chapter 1, episode 2

Checking in with B.

The module arced out of the atmosphere. We had an orbital station in the darkness above us. Rocco didn't like stopping there. He didn't like leaving the home base at all, actually. It had taken me plenty of convincing just to get him to join me on this mission in the first place. But the orbital made the trip much cheaper and prevented us being followed.

In the airlock, we peeled off our body suits. Weapons and communication equipment (anti-surveillance and analysis units) landed on the rubber floor with a thunk. Rocco was wearing a pair of worn striped boxers. His thin frame looked almost robotic. I always suspected his physiology wasn't truly human. His weight was 2/3 of mine and yet he could probably twist my arm off at the base, and I was no joke. I used to theorize that it was some kind of muscle density thing, but he was so light.

We put on robes and went into the main deck. The orbital was basically a sphere. The middle was a single open deck with some tiny sleeping chambers. The top held comm equipment and defenses and the bottom was all engine. I sat in the main console chair, a rattan thing that always pinched my ass. Rocco threw some fuel pellets into the wood stove, firing it up efficiently, bringing warmth into the orbital.

I flipped open the comm panel we'd wired into the arm of the chair. The monitor blinked into life. There was a slight delay as B's secretary patched us in to his office. The blackness broke up into giant pixels which then resolved into a fairly clear image of B sitting at his desk.

"I don't like the way you have to see those pixels when the connection is made," I said back to Rocco. "It makes it look kind of cheap."

He ignored me. He was used to my constant complaining about the efficency and elegance of computer systems.

"How'd it go?" asked B. He was impeccably dressed, maintaining the almost bird-like grooming of people at his level of business. He had his fingers in many pies. Actually, if something was making money in the world, odds were good that B., quietly and efficiently and layers away from any public scrutiny, was involved. His success superseded any politics. He financed our little operation because it was fun for him, a side project with a much greater range of variables than most of his operations. Every now and then, we'd be able to help him out with some crucial data or a hit on one of his competitors. But mostly we were a losing outfit, fiscally speaking.

"Not well. I think they were onto us." I uploaded the sortie data to him. "We were just getting in place and he sped by in a miniature car."

"Weird."

"Yeah, I've never seen anything like that before. I'll get Master Tomás to look at it. Even weirder, as you can see, Cheney was driving."

"Well, at least your info was solid."

"Yep. The DNA and anatomy scan match up. Enough inefficiencies to confirm that it wasn't a clone."

"Their heads are so big."

"I noticed that. Maybe a function of the miniaturization. And zoom in on George Bush's face. Look at that brown dribble disturbing on the corner of his lip. Disturbing, eh?"

"Yeah," He wasn't interested anymore. "Gotta go."

"Okay, later."

"Take care." The screen shifted back to the desktop. I set the orbital's path to head back over the Rockies.

"We're heading home," I said to Rocco. He was lying sideways on the deck couch, actually the seats from an old pickup truck, reading a paperback. He could read anything and right now it was Monsters of God by David Quammen. The fuel pellet was pushing out a warm glow. I grabbed a long pillow and threw it on the floor. I, myself, was halfway through another deliberate and disturbing Patricia Highsmith novel called Deep Water...