Ultraverse E-Zine of Science Fiction and Fantasy: SciFiMage (Short Story)

SciFiMage: Matchbook

By Chris Africa

When Halia saw Jansuk for the first time a decade after their parting conversation, he was sitting on their bench wrapped in the stylish dusk of age, gazing across the dead riverbed.

Jansuk's spine was straight, his skin smooth, but his years swathed him in shadow. A cashmere scarf coiled around his neck and snuggled into his gray overcoat, hiding the tattooed remnants of youth. Even his perfect white coif spoke of professionalism and sobriety uncharacteristic of the Jansuk she had loved.

For many minutes Halia observed him from behind a tree trunk. She had expected to feel a flutter, some symptom of the heartsickness that had kept her mourning him for years. Nothing. Today, he was simply an old man, and one who had ground her bleeding heart under his wandering blueblood heel.

Relief steadied her steps, and she approached the chipped guardrail, peering down into the river. The falls were quiet these days, the water level cut nearly in half by the farm irrigation project. Riverside cottages had fallen into disrepair and the gala of boats and pontoons had evaporated.

Last time they were here, they had watched a trio of water skiers doing tricks. Halia had tossed rose petals over the rail and followed them until they drifted into specks.

She turned aside from the cloying nostalgia and sat on the bench, careful not to snag on the weathered wood.

"You have something for me?" She couldn't help looking into his eyes.

"A rare treasure, indeed." Jansuk smiled, and she found herself wondering at his meaning.

We've had some good times together, Hally. Remembering those last words made her cheeks hot, and she hoped he thought her winded rather than embarrassed.

"Your compensation was transferred five minutes ago." She maintained her business voice, the way Jordan would have done. "You should check. The other half will be transferred when I deliver the package."

Jansuk opened his wallet, nodded, and handed her a box small enough to fit in her palm. "You look well. Though I've never known you to wear red."

"Perhaps you've never known me at all." It wasn't the line she had practiced, but it would do.

"We could remedy that."

There was a pause while her shocked mind tried to get around the suggestion. "No. No, I don't think we could."

Tucking her objective into her pocket, she turned and walked away.

***

It was a small, sad triumph to turn Jansuk down, but hardly a victory at all after so many years. He still looked the same: keen eyes under wide eyebrows, sharp cheekbones, full lips. Back in college, she mistook him for laid back and un-ambitious. Today she thought she glimpsed the tension that held him together inside, demanding a level of performance he was never able to deliver. No wonder he ran an underbusiness instead of hiring himself out to a legitimate company.

And what was her excuse?

Pushing that question back down where it belonged, Halia thumbed her pad and left a voice message for Kieri. She wanted the payment before he flew off to Nexport for his annual month-long vacation. Then she ran a hot bath and sank into fragrant orange and violet bubbles with a bottle of wine on the side.

A knock tensed her shoulders, and Shel poked her head in the door. The rest of her slim body followed, a chiffon skirt fluttering around her enviable hips. "Hey, sweety, I just got back. Mark was a doll today. See what he bought me?" She stretched out a jeweled bracelet for Halia's inspection.

"Lucky girl," Halia murmured, halfway into her wine bottle. Emeralds again. She sighed. "Mark's always a doll."

Shel sat on the edge of the bath, felt Halia's head. "You coming down with something? You sound terrible."

"No, I had a switch today. Jansuk served." The wine made her sulky. She could hardly force her tongue to move.

"Jansuk?" Shel frowned, appeared to search her memory. "Remind me..."

"The guy I lived with in college. The rich one who went away on vacation for a month, then came back and dumped me for someone his parents picked out." He hadn't even told her himself, the coward. She'd had to learn from a mutual friend.

"He's serving tech? I thought he was studying to be a doctor." Shel refilled Halia's wine glass.

Halia shrugged under the bubbles. "He was never going to be a doctor, that's just what he wanted to be." Not bright enough to pass the exams, she added silently. "And he's not just serving tech, he's building it."

"Whoa, that's unexpected. He must have been studying something besides medicine all those years. Anything else new in the past decade? How's the wife?"

"I didn't get around to asking that question."

Halia related the short reunion between sips of wine.

Shel shook her head. "Well, one thing's for sure. He's not married any more."

"What makes you say that?"

"No self-respecting woman would let her husband wear gray -- and white hair -- in public, not at his age. He's available. Maybe you should look him up. I'll bet you could put a little spice back into his life."

Halia grunted. "I don't have any spice to spare."

***

By the time Halia woke the next morning, Kieri still had not responded to her message. Just a few days ago she watched him pace his office, fuming that it would take her so long to arrange the switch; now he wasn't returning her messages? She decided to walk down to the Rif Building and beg Karen to sneak her in between appointments.

This part of the city was an eclectic mix of neon signs, plasma billboards and the newest tech -- holographic commercials dancing on the sidewalks. There were always a few people trying to watch one, but with the streets this busy, pedestrians inevitably disrupted the commercials and jostled anyone standing still. She predicted a short life for these little ghosts.

Movement slowed to a crawl. A standing crowd flooded the walks and street near the plaza. She shoved her way through until she hit the police tape, looked up, and gasped.

The Rif Building was a pile of rubble in the middle of a city block of rubble. Rescue crews and dogs swarmed over mounds of dusty concrete and steel. Red and blue emergency vehicles ringed the debris. A single undamaged street lamp on the corner stood in stark defiance of the destruction.

"You can't go through here."

A uniformed man had his hands on her shoulders, holding her back. She shook her head clear.

"What happened? Was anyone hurt?"

"Find a television," he told her. "I'm just volunteer crowd control."

Halia looked at his uniform. "You're Rif security. I'm Halia Benna. I had a meeting with Mr. Kieri this morning--"

The man stared at her for a few seconds, then shrugged and leaned in close. "The building was like this when I got in. Kieri's dead - rumor has it he was the target. All I can say is, if you worked here, you better start looking for a new job."

Dead? She let the word float around in her head for a few seconds while the officer shoved a few other people back into place. "Hey, the company owes me money. How do I get paid?"

The officer's laugh sounded bitter. "Paid? Nobody's getting paid here. I told you, go watch TV."

Halia walked home in a daze. Mild-mannered Kieri a target? He was the most inoffensive person imaginable. Average height and fair-skinned, Kieri was neither attractive enough to draw envy nor homely enough to draw disdain. His business practices made him a beloved employer, but neither wealthy nor high-profile. He attended a church, but imposed his beliefs on no one. He bought illegal tech, but even his most recent request of her was fairly small-time compared with most of the transactions she had handled. Who could have wanted him dead?

Shel was kissing her on the cheek; Halia had arrived home without realizing it.

"Oh, you poor thing. You're having some week, aren't you? It's all over the news."

And the news was all over the walls, blaring from every screen in the house. Shots of the rubble intermingled with schematics, eyewitness testimony - and official reports about Kieri liquidating all of his assets within 24 hours. He died bankrupt.

Halia stared at the spectacle, her stomach churning. There would be an investigation. Questions would be asked, account transfers would be traced. She hoped Kieri had kept no records of his dealings with her. Karen would remember her, but maybe -

Squeezing her eyes shut, Halia forced herself to breath slowly, deeply. She would not wish the woman dead to cover her own underbusiness dealings.

"What a strange coincidence, Kieri going bankrupt just before he got blown up." Shel splayed her fingers in front of her; she had just painted her nails a nasty shade of blue swirl.

"Yeah, strange." It was surely not a coincidence. Crisis tended to bypass the inconspicuous individual, and Kieri had been practically invisible.

In any case, Jansuk would want the rest of his money, and Halia was in no position to give it to him. She'd have to either return the tech, or find another buyer. She pulled the paper box from her pocket and held it in her palm.

"I'll be in the den," she told Shel. "I have to take care of this package."

***

The brown box stood out in stark contrast to the blue and gold lacquered desktop. Something about it reminded her of those old-fashioned sepia-toned photos her grandmother hung in the foyer. This one was a tiny artifact from the same era.

Halia removed the lid and carefully lifted the contents, a small paper folder wrapped in tissue. The outside of the folder was white with a rough black strip across the back. Inside was more interesting. A double row of white tipped gray tabs was stapled into the bottom. A logo on the top bore the word "aesop."

She had no idea what it was -- but then, she was just a broker, not an engineer or programmer. A quick net search turned up a variety of meanings for the word "aesop": some guy who wrote fables in ancient Greece, an extinct variety of shrimp, and a music group. It had been a popular name for spacecraft, nonprofit groups and social programs, none seemingly significant.

Only one "aesop" result was at all related to tech. A decade ago, a company named GenGenex had developed a prototype for an intelligent software system. Nickname Aesop, the system wrote "component-based software development software."

Programs that wrote programs that wrote programs? Halia shook her head. Why wouldn't the original programs just create the end-use programs? What was the point of the middleman?

Only one thing was certain: this little white folder was outside of her experience.

"You can't sell tech if you don't know what it is," she murmured. "I guess I'll have to return it."

Thumbing the pad by her phone, she called up Jansuk's loc.

"I'm sorry, that is not a valid locator," the phone reported.

She tried forcing pages by voice, text and PPD, with no luck. It had worked only a few days ago. Easy enough for a tech to get a new loc, but why would he just disappear before retrieving the other half of his payment?

Panic stabbed her throat, and she swallowed. What if something had happened to Jansuk, too? She shook it off. If he was dead, his loc would have been forwarded to a friend or family member, not erased.

"Any luck?"

Halia jumped at Shel's voice. "I can't figure out what this thing is, and Jansuk's loc is suddenly invalid. I'm not sure what to do."

Shel hung over her shoulder. "Oh, that's a matchbook. People used to use them to start fires."

Come to think of it, Kieri did have a lot of antiques hanging around the walls of his office. Maybe it was just a collector's item?

"I doubt this is really a matchbook," Halia said. "Antiques aren't illegal, and they aren't normally sold by techs."

"What are you going to do?"

"I guess I'll to track Jansuk down and find out what this is all about."

Shel grinned. "Is this about the tech or Jansuk?"

"Don't be silly, Shel. That was ten years ago. I have no interest in the bastard." Halia shifted in her seat. Well, she cared if he was dead or alive, but that was about it.

"Just be careful." Shel patted her on the shoulder. "Hey, Mark and I are going out to dinner. Want to come along?"

"Thanks, Shel, but I need to get rid of this package and develop a plausible cover story before the feds hunt me down." It was a pity invitation anyway. Who really wanted to be the third on a date?

After Shel left, Halia considered her options. She didn't know the first thing about finding someone who'd gone off the loc, and she didn't know anything about tech, so she was going to need help. Other techs who weren't viciously competitive would be protective of their associates' privacy. Clients intentionally divorced themselves from the business of finding the techs, for legal reasons. Another broker would most likely try to take advantage of her.

There was always Jordan, but...

In her struggle for independence and respect in the underbusiness world, Halia had promised herself she would never again ask her mentor to bail her out.

On the other hand, drastic situations called for drastic measures.

***

Jordan, it turned out, was available to meet over dinner and eager to see the package.

They didn't eat in the true dining room, of course, but in the room Jordan reserved for underbusiness associates. Three white walls were lined with stainless steel shelves, sinks and backsplashes. Locked cabinets showed even rows of bottles, labels out, with well-kept inventories hanging on the front in protective cases. The fourth wall was an underwater view of Jordan's private rare species collection. Freestanding displays and input devices crammed a center island ringed with chairs.

The small table covered with a red tablecloth looked out of place by the window. An employee wheeled in tray of covered dishes, set the table, and took his leave. Jordan sat at one side, motioning Halia to sit opposite.

"How can I help you today?" Straight to business, as usual. Jordan's orange hair was piled on her head in a sculpture of twists and curls almost a foot high. She wore a brocaded coral dress, with dozens of gold bangles shoved above the elbows.

Halia marveled at her style, though the bronze contacts were a bit eerie. She picked self-consciously at her salmon filet, glancing sideways at a fish staring through the window at her. "I have a piece of tech I need to switch, but no buyer, and I have a missing server."

Jordan raised an eyebrow. "Intriguing problem. Tell me about the buyer and the server."

In as much detail as she could remember, Halia related her meeting with Kieri, the switch, the bombing, and finally Jansuk's disappearance.

"Do you know what this is?" Halia pulled out the little box and revealed the tech.

"Well, it's not a matchbook, of that we can be certain. Let's run it through The Machine."

Jordan's little X-ray was Halia's favorite piece of equipment in the lab. With the flip of a dial, she could screen anything from rubber to glass, even plastic explosives. Jordan slipped the matchbook inside, made some adjustments, and motioned Halia to look in the little window.

"A pack of needles?"

Jordan shook her head. "No, one end is bigger. These are delivery devices."

"Delivery of what? Drugs? Poison?"

"If the infamous Jansuk is the server, it's more likely gentech than drugs or weapons. I can open one up and analyze the contents, but it would seriously lower the value of the package. It might turn out to be entirely useless without all the components. It's your call."

Halia sighed. "Thanks, but I can't afford to lose any more on this sale."

Jordan nodded and handed it back to Halia. "Very well. For the second part of your request, we need to take a little trip."

***

Thirty minutes later, Jordan's driver dropped them off in the mud by the river. Jordan's flamboyant outfit stood out against the late fall landscape, but they were the only two people anywhere in sight. They found the decayed brick path and made the half-mile trek to the overlook where Halia had met Jansuk.

"Why did you switch here?" Jordan leaned on the guardrail, breathing heavily.

"I don't know. I guess it seemed like the right place." Halia felt her face heating up again; Jordan had taught her always to switch in public. This was a personal place of comfort, not a business venue, and she had chosen it solely because of her connection to Jansuk.

"No, it was the wrong place." Jordan crouched in front of the bench and felt underneath. She pulled a screwdriver out of her bag, ground it against the plank until the wood splintered, and picked something up. "But lucky for you, you weren't my best student."

Halia cringed. "Why lucky?"

Jordan held up a silver button the size of a fingernail. "A spybot."

"That's a spybot?" Supposedly these little devices could contain the digital contents of an entire metropolitan public library. Halia shuddered to think what it might have collected about her. "I thought they were illegal."

"Who's going to notice out here in the middle of nowhere?" Jordan swept her hand across the gray landscape. "That's why you always switch in public. The police clean them up in the city."

Halia ground her teeth. This was starting to become a lecture. Jordan sat on the bench and took her PPD from her purse.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to see what this thing knows about Jansuk. What time were you here?"

"Two o'clock. No, wait -- I was five minutes late."

Jordan looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "I sincerely hope this was an atypical switch for you. I hate to think I trained someone completely incompetent."

Halia's teeth ached from clenching, so she went to the rail and stared at the brown, churning water below. Her mind wandered back to the last day she and Jansuk had shared here before he was married.

They leaned over the rail, watching a red speedboat pull a daring trio of skiers toward the bay. The seawall was lined with cheering children dressed in all the shades of summer.

"I can't believe you're doing this. You've only been gone a month." Despite the heat, Halia was shivering, her stomach hurt, and she was thinking in circles. She had never learned how to break out of these panic attacks, damn it!

"I said you could date around. A month is a long time."

"A month is no time at all, if you love someone. Why would I date around? We were living together. I thought you were joking." Halia was shivering so violently now that she couldn't even cry. She gripped the blue rail hard, to steady herself.

"I hope you're not angry with me," Jansuk said.

Angry? She didn't even know how to respond to that. What a ridiculous hope to have for a situation like this! She vowed to hate him, as soon as she could manage it.

"Suki, come help me clean up!" Jansuk's mother waved from the other side of the little picnic area. Sisters, brothers, cousins swarmed around her, yet she called Jansuk. They must have planned this ahead of time, a way for him to exit "gracefully."

"I have to go help my mom clean up." He paused and smiled. "We've had some good times together, Hally." His smile seemed insincere now, mocking.

She turned and walked away without looking back. She wondered if he'd always been mocking her.

"Must I charge you for my services to keep you from wasting my time?" Jordan's voice brought her back.

"I'm sorry, Jordan. I was just thinking about old times." Halia's stomach was still turning.

Jordan threw up her hands. "Why are you here, Halia? Why are you searching for him?"

"I need to give him this tech and get my money back."

Jordan clucked her tongue. "You know I could take care of this for you so that everyone benefits financially, including me. It's what I do. Do you still love Jansuk, after all these years?"

Halia collapsed on the bench and sighed. She hadn't really talked, or thought, about why in so long. "I don't think so, Jordan. How can I, after all this time?"

"Then why do you want to find him so badly?"

"Something feels unfinished. It just wasn't right, the way things ended. He didn't even apologize." She breathed deeply, slowly, and her stomach began to unknot.

"Ah, I know what you want."

"What do I want?" Jordan probably did know. Her success in underbusiness was due in no small part to her ability to understand people.

"You want him to be sorry, to regret his actions. You want him to tell you that if his parents hadn't pressured him, he would have married you. Maybe you even want him to say that he still loves you."

Halia nodded. "I guess so. I guess that would make me feel better."

"No, it really wouldn't. You also want to turn him away, so he knows how it feels -- his remorse, your revenge." Jordan nodded. "Am I right?"

"Well, I suppose I've thought of it." Thought of it? What a lie. She'd dreamed of it so many times, she'd woken up gloating about something that had never even happened.

"Then you must also have thought of the fact that he did have a choice, and whether he regretted it was immaterial to the outcome." Her voice was matter-of-fact, almost cold.

Halia felt slapped. Jordan touched her hand. "Forgetting a wrong is often the best revenge. You will not find satisfaction in this meeting, if it goes as you have been dreaming."

Drawing her hand away, Halia ignored the hypocrisy. Jordan had never failed to exact revenge on someone who double-crossed her. She nodded toward the PPD. "Did you find him?"

"Of course I did. I picked up all his vitals from his transaction chip." She raised an eyebrow. "He met with a shady merchant from C6-24 just before you, and bought something quite expensive. He loc is invalid, but not inactive. You just have to have the right equipment to access it." Jordan pocketed her PPD and stood up.

"So, what is it? Aren't you going to give it to me?" Jansuk was buying from off-worlders? That could only mean off-world gentech, which was even more illegal than local gentech, if such a thing were possible. She swallowed hard.

"You don't have the necessary equipment. You'd need a heinously old fiber optics-based system. All the lines were ripped out of your neighborhood two decades ago during the reconstruction."

Halia groaned. "Fabulous! How am I going to get in touch with him?"

Jordan's eyes sparkled. "I said I had found him for you. I have to be home for another appointment in thirty minutes, but my driver will take you to his house."

***

Halia waved to the driver and rolled her shoulders to get the tension out of her neck.

The single building housing Gardenview Apartments did not look like the home of a wealthy gentech dealer. Rows of dark, unadorned windows stared out at her from dingy walls. The empty parking lot and sidewalks were pitted and cracked, the grass sparse.

Stepping carefully up the crumbling steps, Halia opened the creaking door and entered a dank hallway paved in rotting green carpet.

Trudging up eight flights of stairs gave her a new appreciation for her treadmill. She hadn't even broken a sweat by the time she stopped in front of 812. The number 2 hung upside down, like a scary room in some bad horror movie. Adding to the atmosphere was a buzzing, flickering light fixture halfway down the hall. Halia imagined bad-smelling water dripping into a rusty sink somewhere and shuddered.

The door opened, and Jansuk stood in front of her.

"Come in." He did not appear surprised.

Halia stared at the red satin robe and Carmina imported slippers. The carpet under his feet was thick and lemony. The walls over his shoulder were not cracked, mouldy plaster, but brilliant shades of coral, lime and aqua wallpaper. Men's cologne, not mildew, filled her nostrils.

"How did you know I was coming?"

Jansuk smiled calmly. "A good tech monitors his surroundings." He stepped aside and motioned her forward. "Besides, it's my building."

Halia handed him her jacket, removed her shoes, and stepped into the guest slippers. Jansuk's shoes were arrayed along the wall, but hers were the only women's footwear. So he wasn't married any longer. Her heart tried to thump a hole in her chest. This made the whole thing more complicated.

The wallpaper followed them down the short entryway into a laboratory with a curtained bed at one end. Here, the walls became white, but the tile floor adopted the colorful pattern. A typical lab, all the walls were taken up with cabinets, countertops and sinks. In this one, though, the cabinetry was punctuated at regular intervals with lighted displays holding blown-glass flowers. In the middle of the center island was a rocky waterfall, bubbling calm into the room.

Jansuk walked her to the other side of the room and offered her a seat on the bed. There appeared to be no chairs, so Halia sat close to the edge. It made her stomach twinge to be on his bed again.

"I saw what happened to Kieri. Did you come to return the package?" he asked.

"Are you going to give me back the first half of the payment?" Jansuk's scent filled her head. How long had he been expecting her, anyway?

"If I'm able to find a broker who can sell it. The first half of the payment was used to compensate my suppliers."

Halia shrugged. "Maybe I'll keep it then."

Jansuk laughed, and his eyes disappeared. She had always loved that about his face, the way mirth could just take him over. Her cheeks felt hot again. "You're smart, Hally, but you're naive about tech. Jordan's been picking around in my records. You knew before you came that she could sell it for you."

Hally. Only Jansuk had ever called her that. She tried to keep her voice steady. "What makes you think Jordan knows anything about this?"

"Because she used the spybot that I put under the bench, and she only searched it for my information on the day we switched."

Well, yeah, when he put it like that it did seem a little obvious. Holy crap, who else knew this?

Jansuk seemed to read her expression. "Don't worry, it was secure."

"Why did you put a spybot there?" she demanded. "And what's in the package?"

"Hmm... the spybot... let's save that one for later. But I can show you what's in the package. Did you bring it?"

Normally Halia would never have been caught with the package on her in this sort of situation, just in case something went wrong. She frowned at her own foolishness but produced the box.

Jansuk took her to the center island, removed matchbook from the box, and dissolved the coating in a solution. Then he plunged the needle into a petri dish of gelatinous stuff that looked like blue agar.

"Just watch."

After a few seconds, the agar started to turn purple. Jansuk spread a little on a slide and placed it on a tray underneath a microscope. He made some adjustments, then motioned for her to look.

"Bacteria?" It didn't really look like bacteria, but it had been a while since she worked in a lab.

"Come on, Hally, you don't need an electron microscope to see bacteria. Think smaller." He crossed his arms and smiled mysteriously.

Halia backed away from the microscope and covered her face with her hand. "Nanotech?" she asked from behind her fingers. The stuff had been outlawed for a reason. She felt like rushing for the chemical wash sink, but knew it wouldn't matter.

"Relax, it's only programmed to do two things. Turning blue dye red is a test sequence. Even if you managed to breath it in, it would be deactivated."

"What does it do besides turning blue dye red?" Her skin crawled.

"It cures colon cancer."

Halia stopped breathing. Colon cancer? But that would mean...

"Yes, Kieri had colon cancer."

"Jansuk, have you become a complete idiot? You're tangling in something you don't understand. Do you realize what could happen to you? Thousands of people died in the Chicago Incident and tens of thousands at Smith Springs."

Jansuk's face tightened. "Don't lecture me, Halia. I make it, you sell it. There's very little difference in our level of involvement in this enterprise. In fact, I insisted that you handle the switch because I knew you wouldn't flip out if you learned what you were carrying."

It was supposed to be a compliment, but Halia wasn't buying it.

"Don't give me that bullshit, Jansuk. I'm not talking about going to prison, I'm talking about your life. You handle this stuff all the time. There's a reason it was outlawed after the war." Halia balled her fists. She wanted to punch the stupidity out of him.

"Yes, there's a reason it was made illegal. It's called fear. You're a doctor. You know how rampant fear-mongering can overrule logic, especially when it comes to technology." Jansuk's eyes were hard, but he was as calm as she remembered. She'd always hated that about him, the way he could be so dispassionate in the most extreme circumstances, while she worked herself into a panic attack or crying fit.

Halia snorted. "I'm not a doctor anymore, and you- you were never a doctor. But plenty of people who are disagree with you."

The fight left Jansuk's face, and he shrugged. "Licensed doctors aren't gods, Halia. New medicine replaces old, and the old medicine becomes barbaric from a historical perspective. The laws against gentech and nanotech will be overturned some day, and we'll be there to fill the knowledge gap." Jansuk removed the needle from the agar and dumped the contents of the petri dish into the drain. "And by the way, being licensed doesn't make you a doctor. I studied as hard as anyone and I've been working and doing research in genetics since I graduated."

For a moment, Halia stared at the ground, embarrassed to have thrown that into his face. The test does not measure the man, her self-educated father always reminded her.

She cleared her throat. "I'm sorry." His hand on her shoulder prompted her to look up.

"It's alright, Hally. We don't always do or say the right things by the people we care about."

Was that a veiled, decade-late apology? His eyes were so intense, concealing rather than revealing his feelings. His expressions were smooth and even. She'd always had to rely on his words to hear the meaning - and therein lay the problem. Jansuk's grand lie had been one of omission.

Halia turned and walked toward what seemed to be the room's outer wall.

"Where are the windows?

"Windows?"

"The black eyes I saw from the outside."

"Oh, those. Well, they're right here, on the other side of this wall. It keeps my business private." He joined her, sketching out the location with his hand.

"Where do you eat? I don't see a kitchen."

"If you have dinner with me, I'll show you."

***

The rest of Jansuk's quarters were as vividly decorated as the lab, every piece of furniture carefully coordinated.

"Your apartments are beautiful," Halia said. "Did you decorate this yourself?"

Jansuk had his back to her, cooking stir-fry over an open flame. "No, Natalie did it. She did the lab, too."

Halia's heart raced, and the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. There it was, the forbidden topic - just dangling out there waiting for her to respond. The colors seemed to blare at her now, too gaudy, overdone. She practiced breathing exercises until her heartbeat slowed and she stopped shivering. Jansuk turned to the table with two plates of vegetables and rice.

"Here we go. I hope you don't mind vegetarian fare. It's become a habit."

"Thank you. It looks delicious! Why is it a habit?" As the words left her mouth, she wished she hadn't asked. Natalie must be a vegetarian, of course.

"When Natalie got sick, she changed her diet. Fresh fruits and vegetables only. Sometimes I'd cook up a few for myself, but it was easier to skip the meat."

Halia stirred her vegetables, feeling queasy. She didn't want to talk about Natalie, but she had to know for certain.

"So where is your wife?" She crunched a carrot, to hear something besides her own thoughts.

Jansuk looked down at his plate. "Do you remember how we talked about how we were going to help people when we became doctors? How the whole managed care system was a rotten, miserable mess, but we were going to shun the system. We'd probably be poor and survive on donations and barter, but people would get the help they needed."

"Yeah." It was another of his lies. He had encouraged her to dream, and then stolen it away from her in one day. Her hand tightened on her fork. "So?"

"Well, I did get my license, Hally, a year after you. I started my residency at St. John's. Then Natalie got sick. Her HMO wouldn't pay for tests, so her doctor didn't tell her he suspected colon cancer. He suggested that she switch to a vegetarian diet."

Sympathy overwhelmed Halia. She took his hand. "Couldn't her family do anything? I thought they were rich and connected."

"They did. At first I was so overworked and exhausted that I didn't know how sick she was, but when I finally realized what was going on, I called her father. They flew her to JH Regional, and she had the best doctors, the latest treatments. She lived two years."

"I'm sorry." Those words never sounded sufficient, but more would be too much.

"I know." Jansuk stood and cleared away their plates. "I was furious, but as a husband and as a doctor. It horrified me that we're letting people die of preventable diseases, for reasons like greed and fear."

"And that's when you went under?" And Halia had thought he just couldn't make the cut. He was still following their dream, though not in the way she had imagined it.

Jansuk nodded. "What about you?"

"During my residency, a young woman about my age came into the ER with a fractured ulna. It was right after that subway bombing, and I was closing cuts in the hallway."

"Jordan recruited you from the ER?"

"Basically." She smiled at the memory of the wealthy businesswoman holding her own broken arm while she watched Halia sew up a child's head. They carried on a calm debate through a dozen patients. "Jordan argued that the government is too afraid to do what's necessary to protect the people, that we have to take care of ourselves. We went to lunch the next week, and less than a month later, I went to work for her. In two years I was working for myself."

Halia jumped at the sound of a chime.

"We have company." Jansuk dropped the dishes and rushed out of the room.

Halia followed him into a den filled with wall screens and a center control console. Jansuk stared at the screen showing Jordan's car in front of the building.

"I told him to go on without me." Why was he still there?

"He's not waiting, he's dead." Jansuk showed her a replay of her entrance into the building. Moments after she entered, someone in a black mask approached the car, pulled out a gun and shot the driver through the open window.

Halia gasped. "I have to call Jordan!"

She pulled out her PPD, but Jansuk put his hand over hers and motioned to another screen. "Not yet." Three cops were making their way up the stairs. Jansuk looked at her. "I need you to trust me."

"Trust you?" She wasn't sure she could manage that.

"There's going to be a search. We need to disguise this place."

Halia gaped around her. "What are you talking about? There's no way to disguise this whole apartment before they come in."

"Come on."

Jansuk grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the lab. He opened one of the cabinets and took out a transparent spray bottle full of liquid.

"Open your mouth."

"What is it?" Halia eyed the spray bottle. It looked like water, but she knew it was something ominous and illegal.

"Nanites. They won't hurt you." He opened his own mouth and squirted the liquid inside.

"No way in-"

Jansuk's lips were on hers, and she found herself kissing him back, heedless of the mouth spray and the cops outside the door. When he pulled away, she stifled a scream. He was bald, nearly toothless, leaning on a cane. His clothes were rags, and the doors to the other rooms had disappeared. They were standing in a single-room apartment with rotting furniture and bathroom facilities in the corner.

"You should sit down," he said, indicating a rickety wheelchair. He hobbled toward the door.

Halia barely had sunk into the chair when the door crashed open and the cops burst in. When they saw the two old people, they relaxed. One of them spit on the floor and approached Jansuk.

"Hey, old man, this building is condemned. You can't be in here."

"Uhh..." Jansuk's voice scraped like sandpaper.

"Boy that brings our supplies didn't tell us that, the little urchin," Halia added. Her own voice sounded strained. She didn't feel any different, but she couldn't help staring at her wrinkled, spotted hands. What had the crazy bastard done to them?

Jansuk turned slowly and patted the air with his hand. "Now, Doris, don't go blamin' Boy." He looked back to the cops. "I noticed people was movin out, yeah, but Doris and me ain't got nowhere else to go. Boy's been takin' care of us for years now."

"Yeah? Well, you got a week to get out. I'm sending someone back to check on you, and if you're still here they're going to put you away. Got that?" He started to go, then turned back. "Either of you two know anything about that dead body in the parking lot?"

"Dead body in the parking lot?" Jansuk's voice was distressed, his eyes wider than she'd ever seen them. "Well, sir, this neighborhood's just gone to the dogs! A government pension don't buy nothin' these days. Why, I remember a time when..."

The cops slipped out while he was rattling on about his government pension, the cost of food, and a leak in the roof that caused the plaster to crumble. After they closed the door behind them, Halia started to giggle.

"You make a scary old man, Jansuk." The inside of the room did look like a condemned building. The ceiling was discolored and leaking insulation, the threadbare sofa sagged in the middle, and the graffiti-marred coffee table was missing a leg. She tried to roll herself over to him in the wheelchair, but the rusty wheels refused to move more than a few inches.

He knelt in front of her on the bare floor, grinning toothlessly. "Thanks. You make a beautiful old woman."

Halia bit her lip, remembering the kiss. How much of that was real, and how much was designed to get her in disguise? Would she ever know with him? "So is this really what we'll look like when we're old?"

"Pretty much." He glanced down at his rags. "Although I hope I have better clothes and a few more teeth."

***

Jordan called before their disguises had turned, and Halia answered voice-only.

"Halia, are you alright? Your voice sounds strange."

Jordan's hair hung in long red curls now, reminding Halia of the nanites. Jordan's hair changed so often. Was she using nanites, too?

"I'm fine. We can talk more about it later. I have some bad news." Halia related the driver's murder.

"I'm sending you the video," Jansuk added.

"So, Jansuk speaks. Thank you for planting that spybot. I may never have found you otherwise," Jordan said. Her voice turned serious. "We need to talk. This is bigger than the bombing or the murder of my driver. I'll send another car for the two of you."

"That won't be necessary. I'll drive us," Jansuk offered.

Jordan raised an eyebrow. "Dargon is a certified PST. Do you have one of your own?"

"No, I guess not."

"Dargon and an escort of two men will be there in 30 minutes. Do not leave your apartments until he contacts Halia."

Halia pocketed her PPD. "Wow, bigger than the bombing. What's bigger than that?"

"I don't know, but this is a strange situation, Hally. Those cops didn't kill the first driver, so who killed him and why? Where did the killer go? Who called the cops?" His face tightened. "Let's go look at some of the other security recordings, and see if we can learn anything from them."

Jansuk kept video footage from 27 different microrecorders throughout the building, and he had a program that alerted him of activity at those areas. "So I don't have to store recordings from round-the-clock surveillance, only from periods of activity. With this control panel, I specify that I want to see footage from the last day, presented sequentially, with simultaneous events displayed side-by-side."

In the first clip, Jordan's car drove up, and Halia entered the building. Side-by-sides showed her from the front and back. Then the person in the black ski mask walked on-screen, approached Jordan's car, and shot the driver through his open window. The killer moved away from the car and made a call on his PPD, then he disappeared off camera. All the other clips were of the three cops searching the building.

"Who do you think he called?" Halia asked.

"He may been letting someone know the job was done. Or-"

"Or what?"

"He may have been calling the cops. You were the last person to talk to the driver. Maybe they're trying to frame you."

"Me?" Halia's voice squeeked, and she cleared her throat. "I've never done anything to anyone. And who are 'they'?"

"The same people who bombed Kieri's building?" Jansuk shrugged. "Jordan said this was bigger than us."

"This is almost the worst thing I've ever been involved in." Halia shuddered.

Jansuk laughed and slipped his arm around her shoulder. "What was the worst thing?"

Halia looked into his face, and words eluded her. It seemed inappropriate to dredge it all up. Her PPD went off, saving her from an answer.

***

It was dark by the time they reached Jordan's estate, but she met them outside next to the pond. She wore a golden dress so long the tips dragged in the water and so low-cut that her breasts were almost entirely exposed. Fish of all sizes kissed flakes off the top of the water, backlit by underwater spotlights. Torches splashed a path around the edge.

"Sit. Jansuk, it's a pleasure to finally meet you. I've heard much about you." Jordan patted the horseshoe bench beside her.

"All good, I hope."

Halia sat across from Jordan, Jansuk in the middle.

"Your low fees lead me to believe that gentech is a calling for you, not a job. Am I correct?"

Jordan may be dressed for the night, but she was all business. Halia had seen her analyze people; she planned to recruit him. Jansuk nodded.

"You are wise, as well. At the same time the bombing story was broadcast, your loc went invalid. I assume that your accounts also disappeared. Yes?"

"It's my own security protocol. They ...phased."

Jordan's eyes glowed golden, and she leaned closer to Jansuk. "The name Aesop... You prefer to remain a fable."

"That's not how I see myself," Jansuk said.

"You see yourself as the secret champion of the masses. You are a fable to all but the few who have benefited from your work."

Halia wished she could look into Jansuk's character and extract such information! The clues must be there, but she had no idea how to interpret them. Jansuk remained silent.

"What would you say if I told you a war has started, and that champions like you are exactly what we need?"

"War?" Halia's heart raced. "We watched the news on the ride over, and there was nothing about a war."

"It's a covert war, Halia." Jordan picked her skirts out of the water and turned to face them. "Your client Kieri was the first casualty."

"I don't understand." Halia was beginning to shiver again. Jansuk scooted close and put his arm around her, like he used to do whenever a panic attack started.

"The government wouldn't be covert, so who is our opponent?" Jansuk asked. "Come to think of it, who are 'we' exactly?"

"We are the people who believe technology should be used to the benefit of all humans - ethically and prolifically. Our opponent has not yet fully revealed itself, but this message injected under the fingernail of my murdered driver should give you some clues as to the type of people we're dealing with." Jordan slipped her PPD out of a hidden pocket in her skirt and played the message.

"Jordan: You have the power to stop the bloodshed before it begins. Technology belongs in the hands of those with the understanding of its proper application."

"Those elitist bastards!" Halia was shocked that anyone actually thought this way.

"How so?" Jansuk wondered.

"Kieri was not an educated man. He gained wealth through hard, honest labor. However, he was a generous one," Jordan explained. "He had just liquidated the bulk of his assets so he could invest in an underbusiness enterprise. He wanted to manufacture and produce the needles, then sell them at a discounted price to anyone who needed them."

"How did you know that?" Halia couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice. "Kieri's been my client for years, and I didn't know anything about it."

"I wasn't playing in your sandbox, Halia," Jordan soothed. "I heard this from an associate who was partnering with him."

Halia suspected that Jordan "heard" it while trying to re-sell Halia's package. It must be worth a lot more than she thought, for Jordan to take this kind of interest.

"That message was a construct, not a real voice," Jansuk said. "The cops wouldn't look for anything unusual on a man shot in the head in a seedy neighborhood. If they even noticed the dark spot under the fingernail, they probably thought it was a blood blister. Whoever did this wants to avoid the eyes of the law as much as us, and they're sophisticated."

"So as I said, this war needs champions. What do you think?" Jordan looked at both of them, but Halia knew she was talking to Jansuk. Halia couldn't design the stuff and had disappointed Jordan in both her ability to sell and deliver it.

Jansuk was looking at Halia. "We need the night to consider it," he said.

Halia's stomach leaped into her throat. Jordan had included her as an afterthought, but Jansuk had done it by design, as if her decision was crucial to his own.

"Then please allow me to accommodate you overnight," Jordan offered. "I'd like your decision at your earliest convenience, and if you decide to join me, we have to begin planning."

***

Jordan's guest rooms were small and simple for a woman of her wealth - a bed, bedside table and a stiff-backed chair - decorated in that retro steel-and-champagne look Halia hated. Jansuk stuck his head in as she was curling up under her borrowed robe.

"We should talk." His own robe could have wrapped around him twice.

"Okay." Halia didn't feel like talking, she felt like sucking down a bottle of wine. That thought reminded her of Shel, who was probably worried sick. A covert war! What had she gotten herself into now?

Jansuk hopped up beside her on the bed and put his arm around her, wrapping his extra robe across her legs, as if he knew she was cold. "I'm glad you found me."

"Why?"

"Because I've missed you. If you hadn't coming looking for me, I would have looked for you. That's why I planted the spybot, you know."

Halia looked up at him. He was smiling, his eyes disappearing into happiness. She flicked her eyes away, reminding herself that she couldn't trust anything he said.

"Are you going to join this war of Jordan's?" The words came out more forcefully than she'd intended, and she hoped he didn't recognize the jealousy behind them.

"It's not Jordan's war, Hally, it's ours. Remember what we planned - us, together, against the world? Helping the little guy, the one who has no champion? We can do what we always dreamed of doing!" His excitement reached out to her, but she pushed it away.

"That was a long time ago, Jansuk. We're adults now, with perspective. We understand our limits and the consequences of our actions."

"We also understand injustice and death in a way that we never have before. You were selling the tech, fighting the system, without even knowing why. This is why! It's what we do - it's who we are!" His hand pulled her chin around so she was forced to look at him. "Come on, join me. We'll be in it together."

"I don't know the first thing about tech." Maybe he'd decide he didn't want her around again. Halia couldn't bear it if he turned her away. She'd spent the last ten years not developing relationships to avoid exactly that situation.

"I'll teach you everything you need to know."

"What if I'm no good at it?" Jordan had certainly found her flawed enough.

"At which part? Wars need all kinds of people. You don't have to be a tech."

He caressed her hair, and she closed her eyes. So long ago, she used to fall asleep like that. Halia relaxed.

"Jansuk," she mumbled. "I have to ask you something."

"What's that?"

"When we met for the switch, you were dressed like an old man, all faded and gray. Why?" It felt like an uncomfortably personal question - which almost made her laugh, considering the position they were in right now.

Jansuk laughed again, and she opened her eyes to watch joy take his face. "For the same reason I made the needles into a matchbook. Old men and relics are beyond notice."

I noticed you, she thought. "Okay, I'll join the war - on one condition."

"What's the condition?"

"Whenever you decide to become an old man, you have to take me with you."

Jansuk looked at her for a minute, like he was considering something, then he kissed her on the forehead. "Alright. I agree."

Halia snuggled into his shoulder and fell asleep.

Chris Africa is a veteran writer, editor, and Web site developer. For more information about Chris, browse her personal web site, Parola Scritta. Feel free to contact her at either of her e-mail addresses: baiewola@yahoo.com or editor@ultraverse.us

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