Shareware Supreme Volume 6 #1/swsii.zip/swsii/201/RUBYV25.ZIP/RUBY25-7

Text File | 1993-09-12 | 29KB | 488 lines

Copyright 1993(c)

                              GLINT
                        By D. G. Hembroff

     God, I needed a fix. The midmorning sun invaded the office
with its brilliance, washing out all the dirty ambiance. I reached
into the bottom left hand drawer of the desk for my stash, only to
stop my hand short, groping between the old case files and food
wrappers. Damn "New Prohibition" anyway.
     Through the haze of the blinding ache in my head I remembered
the Vicetrol cop and his pious lecture. One more time and I was
going down. I threw it all away, even the bottle behind the
baseboard. Everything, gone. Gone, when I needed it most.
     A cold compress over my eyes, leaning back in my chair, I
could almost bear to spend another day waiting. There hadn't been
a call on the phone or a knock at my door in three months. I
accepted the silence of my office so thoroughly that the shrill of
my page shocked me out of my seat. I grabbed at my temple as if to
stop the explosions in my head. My thumb gingerly pressed down onto
the answer switch.
     "Aldrin."  My voice barely registered.
     "Lady here," came the answer.
     "So what, Jethro?  I'm not having a good day."
     "She wants something found out. She asked for you."
     I considered. "She look rich?"
     "She looks good, Aldrin. I'm sending her up."  I heard the
door slam open downstairs. No chance to even make an effort to
shape things up.
     Standing in the doorway I could see how cagey old Jethro's
security minded ways got circumvented. Red-headed, medium sized,
and built is all I saw. "You're the Info Man."  No question there.
     I shrugged. "And you?"
     She handed over her I.D.. Rand, Keli NMI, Doctor of Optometry.
Here was one you didn't see every day.
     "I work for the State," she said.
     That wasn't exactly news. Ever since the nineties, all the
medos belonged to the government. They still had all the money,
though. "What is it you need to know?" I asked.
     Not needing further invitation, she took a chair by the desk.
I returned to my seat. "I'm on the State Senate medical board,"
she began. "I take care of all the staff optometry appointments.
I think there's something wrong with Graves."
     Senator Carlton Graves. A good pick for the Elephants' main
man next year. Good looking, clean background, the perfect
Presidential candidate. "I'm not a doctor of medicine, Dr. Rand.
I was in exobiology before..."
     "Before it was banned. I know," I helped her out. It didn't
sting as much as it used to.
     "So refer him. I don't think I can help you."
     "I think this is right up your alley."  She threw a stack of
papers from her bag on the desk. "You've seen these, I presume."
     I glanced at the top article. "Random Killings Escalate" it
read. Some perps got into the main processor for the shopping net
and hooked up a neural feedback generator to the cashcard input.
They managed to fry the frontal lobes of over two hundred holiday
shoppers. Ten of the vics were wives of some very heavy hitters
from the Japanese Consortium. The Metropolitan Vice Control Force,
Vicetrol, was announcing that arrests were imminent.
     The rest of the clippings were of the same vein: rape, murder,
assaults out of control. Vicetrol had no answer for it at all. The
violent crime rate was nearly triple what it had been last year,
and last year was double the year before that. It wasn't safe to
go on the streets anymore; big news. "The Senator?" I prompted.
     She wasn't in a hurry. "We've caught a few of these psychos,
you know. They aren't your ordinary perps. They were all the
regular John Q. Public type, no priors, good Morality index. Just
one day they let loose as if they didn't know better. We couldn't
find any connection. For two years we searched. Vicetrol came up
with nothing, until last month. They all had one thing in common."
     I didn't have a hope of making her get to the point before she
was ready. I tried hard to keep my eyes off her best features, to
put on my best interested face. My head continued to pound
insistently, but this was amusing. "After the discipline phase,
the autopsies showed a strange cavity behind the perps' eyes,
around the optic nerve. All of them had it."
     Discipline phase. Another government euphemism for ritual
execution. There was never a repeat offender. This woman was
programmed to the hilt. "The Senator?" I said again, not expecting
any results. It was a pleasure watching her mouth move.
     "I did his annual last week. I found something."  All at once,
her poised front dropped, for a moment, but I could see it fail.
I couldn't help it, my interest multiplied. "He had something in
his eye."
     "So flush it out."  I was baiting her.
     Her cheeks flushed, "Not in it, behind it. It glinted at me."
     I laughed. It hurt my head, but I savored it. Precious few
chances to laugh these days.
     "I don't need this shit!"  She got up.
     I shot from my chair,  "Wait," I said.
     She turned on me, her eyes daggers. "You don't think this is
easy for me, do you?  You don't think I know how this sounds?
There was something there, something alien."
     This was all too much, too close to home. "There are no
aliens. Humans are the supreme race, the only race."  I nearly
choked on it.
     "I know the approved text, Aldrin. I know the people who
helped write it. You know better."  She began to walk out, "I may
have just seen the proof."
     "So what do you want me to do about it?"
     She paused, "Do what you do, Aldrin. Watch him. Maybe we can
change the party line. Maybe we can find out what they're up to."
     The door slammed shut behind her. How could I refuse?
                               ***
     I cleared Rand's visit with the Vicetrol, registering my Moral
Stability license with the time and date of her visit. Jethro
corroborated my report, griping the whole time we were on the net.
I hated being legit, but couldn't afford any trouble. I was already
halfway under with my 'Trine bust, a Class Three moral turpitude
arrest would get me fifteen years. America wasn't the same Land of
the Free I grew up in.
     A cab dropped me off up on the Hill, the ride nearly cleared
out my cash card. I'd be walking home. Lights from the Senator's
compound spilled out onto the street, clearly intended to
discourage the type of prowling I had planned. My palm access;
unregistered and illegal as hell to own, much less use; made quick
work of the outer barrier. As I cleared the perimeter, I looked
for the next line of defense.
     The Senator would be too good for mere human or animal guards
on the grounds. I shifted my perspective to get closer to the
ground. There. I saw the faint glow of the interactive laser grid
only a moment before I would have broken the loop. I got down on
my stomach and crawled to the house. Using my palm'cess again, I
called up the house plans from the net. He would be in the study,
I knew. They always had a study, and they were always retiring to
it.
     Graves desk looked bigger than my office. He sat in front of
his high level net access, making notes, or writing a speech,
looking very Senatorial. For a while it was just like watching the
vid commercials. Underlings bustled in and out constantly, having
him sign this or approve that. I tried to get comfortable outside
the window. It looked like it was going to be a while.
After a few hours of this, the coming and goings trickled off.
Graves pushed back from his desk to stretch. From his silver hair,
six feet four inches down to his Armani shoes, he cut a regal
figure. The electorate loved this man. He was not just beautiful,
but also as pure as mortal man could be. There wasn't one
infraction, not even a warning, on his Morals record. His Theocracy
rating was in the high two thousand range. I didn't even rate a
three hundred, most men never earned better than fifteen hundred.
In the backlash against the corrupt and morally bankrupt
politicians of the last century, America had at last created a
figurehead of saintly proportion.
     He moved fluidly about the study, not quite looking at
anything. he passed his slender fingers over a few old tomes on
the shelves, but did not pick any up. I suddenly realized that I
was tensed as if to spring, and forced myself to settle back down
into my crouch. He even had an effect on me, I thought sourly.
The door to the study swung open, and two men entered. The Senator
greeted them and returned to his seat. The larger of the pair
motioned for the smaller to sit in the wing back chair across from
Graves. The smaller man hesitated, but finally decided to
acquiesce. Graves and the standing visitor began talking to the
man in the chair, their manner and gestures becoming more agitated
as the small man shook his head vehemently. The larger man, (by
now I was thinking of him as Burly, and his recalcitrant partner
as Scrawny), pulled out a gun and pointed it at Scrawny. The
Senator jumped up and began shouting.
     Graves grabbed the gun from the big man's hand, yelling the
whole time. I began to unwind again as the calmer heads looked to
have prevailed, but Graves continued to walk toward the man in the
chair. Without warning, or pausing for breath, he swung the weapon
viciously at Scrawny's head. The hapless man collapsed on the
Senator's desk, his forehead striking the blotter and splitting
open in a nasty gash. Blood flowed over the papers near Scrawny's
unmoving face and onto the expensive-looking carpet. Instead of the
expected reactions of alarm or confusion, Graves and Brawny showed
no regard whatsoever for the still form. The two men continued
arguing heatedly, throwing their hands around as they battled their
respective positions. I was tempted to try and get closer to the
glass, but the motion sensors embedded in the pane discouraged that
thought. There must have been licrystal polarizer between the
glass, damping the sound, as not a peep penetrated to my perch. I
could only guess at the content of their conversation.
     Graves did something with the hand farthest away from me, a
gesture perhaps. His other hand dropped the gun to the floor, just
in time, it turned out. Brawny began to slump toward the Senator,
his eyes fluttering. Graves hadn't laid a finger on him, I was
sure. The Senator caught the other man neatly, rolling him back as
if they were going to dip. What happened next shocked me so badly
that I didn't even hear my cerepager go off at first.
I couldn't answer the 'page without speaking, however softly. The
shriek in my sinus cavity could be cut off by deactivating the
device, but I had a hunch that I didn't want to miss this call. In
any case, I decided I'd seen enough of the Senator for the night,
and slipped off the property.
     I thumbed the switch as soon as I cleared the wall, "Aldrin."
"Where are you, Buzz?" Jethro's insistent voice resonated in my
head. It was a rhetorical question of course. "The redhead came
back looking for you. I told her you were out and she just smiled.
She said you'd want to talk when you got back, and she left her
address."
     I took the information from Jethro, and knocked him up for a
few credits to get a cab to Rand's flat. "That was quick," she said
by way of greeting. She motioned me inside.
     "I came right from Graves house."  She had a nice place, worth
more each month than most people made in a year. It was curiously
underfurnished; white carpet under white walls with no pictures
anywhere. A sofa sat along one wall, a smaller settee was across
from it. The only other piece to be seen was the executive net
access console in the hall.
     She stepped close, running her cool fingers across my forehead
and around my toward my ears. "Very impressive," she breathed. This
was not at all the same woman who wore the full length wool dress
into my office that morning. She wore a semi - informal sort of
shift, covering herself rather indecently. Her hair was back in a
style outlawed by city code. Any Vicetrol cop within a city block
would have arrested us both; her for showing it, me for wanting it.
I looked and saw the shades were closed.
     I ran my index finger over the 'page activator. "It's receive
call only. I got it a long time ago."
     "My how times change," she said. I shrugged. There was nothing
I could do about it. I had been rich once, maybe more wealthy than
she was. Of all the toys I acquired while still the golden boy at
World Aeronautics, the 'page was the only one I couldn't sell.
     "Learn anything, Mister Aldrin?"  Somehow she knew what I had
seen.
     "Graves has a lousy decorator, he's got more money than he can
ever spend, and he is not at all what he seems."
     "Did you see it?"  Rand was desperate for someone to assure
her that she wasn't crazy. Unfortunately I'm not near sure enough
of my own sanity to be able to diagnose it in others.
     "I don't know what I saw." It was only a small lie. I had a
pretty good idea, but I wasn't ready to deal with it. "Two guys
came to the house, one got assaulted, the other passed out. Graves
spent a lot of time leaning over both of them, then you called."
That was only part of it, but I'm pretty sure she knew the rest.
The memory of Graves' tongue snaking out and caressing old Burly's
right eye was sure to haunt my sleep for weeks.
     Rand sat heavily on the sofa; knees together, hands locked
around them. She looked tiny, defenseless. I was beginning to get
turned on. "Tell me what you saw when you examined Graves."
     The thought that I might be swallowing the "glint" part of her
story obviously surprised her. "I looked through the cornea of his
right eye, through the lens, expecting to see a normal retina, the
foveal pit, the optic papilla..."
     "I'm not a doctor of medicine, Rand. Use terms I can relate
to."
     "The cornea is the clear part of your eye, here," she pointed
to the area around her pupil. "The lens is what you see through.
Your retina is where all the light your eyes gather is sorted out
into color and pattern for transmission to your brain. The fovea
is a depression in the retina where you get most of your visual
acuity from. The optic papilla is the blind spot where the optic
nerve fibers pass out of your eye. Got it?"  As she sat, the shift
began creeping up her legs. I barely managed to pay attention to
what she was saying.
     "Is that all I'll need to know to understand before you go
on?"
     She nodded, unwilling to hold back any longer. "I expected
only a normal eye. After all the man is as healthy as a horse,
right?"  I dipped my head in agreement, hoping that she would just
get to it. Finally she said, "Coming out of the papilla, waving
back and forth as I watched, was some sort of antenna. I've been
in optometry for nine years and I've never seen anything like it.
It moved of it's own volition, like a living thing. It glinted at
me.
     "He knew I saw something, or that thing told him, I don't
know. He shot out of that chair and out of my office like a rocket.
He said he remembered some bill that he had to attend the debate
on."  Her voice trailed off.
     I sat down beside her, closer than code would permit, if there
was anyone around to enforce it. She began to tremble. "I tried to
talk myself out of what I'd seen. It couldn't be real. I didn't
write it up in my report. Then the autopsy information came across
my desk. Behind all the perps eyes was a cavity about the size of
a fountain pen, wrapped around the optic nerve. The Vicetrol
coroner found tissue samples of a type he couldn't cross match with
anything he'd ever seen before."
     She laid it all out for me, but wouldn't fill in the
conclusion. "So you think that all these crazies were under control
of some sort of creature that lived on their optic nerve?"  "You
wrote the book on it, Aldrin. You tell me."  She knew more about
me than I gave her credit for. "The Next Invasion" by George Aldrin
was banned over fifteen years ago. She wouldn't have been out of
her teens by then. "You said that the idea that aliens would come
in a semi - humanoid form was unrealistic. You knew that they would
insinuate themselves in a way we would not recognize and pursue
their goals from there."
     "We could be arrested for even talking about aliens, Doctor."
The last thing I wanted to do was discuss my old life.
She gave me a look that could have melted glass, "We could be
locked up for just sitting here alone like this."  She stood up
abruptly. My eyes followed her as she glided over to a shelf across
the room. I saw her pull a black lacquer box down. She carried it
back to the couch and sat down again. "Maybe this will make you
more comfortable."
     I knew what was inside before she opened the lid. 'Trine. Used
to be the only legal narcotic out there, except for alcohol. The
New Prohibition had changed all that. Totally non-toxic, non-
addictive, and a guaranteed jail sentence. "That stuff will ruin
your life," I was already reaching for the injector.
     She gently pushed my hands away. Her fingers picked up an
ampule and placed it in the reservoir. I found myself tilting my
head even before she raised the injector to my neck. There was only
the slightest pressure as the 'Trine sprayed into my carotid
artery. In the second or two before the drug took hold, I watched
her inject herself, and start to undress.
                               ***
     The next five hours were completely lost in a the fog of the
'Trine. When I started to come out of it, I could smell her on me.
My eyes refused to open at first, but I knew where I was. We must
have spent the whole time on the floor in the main room. My head
was propped up on the divan, which one, I couldn't tell. I could
feel her breath on my face.
     Suddenly, I could see. Rand's face was inches from mine.
Shocked, I tried to backpedal, but I was blocked by the couch.
"Relax," she soothed. The dead look in her eyes when I woke was
replaced by the smoldering heat I'd seen just before the 'Trine
took hold. Something flashed in her hand with a metallic gleam, "I
was just checking you out."
     There was just no trust left in the world. "So do I pass?"
     "Maybe."  She leaned over, her breasts brushing the hair on
my chest, "There's just one more test I have to run, medically
speaking."
     Her mouth was velvet passion, "I hear men possessed by aliens
are lousy in bed."  Her tongue traced the lines on my face, her
body slipped over mine, and she gave me one that I could remember.
     Later, as the sun made its way through the shades, I got up
to put my clothes on. "Assuming Graves does have this "glint", what
do you want me to do about it?"
     "That would seem to be the most obvious part of all this."
She pulled a loose sweater over her skin, the waistband barely
reaching her thighs. "It, or he, would have to be stopped."
     Even my moral rating stopped long before cold blooded murder,
"I'm not a killer."
     "No, you're an exobiologist," she slid up next to me, filling
my head with images that would get me a couple life sentences.
"Learn what you can about it, and stop it from taking over any more
lives."
     "How am I going to get close enough to Graves to talk to him?"
     She smiled wickedly, "That's all taken care of. Remember, I
told you that Graves left the last examination before I was
finished. I rescheduled him for a make up today, at nineteen
hundred. We have just enough time to teach you how to be an
optometrist."
     She spent the day showing me some of the tools of the trade,
and how to use them. She taught me how to use the ophthalmoscope,
the little handheld microscope with the light in it, to look into
a patient's eye and see the retina and fovea. I wasn't a quick
study, but I eventually caught onto the rudiments.
     We caught a cab across town to the Legislative Assembly. Rand
used her access card to get us through security and onto the lift
down to the medical clinic. As we traveled deeper and deeper into
the bowels of the ancient building, I got to see first hand some
of the "perks" our elected officials granted themselves. There must
have been ten separate restaurants in the lower corridors, special
cab accesses, and hundreds of shops and smaller kiosks selling
everything under the sun for unbelievable prices. Even after the
Great Graft Rebellion...
     My voice was caustic, "Nice set up."
     She shrugged. Past all the shops, a corridor branched off. We
came to a stop at the optometry clinic. Rand led me past the
receptionist to an examination room. "They're all leaving for the
day. I'll be in the next room," she motioned to a door on the wall.
"It'll be just you and Graves."  She kissed me quickly and the door
slid shut behind her.
     With expected punctuality, Graves stepped into the room. Let's
get this over with," he muttered as he sat in the chair.
I grabbed the 'scope and bent over to have a look, saying, "Just
look straight ahead and relax."  The left eye was almost a perfect
recreation of what I'd seen in Rand's journals; normal and healthy.
I hesitated only slightly before looking into the right eye.
Even though I knew what I was looking for, it still took me by
surprise. There, in the back of Graves eye, a thin off - white
tentacle moved back and forth, reflecting back the light of the
ophthalmoscope. I began to draw back.
     Graves strong hands had my arms pinned before I realized I'd
been grabbed. I went limp immediately. "What the hell!"
     "Enough, Aldrin." I started to protest, "Shut up. I know who
you are. We all know about you."  Graves manner changed suddenly,
from violent to entreating, "I let you see what I am, now let me
explain."
     I was confused by the change, but still suspicious, "Who am
I talking to?"
     The Senator smiled. Something glinted in his eye. "Does it
matter?  We're the same being. You should understand about this
kind of symbiosis. We need each other."  The Senator deposited me
on a stool by the connecting door.
     "Your world has fallen victim to a rather nasty group of my
brethren. Some of us are here to set things straight."
     "How long have you been here?"  I couldn't help myself.
Finally, in the most impossible of circumstances, my work had
finally been validated.
     "The others have been operating here for over a century. They
have manipulated your destiny. Using your own species fears, they
have created a theological police state in the most enlightened
nation on your planet. Our job is to eliminate the ones who have
done this to you, and perhaps set you back on the correct path."
     I watched Graves pace about the examination room. "How are
you doing this?"  My hand fell into a pocket of my lab coat.
     "We identify the others, and then terminate them in a way that
will not draw suspicion to our activities."
     I curled my fingers around the butt of the weapon in my
pocket, "So you are playing out your war on our planet, killing
humans to eliminate your enemies."
     Graves looked a bit dismayed at my reaction, "We are trying
to help. Would you rather your world stayed in the hands of
aliens?"
     "What is the difference between them and you?"  Graves started
over to me. I pulled the gun out and leveled it on the Senator's
face. "Why should we tolerate any of you?"  He stopped his advance.

     "But we need to help you. We are able to make your species so
much more than it is."  He feinted to the right, drawing my aim,
then lunged. "Together we can..."
     The gun thundered in my hands. Graves was knocked back onto
the examination chair, an explosion of crimson suddenly on his
chest. The door behind me burst open and Rand bounded into the
room. She picked up the scope from the floor where I had dropped
it.
     Graves was still trying to speak, clawing at his collar as if
to get more air. He looked at Rand with a look of horrified
recognition. She bent over him. I walked slowly over to the pair,
still holding the gun loosely in my hand.
     Rand looked up suddenly at my approach. "It's not dead yet."
     She grabbed the gun from me and aimed it at the Senator.
Graves' eyes pleaded with mine, but I was paralyzed. Shifting her
aim slightly, she blew Graves' right eye out the back of his head.
Brain and bone made a mosaic on the tile floor. As I watched, a
translucent piece of gristle separated itself from the bloody mass
and began to slowly inch toward me.
     Sluglike, it kept advancing. I could only marvel at the alien
creature. Oblong, sinuous, it inched across the floor, one tentacle
waving in the cold air. It had almost reached the toe of my shoe,
when Rand's foot stomped viciously down on it. She twisted on the
ball of her foot, a look of triumph on her haggard face. "Not
today, you bastard."
     I opened my arms as she fell forward into them. "God, Buzz,
that was awful."  I couldn't speak, remembering something that
flashed in her eye as I caught her. Together we fell to the
examination room floor.
     "Give me the gun, Keli."
     She looked up from my shoulder, "What?  Oh, of course."
     I took the gun, releasing myself from her grip as I did so.
"You're from the other side, I suppose?"  I took a few steps back
from her.
     She slowly turned to me, "What the hell are you talking
about?"
     "Come on, Rand. I saw how he looked at you. Do I need this?"
I scooped up the ophthalmoscope.
     Her expression never changed. "You must be crazy. Do you think
I'm one of those?" she pointed at the cooling corpse.
I brandished the 'scope like a weapon, "You didn't even use this
thing. The only other time I saw someone with their tongue on
someone else's eye was at Graves' house. What is that, some sort
of communication thing?  Is that how you breed?"
     "Always the scientist, Buzz. Put down the gun, I'm not going
to hurt you. We're more alike than you may think."  She put her
hand out to me.
     The room wavered for a moment. I closed my eyes and shook my
head. When I reopened them, Rand was still holding out her hand,
smiling calmly. Rage welled up within me, "You used me to get close
to him."
     "I had to," she continued to smile, mocking my anger.
     The gun went off for the third time. Rand fell back to the
floor, her eyes still taunting me.
                               ***
     I remembered little about the time after shooting Rand. I was
aware of the two men who took custody of me, but could do nothing
to stop them from putting me in their car and taking me downtown
to the Vicetrol headquarters. They took my identification, and
placed a static block on my  'page and left me in one their
"interview" rooms. Perhaps not surprisingly, I felt no fear or
trepidation. In fact, I felt nothing at all.
     After a time, another man came into the room. He was wearing
one of the trademark suits of the Vicetrol Intelligence Arm. I
didn't recognize his face, but I immediately began spilling out the
events of the past two days. I couldn't stop the words from coming
out of my mouth. By the time I was finished, my whole body ached
with the effort of it.
     The man listened impassively through the whole story. "So that
is your report?" he said finally.
     "I wasn't able to control myself."
     He looked at me sharply, "This is a very serious offense, you
understand."
     I wanted to say that I was innocent, that I'd been coerced,
but what came out was,  "It took longer than expected to tap into
the neural net. The page interfered with my interface. By the time
the cerebral cortex came under control, it was too late."
     "At least you were able to get Graves," the suit allowed. "He
was shaping up to be a real problem for us."  Both of the man's
humorless eyes glinted in the dim light of the room. "The rest of
it can be excused, I guess. That decision is up to the council,
however. Too bad about Rand," he said, "she was a valuable agent."
     "Yeah," I heard myself answer, no longer able to control my
words at all. "It's a damn shame."
                               END