Authors: John Barnes
Mother of Storms (19 page)
“You two kids were always so romantic.”
“Oh, belt up. This is important. The numbers he gave me are way higher
than the numbers I’ve been getting out of NOAA, and it’s a systematic error—somebody’s been dividing some key data by eight before reporting it. I want to know what’s going on and why this is being done—and if you’re not in on it, I want to give you the real numbers.”
than the numbers I’ve been getting out of NOAA, and it’s a systematic error—somebody’s been dividing some key data by eight before reporting it. I want to know what’s going on and why this is being done—and if you’re not in on it, I want to give you the real numbers.”
Di looks like he’s been punched in the gut, but he’d look that way whether he was surprised at the information or surprised that she knew it. “What are the numbers, then?” he asks.
She tells him and then drops the second of her three blockbusters. “Now, when you start plugging those numbers in, plot the isotherms on Pacific surface water temperature.”
“Why?”
“Because the thing that our model does is figure size of each hurricane formation zone individually. Generally that’s all that needs to be done and it works, because when you’re only messing with small changes the zones grow or shrink by a hundred miles or so at most.” She tells him about the whole Pacific being one formation zone.
“Think about it, Di, they get bigger the farther they run. Up till now you’ve never had one run two thousand miles through a formation zone. When a big one rips up the U.S. East Coast it’s dying before it clears Florida. But this summer there are some that might get in eight-thousand- or ten-thousand-mile runs before they pile into land … and a hurricane might pass New York City and be headed for Europe, still gaining energy.”
“Now wait a minute, Carla, it’s bad but it’s not that bad. Hurricanes move east to west. They’ll hit land eventually—”
Time for her third blockbuster. “They also move toward the pole. And once you’re up at thirty-two degrees north or so, the steering currents will tend to push them toward the
east
. You might very well see one or more of them circling around out there and not dying all summer.”
east
. You might very well see one or more of them circling around out there and not dying all summer.”
It is characteristic of information that it can be stolen an all but unlimited number of times. When it became clear that one particular senior meteorologist at NOAA might be sitting at the focal point, that clarity—that little note that “this is what probably matters”—became information in and of itself, and was worth stealing. A dozen monitoring programs stole it at once, and dozens more stole from each of them, and from the places they passed it on to, until by now practically everyone who matters knows that Diogenes Callare matters. One of the few who doesn’t know is Diogenes Callare.
He hasn’t noticed his superiors treating him with kid gloves, though they are, or the FBI men who watch him constantly.
What he has noticed is how much seems to be kept from him, as if no one wants him to figure anything out. So Carla Tynan’s phone call finally
makes it click into place, and he’s been in Washington for far too long not to realize that if so much is being kept from him, it’s because he’s more important than he thinks he is. It’s a long step down the road to paranoia, but it’s been a proverb for a hundred years that being paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.
makes it click into place, and he’s been in Washington for far too long not to realize that if so much is being kept from him, it’s because he’s more important than he thinks he is. It’s a long step down the road to paranoia, but it’s been a proverb for a hundred years that being paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you.
As he hangs up, he thinks of a dozen little details … an instrument report or two that he had discarded as too far out of bounds—and which had disappeared later. One or two people at NOAA whom he had thought were new hires, people he’d never seen before, who seemed to spend all the time they were not in meetings on the phone and didn’t seem to know a lot of meteorology. Having overheard one new supervisor getting an explanation about methane being CH
4
and opaque in the infrared from another of the new hires.
4
and opaque in the infrared from another of the new hires.
He knows, very suddenly, that there have been many, many datarodents in the nodes near him, with more arriving all the time. He doesn’t know about the four guardians in the shadows around his house—or the two watchers who watch the guardians, waiting for a slip—but he will notice them when he comes out the door in the morning.
Di Callare stands and runs his hands through his hair. He thinks back to all the bland, boring years while not much happened; to the night when nuclear fire tore a hole in the capital, and the long year afterward as they swiftly rebuilt, and the slow realization that the Blue Berets might never be going home; and to the way that Washington went from being merely dangerous and dirty to a city of intrigue, like Vienna, Berlin, or Bucharest, a place where power swirled and congealed in dark corners, a place where Di could remember four acquaintances who died in odd accidents and three people who had disappeared.
“Even at fucking NOAA,” he mutters under his breath, and then looks around and is relieved to remember that Nahum is asleep and hasn’t picked up that one. He sighs once more, deeply, and goes in to see how Lori is doing.
She’s hunched over the keyboard, beating away at it. He’s given up on asking why she insists on using a keyboard when dictation equipment is so fast and accurate nowadays; her explanation—that readers of books like hers read fast and that they don’t hear the words, so to write orally is to write the wrong rhythm—hasn’t made much sense to him, but then he knows that his attempts to explain the jet stream to her haven’t gotten much of anywhere either. Let it just be that she knows what she’s doing.
He creeps softly up behind her and sees that she’s typing
but there was no one to hear her scream, however loud she might, not even as the man with the big, kind eyes began to slit the skin around her breast with his matte knife
—
but there was no one to hear her scream, however loud she might, not even as the man with the big, kind eyes began to slit the skin around her breast with his matte knife
—
Di Callare winces, brushes her hair back, kisses her neck. Normally she
hates to be interrupted while she’s working, and normally he respects that, but right now he needs her touch badly, and he has to hope she’ll understand.
hates to be interrupted while she’s working, and normally he respects that, but right now he needs her touch badly, and he has to hope she’ll understand.
When she turns to kiss his cheek, her face is wet with tears. “Bad news from Carla?” she asks.
“The worst. Did you hear?”
“She told me it was going to be bad.” Lori explains, whispering in his ear. His mouth sets in disapproval—he’d have thought Carla would have more sense than to tell Lori something like—“Don’t blame her, I asked. She’s one of your best friends, you know—maybe not your closest, but one of your most loyal. I love her for that.”
He lifts Lori out of her chair and carries her to their bedroom; in happier times when he has done this, mostly just to prove he still can, she’s referred to it as “a moment out of the classic movies, that moment when the leading man carries away the leading lady and we see what they both really want—just before the train goes into the tunnel, or biplanes show up—”
The remembered joke makes him smile. They take a very long time about making love, as if they were trying to memorize everything.
The third week he’s teaching in Tapachula, Jesse persuades Naomi to come down for a long visit. At first it seems like a blazing success; she seems very pleased with his tutoring work and with the little place he’s found, and congratulates him on getting into a much better mode of existence than he had before. At least he’s got her fooled into thinking he’s a real Leftie.
But that night, as they sit on his couch and he very tentatively tries to kiss her, she says, “Oh, god, Jesse, no, no, I can’t. Really. I had such a hard time getting over you the first time.”
“Well, then don’t get over me and just enjoy this.”
“I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?”
For the first time ever, he sees her lose her temper. “Because just maybe you’re the kind of guy who wants me to just enjoy it, all right? It’s bad enough that you don’t think of anyone but yourself but you don’t want
me
to think of anyone but
myself
, either! I can’t believe you’re trying to talk me into being selfish and centered and linear!”
me
to think of anyone but
myself
, either! I can’t believe you’re trying to talk me into being selfish and centered and linear!”
They end up talking philosophy for hours. When Jesse finally goes to sleep, he’s not only exhausted, but the apartment is so tiny that he doesn’t even have the option of masturbating to relieve himself. The next day Naomi gets on the little jumplane, which shoots straight up into the brilliant blue tropical sky and is gone. She’ll be touching down on the runway in Tehuantepec before the
combino
can get Jesse out of the airport traffic.
combino
can get Jesse out of the airport traffic.
Still, he manages to get her to come down once more, and then, in the middle of one of the cafés that fronts on the Zócalo, just because he suggests that a little pleasure in her life would surely not damage the good things she does, she starts to cry, and she
hits
him (not hard, that takes practice she’s never had). Lunging across the table in a clatter of dishes, she dumps a pitcher of beer on him, flags down a taxi, and is gone while he is still trying to rub his eyes clear of the salty, sticky mess dribbling down from his hair.
hits
him (not hard, that takes practice she’s never had). Lunging across the table in a clatter of dishes, she dumps a pitcher of beer on him, flags down a taxi, and is gone while he is still trying to rub his eyes clear of the salty, sticky mess dribbling down from his hair.
He checks his contract with TechsMex and discovers that unless he can give them twice the price of a new car right away, he’s here for at least six more months. Probably he’d have missed his students, anyway. They’re great people—as evidenced by the fact that three of them witnessed that last incident with Naomi, and yet he never hears a thing about it. It’s as if the whole collective memory, the great gossip bank, of Tapachula, has all been subjected to a Flash.
With Jesse in the role of the ruins of the Duc.
“And that’s all,” Glinda Gray is saying to John Klieg. “Just emphasize that when you talk to the Siberians. There’s Ariane 12, Delta Clipper III, the Japanese K-4, a bunch of military space planes that can’t lift much more than their own crews, and no real heavy lift until NAOS gets the Monster flying. Theoretically, the Russians or Chinese could start building big boosters again but it would be from scratch.
“And that couldn’t be more perfect. Ariane flies from the Caribbean, Delta Clipper III from Edwards AFB, K-4 from Kageshima. All places that are vulnerable—but not nearly as vulnerable as the NAOS Monster flying out of Kingman Reef. Meteorology’s estimate is that by late June everything that can lift more than a two-man crew should be shut down completely.”
“Got it,” Klieg says. He looks Glinda up and down; she is in a perfect pink leather suit and matching shoes. It shouts “Expensive!” and for the Siberians that’s what you have to do. “Remember what the culture coach said. Do your best to look in awe, like you’re completely enslaved sexually.”
Glinda grins at him. “If anyone could do that to me, darling … .”
His heart gives a funny thump. This meeting is for all the marbles if ever there was one—they’ve got half the significant officials in the Siberian Republic flying in to Islamabad, the nearest place where discretion could be assured and Western comforts were available. Just chasing this deal so far has cost Klieg four times what it did to start GateTech.
God, he’s glad Glinda is here. No man ever had a better partner for this kind of thing; she remembers everything, coordinates everything, and yet is willing to play the Number One Harem Girl to get them the deal.
And it is their deal now, not just Klieg’s. For the last ten days he’s been noticing he thinks about the future a lot—about where Derry will go to college, and what kind of house he and Glinda will need for the years Derry is with them, and then after that when they’re still active, and finally for retirement. He loves planning things.
Gently, he brings her face to his; in the super-high heels her balance isn’t good and she’s almost as tall as he is, so their kisses are very tender and light, just the warm brushing of lip to lip.
Randy Householder finds it hard to believe, but there it is. After all these years, some signs of progress. Five scattered datarodents out there have reported that Harris Diem is behind a couple of fronts that are buying the murder wedges. That doesn’t surprise him a bit—if anyone would be conducting a secret investigation, that’s who. He’s just surprised how long it took him to find the traces of the investigation. He hopes it won’t be equally hard to penetrate its files.
It’s pretty clever of them to hide the investigation behind Diem’s personal accounts.
That one little one that got into the NOAA node was the key; now that he has many supplemental keys to look for, the right bank and credit accounts, it will take less time. It’s still going to be some weeks, of course, because to do these illegal accesses he has to wait until things are brought out of storage and put online, and most of the relevant records will be more than a decade old.
It’s okay with Randy. He’s been hunting a long time. A part of him wonders what it will be like, not to be looking for the man who paid to have Kimbie Dee killed. He wonders if there’ll even be a world at all after that?
Her face is getting indistinct in his mind again, so he pulls out a video disk and watches his daughter for an hour; sees how she grew up, how pretty she was, watches her cheering at an eighth-grade football game (and what a beautiful girl she was!)—
Cuts very briefly to her on the slab in the morgue, face black from the hanging, bra still embedded in her neck, blood on her thighs and belly.
“It’s okay,” Randy whispers to her. Except online he rarely talks to anyone else anymore. He’s not even sure where Terry is now—she got married again and had a couple more kids. “We’ll get him, Kimbie Dee. No matter what.”
Datarodents swarm out of the car’s computer, up through the antenna into the satellite, and from there to everywhere, over laser, radio, and fibrop. The car rolls on toward Austin—there are just enough connections in the
material he got by bugging Diem’s investigation so that it looks like there’s something worth knowing in police records down there.
material he got by bugging Diem’s investigation so that it looks like there’s something worth knowing in police records down there.
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