Systemic Shock (27 page)

And again. And again. "I'm not getting any better, Smetana," he said. "I'd always be spotted by a local."

"You're already better. And you aren't supposed to pass yourself off as a local; you can't develop deep cover on a week-long assignment. Be glad you took high-school Spanish instead of French, idiot! Would you rather spend a week in Cuernavaca sunshine, or Quebec?"

"She's got a point," smiled Goldhaber to the grumbling Quantrill.

"And you've got a long way to go to pass as
njudio
from Ciudad Mejico," Smetana reminded Goldhaber.

"Practiced all my life to outgrow Miami pawnshop intonations, and this
yentzer
wants to give me one from Mexico City."

"You just be glad I don't know what
ayentzer
is," said the linguist primly. “And don't avoid your strengths. Wherever there's a Jewish community," Smetana punctuated it with a fingerwag, "you'll have something going for you that Zachary or Quantrill would need years to learn. In T Section we don't train you all alike. That's one way a good counter-agent might spot you; most agencies leave indelible marks on an agent's behavior. We want each of you unique. No agency pattern, especially linguistic."

"They'd find a pattern damn' fast if they captured us," Goldhaber cracked. Smetana merely shrugged; his insinuation touched a sore spot.

Most trainees quickly accepted appendectomies, dental and cosmetic surgery, and in a few cases glandular adjustments which had been made without their permission prior to their arrival at San Simeon. They found it harder to accept the mastoid-implanted radio, for a variety of reasons. They had not been consulted; it was a foreign entity, an alien presence in one's head; and as long as the implant resided within the porous mastoid cells, its bearer was subject to audio monitoring twenty-four hours a day. No wonder, then, Control hadn't worried that a trainee might go AWOL.

Some trainees, including Quantrill, shrugged the implant off as an unavoidable necessity. Some, like Goldhaber, re sented it from the first day they were made aware of it in Control class. The tiny device was powered by an energy cell which could be recharged without an incision. The audio transmitter permitted its owner to hear instructions relayed from twenty klicks away, but which were wholly inaudible to a bystander. Its receiver allowed Control to hear every word uttered by a gunsel. At its current state of the art, the receiver could not pick up external noises with much fidelity. It had taken Goldhaber less than a day to 'borrow' an illustrated dictionary from the musty Hearst library. He knew better than to ask Smetana or his carrel about the manual alphabet.

By mid-March, most of the trainees could damn an instructor or a weak cup of coffee among themselves in sign language, and kept it secret as a harmless joke on the system. Lacking instruction in the short-hand forms, they developed some of their own, including facial movement. Quantrill had little time for this casual byplay, fighting hard to overcome several years' disadvantage in schooling—Ethridge, for example, was a college graduate. But Quantrill found he'd much rather read the lips of Marbrye Sanger than those of Simon Goldhaber.

It was Goldhaber, though, who gave their mastoid implant a label. “
It lets Control criticize you; a critic of the toughest kind
," Goldhaber signed one evening as he and Quantrill jogged an undulating trail two klicks from San Simeon.

Quantrill had trouble reading hands while jogging. “Let's walk awhile," he said, slowing. "
Who d'you think Control is? Howell? Smetana
?"

Goldhaber, breathing in time with footfalls, practicing silent movement: "These damned sweatsuits make too much noise." Signing:”
I suspect Control is some colonel in Intelligence, maybe at Hunter-Liggett, running us by computer."

"By himself?"

Aloud, Goldhaber snorted. Signing, he said, "
Not when we go on solo assignments, stupid. Too many decisions for one man, and I don't think they'd let a computer terminate a gunsel without human endorsement
."

Quantrill stared hard at the lank Goldhaber. They had been told that, if captured and tortured, a gunsel could ask for instructions on a yet-unspecified means to suicide. Quantrill supposed it involved crushing a subcutaneous capsule; had already checked himself for such an implant, and mistakenly believed that a lymph node in his left armpit was really a termination cap. "
But termination is up to me
," he signed.

Staring back, one eyebrow lifted: "
Naive. How many grams of TNT do they need in your ear? You don't pull your plug. Control does
."

Quantrill, in forlorn hope: "
But I ask for it first
."

"
Grow up, Q. It's the ultimate control
—
invisible, absolute. Now you know why I hate this goddam critic in my head
."

Quantrill began to lope then, avoiding Goldhaber's argumentative hands. By now he knew that his and Sanger's critics had followed their dialogue during their first meeting. So long as he did nothing for which he should feel shame, that omnipresent sexless other voice in his head would be a powerful ally—or so he had decided. He did not thank Goldhaber for suggesting that his implanted critic could kill him out of hand.

Simon Goldhaber's guess had missed only in detail. The plastique encapsulated in his mastoid was a shaped charge which, on command, vaporized the transceiver and was so oriented as to drive a white-hot spike of debris into the brain. The faceless theorists of Control in Ft. Ord did not worry too much that a trainee might desert T Section, nor that a graduate gunsel might be turned to the other side. The critic relay function could be managed by personnel of another agency, or if necessary by an aircraft co-opted by Control. Control could even terminate an agent by satellite, given an approximate location of the agent. The critic was not quite foolproof, but near enough; and no part of a gunsel's training told trainees how to build a Faraday cage.

The two joggers neared the castle promontory with its challenging uphill portion. "For Christ's sake slow down," Goldhaber called ahead. "You think Sanger's watching, or are you just trying to kill us both?"

Stung by this reference to the svelte Sanger, Quantrill forgot himself. “Why not? You said Control might blow me away anyhow," he called back. Then he stopped; turned. Goldhaber stood, eyes wide in horror, breathing hard, both hands pressed over his ears as if to protect him from some lethal signal.

Quantrill's hands gestured helplessly. "
Sorry; sorry
," they fluttered, as Goldhaber trotted past him with a stony glance. Of course there was no assurance that Control was monitoring, or that a monitor would make anything of Quantrill's angry shout. Quantrill told himself as much a few weeks later after Goldhaber disappeared.

Mason Reardon was an eminently forgettable figure; medium age, medium height, weight, nondescript face and manner. When you described Reardon you were describing anybody, hence nobody. Old successes in surveillance made Reardon an expert on how to be a Reardon. On April 2 his night class was a class of one.

"You're letter-perfect on your cover, Quantrill," he mused, "and I watched you tail Cross like an old hand through that mob of tourists today. When Marty Cross says you'll do, you're good. So what's eating you? Afraid you'll choke on your first assignment?"

Quantrill said nothing. His face was denial enough.

"Can't be buck fever; your record shows you've iced two or three people already, and even managed to hide some of it 'til you were under sedation. That takes coolth," Reardon said, savoring that last word like a rarely-indulged sweetmeat, and then took away the gas-pen. Quantrill had been turning it over, again and again, in his hands. "Is it this?" Reardon held the innocent little pen up for display. “It really writes. Its pressure cylinder dissolves in a pond or a toilet tank. Lasser tells me you can zap a fly with it. And two minutes after your mark gets a faceful of spray, he'll show no symptoms but classic heart failure. But it's scheduled for Saturday the fifth, which means you leave here tomorrow, and I'm not clearing you 'til I think you're ready."

"I've memorized the whole campus layout, and the Army annex dorm floor plan. I'm ready."

"You're not. Look, I've even told you this bastard Fowler was nailed while sabotaging a supply fleet that cost us a lot of men—not once, but twice! Naval Intelligence is dead certain it's Lt. Fowler. The only reason they're not icing him themselves is that Fowler's in Corvallis for a tri-service seminar, and the Army's running it.

"What more do you want for reassurance, Quantrill? I assure you, you won't get nursemaided like this when you graduate." Reardon waited in vain for Quantrill to meet his gaze. "I'm tired of guessing—unless you're spooked about your return route."

"Damn" right," Quantrill blurted, the green eyes a sullen flash. "Why didn't Goldhaber get back?"

"Ah. So that's it." Reardon handed the little weapon back, sat down facing Quantrill, inspected his own cuticles. "I've heard the rumor. All I know is that he drew an early assignment, and blew it. Maybe he was tortured by those religious fanatics in Flagstaff and asked for termination. Maybe he's still alive; they didn't tell us. You know your implant—what do you guys call it, a critic? Your critic can't help you if you're trussed up in a cave somewhere."

"So far as I'm concerned," Quantrill snapped, "my critic's some guy with a World Almanac and a monorail timetable who won't know shit about what I'm up against or how I'm feeling about it. All I want from you is a promise that Control will leave me the fuck alone as long as I'm doing the job."

Now Reardon had his anonymous face on: emotionless, impersonal, a system automaton. It occured to Quantrill Reardon might be repeating something he was receiving from a critic of his own. "You have my solemn pledge that Control will not interfere with you unless you ask for it."

"Good enough." Quantrill pocketed the weapon. “Now, where's my ticket to Corvallis?"

Mason Reardon managed a convincing smile, patted his trainee's shoulder, and pronounced himself satisfied now that Quantrill himself seemed satisfied.

The following day, Quantrill flew by Military Airlift Service to Salem, Oregon. Clouds masked much of the desolation below, but he spotted Sacramento through a rift of cumulus. He saw some activity at the docks. For the most part, the city seemed an ages-dead ruin that might have been exposed by shifting dunes that day. What blast effects from the two air bursts had not accomplished, the overlapping firestorms had. The collapsed freeway overpasses had, at least, been cleared. A pattern of faint smudges from survivor hearthfires ringed the rubble-choked city center. It might have been Raleigh, he thought, and steered his mind forward. The Mormons might be able to counter destruction with rebirth; was there any paradox in T Section's development of human weapons, to counter with more destruction?

Quantrill, wearing dark body stain and false gold caps on his teeth, excited no one's interest. His scalp felt tight under the longish tight-fitting black wig. As Vitorio Sanchez, a part-time student and dormitory custodian, he had good reason for the master ID plate in his pocket. He also had an assignment to terminate Lt. Jon Fowler somewhere on the campus of Oregon State University.

'Sanchez' hauled his bulky bag from the Corvallis monorail, located Western Boulevard in a light drizzle, and used one of his tokens on the automated shuttle to the campus, pleased that his briefing had been so thorough. The nearer the shuttle came to the campus, the more variety he saw in foliage—and the more he saw of a familiar color combination. Either Oregon State's colors were orange and black, or Corvallis celebrated Halloween in April.

He walked in gathering dusk beneath huge dripping conifers from Thirtieth to the modular annex dorms, located the garbage recycling area, trudged behind the dorm annex with shoulders slumped. His fingertip masks were tight even with rain trickling down from his wrists. He pulled a tab on the bag, watched a long jagged rip extend along old seams, drew the antistatic vacuum cleaner from the bag's remains and stuffed the bag into a recycling container. No one would be saving such an article now, even by happenstance.

His entry to the Army dorm annex was merely a matter of offering his ID plate to the door slot and keeping a lugubrious face turned toward his brogans as he passed a trio of young Army officers. The vacuum cleaner unpersoned him, and provided a stash for his change of identity. He turned toward the stairwell that would lead to 'his' room—vacated the previous day by a man in Army Intelligence—and then continued his lackluster pace beyond it as the two Naval officers brushed past.

"… See whether Oregon State coeds are really berserk over uniforms," the taller one was saying.

The other was compact, aquiline-nosed, with a receding vee of dark hair and thick dark brows. "Ah, Jon, always the researcher," he replied softly, glancing at the shabby janitor, holding the sleeve of his dress whites aloof. The lieutenants paused at the entrance to curse the rain, and to don filmy ponchos while Quantrill knelt to pry at an ancient blob of chewing gum in the carpet. A moment later he heard the voices attenuate; hurried back down the stairwell and breathed a long exhalation as his ID plate triggered the door slider.

The room was still furnished. Under a crucifix, the twin-sized bed was unmade. Quantrill sat on it, held up one darkened hand, grinned lamely. The hand wasn't trembling, but he felt as if it should be. The dapper little man with thicket eyebrows might pose a problem, because he obviously knew the tall lantern-jawed officer by name. 'Sanchez' had not needed to hear that name; he'd recognized Lt. Jon Fowler instantly.

And craved his death in that instant. It was cruel sport to meet your enemy the minute you set foot on his turf, like the flaunting of some trophy, and to find that you could not reach out and take it. Quantrill knew that his quarry had a midnight curfew; knew that he slept alone; knew even the position of the bed in which Fowler would lie. He could not know that in icing Fowler he would be compounding an error of Naval Intelligence.