Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Spartacus File

Beech had difficulty believing his eyes. A cop? In his neighborhood? But there he was, as big as life. “Am I glad to see you!” Casper gasped.

“Is there something wrong?” the officer asked suspiciously.

Casper gestured towards the entrance to the subway as the first of the gang members emerged. Seeing the officer, the gang turned and raced back the way they had come, their metal-heeled boots clattering on the steps.

“I'll take care of this.” Grinning wolfishly, the officer reached for his holstered shotgun as he started down into the subway.

Casper watched him go. He felt no inclination to follow, or to see what was going to happen-he wasn't interested in revenge, and his curiosity wasn't that morbid.

Or that reckless.

Party hacks on TV sometimes still talked about criminals being coddled, but Casper had never seen any evidence of it, not since the Crisis and the emergency decrees. Criminals weren't paroled when the jails got crowded any more; they were “shot while trying to escape.”

Sometimes the cops didn't bother with the intermediate steps of arrest, trial, and jail.

And sometimes witnesses got “caught in the crossfire” if they saw the wrong thing. Casper had no desire to see anything that might be wrong. Feeling shaky, he walked the rest of the way home without incident.

It was after eleven, but he was more keyed up than ever. After a few moments of uneasy pacing around his apartment he decided he needed still more exercise. Just running or walking wasn't enough, and he didn't want to risk damaging himself, so he sat down at his computer and pulled up a webfeed, entered a few search terms, and found a catalog of exercise videos. He chose a few almost at random, and downloaded them.

As soon as the first download was complete he shifted the others to the background, and began playing this new acquisition in fullscreen video.

The title was Basic Stretching, and he followed the lead of the girl on the screen carefully.

It was fortunate that he started with this file, because the next three, Aerobics for a Better Life, Modern Dance at Home, and Calisthenics, had no warmup period, and he probably would have injured himself. As it was, none of the programs did more than tire him out.

He ran through all of them without stopping.

The last file, however, was different. Self Defense for the Common Man struck a chord within him. Watching the first demonstration he felt an electric excitement. He followed along, clumsily at first, but with rapid improvement. It was as though this was what his body was waiting for, and when he had finished, he felt relaxed and at ease for the first time since the imprinting.

He ran the file through again, and burned all five to disk.

It was just after four a.m. when he finally stumbled into bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Once again the NeuroTalents executive boardroom was the scene of a late night meeting. This time, however, Mr. Yamashiro, looking somewhat subdued, sat halfway down the table. At the head of the table, in Yamashiro's usual seat, was an angry man in a black suit and old-fashioned red tie.

“I can't believe you people screwed up like this,” the man in black said. “Those files are classified!”

“ Your people ordered us to keep them available,” Yamashiro protested weakly.

“But not in with the everyday business!” the man in black said. “You could have kept the disks to one side, ready to plug in when we told you to!” He glared for a moment, then said, “Oh, hell, it doesn't matter any more-the damage is done. I hope you realize that your carelessness may have endangered not only NeuroTalents, but the very existence of the entire parent corporation. This could get us kicked out of the Consortium!”

“I think you're making too much of this,” Yamashiro replied uneasily.

“I don't doubt you think that,” the man in black said, his tone flat and deadly. “That opinion is just another example of your incompetence.” He frowned. “I'm afraid that extraordinary measures are called for, Yamashiro-there is simply no longer a place for you in this organization.”

“What?” Yamashiro stared in disbelief.

“Your services are no longer needed, Yamashiro.” The man in black spoke with quiet intensity, more effective than shouting would have been. “You're fired.”

Yamashiro pushed his chair back and rose unsteadily. “You can't do this to me,” he said. “I have friends, contacts-I'm a major stockholder! I'll make trouble for you. I'm not someone you can treat this way.”

“I'm afraid you are. You're not active in the Party, and this is a political case.” The man in black touched a button on his wrist unit, and two silent men in impeccably tailored suits entered; they had obviously been just outside the door, awaiting their signal. They walked silently down the length of the table and stood behind Yamashiro.

“These gentlemen will be escorting you out of the building,” the man in black explained calmly. “You will not be allowed back. Your personal effects will be sent to you by courier.”

Yamashiro tried to protest as the two silent men seized his arms and led him from the room, but the others all sat utterly motionless, totally ignoring him, until the sound had been cut off by the closing of the heavy conference room doors.

The man in black looked at the woman who had been seated next to Yamashiro. “Ms. Kendall, henceforth you will carry out the duties of the executive director. We can regularize the title later, if you like. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded.

“Good,” the man in black said. “Now let's see if we can find a solution to this problem.” He turned to the man seated to his left. “I appreciate your coming up, sir, especially considering the short notice you were given.”

The man he addressed nodded. “My pleasure, Mr. Chairman.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the chairman explained to the others, “this is a representative of the Homeland Security Department, knowledgeable in covert activities and a coordinator of the programs NeuroTalents has undertaken in that area. You may refer to him as Mr. Smith.”

Smith nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “Of course you all realize that, officially, the Covert Operations Group has no involvement in this affair, any more than any other branch of the federal government or any part of the Democratic-Republican Party does. Officially, those optimization files do not exist, NeuroTalents has no connection with Covert or any other part of Homeland Security, and I am not here. That's official, and you'd all do well to remember it. However, on a practical level, we must keep on top of this matter.”

The chairman nodded his agreement. He looked at NeuroTalents’ new executive director. “A team of ours has been working with your people. You have a report from them?”

“Ah, yes.” The woman shuffled nervously through pages on her PDA.

The others eyed her expectantly. She cleared her throat and began, “First, the technical failure. It appears that when the system was installed, no one bothered to arrange a maintenance schedule; instead it was left up to the users to judge when to check over the system. It appears…” She hesitated, then continued, “It appears that the users, the technicians running the system, were unaware that any maintenance was called for, ever. The system has been running non-stop, uninspected and unmaintained, for more than six years. It's a miracle we haven't had a breakdown before this-or at least, as far as we know we haven't. Steps are being taken to ensure that regular maintenance will be done from now on.”

She paused, then went on. “The next question is the classified files themselves. The current software uses a single master program to access everything in the system. Until this can be altered, we have removed the files in question from the system. New software is being written that will handle this all in better fashion, requiring human intervention at certain critical points in any non-standard procedure.”