Maya Bohnhoff: Pipe Dreams

Beck wetted his lips. “Too close. I was deep inside the program, at the last security protocols, when I realized… sort of… what was going on—that someone had set me up to breach my own program.”

The colonel’s alarm showed as tiny white brackets on each side of his mouth. “But you stopped them. I assume you recognized your code.”

Beck closed his eyes. “No… I recognized my childhood.”

“Excuse me?”

Beck smiled wanly. “You would’ve had to be there.”

Later, with Traynor gone, Marian sat next to him on the bed and held his hand. Her scent struck him softly. He opened one eye. “You were right, all along. Bourbon was connected to Ibrahim. In ways I couldn’t have imagined. I seem to have an imagination deficiency. Not a good thing for a guy who wants to write science fiction.”

“What was it like in there?”

“Weird. Like being in a dream. Or down a rabbit hole. But it was my rabbit hole—which is why I finally recognized the… the programming. It was all from my childhood. Games I played, shows I watched, pictures I drew, riddles I made up. Patterns in floor tiles, staircases, cow pastures. But it was the clown. The clown in the funeral chapel. That was what did it.”

Marian grimaced. “Imagination deficiency, huh? Hell, I’m not even going to ask.”

“Aren’t you at least going to say, ‘I told you so’?”

“Do I need to?”

He shook his head. A sigh, deep and silent, broke over him as a realization struck.

Somehow Marian heard it and squeezed his hand. “What?”

“The book. Sefton never really wanted the book.”

“Maybe they did, and it gave Bourbon a legitimate excuse to contact you.”

“Maybe. But it’s more likely I got duped. 1 let my naivete compromise the secrets I hold for my government.” He closed his eyes again. “But the worst thing is what they led me to believe about you and Ruby. I think they must have drugged me, planted suggestions in my head that I couldn’t trust you… and other things. They wanted you out of the way, I guess.”

Marian’s mouth curled. “So, that’s what that was about. And that was worse than almost giving away the deed to Uncle Sam’s farm? Sweet, but silly, Beck. There was a hell of a lot at stake in those silos. On the bright side, I think this little episode has given Colonel Traynor and his fellows reason to consider an alternative to hiding loaded guns.”

Beck looked out the window where the Sun had risen on a brilliant day. “Funny. I guess I turned out to be a secret agent after all. So secret, even I didn’t know it. Secret agent double-oh-one—binary spy.”

“You could write a book about it.”

“Yeah, I could. But, who’d buy it?”

There were, in fact, several publishers standing in the electronic queue in Beck’s e-mail box when news of the virtual break-in surfaced and Ibrahim X was arrested on charges of masterminding it. Beck had his pick of offers, his shiny new agent finally accepting the high bid from a large publisher most widely known for its techno-thrillers.

Beck was pleased, without being ecstatic. He had a book contract, but it was non-fiction—just one more real-world title on cutting-edge programming by Beckett Hodge, destined one day to reside on the shelves of universities and computer super-stores everywhere. Still, given the sensational nature of the subject matter, it would almost certainly arrive there by way of the AT-T bestseller list.

At least that was the picture until the Pentagon intervened in the form of an apologetic Colonel Traynor, who appeared in the Hodge living room one evening and parked himself in Beck’s favorite chair.

“I’m sorry, Professor Hodge, but we simply can’t allow you to publish this book. It would reveal too much about our security system and its…”

“Vulnerability?” Marian suggested.

“I was going to say, its nature.”

Beck didn’t care what he had been going to say. All that registered was that the brass ring had dodged him once again.

“But if you prevent it from being published—” Marian objected.

“The public would suspect a cover-up,” Traynor finished for her. “And they’d be right. That’s why we’re willing to allow the book to be published provided two conditions are met.”

Beck raised his head. “Which are?”

“First, that it be published in a vastly altered form. You would have to fictionalize the account. Change names and circumstances, alter the order of events, make up different riddles.”

Amazement settled on Beck like a woolly cloud. “But anyone who followed the news would know—”

“Ah, no. You see, that’s the second condition—you have to wait.”

“Wait? How long?”

“Three years… or the length of time it takes for you to completely redesign your security system.”

Beck sagged back into his chair. “Completely?”

“You’ll have to design two new systems, actually—one for the warheads and one for the delivery system… which we’ve decided should be separated by… some distance.”

“But in three years, there may not be a publisher still interested in the story.”

Traynor shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s the only recourse you have, Professor Hodge. We simply can’t allow the story to be published now—not even as fiction.”

Beck nodded. He was still nodding when Traynor was gone.

“You should be happy,” Marian told him. “They’re unloading the ‘gun.’ ”

“I suppose I should be, but I just feel… exhausted… and silly. I was so taken in by Bourbon and his flattery. What made me think I could write fiction? Terry Lance was right; I should stick to what I know.”

Marian made a rude noise. “Terry Lance is a textbook jockey. He wouldn’t know good science fiction if he had a close encounter with it. Besides, you did write fiction. You just wrote it into the national defense system.”

Beck had to laugh, and Marian, who didn’t need to be told why he was laughing, laughed with him. The irony was delicious: He wrote fiction like a programmer and programmed like a science fiction writer.

Mentally, he was still laughing when his head touched the pillow that night. He didn’t know if he could convince a publisher to wait three years for the story—especially a fictionalized version of it—but he did know he would continue to write both programs and fiction. Eventually, he would get them straight.