“Tell me why that matters,” Quirn said.
“I am not a military person.”
“Neither am I,” Quirn said. “But you are an engineer. I think you have an idea of why it’s important. In fact, I’m certain you do.”
“I have an idea, yes.”
“What?”
“We’ve all read news-blog releases of the incredible range of the Doom Stars.”
“One million kilometers,” Quirn said. He’d watched an illegal Social Unity show on it, and the incredible victory at Mars. The show had highlighted the impossibility of facing the Highborn and surviving.
“The Sunbeam should easily be able to outrange a million kilometers,” she said.
“By how much?” asked Quirn.
“That is what I’m trying to determine.”
“I still don’t understand why you’re taking such an interest in it.”
Ah Chen dropped the clicker and let a smile appear. “I’m tired, Quirn. I need to go to bed early tonight.”
He laughed. It was an ugly sound. As he advanced upon her, he said, “I have a different idea. Take off your clothing, and be quick about it.”
She hesitated a moment. Then she began to strip. Their couching was short and vigorous, at least Quirn’s part of it was. He became red-faced and shouted at the end, his hands clutching her smooth skin.
Afterward, as they lay on the sofa, Quirn began to talk. He rambled after his sessions with Ah Chen. Sleepy-eyed, he complained about Molly, going on and on about her many faults. He even told Ah Chen how he hated Molly speaking about Marten Kluge. Then Quirn lapsed into a moody silence.
“Would you like a drink?” Ah Chen asked. “I have brandy.”
He nodded. She got up. He loved looking at her slinkiness. She was so trim and fit. He could spend hours devouring her with his eyes. She poured brown brandy into a snifter and returned with the glass.
“Make yourself one,” he said. “Tonight, you will drink with me.”
She nodded, returning with brandy for herself.
They drank for two hours as Quirn steadily became drunker. He failed to notice that Ah Chen only took the tiniest of sips from her glass. He began to ramble about Marten Kluge, telling Ah Chen what he’d seen on the holo.
“Marten Kluge is on Earth?” she asked.
“He’s in the enemy capital,” Quirn said. “Nancy Vance was giving him a live interview. Can you believe that they’re calling him the Jovian Representative?”
She blinked at him.
“I was monitoring the Nancy Vance Show for my superiors,” Quirn muttered. “It is one of my duties.”
Ah Chen waved that aside. “What does it mean that Marten is a Jovian Representative?”
“I guess that he has his own spaceship. Our Marten Kluge has gone a long way since leaving Sydney.”
“That is very interesting,” Ah Chen said.
“Why?” Quirn asked, his small eyes shining with malice. “Why do you find that interesting?”
She laughed easily. “It shows how foolish the other side is. We have made the right choice in following the Highborn.”
“Yes,” Quirn said with a sharp nod. “You’re a smart girl,” and he slapped her butt.
He left the apartment ninety minutes later. She helped him get his coat on. Then he staggered home, showing his pass three different times to curfew guards.
He went to his bedroom and found Molly snoring on the cot. In disgust, he retreated to his den. He sank into his favorite chair and put his hand in his coat pocket. With a frown, he withdrew his packet of dust.
His fingertips were very sensitive. It was one of the reasons he enjoyed Ah Chen’s smooth skin so much and found Molly’s lumpiness so disgusting. It felt as if someone had tampered with the paper.
Carefully, and with a critical eye, he unfolded it and examined the dust. He had expected some to be missing. Instead, it almost seemed as if there was more. Maybe if he’d been sober…he was still drunk and still desiring a dust-dream.
One of the wonderful things about dust was that it was just as powerful when taken sober as when drunk.
With a slobbery grin, Quirn brought the dust to his nose and inhaled deeply. Then he sank back into his chair. Before he entered the dream haze, however, the poison so recently added to the dust began its nefarious task of murdering Chief Monitor Quirn. He went into seizures nine minutes later and cardiac arrest three minutes after that. His days of monitoring for the Highborn and enjoying women like Ah Chen were over.
That morning at first lamplight, Ah Chen left her apartment. She carried several money cards, but otherwise went empty-handed. She was on a mission, certain that she had learned various technological secrets for a reason. That the last piece of the puzzle had come from Quirn…it made the many nights in his disgusting embrace less shameful.
At this point in her life, she had to take what she could get.
-6-
Marten seethed inwardly as he pulled Nadia away from a cybertank. The hulking vehicle threatening them was one hundred tons of lethal destruction, with six warfare pods. An anti-personnel turret presently aimed at him. The giant tank blocked the arched brick entrance to the Supreme Commander’s Mansion, where Osadar was presently under house arrest.
“I can’t see anyone on the grounds,” Nadia said, craning to look past the huge tracked vehicle.
There was an ominous clack from the warfare pod aimed at them.
“We’re leaving!” Marten shouted at the cybertank. He yanked Nadia beside him.
“I have logged your attempt to gain access to a restricted area,” the cybertank said in its mechanical voice. “Now I am radioing the authorities. Do not make such an attempt again or I shall take immediate action.”
Marten turned away from the giant tank. Nadia and he were in the Governmental Area of New Baghdad, the third level. Here there were monumental buildings set along wide plazas and avenues, while the sunlamps blazed at twice the normal ceiling height.
In the distance was the octagonal Directors House where debates raged. Hawthorne hadn’t returned from orbit and his “disappearance” had thrown the highest levels of government into disarray.
Marten and Nadia hurried away from the Supreme Commander’s Mansion. It was an imitation of the ancient Palace of Versailles near Paris. They passed artifacts meant to celebrate various facets of human history: fountains, statues and various plinths and arches. At the end of one promenade, there was even a Sphinx.
The Nancy Vance interview had shaken Marten from what he now considered as his complacency. He didn’t belong on Earth, not an Earth ruled by Social Unity. He had come down to the surface as the Jovian Representative, hoping to drum up greater support for a united war against the cyborgs. With Hawthorne’s disappearance…
Marten’s few SU friends were in space with the fleet. His plan was simple now. He would free Osadar, get his space marines at Athens and find Omi. Then he would return to his patrol boats in orbit and join the fleet before it set out for Neptune.
“Why is Osadar a prisoner?” Nadia asked.
“That’s a good question,” Marten said. The idea of leaving Osadar behind—he didn’t like it. “We have to get her out of there.”
“How?”
Marten strode to a set of fountains, sliding his butt onto the lip of a smaller one. The air was cooler here, although the sounds of tinkling water did nothing to soothe his anxiety. He had to come up with a plan. He needed a way past the cybertank.
“Oh-oh,” Nadia said. “I think someone took the cybertank’s report seriously.”
Looking up, Marten spied a tall woman wearing a bright orange, flowing robe of African design. The woman also wore an orange turban, and there seemed to be something familiar about her. She had long, purposeful strides.
“Director Juba-Ryder,” Marten said, snapping his fingers. “She must have hurried out of the Director’s House. Yes, I think you’re right. She received the cybertank’s report.”