John Scalzi - The Android's Dream

To Robin, he handed a pair of scissors and some hair dye. "Low-tech," he said. "You have great hair, my dear. But it's far too obvious." Robin took the scissors and dye and looked like she had just been told to cut her own throat. Fixer guided her to a bathroom and then came back to Creek. "I need to make a few calls," he said. "I need to call in a few favors."

"Thank you," Creek said. "I really appreciate it."

"They're not favors for you," Fixer said. "I can get you off planet under my own steam. But I have a feeling you've just qualified me for a long, necessary, and possibly permanent vacation. That's going to require calling in some markers."

"Sorry about that," Creek said.

"Don't be too sorry," Fixer said. He dug out Creek's anonymous credit card and handed it back to him. "You're paying for it. And I don't mind telling you I'm putting a hell of a markup on my services tonight." Fixer headed up the stairs; Creek pulled out his communicator and made a call of his own to Brian.

"You're very popular," Brian said, again without preamble. "In the last hour or so there's been about 2,000 attempts to hack your system, some of them actually pretty good."

"The fact you're here to tell me about it suggests you have it under control," Creek said.

"That's one way of putting it," Brian said. "Another way of putting would be to say that in about ninety minutes, a couple thousand elite and not-so-elite hacks are going to howl in terror when their little worlds implode. However, I'm less worried about them than I am about the fact that a judge has just authorized a warrant to search your premises and the chattels within, namely, your computer system in an attempt to figure out just where you are at the moment. The cops aren't going to be any more successful in getting information out of your system than the hacks, but if I'm disconnected from the network I'm not going to be much use to you."

"Can you leave the system?" Creek asked.

"I don't think so," Brian said. "The network allows for small autonomous programs, like the drillers I'm currently swatting away, but I'm a little large not to be noticed just floating there in the aether."

Creek thought for a moment. "The IBM at NOAA," he said, finally. "It should still be accessible. You could go there."

"Oh, very nice," Brian said. "Back to the womb."

"It's better than nothing," Creek said.

"I'm not complaining, Harry," Brian said. "I like the IBM. It's roomy. And it's also connected to the government network, which makes my accessing it rather less obtrusive. Hold on, I've begun my transfer. Do I sound farther away?"

"Not really," Creek said.

"And as I'm backing out of your system I'm formatting it and ordering it to disconnect from the network," Brian said. "I don't know what the cops are going to find in the rest of your house but your computer, at least, will be clean in just a few minutes."

"What else have you got for me?" Creek asked.

"Tons," Brian said. "First: The mall security cameras weren't working—the police pulled some disrupters off your new friends—but you and Miss Baker were recorded by the Metro video cameras. That's the bad news. The good news is that I managed to disconnect the feed from your train once I located you. The bad news is that I wasn't able to disconnect the video feed from the Benning Road stop, so eventually they'll figure out where you got off. But it still gives you a little bit of time. If you're not already hurrying to do whatever you're doing, it's time to start."

"We're hurrying," Creek said.

"Good to hear," Brain said. "Second: Your Agent Reginald Dwight is actually Edward Baer, who appears to be your average low-grade flunky type. Served a couple years for extortion and racketeering about a decade ago and got an extra six months tacked on to his sentence for assaulting another prisoner while in the pen. His official job is as a security specialist, which is some irony for you. Quite obviously an associate of Mr. Acuna, who has been signing checks to this guy for a couple of years now."

"Is he dead?" Creek asked.

"No, he's not," Brian said. "He's not exactly skipping through the daisies, either. He was admitted to Mount Vernon Hospital with multiple internal and external injuries, including a broken back and severed spinal cord. He's in surgery now. There are two confirmed dead, one from massive head trauma and another from a gunshot wound, and two others wounded. One of those is unconscious, but one is conscious and being grilled by the police as we speak."

"That's five," Creek said. "Where's Acuna?"

"He's not at the scene," Brian said. "At the very least, there's no word of his arrest or his being sent to the hospital."

"That's no good," Creek said.

"Third," Brian continued, "I figured out who it was who's been trying to dig into your system for the last day or so: A guy named Archie McClellan. He's a contractor for the Department of Defense. Have you heard of him?"

"No," Creek said.

"Well, he's definitely heard of you," Brian said, "and since his attempts to hack into your system correspond almost exactly with your attempts to find your lost sheep, I don't think his visits are coincidental."

"Does this McClellan guy have any connection to Jean Schroeder or the AIC?" Creek asked.

"There's nothing in his banking history that would say so. He mostly works for the US and UNE governments. His contract information says he primarily works with legacy systems. He's got no axe to grind. Apparently, he's just a geek. I'm crawling up his computer's tailpipe as we speak. I expect to learn more any second now. But in the meantime I'd like to suggest to you that, yeah, we should assume whatever Jean Schroeder and his merry band of xenophobic freaks are up to, our friend Archie and the Defense Department are along for the ride."

Creek open his mouth to answer when the door to the basement opened and Fixer stepped a few steps down the stairs. "I've got a ride for you two," he said. "The Neverland cruise ship. The entire boat has been rented out to a group of Veterans of Foreign and Extraterrestrial Wars. It's hitting some of the usual stops but then it's going to some battle sites. So you're going to have to pretend to be a veteran."

"I am a veteran," Creek said.

"Well, good. Then things just got easier for a change," Fixer said. "The last shuttle up to the Neverland leaves from BWI in about two hours, so let's get you two moving. Tell your friend to hurry up in the bathroom; I need to make passport pictures for the two of you in the next fifteen minutes." Fixer went back up the stairs.

"Going somewhere?" Brian said.

"That"s the plan," Creek said.

"You'll recall that starships, even the comfy cruise liners, are totally out of communication when they jump into null space," Brian said. "You can send messages through n-space, but you can't send or receive messages while you're in it. You're going to be out of reach most of the time."

"At this point I'm hard-pressed to see that as a bad thing," Creek said. "Look, it's a cruise liner. It makes stops every couple of days. As soon as we're back in real space, the data feeds are open again."

"Do you think when Ben told you to get lost he meant for you to actually leave the planet?" Brian asked. "If he needs you, even if you're in real space you'll be several light-years away. It won't be that easy to hitch a ride back."

"If Ben's trying to call us back, it means that he's figured out what the hell is going on, which means he's going to have the resources of the State Department to retrieve us," Creek said. "So I don't think bringing us back is going to be that much of a problem. But in the meantime I'm not going to sit around trying to lay low on this planet and waiting for people to shoot our heads off."

"What do I do while you're away?" Brian said.