Joe Haldeman - Forever Peace

"I have a male nurse who is very fat... no, very large-and who knows, who grasps, a black belt in karate. He will be watching along with me."

"No. By the time he got down the stairs, she could kill me."

Spencer nodded and thought. "I'll put him in the room next door, with a beeper." He held up the remote and pushed a button. "Like now. This will call him."

Ray excused himself and went to the bathroom, where he was unable to do anything but catalogue his weapons: a key ring and a Swiss Army knife. Back in the observation room he met Lalo, who had arms the size of Ray's thighs. He spoke no English and moved with the nervous delicacy of a man who knows how easily things break. They walked downstairs together. Lalo slipped into room 2, and Ray went into the lobby.

"Madame?" She looked up at him, targeting. "I'm Dr. Spencer. And you?"

"Jane Smith. Can we go someplace and talk?"

He led her to room 1, which was larger than it had seemed in the camera. He motioned her to the couch and pulled over a chair. He straddled it, the chair back a protective shield between them.

"How may I help you?"

"You have a patient named Blaze Harding. Professor Blaze Harding. It is absolutely imperative that I speak to her."

"In the first place, we don't give out the names of our clients. In the second place, our clients don't always give us their real names. Ms. Smith."

"Who are you, really?"

"What?"

"My sources said Dr. Spencer was Mexican. I never met a Mexican with a Boston accent."

"I assure you that I am – "

"No." She reached into her waistband and pulled out a pistol apparently made of glass. "I don't have time for this." Her face became grim, set; totally mad. "You are going to quietly take me from room to room until we find Professor Harding."

Ray paused. "And if she's not here?"

"Then we'll go to a quiet place where I will cut your fingers off, one by one, until you tell me where she is."

Lalo eased the door open and swung in with a large black pistol coming up to aim. She gave him an annoyed look and shot him once in the eye. The glass pistol was almost completely silent.

He dropped the gun and fell to one knee, both hands over his face. He began a girlish keening but her second shot sheared off the top of his head. He toppled forward silently in a flood of blood and brain and cerebrospinal fluid.

Her tone of voice was unchanged: earnest and flat. "You see, the only way you're going to live to see the night is to cooperate with me."

Ray was struck dumb, staring at the corpse.

"Get up. Let's go."

"I... I don't think she's here."

"Then where – " She was interrupted by the rattling sound of metal shutters rolling down over the door and window.

Ray heard a faint hissing sound, and remembered Marty's story about the interrogation room at St. Bart's. Maybe they had the same architect.

She evidently didn't hear it-too many hours on the firing range-but she looked around and did see the television camera, like a stub of pencil pointed at them from an upper corner of the room. She jerked him around to face the camera and put the pistol to his head. "You have three seconds to open that door, or I kill him. Two."

"Senora Smith!" A voice came from everywhere. "To open that door, it requires a, el gato ... a jack. It will take two minutes, or three."

"You have two minutes." She looked at her watch. "Starting now."

Ray slumped and suddenly collapsed, rolling out on his back. His head hit the floor with a solid whack.

She made a disgusted noise. "Coward." Then a few seconds later, she herself staggered, and then sat down hard on the floor. Wavering, she held the pistol with both hands and shot Ray in the chest four times.

MY PLACE IN THE BOQ had two rooms-a bedroom and an "office," a gray cubicle with just enough room for a cooler, two hard chairs, and a small table in front of a simple comm console.

On the table, a glass of wine and my last meal: a gray pill. I had a yellow legal tablet and a pen, but couldn't think of anything to say that wasn't obvious.

The phone rang. I let it go three times, and said hello.

It was Jefferson-my psychiatric nemesis, come to save me in the eleventh hour. The instant he hangs up, I resolved, I'm taking the pill.

But like the room and the pill, Jefferson was gray, more gray than black. I hadn't seen anybody that color since my mother had called to tell me Aunt Franci had died. "What's wrong?" I said.

"Ray's dead. He was killed by an assassin they sent after Blaze."

"'They'? The Hammer of God?" The wavering silver bar at the top of the screen meant the encryptation was working; we could say anything.

"We assume she's one of them. Spencer's drilling her out now for a jack."

"How do you know she was after Amelia?"

"She had her picture; was nosing around the hotel here-Julian, she killed Ray just for the hell of it, after she'd killed another man. She walked right through the security screen at the clinic, with a gun and a knife of some plastic. We're scared shitless that she's not here alone."

"God. They tracked us to Mexico?"

"Can you get up here? Blaze needs your protection – we all need you!"

I actually felt my jaw drop. "You need me to come up and be a soldier?" All those professional snipers and convicted murderers.

SPENCER UNPLUGGED HIS JACK and walked to the window. He raised the blinds and squinted at the rising sun, yawning. He turned to the woman who was bound to a wheelchair with locked restraints.

"Senora," he said, "you are crazy nuts."

Jefferson had unjacked a minute before. "That would be my professional opinion, too."

"What you've done is completely illegal and immoral," she said. "Violating a person's soul."

"Gavrila," Jefferson said, "if you have a soul, I couldn't find it in there."

She jerked at her bonds and the wheelchair rocked toward him.

"She does have a point, though," he said to Spencer.

"We can't very well turn her over to the police."

"I will, as you Americans say, keep her under observation indefinitely. Once she's well, she's free to go." He scratched the stubble on his chin. "At least until the middle of September. You believe that, too?"

"I can't do the math. But Julian and Blaze can, and they don't have any doubts."

"It's the Hammer of God coming down," Gavrila said. "Nothing you can do will stop it."

"Oh, shut up. Can we put her someplace?"

"I have what you would call a 'rubber room.' No lunatic has ever escaped from it." He went to the intercom and arranged for a man named Luis to take her there.

He sat down and looked at her. "Poor Lalo; poor Ray. They didn't suspect what a monster you were."

"Of course not. Men just see me as a receptacle for their lust. Why should they fear a cunt?"

"You're going to find out a lot about that," Jefferson said.

"Go ahead and threaten me. I'm not afraid of rape."

"This is more intimate than rape. We're going to introduce you to some friends. If you do have a soul, they'll find it."

She didn't say anything. She knew what he meant; she knew about the Twenty from being jacked with him. For the first time, she looked a little frightened.

There was a knock on the door, but it wasn't Luis. "Julian," Jefferson said, and gestured. "Here she is."

Julian studied her. "She's the same woman we saw in the monitor at St. Bart's? Hard to believe." She was staring at him with an odd expression. "What?"

"She recognizes you," Jefferson said. "When Ingram tried to kidnap Blaze off the train, you followed them. She thought you were with Ingram."

Julian walked over to her. "Take a good look. I want you to dream about me."

"I'm so frightened," she said.

"You came here to kill my lover, and instead killed an old friend. And another man. They say you didn't blink." He reached slowly toward her. She tried to dodge, but he grabbed her throat.

"Julian..."

"Oh, don't worry." The wheels on the chair were locked. He pushed slowly on her throat and she tipped back. He held her at the balance point. "You're going to find everyone here so nice. They just want to help you." He let go, and the wheelchair fell over with a jarring crash. She grunted.

"I'm not one of them, though." He got down on his hands and knees, his face directly over hers. "I'm not nice, and I don't want to help you."

"That's not going to work with her, Julian."

"It's not for her. It's for me." She tried to spit at him, but missed. He stood up and casually flipped the wheelchair into an upright position.

"This isn't like you."

"I'm not like me. Marty didn't say anything about my losing the ability to jack!"

"You didn't know that could happen with the memory manipulation?"

"No. Because I didn't ask."

Jefferson nodded. "That's why you and I haven't been scheduled together lately. You might have asked me about it."

Luis came into the room and they didn't say anything while Spencer instructed him and he rolled Gavrila out.

"I think it's more sinister than that, more manipulative," Julian said. "I think Marty needed somebody who'd been a mechanic, knows soldiering, but is immune to being humanized." He gestured with a thumb at Spencer. "He knows everything now?"

"The essentials."

"I think Marty wants me this way in case there's a need for violence. Just like you-when you called me to come protect Blaze, you implied the same."

"Well, it's just that – "

"And you're right, too! I'm so fucking mad that I could kill someone. Isn't that crazy?"

"Julian..."

"Oh, you don't use the word 'crazy.'" He lowered his voice. "But it's odd, isn't it? I've sort of come full circle."

"That could be temporary, too. You have every right to be angry."

Julian sat down and clasped his hands together, as if to restrain them. "What did you learn from her? Are there other assassins in town, headed here?"

"The only other one she actually knew was Ingram. We do know the name of the man above her, though, and he must be close to the top. It's a General Blaisdell. He's also the one who ordered the suppression of your paper and had Blaze's partner killed."

"He's in Washington?"

"The Pentagon. He's the undersecretary of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-DARPA."

Julian almost laughed. "DARPA kills research all the time. I've never heard of them killing a researcher before."

"He knows she came to Guadalajara, and that she was coming to a jack clinic, but that's all."

"How many clinics are there?"

"One hundred thirty-eight," Spencer said. "And when Professor Harding had her work done here, the only connections to her real name are my own office records and the... what did you call the thing you signed?"

"Power of attorney."

"Yes, that's buried in a law office's files, and even so, there shouldn't be anything connecting it with this clinic."

"I wouldn't get too complacent," Julian said. "If Blaisdell wants to, he can find us the same way she did. We left some kind of a trail. The Mexican police could probably place us in Guadalajara-maybe even right here-and they could be bribed pretty easily. Begging your pardon, Dr. Spencer."

He shrugged. "Es verdad."

"So we suspect anyone who comes through that door. But what about Amelia, Blaze-is she nearby?"

"Maybe a quarter of a mile," Jefferson said. "I'll take you there."

"No. They might be following either of us. Let's not double their odds. Just write down the name of the place. I'll take two cabs."