Second Contact Page 20

  “Interesting,” muttered Jaimie.

  “What is?” asked Becker.

  “I'll let you know as soon as I can figure it out,” she said.

  “What's to figure?” he asked. “Maybe I can help.”

  “You can't,” she said. “Leave me alone, Counselor.”

  He shrugged and went back to his own room. He thumbed through the sports section without much interest, checked the business news with even less, and finally activated the holovision. The airways were filled with interchangeable soap operas and quiz shows and reruns of old sporting events, and finally he turned it off, just as room service arrived with his lunch. He thanked the uniformed waiter who brought it, gave him a substantial tip, and then rolled the cart over to an area he had cleared between two chairs.

  “Come on,” he called into the next room. “Your sandwich is here.”

  “Interesting,” mused Jaimie again, oblivious to him.

  “What the hell is so damned interesting?” he demanded, walking over to where she sat.

  “I'm not sure yet,” she said. “It's like a puzzle. I've only been working on it for an hour; give me another twenty minutes and I'll have it.”

  “Have what?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You're not making any sense.”

  “Neither is this,” she said, nodding her head toward the computer.

  “Maybe you're doing something wrong.”

  She stared at him with open contempt.

  “No, of course not,” he amended. “But what's the problem?”

  “If I could define the problem, I could probably give you the answer,” she said.

  “You sound like a mystic. Have you got a line on Roth's superior or not?”

  “Oh, that,” she said with a shrug. “He got his orders from General Truman Fischer.”

  “That's it, then.”

  “No it isn't,” she replied.

  “Then—?”

  “Just leave me alone for another half an hour and I think I'll be able to tell you what's going on.”

  He shrugged, returned to his room, activated the holovision again, and began eating his salad while watching a replay of a jai alai match from four months ago. He had given up on that and was watching three well-paid executives make fools of themselves trying to identify Egypt on an unmarked map of the world by the time he reached his main course. He completed his dessert to the whines and moans of an actress who had obviously been in the process of dying for the past three weeks.

  When he finished his coffee, he deactivated the holovision again and walked back into Jaimie's room.

  “Fascinating,” she said.

  “That's even better than ‘interesting',” he noted dryly.

  “Fascinating's the word for it,” she affirmed.

  “For what?”

  “Five more minutes.”

  “I thought you only needed twenty,” he said. “That was half an hour ago.”

  “This is big, Counselor,” she said, finally looking up at him. “Bigger than you can imagine. Now leave me alone for another five minutes and I'll have some answers for you.”

  “How about if I just look over your shoulder?” he suggested.

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “Just keep your mouth shut and let me concentrate.”

  He glanced at her screen, realized that it was conversing with her in no language he had ever seen before, and stalked out of the room again. He stopped by the bathroom, then lit a cigar, turned on his quiz show again, saw three new executives fail to define the word “enigmatic", and turned it back off.

  And then Jaimie, her face alive with excitement, entered the room.

  “Where's my lunch?” she demanded.

  “Right there,” he said, gesturing to the ham sandwich.

  “That?” she said. “That wouldn't fill a month-old puppy. Call room service and order me a couple of hamburgers, heavy on the onions.” He reached for the vidphone. “And make sure they send up ketchup and mustard and lots of pickles.”

  “Anything else?” he asked sarcastically.

  “A nice cold beer,” she said. “No, make that two.”

  “Right,” he said, dialing room service and placing the order. “That's a pretty big meal for a girl who wasn't hungry.”

  “Who says I wasn't hungry?” she replied. “I'm famished.”

  “So am I,” said Becker.

  “You can have half the ham sandwich,” said Jaimie, holding it out for him.

  “For information,” he added meaningfully.

  “There's something very strange going on,” she said, biting into her half of the ham sandwich.

  “Everyone's trying to shoot me,” he said.

  She shook her head. “No, it's much more complicated than that.”

  “Would you like to tell me,” asked Becker, “or are we going to play guessing games?”

  “Don't be sarcastic,” she said. “I just put in a hell of a day on your behalf.”

  “I'm sorry,” he said caustically, “but you can appreciate my interest in your findings.”

  “All right,” she said, putting the uneaten portion of her sandwich down. “Like I told you, the man who gave Roth the hit order was General Truman Fischer.”

  “So you said.”

  “But that's just the beginning. I traced the chain of command—after all, there's no reason to assume that it originated with Fischer, any more than it originated with Roth—and I came to a loop.”

  “Loop?” Becker repeated. “What kind of loop?”

  “Theoretically, only two people in the space service can give orders to Fischer: General Harry Blackmane and General Wanda Janowitz. Theoretically they're responsible only to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President.”

  “So?”

  “So what would you say if I told you that there is a colonel nobody ever heard of that they both report to?”

  Becker frowned. “That doesn't make any sense.”

  “What if I further told you that this colonel—I haven't got his identity yet, just his code name—has the power to issue a Code Red, which is what they've issued on you, even though he has nothing to do with Covert Operations or Internal Security?”

  “Are you telling me that?” asked Becker.

  “That, and more. This guy has free access to the Joint Chiefs, and can bypass the National Security Council and go straight to the President ... and that, furthermore, he's done it seventeen times already.”

  “A colonel who's not in the official chain of command has had seventeen audiences with the President?” repeated Becker incredulously.

  “Over a period of ten years,” she said.

  “He was a colonel when it started, and he's still a colonel?”

  “That's right.”

  “And he's had access to, let me think, three presidents?”

  She nodded.

  “It doesn't make sense,” said Becker emphatically.

  “Sure doesn't. It also doesn't make sense that he wants you dead, but I think he's the guy who initiated the Code Red on you.”

  “Who the hell is he?”

  “I haven't been able to find out, but his code name is Wild Card.”

  “Never heard of it.” He paused. “I wish we'd have known about this guy earlier. We could have asked Roth about him.”

  “I'll lay you twenty-to-one that Roth doesn't even know he exists.”

  “Really?” he said, surprised. “Just how well-insulated is this Wild Card, anyway?”

  “I've done a little checking, using Roth's access code,” said Jaimie, “and you'd be surprised how few people in the space service have heard of him.” She paused. “You could count them on the fingers of one mangled hand.”

  “What the hell is going on?” asked Becker.

  “Something so big that the military doesn't want it to go through normal channels, that's for sure.”

  “Where does Wild Card work out of?”

  “Washington.”

  “What else
can you tell me about him?”

  “Nothing, yet ... but he's a very careful man, and that will help us.”

  “How?”

  “He doesn't believe in putting all his eggs in one basket, or all his files in one database. He's got ’em scattered all the hell over, and he's got some of them circling the world every ten minutes.”

  “I would imagine he's got them pretty well-protected, too.”

  She grinned. “It wouldn't be any fun if it was too easy.”

  “You think you can break in?”

  “Eventually.”

  “I hate to point this out to you, but I have a couple of hundred people vying with each other to see who can kill me first. ‘Eventually’ is not exactly a comforting answer.”

  “We're safe here for a couple of more days,” she said. “I'll have plenty more by then.”

  “I was kind of planning on going back tonight.”

  She shook her head. “Along with monitoring all the airports and train and bus stations, Roth will have roadblocks everywhere, and even if we ran them, you have no place to go in Washington. We're much safer right where we are ... and he can't keep checking every vehicle day after day without having to answer some embarrassing questions. We'll give him two or three days to assume we've gotten out and call off his dogs, and then we'll drive home.”

  “But I feel useless here,” said Becker. “You've got your computer, but all I can do is sit around and wait for you to discover more about Wild Card. I'm the one they're trying to kill; I should be doing something.”

  “What would you do in Washington?”

  “Something,” he replied. “Maybe I'd try to talk to Jennings and find out what they promised him to make him change his plea.”

  “Get within a mile of Jennings and you can kiss your old age good-bye,” she said. “Or did you think the hit stops at the New York City border?”

  “All right,” he said. “I'll stay here.”

  “Now you're making sense, Counselor.”

  “But you've got to teach me to use your other computer.”

  “What for?” she said. “Wild Card is damned near the best-kept secret in the country. You wouldn't begin to know how to look for him, even if you could speak computerese.”

  “There must be something I can do.”

  “There is.”

  “What?”

  “Be a pillar of silent strength and don't nag me when I'm working.”

  “Fuck you,” he growled irritably.

  “That, Counselor,” she said with a grin, “is one thing you can't do.”

  He glared at her furiously and made no reply. She enjoyed his discomfort for a few moments, then relented.

  “All right,” she said. “There is something you can do ... but you won't like it.”

  “What is it?”

  “While I'm trying to uncover more about Wild Card, you can do a little detective work on your own.”

  “What kind.”

  “I can show you how to tie into the Library of Congress, and how to access all the facts you need.”

  “To prove what?”

  “To prove that Greenberg and Provost were human beings.”

  “That again?”

  “Prove it, and I'll never mention it again.”

  “I told you—every goddamned scientist I've spoken to says that the odds are billions to one against—”

  “Don't quote scientists at me,” she said. “Don't give me logic, don't give me reasoned responses. Prove that they were humans.”

  “That's like pointing at a color and telling me to prove it's red and not green.”

  “There are ways ... or didn't they ever teach you about light diffraction in school?”

  “This is ridiculous!”

  “You didn't think it was ridiculous when you laid it out for General Roth this morning.”

  “I had to sound sincere. It was the only story I could come up with.”

  “I've been listening to you ridicule it for four or five days now,” replied Jaimie calmly. “If it's so crazy, prove it.”

  “How?”

  “That's up to you. I can't think of everything.”

  “What's the Library of Congress got to do with it?”

  “You can't leave the hotel,” she pointed out patiently. “That means your computer has to do your traveling for you. And the Library of Congress has the biggest English language database in the world. That ought to make it easy for you.”

  “What do I look for?”

  She shrugged. “Beats me. You're the guy who has to prove it. I think they're aliens, remember?”

  “You don't really!”

  “Who knows? Every time you try to prove they were aliens, someone hides your witnesses or tries to blow you away. Maybe you'll be safer trying to prove they weren't.”

  “When you say it that way, it almost makes sense,” he admitted grudgingly.

  “All right,” she said. “Let me show you how to tie in to the Library's database and—”

  She was interrupted just then as the same waiter returned with her lunch. Becker gave him a somewhat smaller tip this time and his posture made his displeasure evident as he walked out of the room.

  “Now about tying in ... “ said Becker when the door slid shut behind the disgruntled waiter.

  “Later,” said Jaimie. “I'm starving.”

  Becker watched her eat, wondering how a body that couldn't have weighed ninety-five pounds dripping wet could store so much food. Halfway through her second beer she suddenly stopped, as if she had just filled to capacity. She relaxed with a cigarette for a moment, then had him set up the less powerful of the two computers on his desk.

  “Now, you'll have to use the keyboard,” she said, “but once you're hooked in, all the instructions and data will be in English, so it's not a real disadvantage.”

  “How do I tie in?”

  “I'll do that for you,” she said, sending an instruction to the modem to dial a certain toll-free number, then going through the rather simplistic logging-in routine.

  “That's it,” she announced. “Now just respond to its questions or ask your own. I'll be next door hunting down our mysterious friend.”

  “Right,” he said, staring at the screen.

  MAY I HELP YOU?

  He typed in his response:

  Do you have access to newspapers and magazines?

  I HAVE ACCESS TO ALL COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

  He thought for a moment.

  Does that include high school and college yearbooks and newspapers?

  YES, IF THEY WERE COPYRIGHTED.

  Do you have access to current military records?

  NO.

  All right, he decided, let's start with Provost. Where did he grow up? Somewhere in Pennsylvania. Medford? Milford? That was it—Milford.

  Can you access high school yearbooks from Milford, Pennsylvania?

  WHAT YEARS?

  It was 2065, and Provost had been in the service for a decade or more. So if he joined in his early twenties...

  2048 through 2053.

  There was a brief pause.

  ACCESSED.

  Bring up all data and holographs or photographs of Jonathan Provost, Jr., from his senior year.

  There followed, in quick succession, a class photograph with Provost's face highlighted, a close-up of Provost, and a tongue-in-cheek prediction that he would be the world's tallest racehorse jockey.

  Becker studied the close-up. It sure as hell looked like a younger version of the Provost he had seen in holographs when going over the case documents.

  All right. Now to find out if there was anything usual about him then?

  Bring up all sporting team rosters from Provost's senior year.

  Rosters for eleven teams appeared. Provost was listed as a first baseman on the baseball team, a member of the relay team in swimming, and as the starting defensive back on the football team.

  Which clinched it. He couldn't have
made the team without undergoing a physical. Unless the aliens were practicing medicine at the local high school level fifteen years ago, Provost was human.

  He got up from the computer and described his conclusion to Jaimie, who didn't even look up from her screen.

  “Wouldn't you like to offer me an apology?” he asked sarcastically.

  She shook her head, still without taking her eyes from the almost-incomprehensible data that appeared before her.

  “You haven't proved anything, except that he was a human fifteen years ago.”

  “You think maybe he metamorphized into an alien?” suggested Becker sarcastically.

  “Not necessarily,” said Jaimie. “Prove that he wasn't replaced by one.”

  “How?”

  “You're a lawyer,” she said. “Pretend he's your client and you have to prove that he hasn't been replaced by aliens somewhere along the line.”

  He sighed and trudged back to the computer, feeling like a complete fool and totally unaware of how close he was to striking paydirt.

  19.

  It took Becker another twenty minutes to follow Provost's career through college. His hometown newspaper noted that he went immediately into the space service upon graduation.

  Becker then followed the same procedure with Greenberg, who had not been an athlete, but who had, according to his local newspaper, sued a driver who had hit him and broken his leg while intoxicated. The leg required extensive surgery, which means that Greenberg, too, was undeniably human at age 19. Becker traced his life to the day that he entered the service, and found nothing out of the ordinary.

  On a hunch, he tried Gillette next, but could find virtually nothing about him between the year he graduated medical school and the day he joined the space service.

  Finally Becker walked into the next room, where Jaimie and the computer were exchanging incomprehensible messages at a phenomenal rate.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I've gone as far as I can go without accessing military records, and if I use my own code I'm going to set off half a zillion alarms,” he announced.

  She stopped typing at her keyboard long enough to walk over to the desk, grab a piece of stationery, and scribble down an intricate three-part identification code.

  “This is Roth's,” she said. “Assuming that he's still safely locked away in his closet, this should get you access to anything you need.” She paused. “In fact, if they've been feeding you false information, Roth's clearance just might get you the truth.”