Socratic Heresy

Page 2

After exactly five minutes Michael moved. For a moment Joseph was confused. Five minutes, and he's giving up? Then he realized what Michael was doing. He was waiting for any tails to catch up, and then sweeping to find them. Fortunately, Joseph's pipes would hide him from most detection measures. For a little extra security he turned his jammer up to a whisper. Here behind the pipes, with his jammer and body interfering with each other, Michael would nearly have to poke him to detect anything. Joseph stayed perfectly still, projecting an image of utter calm to himself as Michael retraced his steps all the way back to the elevator. From the sound of it, Joseph could tell that he was turning this way and that. Safe bet that he had a weapon out as well, even though Joseph had not seen one. On the other hand, maybe not. A weapon wouldn't help Michael much if the authorities were here, and it would just be a danger to him anywhere else. Michael was taking this precaution for Socrates' benefit. No wonder this person had evaded discovery for so long.

Michael came back, still diligently pointing his scanner about, but he hadn't really done a through search. Joseph probably needn't have bothered to smooth his tracks outside the elevator, but then again, nailing Socrates down would have justified almost any trouble. Michael returned to his waiting place and sat down again. Definitely not just leaning against the wall. There must be a bench hewn into the chamber wall in there. Not long now. Another sweep would accomplish little, although Joseph kept himself ready all the same, his jammer tuned to counterpoint his vitals. But his gut told him that he wouldn't have to wait long at all. In less than a minute his gut was proved right.

A woman's voice called from the other side of the room where Michael was waiting. "Michael." Sounded like an older woman, perhaps in her late thirties, early forties..

"Hi there, Dancer." Michael answered. Dead on, thought Joseph to himself. Dancer was the name that Socrates used with this group. Michael continued. "If we keep meeting like this, how will anyone ever start to talk?"

Both of them laughed at that. Joseph remained where he was, letting his picture of the situation out there build. From what he could hear, it sounded like the two of them were alone. That had been about what he thought. Every extra person at this meeting represented a great deal of effort, and some increased risk as well. It also represented a certain chance of a sour deal. With one person receiving everything, and the other person there to do the giving, there was a nice unity of purpose. Joseph cocked his ears again as they quieted down.

"I think that I would like to keep our relationship quiet for now. Being a lady has... constraints."

"Really? I hardly think of you as suffering any infringement on your liberty. Certainly you don't suffer the infringement of ours. But it is probably injudicious to let our vigilent guardians know who we are. It is being confined to the role that society places upon us that makes us unfree, not our delicacy."

"What are you quoting? No, don't tell me. I think that a writer should have the advantage of words. And, the advantage of funds. Here they are." There was an audible thump, probably from a carrying case. Smacked with her hand, or put on a table. Joseph didn't think it likely there was a table in there.

"A great sum of money. You said that you had something special for us?" Joseph began paying particular attention. Socrates had gotten access to a number of molecularly encoded authorization processors recently. They were not unforgeable, but it would take years to reverse engineer their code sequences, and even then a fake would not always give the right ‘answer' to an authorization query. Socrates was the only person outside of the MDC heirarchy who had any, and if this woman produced them, then she was it.

"Yes, several things. This man you've recruited, Joseph Arden, do you feel that you can trust him?" Joseph smiled in his hiding place.

"I'm not sure that we can tell him everything, but he seems genuine. Have you found any reason not to trust him?"

"No. He's telling the truth about what happened to his daughter in any case. And he is still reported as being at large, although the authorities haven't started a real push to look off Earth."
"So you think that we can start giving him some real work, making him part of our plans?"

There was a hesitation. When Dancer spoke again she was decisive, but reserved. "Yes. But I won't give you any instructions on what to have him do. As far as he is concerned, your support and funding are a closed issue. Don't push him to do anything extraordinary. You think of things that you already know he can do, and when he's ready to make his own suggestions, you trust him. I know that I'm asking you to take the risks for me, but that's the way it is."

"I can accept that." He paused. "I was also intrigued by your other instructions. The luminaries you asked us to impersonate, well, the cosmetic issue is not the real barrier. I take it you knew that."

"Yes, I have the missing pieces right here." That was all Joseph needed to hear. The missing pieces were 'unforgeable' identifications based on authorization processors, and that meant Dancer was definitely Socrates. He was moving the moment she said 'here', sprinting towards the room with his needler drawn.

There was a buzzing alarm the moment he moved, the scanner that Michael had brought with him must have been set in a trip wire mode. Either his sudden movement or his unmasked signals had set off the little device. Not that it would matter. There were only two of them, and Michael probably wasn't armed. In fact, when he caught sight of Michael through the near entrance of the meeting room, he was still staring over at the scanner as though completely unaware of why the little device would make such a racket.

Socrates was more astute. "Move! Just go!" Her yell was too late. At barely twenty yards, the maximum splinter needles couldn't miss. The entry wounds were less than a millimeter in diameter, the exit wound a simple, wide angled, cone beginning at the entry point. Half of Michael's head and a goodly part of his chest were simply gone before the words were out of her mouth. Not that she had such a long time left herself, as her killer approached the entrance.

Joseph was just about to round the entrance and burst inside when some instinct warned him to stop. There were several muted cracks, then the entryway caved in. Apparently Socrates, at least, was armed. And not with some flimsy piece of legal tin. The entryway was well and truly blocked up. But that was not a problem, really. After all, Socrates had only one way out, the elevators behind the main pumping room. She probably also thought she was closer to them than he was. He grinned and scrambled up onto the topmost pipes. One of the pipes was larger and turned suddenly to penetrate the wall. There was just enough room to shimmy through on top of it. Voilà. The main pump and the only elevator bank that she could readily reach. He popped down and hid behind the motor housing of one of the gently idling pumps. He didn't have to wait as long as he thought he would. Socrates was a lot quicker than Michael had been. And she had more style, too. No fooling with a doorknob that might be locked, no. She just blew the latch area right out of the door, simultaneously bursting through and rolling across the floor. He could identify her weapon now. It was some kind of pulse weapon, probably a Saturn Corp. model. Something in the sound, the phase setting or modulation, gave that impression.

Socrates didn't wait for any potential pursuers to catch up. She was over at the elevator, slapping the call button without a pause. Joseph timed his moment, coming out of cover just as the elevator doors opened.

There she was, standing about five meters from the elevator and over to one side, weapon leveled at the widening vertical crack. She darted across the axis as the elevator opened, seeing the whole inside without getting close. Meanwhile, her back was to him, her whole focus on the nearest potential danger.

Three shots, two slightly spaced on the chest, the last centered on the head. Socrates spun to the ground in a fine spray of what had been her flesh until the tungsten carbide fragments from the needles destroyed it. He trotted over to the body, ready to recover the materials that she probably still had on her person. 'Joseph' was gone, his reason for being now completely eliminated. He would take the processors and the negotiables back to his masters now, and wait for another assignment.

Socrates was lying face up. That struck him as unusual. Oh, she had spun as she fell, she must have been turning to cover the pump room again after clearing the elevator. Very quick, very good. In a few more steps, he realized that she was still alive. How odd, he thought, lifting his weapon, I totally missed her head. She was looking right at him. Dark eyes, seeing and knowing him for what he was. He hesitated, then lowered the needler.

"Who are you?" He asked the question before the thought formed in his mind.

"Who wants... to know." She spoke weakly, a strained tone evident. It occurred to him that the missing arm and shoulder were probably impairing her ability to speak. He pulled a compact medical kit from his pocket and knelt beside her.

"I do." He sprayed the wound with a analgesic coagulant foam. It was really more for minor abraisions, but the shoulder was beyond any other hope anyway. And it did stop the bleeding.

"So who..." She took a deeper breath. "Who are you?" She looked tragically pale, despite the blood speckling her face. He wasn't far wrong about her age. Mid forties, perhaps. Very athletic, trim. Her hair was a dark auburn with reddish highlights, which accentuated the strange effect of blood droplets sprinkled like a sanguinary mist in her hair. Her eyes... her eyes were large and dark, with only a glimmer of light. They began to lose focus, and he compensated by lifting her legs up, crossing them and bracing them against his shoulder. He also gave her an injection of a systemic stimulant to keep her heart beating. Her eyes regained their focus, and this time the question was more insistent. "Who are you?"

He looked back at her for a long moment. He didn't have a name now. His assignment had just ended, and all he had to do was go into any police station on Mars. He would be wisked namelessly away, to await a new identity. This was the first time that he remembered looking at someone without playing a role. "I don't know." Even as he said it, he wanted those words... not back, but he wanted to be able to explain himself to her. He watched her eyes, seeing the anger, pain, the keen knowledge that he had killed her. A cold feeling broke over his skin like a wave. He had never met a target alive before, let alone talked with her afterwards. It was...strange. She was gazing at him intently."I don't... remember. What do you remember? What was your life like?"

She took another breath, gulping. "It's not over... not... not yet." She was having trouble breathing. Most of her left lung was probably full of fluid by now. He could do little about that. Moving her was out of the question, she would be lost to shock at even a nudge. He gave her another dose of the stimulant, to keep her conscious a minute longer. She coughed then, delicately, a fine spray of clear fluid demonstrating the cause of her impending death. Her right lung would fill up in only a minute. "What? What...isn't it here?" In a moment she was lying still, her eyes drifting across his face. She whispered. "I remember, when I was a girl, my parents had a ranch in Argentina." She was only moving her lips now. "I would ride the horses. That was all I wanted to do then." Her eyes were bright with memory, the large eyes of a vivacious young girl who loved riding horses. Very still, and then, nothing.

He looked down at her for a long moment, then gently touched her cheek. It was warm, but there was no tension in the muscles. He patted down her pockets, and found a small scanner. It had a vital signs mode, and he played it across her features. Zero. No life signs. For a moment he just sat there, holding her legs against his shoulder. Then he carefully laid her down, folding her arms across her stomach. The effect was strange, with her left arm almost severed. Her eyes were already beginning to film, drying out without tears. She hadn't cried, but there was a track down her right temple nonetheless. He closed her eyes and stood up. She still had a grace, composure in death. He didn't usually bother with targets once they were eliminated. Looking down. She would not look up at him.

The carrying case with the processors and the negotiables had fallen not far away. He moved to them and picked the case up off the ground. They were still intact. He didn't actually have to take them back, if he destroyed them. They were valuable, but the important thing had been to kill Socrates, and the materials were just as good destroyed as recaptured. His masters did not want the threat of someone like Socrates running about, invisible and uncatchable. She had been planning to use them still. Those processors would make him a ghost, untouchable, unfindable. He thought about that as he stepped in to the elevator. His precautions were by rote, not a matter of serious attention. He thought about returning to his orientation bay, cold and sterile. Giving the processors to his controllers. They would want them, but they would only lock them up, hide them. She would not have wanted that. They were freedom, a word that he had never had defined.

The elevator reached the top of the shaft in only a few minutes. The doors opened, and stepped out into the hall of the physical plant maintainance station. It was only a block or so from here to the nearest security station. He looked at the case in his hand. Processors and negotiables, and freedom.

He would need those. For himself.

Whoever that was.

He turned and walked away.