Fire with Fire

Chapter Sixteen

ODYSSEUS

Once in the car, Caine turned to Opal. “You sure you want to drive up a mountain?”

“Anything without security guards is fine by me.”

He smiled at her for a moment before telling the car, “Legonia overlook, please.”

“Yes, sir.” The engine whined into activity and they reversed toward the exit. Opal started to clutch the sides of her seat when the car started moving without human control, then she fumbled for the seatbelts.

Caine smiled again. “First time in one of these?”

Opal both smiled back and glared at him. “Look, in my day, the people drove the cars-not the other way around.”

He nodded, looked out the windshield as they glided smoothly into the sparse traffic passing the stadium. “And when exactly was your day?”

Opal’s chin came up, almost defiantly. “They made me an ice-pop in 2066. Couple of bad coincidences during a counterterrorist operation. But only the good die young, so I’m destined to be immortal, I guess.”

He looked over at her with a raised eyebrow. “I envy your confidence in your own immortality.”

“What do you mean?”

“I guess you could say I’ve become painfully aware of just how mortal I am. Being on someone’s death list tends to do that to you. Yet here I am anyhow, ready to do my master’s bidding.” He turned to her. “And what about you?”

Her response bordered on truculence. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, why has Downing brought you here?”

“Convenience, according to Downing.”

“‘Convenience’?”

“Yeah, in terms of security, anyway. Yesterday he arrives at my rehab facility far too early-0500, I think it was-and tells me, ‘we’re moving you.’ He also chooses that moment to tell me that I was the only sleeper who survived the attack in Alexandria, and that they can’t be sure of security at the base anymore. An hour later, I’m getting on a plane with him, flanked by a pair of suits-and-sunglasses types who apparently never learned how to talk. We land somewhere, Downing gets off: that’s the last I see of him. I wait in the back of the plane with the mute musclemen for I don’t know how long-better part of a day, I guess. Then we take off and after an hour or two, we’re in Athens-0400, I’m guessing. That was this morning. And here I am. Still don’t know what the hell Downing plans to do with me.”

Caine looked over at her. “Why ‘what Downing plans to do’ with you? Don’t you have a say in what comes next?”

“Not much; officially, I’m still a soldier for Uncle Sam. But apparently I’m on loan to Mr. Downing, who hasn’t filled me in on where we’re going, or what I’m supposed to do when we get there. Of course, since Downing himself is the one who told me all this, I suppose all-or a lot-of it could be a lie.”

Caine nodded, but said, “Downing walks a pretty narrow tightrope, I think.”

“Yeah, maybe-but that doesn’t mean I’m ever going to trust him. Do you? Trust him, I mean?”

“I don’t trust what he says, but I trust his intentions-I think.”

Opal raised one eyebrow. “You ‘think’ you trust him?”

Caine shrugged. “He tells lies, but somehow, he doesn’t feel like a liar. I don’t think he likes that part of his job.”

Opal leaned back. “Well, Caine, you’re a much more understanding person than I am. I know we have to have people in intelligence who lie for a living, but I don’t trust them. And now he’s taking my choices away from me. Hell, today’s run is the first real freedom I’ve had in-well, I guess about fifty-three years.”

“You like running?”

“Me? God, no-but I’ve got to work hard if I’m going to get back into shape after spending half a century frozen.” She glanced over him. “So what’s your secret? If you were in cold storage for a few years, then how did you keep fit? Just naturally gifted?”

“I was worse off than you were when they woke me up the first time. But we can talk about that later: right now, there are far more important things for you to learn about.”

“Such as?”

“The state of the world. This car does have a radio.”

The prospect seemed to excite her. “Where are the controls?”

“Just ask.”

“I just did.”

Caine grinned. “No. Ask the car. To turn it on.”

She looked at him with wide eyes. “Too creepy.” Then she leaned tentatively toward the dashboard. “Car, please turn on the radio.”

The Irish-accented radio greeted her, then asked her to choose a channel. She asked for World News.

“Thank you. Connecting to World News…”

“This is weird,” she said.

Caine smiled. “That’s nothing; wait ’til you hear the news.”

Which cut directly in on the strident voice of a career newscaster: “-which leads observers to ask: has the UK now decided to confirm its membership in the New World Commonwealth? If so, this would also represent a final abandonment of the long-standing bilateral-and increasingly unproductive-efforts to integrate with the European Union. Prime Minister Hadley-Singh announced that his government’s commission on assessing membership in the Commonwealth cited more benefits than detriments, despite the opposition’s repeated warnings of the United States’ preponderant influence within the NWCW. Moderates in Commons observed that accepting membership might be made contingent upon nomenclature change, with Speaker Reginald Kendrick suggesting that a more accurate name for this expanded international bloc would be the United Commonwealths and Aligned States.”

Opal looked over at him. “‘International bloc’?”

He nodded, answered in the short space between news items. “Five blocs. More important than nations, now.”

The same newscaster pressed on. “In interstellar news,-”

Her eyes widened. “Whoa.”

“-the sharp debates over the co-dominium of Delta Pavonis Three now seem to be abating. Observers attribute the restoration of normative relations between the planet’s Commonwealth and European Union communities to the universal threat posed by the D-Pav virus, or ‘Pavirus’ as it has been dubbed by the WHO’s Office of Xenobiology and Epidemiology. Mounting pressure by megacorporations, particularly the Colonial Development Combine, to restore commercial access to Delta Pavonis have been denied. CoDevCo spokesperson Theresa Farkhan asserted that the bloc-imposed quarantine of Delta Pavonis Three was unnecessary and might be, quote, ‘yet another ploy by nation-states to undermine the legitimate interests and rights of transnational corporations.’”

Opal frowned. “Those sound like fighting words.”

Caine just nodded and waited for the next item.

“In other business headlines, CoDevCo continues to deny allegations that hundreds of outsystem-worker deaths were caused by transport in unsafe or outdated cryocells. CoDevCo Public Affairs Director Robin Astor-Smath claimed that the Combine had not violated any of its contractual obligations, and that its semi-skilled outbound employees willingly accepted greater hazards in order to secure better pay. Astor-Smath went on to assert that the international blocs were to blame for the disproportionate risks borne by contract laborers from the Undeveloped World: ‘the blocs would not have green world colonies if it wasn’t for the inexpensive labor that we hire to extract needed resources from inhospitable worlds.’”

“And that-” Caine said, manually switching off the radio, “-is the end of the news.” The car had ceased moving. “Seems like we’ve hit a snag,” he observed. They were stopped before a yellow-and-black-striped roadblock sawhorse. Just beyond it, a woman in a hard hat was inspecting small silver disks embedded in the margins of the roadway.

“I’ll see what the problem is,” Opal volunteered, and fumbled at the door for a moment before remembering to unfasten her seat belt.

As he watched her exit the vehicle, he heard the air conditioning increase, felt the engine race to keep up with the sudden power drain. “Stop,” he instructed the car.

“This car is stopped.”

“Uh…‘off.’”

“Shutting down.” The fuel-cell engine diminuendoed into a bass hum and then nothing.

Watching Opal saunter toward the road worker was a pleasant distraction. But after an exchange of smiles and nods, she seemed to hit a language snag. As her arm and head gestures became more expansive, the rest of her body exhibited a clipped sinuousness. She certainly did move like a woman who had worked around men-soldiers-almost all of her life. There were other signs of that background, too: she was capable and direct, but a little unsure of herself when it came to the subtler social banter of civilians.

Caine wondered what Downing had in mind for her: almost certainly something involving her military training. Her movements also suggested that if she had missed having the opportunity to learn the minuet, she hadn’t missed any of her martial arts classes. That, in conjunction with not being on any intelligence agency’s radar, were her greatest assets-at least right now. So what was she here for? To work as a bodyguard, maybe?

He considered her empty seat: a bodyguard…for me? Possible. And a bodyguard could also work as a watchdog, an informant. Caine frowned: that would certainly be Downing’s style, but it was hard to see Opal in such a role. Her dislike of Downing was genuine, palpable, and she seemed too socially awkward to be a very proficient actress or a reliable-

The door opened; Opal was almost in her seat by the time he turned. Reaching for the safety belt, she frowned and smiled at the same time. “You know how to drive this thing-I mean, the old-fashioned way?”

“I’ve had a few instructive misadventures trying to learn: why?”

She looked ahead, nodded at a road marker two hundred meters further on. “We’re going to have to take the ‘old road’ up to a different lookout. And from what I was just told-if I understood the Engreek correctly-the locals still call it the ‘goat path.’”

“Will we have to dodge the animals?”

She smiled. “Just a figure of speech, but a few parts are still single lane gravel. I got the whole sad story: seems they were in the process of modernizing it last year when the funding dried up.”

“And what’s wrong with the road to the main site?”

She looked over her shoulder at the woman in the hard hat, who had resumed her fixated roadside crouch. “Apparently, the sensors steered someone right over an embankment earlier today. So they have to keep the grid active-but empty-while they run their diagnostics and fix the problem.”

“Uh…Opal, I’ve got to confess: I’m still getting the hang of these quasi-cars. I might not be the safest driver.”

Her smile was back. “We’d be in a hell of a lot more trouble with me behind the wheel. So drive on: I have every confidence in your manly automotive abilities. Besides, like I told you, I’m immortal-so you’ll be safe as long as you’re with me.”

Her radiant confidence was gratifying, but not particularly reassuring. Caine forced himself to return her smile, restarted the car in manual, turned off the computer, eased slowly into gear. Driving like a maiden aunt on her way to church. “So we take that turn up ahead?”

“Yup. Let me see; the woman back there said that most rentals have maps in the glove compartment.” She opened it and rummaged through the various manuals and registration papers.

As he moved off the shoulder of the road and back into the northbound lane, Caine checked the rearview mirror: no traffic-and the hard-hatted road worker had apparently finished her chores, coming to stand at the side of the road, walkie-talkie in hand.

Opal was muttering and still rummaging: “Every damn promotional brochure known to man, but if you need to find a map-” Caine stole a quick sideways glance; she was bent over, face almost in the glove compartment. A hint of the elfin in the faintly retrousse nose, the delicate, almost pointed chin, the bright, wide, vaguely feline eyes. Since being reawakened five weeks ago, he’d occasionally wondered if his libido had followed his lunar memories into limbo: it was reassuring to discover-as he did now-that this was not the case.

“You turn here.” Her head had swiveled toward him, and, smiling, she cocked it in the direction of the oncoming white concrete marker.

Caught staring. Damn. “Um…yes, right.”

He checked the rearview mirror before turning. Still no traffic, although the road technician seemed to be looking after them. Wondering if the tourists understood the directions, he surmised, turning in at the marker, kicking up dust from the unused roadbed. Evidently satisfied, the technician removed her hard hat, opened the door to her own car, and got in.