Safe House nfe-10 Read online

  “What? About him being in the Net?”

  “Yes.”

  “But they have it, too….”

  “Not nearly as wide-bandwidth as ours,” her dad said, “and there’s not nearly as much for anyone to do. Their country’s Net is more or less quarantined from the rest of the worldwide Net…and the quarantine has run both ways. They can’t get their hands on the equipment they’d like to have. They’ve been embargoed for years. And from their side of things, they don’t want their own people getting their hands on the kind of ‘decadent’ liberal entertainment — not to mention news — that’s available everywhere else in the world. So our Net is going to look pretty interesting to Laurent. His father sounded concerned about it, asked me very pointedly not to let his son overdo it, or even spend that much time on it, until he got here himself to help guide him through all the content.”

  Maj nodded. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t spend all day and all night on it,” she said. “I can imagine it would be easy to get sucked into overdoing it.”

  Her father nodded, ran his hand over his thin spot again. “But at the same time,” he said, “if you want to take him ‘places’ where you can keep an eye on him, and let him have some harmless entertainment…”

  “No problem with that,” Maj said, and grinned. “I had some plans for one of those places tonight.”

  “Simming again?”

  “Yes, but somebody else’s sim,” Maj said. “The Group have gotten into it in a big way. We have a battle scheduled this evening.”

  “Well, if you want to take Laurent along, he’d probably thank you.” Her father sighed, rubbed his head again where his hair used to be.

  “Daddy,” Maj said suddenly, “I have to ask you. Please don’t be mad. But why don’t you go have that grown back?”

  He looked at her, and then smiled. “Honey,” he said, “a lot of my ‘bosses’ were born, oh, no later than the middle of the last century. They still have that century’s values…though reminding them openly of that can be dangerous. Think about it. From their point of view, without being thin on top and looking elderly and respectable, how am I supposed to look as if I deserve my tenure?”

  He smiled a most ironic smile, then got up, squeezing her shoulder as he went by, and headed off among the shelves before Maj could think of anything to say.

  She looked after him with a ghost of that smile, and then turned and made her way back to the door into her work space.

  4

  About half an hour later she ran into her mother in the kitchen. Her mother was looking frazzled. Plainly she had had a difficult morning on the machine. “Any improvement?” Maj said.

  “In their system? Some,” her mom said, leaning against the window, more or less as Laurent had, and looking out at the tomatoes. “I’ve got to get out there and pinch those things back,” she said, “or there are going to be eight hundred thousand tomatoes again this August. And I’ve made all the green tomato chutney I can stand.” She glanced down the hallway. “Don’t knock on his door, Muffin mine,” she said quickly. “He’s still sleeping.”

  “I was just going to look,” said the plaintive little voice from down the hall.

  “I know, sweetieMuf. Don’t. Just go down and read to your dinosaurs now.”

  “They’re tired of reading.”

  “Then tell them all about Niko’s cows, the ones with the buckets.”

  “Oh,” said the Muffin, delighted, and ran off down the hall. Her room door shut.

  Maj’s mother smiled. “She’s fascinated with him,” she said. “For which he’ll probably start being sorry when he wakes up. How is he, do you think?”

  “Tired. And there’s other stuff going on.”

  “Yes, his father…Daddy told you?”

  “We had a word.”

  “Yes.” Her mother looked suddenly more weary than she had. “I feel for him, poor kid, being thrown out into the world all alone like this all of a sudden…. I don’t think there’s any luggage coming, either. It seems that was just a ‘phantom record’ generated by whoever sent him, to keep him from looking abnormal. Nobody but a government courier gets on a spaceplane without any bags, and I think poor Laurent must just have been hustled straight out of the country without any, on the grounds that anyone with luggage would attract suspicion….”

  “Yeah,” Maj said. “Well, his stuff came in from the warehouse…it’s there on the counter. But, Mom, should I send for some more stuff for him? He’s going to need more than just one pair of pants and a shirt. GearOnline has his template.”

  Her mother nodded. “Sure, honey, that’s a good idea. You take care of it.” She gave Maj a cautionary look. “Try not to break the bank.”

  “I won’t.”

  Her mother looked out the window again. “I should get back to hammering on that system. But I’ve got to take a moment to do something about the aphids out there. Otherwise those nasty little suckers are going to pull those roses up by the roots and fly off with them, there are so many of them all over the bushes…Where’s the bug gun?”

  “Under the sink,” said Maj. Her mother went over and opened the under-sink cupboard, hunting out the spray bottle which held the organic soap insecticide which was the only form of chemical warfare she allowed in her garden.

  “Mom, you should really get something more effective,” Maj said as her mother went out. “Something systemic, so the bugs’ll bite the bushes and die of it.”

  “Technofreak,” her mother said with good-natured scorn as the screen door banged closed behind her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Maj said, amused.

  She glanced up at the kitchen clock. Three o’clock already? It was only three hours to the battle. The thought brought chills. The hair stood up all over her. Food, she thought, and a fast review of our last maneuvers….

  She was too jumpy, already, for a big meal. Maj rummaged around in the fridge for a bowl of microwave noodles, made herself some more tea, and settled at the table to slip back into her work space.

  About a second later, it seemed, her bowl was empty, her tea was cold, and Laurent was looking at her from across the table, standing there in the middle of the kitchen and looking slightly bemused. “Maj?” he said. “I am sorry, you are virtual?”

  “Huh? Not so it matters,” she said, surprised, for it had genuinely taken several moments for her to register him standing there. I’m as preoccupied as he was this morning, she thought. She glanced up at the clock. It was five-thirty. “Hey, your stuff’s there on the counter.” Maj looked at him carefully. “Are you okay?”

  “I feel fine,” Laurent said. And indeed he looked fine, better than anyone had a right to who had just been through the day and a half he’d had. “This is it?”

  “That package, yeah. Let me know if something doesn’t fit. The invoice says they have a pickup van in the area if we need to return anything…all we need to do is call. Meantime, what do you want to eat? We should have something before we go to the battle…you’ll be surprised how this kind of ‘fighting’ takes it out of you.”

  “Oh.” He stood there in his “schoolboy” clothes and looked bemused. “Maybe a sandwich?”

  “Every kind of cold cut on earth is in the fridge,” Maj said, getting up to put her tea in the microwave. “My brother is kind of a carnivore.” She grinned. “We really have to introduce you to him, if you’re ever awake at the same time. His hours have been a little weird lately…he has some kind of curling championship coming up.”

  “‘Curling’?”

  “It’s too weird to explain with mere words. It involves shoving a hunk of rock around on a sheet of ice with brooms and a handle. I’ll show you later,” she said. “Go on, get changed.”

  He disappeared down the hall. When he came back, Maj had decided that a sandwich wasn’t a bad idea and was rooting around in the “cool” cupboard where the bread was kept for a loaf of rye. She glanced up. “Hey,” she said, “that looks good on you.”

  He grinned,
that extremely charming smile that seemed to light up his whole face, partly by contrast. Laurent looked very sober a lot of the rest of the time, which, under the circumstances, Maj thought, was probably understandable. When he gets old enough, she thought, he’s going to need a stick to beat the girls off with, if he keeps that smile….

  “So, here,” Maj said. “Baloney, mortadella, regular ham, Mom’s favorite smoked Virginia ham, which she will threaten our lives for eating, my father’s head cheese, white bread, pumpernickel, rye, mayo…”

  “Mustard?” Laurent said.

  “In the fridge.”

  He went to get it. “It did not comment,” Laurent said, returning with it.

  Maj smiled. “It’ll find something to say eventually. I should warn you, don’t leave its door open, or it’ll call you ‘Adrienne.’”

  “Oh?”

  “The Muffin likes to stand there and look in, pondering the mysteries of the universe.”

  “Oh.” He started slathering mustard on some of the pumpernickel. “But her proper name is Adrienne….”

  “She won’t answer to it. She decided some while back that Muffin is her name, and she won’t answer to Adrienne anymore.” Maj shrugged. “We’ll see if it lasts. She may change her mind in a few years when the other kids at school start ragging her about it.” She got a plate for her sandwich, then said, “Speaking of names…we’ll keep using Niko, huh? Just so she doesn’t get confused. But I know the story behind the cover story.”

  He nodded, that somber expression in place again. “I am sorry,” Laurent said, “not to really be related to you.”

  The pain in his voice, though he was trying hard to cover it over, was considerable. Maj shook her head. “While you’re here,” she said, “you are. So forget about it. But what do I call you in private? ‘Laurent’ seems awfully formal.”

  “‘Lari’ is the short form, the — nickname?”

  “Oh. ‘Larry’?”

  “Close,” he said. “‘Larry,’” he said, a little slowly, as if it were a word in a foreign language — but then again, it was.

  “It’s just a short form of ‘Lawrence.’ Your name, but the English version.”

  “Okay. Larry.”

  “Great,” Maj said. “Now at least I won’t have to shout at you and get no answer back all the time.”

  Laurent grinned. “It must have seemed silly. But it is hard to remember you have a new name.” Then the grin fell off, as if he was remembering something that made him uncomfortable. “Larry is better.”

  “Well, you’ll still have to remember around the Muffin.”

  “I think I will manage. Is there another plate?” She handed him one, and he put his sandwich on it and cut it in half. “She will keep reminding me, I think….”

  They went to sit down, and Maj rooted around in the fridge for her mother’s perpetual jug of iced tea and brought it to the table. For a while they sat and ate comfortably enough, not saying anything; but Maj suddenly became aware that Laurent was looking at her, and she raised her eyebrows.

  “You look worried,” he said.

  She opened her mouth to protest that she didn’t know what he was talking about…then laughed. “The battle,” Maj said. “I always get twitchy before these…”

  “But it is virtual,” Laurent said, looking somewhat bemused.

  “Well,” she said, “there’s virtual, and then there’s virtual. Look—” She pushed the plate away and got up. “We’ll be a little early, but there’s no harm in being the first ones into the hangar. Though wait half a second—”

  She put her head out the back door and looked for her mother. She was crouched down behind some rosebushes, slaughtering aphids. “Mom,” she said, “my battle’s in a little while. I want to take L-Niko along, but I don’t want to sit at the table—”

  “You use my machine, honey,” her mother said. “Niko can use the chair in the den. I don’t think Rick’s going to be back until well after you’re done.”

  She let the door close. “My brother usually uses the den link,” Maj said. “Fortunately he’s out of the picture at the moment. Come on, finish that up and we’ll get you settled.”

  A few minutes later they were both installed in separate rooms. Minutes after that they were in Maj’s work space. Laurent looked around appreciatively again. “Mine is nothing like so nice,” he said. “But maybe now it is over here, I can make some changes.”

  “Your dad had your space cloned over here?”

  “My father took care of it last week, he said.” Laurent glanced around him. “But it is very empty compared to this. All these books in the shelves…these are real works somewhere else?”

  “Reference stuff mostly. Encyclopedias, almanacs, links to the news services. I’ll show you how it’s done after I get back from school tomorrow. Meanwhile—”

  She paused by the version of her desk that lived in the work space, and put her hand down on it. “Computer…”

  “Wide awake, boss.”

  “Open access to Cluster Rangers. I need a guest authorization.”

  There was a pause. “Addition to account authorized,” said the computer. “Is the authorization intended for the party presently in your work space?”

  “Yes.”

  “Noted. Time limitations now apply to guest accounts. Fifty hours maximum.”

  Maj rolled her eyes. This was more than enough time to get anyone she could think of addicted to the game…which was doubtless the designers’ intention. “Thank you,” she said. “Ready?”

  “Ready now. Preferred area of ingress?”

  “Hangar one.”

  “Hangar one access ready.”

  She went over to the door in the wall, opened it. “Come on in.”

  Laurent followed her in. The other side of the door was now occupied by a huge empty space with a shiny concrete floor. The walls were a long way off and were also painted concrete with large tool closets and metal equipment shelving pushed up against them. From the corrugated metal ceiling hung lights so bright they almost hurt to look at, and in the middle of it all sat Maj’s Arbalest fighter.

  It was a long, sharp-nosed black shape somewhat reminiscent of the old SR-71 Blackbird, but stubbier, and not so “flattened” in cross-section, and it was shiny mirror-black, not matte, for protection against light-weapons. The wings were swept back much more acutely, and the wing-roots were much broader, partly to support the weight of the “Crossbow” pumped laser cannons that hung under them on each side.

  “This is yours?” Laurent breathed.

  “Yup,” Maj said as they walked toward it. “Well, my group’s, anyway. The basic design, I mean. We’ve all made modifications to the design, here and there. But it’s not too bad.” She paused and just took a moment to admire it.

  Laurent was walking around it with his mouth very satisfyingly open. Maj was pleased. Whatever else might be going on inside this new visitor, he plainly had taste.

  “Suit,” she said to the air. Her space suit appeared on her — again one of the game’s standard suits, but customized with the Group of Seven’s black eight-ball patch (though the numeral was a seven instead) on the shoulders. It was similar to gee suits being used today by those pilots who insisted on flying their fighters “genuinely” rather than virtually, but it had much more attention paid to the insulation. Even fighter pilots do not normally have to worry about being dumped out of their craft in deep space, or having to wait there for pickup for prolonged periods.

  “Games controller,” Maj said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the game’s computer.

  “Would you provide a suit for my guest, please?”

  “Yes ma’am. Will he be participating in flight?”

  “Flight, yes. Not fighting, though.”

  “Control sequencing unchanged, then.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Next order.”

  “On hold.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A sudden sque
ak came from Laurent as he was heading around from the other side of the fighter. “Suit too tight?” Maj said.

  “Uh, no, it just surprised me.”

  She restrained herself from shaking her head and commenting on how much his home system plainly left to be desired. Costuming — changing body covering or, for that matter, body shape — was one of the most basic virtual utilities. If they won’t even let people dress up the way they want to—! “Well, no more serious surprises,” she said. “Come on, let’s get up into the cockpit. We’ve got a short jump to make before we take the long one.”

  He hurried along beside here. “Where is this? I mean, where are we supposed to be?”

  “It’s a hangar facility on Amrit, the third moon of the gas giant Dolorosa,” Maj said. “I don’t know how much that helps you. Come on, get in. The aft ladder is on the other side — walk underneath.”

  She clambered up into the cockpit. “Let me know if that seat suits you,” she said. “The program should have fixed it.”

  There was some clunking and bumping as Laurent wriggled himself into the number-two seat behind her. “It — is snug,” he said.

  “Partly for protection against those high-G turns,” she said. “You’ll be glad of it later. Helmet,” she said.

  Maj’s helmet appeared, a perfectly transparent dome that faired into her suit apparently seamlessly. It was solid plex. Maj knew other players who trusted the new force field helmets, but herself, she preferred something that didn’t need a power source, no matter how “guaranteed” the power sources were.

  “But this is, well, virtual,” Laurent said, sounding a little dubious. “Do we really need these?”

  Maj laughed. “You breathe a little vacuum, and you’ll find out whether you need it or not.”

  “But we couldn’t really suffocate, or—”

  “Yes, I know, it’s a game, but isn’t it more fun to play a game and pretend it’s not a game?” Maj said. “You ready? We should get going. Got yourself strapped in?”

  It was the usual five-point harness, and as usual took a little doing for him to get all fastened in the first time. When Laurent was helmeted and secure, Maj said, “Hangar control…”