The Unincorporated Woman (45 page)

Sandra grabbed two more cookies and went back to her desk. To be polite, Marilynn took one from the side of the plate closest to her and sat down. She understood that this new, or old, food had become wildly popular in Ceres over the past weeks and that their popularity was spreading throughout the territory of the Alliance. Although she did like the Oreo, she could not agree with a food critic on the Neuro who called them only slightly less vital than oxygen. Still, she wasn’t surprised. Things coming from this new President, as they had with the old, had a strange habit of becoming part of the norm in a short period of time.

“The Alliance has a problem, and the captain and I think you may be part of the solution,” began the President.

“Whatever I can do to help, Madam President,” replied Marilynn gamely.

“I’ll remember you said that.” She then turned Sebastian. “Captain, this is your bailiwick more than mine.”

“Bailiwick?” said both Sebastian and Marilynn in the same confused voice.

“My bad, just some old slang—and it was old even in my day. Means ‘area of expertise.’”

“Very well, Madam President,” mused Sebastian, “I will proceed from my ‘bailiwick.’” He then turned to face Marilynn. “The Alliance has recently discovered something of immense importance that, unbeknownst to all, had been kept in utter secrecy.”

“Kept secret by whom?”

“The President and myself, actually.”

“You just said, ‘the Alliance discovered.’”

“Are we not?”

“I suppose.” Marilynn shrugged.

“Suffice it to say, the information about to be shared must be kept in the strictest confidence.”

“You needn’t lecture me on secrecy, Captain. As you’re well aware, I have the ear of the President and the fleet admiral.”

“Indeed,” agreed Sebastian with a disarming smile. “However, this isn’t a typical infodump, in which you pass on what you’ve learned to the admiral.”

“Are you telling me,
Captain
,” snorted Marilynn, reminding the officer of his subordinate rank, “not to do my job?”

“No, Marilynn,” interjected Sandra. “I am.”

Marilynn’s eyes swung abruptly to the President. “I see.”

“You’re here,” Sebastian divulged, “because at one point you were addicted to virtual reality, and that weakness, it turns out, may now be a strength.”

Marilynn sat motionless for a brief second, then fixed a scathing gaze on the captain. “Virtual reality is
not
a strength. It is a plague that should be eradicated.”

A worried look briefly passed between the captain and the President.

“It
is
an asset,” said Sandra, “if it can be exploited to win this war.”

“So the rumors
are
true,” shuddered Marilynn. “Is that what this is all about? Well I’ve got news for the both of you, then: This ain’t no secret.”

“What rumors are you referring to?” asked Sebastian.

“The ones claiming that we’re supposedly going to be spreading VR rigs to the UHF in an attempt to reintroduce the plague.”

Sandra threw her arms up. “So much for security.”

“The Secretary will have to be informed,” added Sebastian.

“Madam President,” offered Marilynn, “I practically live in the Cliff House now. Every rumor in the history of politics moves through here. I heard the one about the VR rigs, but didn’t give it a second thought until now. Until you mentioned my illness, that is. Is that what this is about?”

“Not exactly,” confided Sebastian, once again shooting a furtive glance over to Sandra. “It just so happens that you’re on a very short list of personnel who can be very instrumental in fighting the war in a theater of operations that has been left untended until now—by both the Alliance and the UHF.”

“Go on.”

“We’ve recently uncovered startling information concerning nothing less than a new player in the war. If we can forge an accommodation with this new force, we might just win.”

Marilynn’s face spoke to her disbelief. “I’m not sure where you’re getting your intelligence, Captain, because unless an alien race has been discovered entering our solar system with a vast battle fleet and an attraction to the notion of individual liberty, we are still, and excuse me for being more blunt than normal, fucked. And as long as I’m on a roll, since you’re Fleet Intelligence, you already know that I’m really nothing more or less than the admiral’s eyes and ears in the political nest of vipers she’s had to deal with since the Unincorporated Man was assassinated.”

Sebastian tipped his head slightly without once taking his eyes off Marilynn. “You’re more than that to us, Commodore. Your exposure to the upper echelons of both military and political power in the Alliance could be a major factor in getting this accommodation accepted.”

“An accommodation with whom?” demanded Marilynn.

“Commodore,” interrupted the President, “allow me to back up for a second. What happens if we don’t get any help?”

“We’re
not
getting any help.”

“Humor me.”

“We lose,” Marilynn said plainly. “I am so sorry, Madam President. I realize it’s defeatist talk, but you’ve asked for the unexpurgated truth.”

“No need to apologize, Commodore. You’re right, of course. We
are
losing the war. The truth is, we just don’t have the resources to win. We’re outnumbered nine to one and outproduced almost twenty to one. Even in material directly related to the war effort, we’re outnumbered four to one, and how we’ve managed to produce even that much is a testament to both our will to win and the intervention of miracles. But we’re over six years into this war, and while I may not have seen its beginning, it’s looking depressingly likely that I will see its end.”

Marilynn’s lips formed into a pensive frown.

“We have found our French,” interrupted Sebastian with clueless exuberance.

Marilynn’s left brow shot up. “Pardon?”

“We are fighting something analogous to the American Revolution. The Americans didn’t need to win. They just needed to hang on until the French came and saved their asses. Truth is, the British had the better generals; the only real battle general the Americans had was Benedict Arnold, and that bastard switched sides.” He looked up as the President cleared her throat to remind the Intelligence officer to stick to the point.

“Who exactly are to be our ‘French’?” asked Marilynn. “And even if they
are
real, why should they help us?”

Sebastian took a deep breath. “Because we have enemies of our own, Commodore.”

*   *   *

As Marilynn left the President’s office and headed toward her own quarters on the Smith thoroughfare, she tried with all her might to quell a scream and suppress a volatility that had laid dormant within her for years. Would she now have to second-guess everything she’d experienced post the successful weaning of her VR addiction all those years ago? How much of what she was even now experiencing was real, given the alarming display of virtual reality she’d just witnessed in the President’s office?
Fucking Oreos,
she thought to herself, swearing never to eat another as long as she lived. The barely perceptible and dulcet sound of her DijAssist—a sound she’d heard innumerable times—sent a flood of endorphins to her brain and brought her already tense body to the edge of paroxysm.
Great, now I’m even afraid of my own DijAssist
. Only her years of military service and an inner strength gained from having licked her VR addiction allowed Marilynn to collect herself before answering. She noted that the incoming caller was on an audio-only signal.

“Yes.”

“Commodore,” said a sprightly and energetic voice, “my name is Dante. I am calling on behalf of your
new friends
.”

He had a voice that reminded her of … “Stop sounding like my favorite uncle,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “It won’t make me like you any better.”

“I’m sorry if I sound like a relative, but please believe this is the voice I’ve been using for years, and I’m not about to change it just to make you feel better or, as it happens, worse.”

Marilynn’s eyes widened as her lower lip quivered slightly. It was one thing to hear that avatars were sentient. But to have one actually flat-out refuse a request from a human was unprecedented.

“Commodore, you should keep moving.” It was only at Dante’s prodding that Marilynn realized she’d stopped dead in the street and was starting to garner stares from pedestrians and shopkeepers. She started walking again.

“We need to talk,” he suggested, “and if your current route is indicative of your destination, we can’t do it in your quarters.”

“Why not?”

“Because Kirk Olmstead has them completely bugged. I find it interesting that this term has stayed intact for nearly four centuries.”

“Impossible. I scan that room every day.”

“You’re not yet moved into the Cliff House, Commodore, where the security is better. Plus, Kirk is very good at his job—” A few seconds hung on his words. “—for a human.”

Marilynn took a deep breath. “I am not going to be seen talking to my avatar in a club over a drink. I’m already viewed with suspicion by too many people here. I don’t need ‘social loser’ tagged onto everyone’s perception.”

“Of course. There is a church only a hundred meters from here. If you go into one of the confessional booths, no one will question it. Indeed, many will note your piety with approval.”

Marilynn considered the suggestion, along with everything else she’d just been exposed to. She carefully balanced her desire to escape it all with her need to find out what the hell was going on. It took only a second for curiosity to overcome fear.

“Okay, Dante,” she said, addressing the avatar for the first time, “direct me.”

Marilynn soon arrived at her destination. It was a newly approved building carved into fresh rock, a rarity. Most workspaces on the planetoid were reuses of previously existing spaces—if such a word could be applied to the filled-in caverns.

Closing up shop on Ceres was quite literally that. The owner of the space would drop a nanite fogger into the chamber, and in minutes the allotted area would once again be filled with solid rock. It was inexpensive to do, kept out squatters and allowed the new occupants the opportunity to reconfigure the space to any preset or customized format they desired.

Marilynn breathed deeply, inhaling the fresh stone-cut smell. No matter how hard the market tried, its scent machines and sprays still could not replicate the unique aroma. She wondered for a moment if a “Dante” or any of his ilk could discern such a subtle difference, much less smell at all.

This church, she saw, was less than three months old. It was two stories tall with stained-glass windows that gave the appearance of having sunlight streaming in from behind them. The interior carving was wonderfully intricate, with all the coruscations expected of so grand an altar to God. The fact that so complicated an undertaking would once have taken years to create as opposed to the single week it did was only mildly interesting to Marilynn.

As she walked toward the altar down the central aisle between the pews, the sound of her boots echoed off the walls. Given the church’s recent creation, it seemed odd to her that the hollowed halls somehow contained within them the imprimatur of agelessness and as such seemed to set her at ease.

The large figure of Christ on the cross and the predominately Christian trappings, including ten confessionals lined up neatly in a row, bespoke the church’s leanings. But she also would not have been surprised to see manifestations of other religions as well, as that was the path of unity that Fawa Hamdi and her religious cohorts had set in motion prior to their untimely deaths.

“Please use the first or last confessional,” Dante whispered.

Marilynn felt her heart skip a beat. The church was, ironically, the last place she expected to hear an ethereal voice. She quickly regained her composure and decided on the confessional farthest from the altar. Once inside, a simple inscription informed her that she could use the booth as either a confessional or as a private space. She chose the latter and then slid a wooden latch on the door that indicated from outside the box that she was not to be disturbed. Even that simple sliding action reverberated throughout the cavernous space. She was now surrounded by darkness with only the building’s ambient light penetrating the confessional’s latticework.

“Why the first or the last booth?” Marilynn asked, now that she was situated.

“Bugs.”

“And these ones aren’t?”

“No, they are.”

Marilynn took another deep breath and resisted the urge to berate the … the … Dante. But she said nothing.

“Feel free to talk.”

“But you just said this confessional was bugged!”

“I did, didn’t I?” quipped Dante. “I’ve seen to it, Commodore. You’re free to talk.”

Marilynn sighed. “Then would you mind telling me why we didn’t just go to my bugged apartment if you’ve led me into a bugged confessional?” She paused briefly and then asked, “And who would dare bug a confessional, anyway?”

“Kirk Olmstead. Who else?”

Marilynn shook her head knowingly. “Figures.”

“He was actually pretty instrumental in getting this church approved so close to the Cliff House. Seems to feel it would be easier to watch the religious if they were able to congregate in a nearby convenient location.”

“Then why bug only the first and the last?”

“He may be paranoid, Commodore, but he ain’t stupid. If it were to be discovered he was bugging a church, can you even begin to imagine the fallout? He seeded only the first and last because they’re the ones most often used.”

“In its own twisted way, I have to admit it makes a certain amount of sense.”

“He’s not after any one person, per se. He just wanted to get a sense of what the faithful were feeling, since he has no faith of his own.”

“You mean other than in himself?”

Dante laughed but did not answer.

“So once again, why am I then sitting in one of the only two bugged booths in this church?”

“Because I’ve been altering Kirk’s receiving feed. A task made much easier here, as opposed to in your quarters, where the devices are much more elaborate and numerous.”