Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (6 page)

“Saw it on a shelf one time at a party at your house,” Tyler said. “Only thing even close
to SF so it caught my eye. How's Mel?”

“Pregnant again,” Jeff said. “Nice to see you and all as I said but why is my department
being charged a thousand dollars an hour to use the shield room?”

“This,” Tyler said, pulling his hand out of his pocket and rolling the handful of atacirc
out on the table. “I need a million dollars. Quickly. And I need a hundred grand of that
in cash.”

“Is this from the
Spinward Crossing
?” Jeff asked, picking up one of the chips gingerly.

“Where else?”

“You found something they want to trade,” Jeff said. “It's not worth a mil. A lot, yeah,
not a mil. Among other things about one in ten of the stuff the
Spinward Crossing
has been selling doesn't work. And I can't authorize that sort of money.”

“I'm going to have more. Quite a bit. I need AT&T to get some people in here to buy it
from multiple companies. I'll cut AT&T in on one percent of whatever I make for being the
house. And, obviously, we need to keep this quiet. Nothing electronic.”

“Agreed,” Jeff said. “But as I said, I can't authorize any of that.”

“I know that, Jeff,” Tyler said, sitting down. “Which means you need to shag your ass to
the Thirty-Fifth floor.”

“I also can't simply walk in on Weasley Rayl,” Jeff said, nervously.

“You can if you're holding a million dollars in atacirc in your hand,” Tyler said. “Weasel
won't mind. Really. Especially since this deal ends on Wednesday.”

“Call him Weasel to his face and it won't matter how much atacirc you're holding,” Jeff
said, sighing. “Okay, okay. I'll need to take...”

“Take as many as you'd like,” Tyler said, waving expansively.

***

“Mr. Rayl is in a meeting,” the executive secretary said, sternly.

“And if I'm wrong he'll fire me,” Jeff said, breezing past her.

“I said stop!”

Jeff opened the door to the President of Northwestern Operations' offices and strode
across the carpet to his desk. Mr. Rayl was, in fact, reading the
Wall Street Journal
. He looked up as the door opened, tilted his head to the side and set the paper down.

“This is either important or you've just pretty much killed your career,” Rayl said,
mildly.

Jeff walked up to the desk and held his finger to his lips. Then he held out his hands,
cupped, so the executive could see the atacirc for just a moment.

“It's about the SeeFid project, sir,” Jeff said. “The one we used to call Babylon. Tyler
Vernon used to work with me over at Verizon and I thought he might have some ideas. As it
turns out, he does.”

“It's okay, Bernice,” Rayl said, waving at his secretary. “This really is an emergency.
I'll be in... ?”

“Shield Room Five.”

***

“Mr. Tyler,” Weasley Rayl said heartily as soon as the door was closed. “Pleasure to see
you in the building again!”

“Pleasure to see you too, Mr. Weasley,” Tyler said as Jeff winced.

“It's... Damnit. It's Tyler
Vernon
, isn't it? Sorry.”

“We've both got the same problem with our names, sir,” Tyler said, smiling. “No offense
intended.”

“None taken,” Rayl said. “What have you got?”

“I have to meet tomorrow night, clandestinely, with the Glatun,” Tyler said, sitting down.
“I need to pick up a pick-up's load of a certain product. Less than a pick-up's load,
actually. They will trade me a full pick-up of atacirc.”

“Christ,” Jeff said. “Six
petabytes
of variable use memory, infinite parallel processor and the size of a match head. You
could buy... Name a third world country. Name a
country
. I don't think anyone's seen a case of it in one place.”

“More than that,” Tyler said. “As you said, nobody has seen a case in one place. You can
replace a server farm with one chip. The value I saw someone calculate in
Wired
on a standard dry bushel of it is a hundred
billion
dollars. Which
nobody
can afford. A pick-up load is going to distort that price. I still need a million
dollars, at least a hundred grand in cash. That's for those. AT&T gets some serious
players that can pay for the rest. I'll take a check. We'll negotiate for it here. AT&T
gets one percent as the house. And I need to do this quick because time's a wasting. Among
other things, I'll need to get the money from a bank and they close soon.”

“Bank's stay open to surprising hours when the right people call,” Rayl said. “It's not
worth a mil. Among other things...”

“Some of it's bad,” Tyler said. “I also got the information that it's their scrap and
about a hundred years old.”

“More or less what we thought,” Rayl said, narrowing his eyes. “But that sounds like you
got more information out of the Glatun than most governments.”

“They are, surprisingly, fans of my series,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I just remembered I
owe them a sketch. That's beside the point. One mil.”

“Two hundred grand,” Rayl said. “The hundred in cash is no problem. I'll call JP.”

“Not going to just give this away,” Tyler said. “Nine hundred and that's flat. Novell is
just down the road. And I know people there, too.”

“Two fifty and I'll make sure you can breeze in and out of the bank. And twenty percent on
the trades. Wednesday morning work?”

“Wednesday morning works but if you think I'm giving you twenty percent you've been
drinking. Two percent, eight seventy-five.”

“Eighteen and three.”

“I'll tell you truth. I'm not going lower than nine and I'm not going higher than four.
Take it or leave it.”

“I'll leave it. But I'll get closer. Twelve percent and five hundred grand. Seriously,
that's a good deal.”

“Totally sucks. Five and eight hundred.”

Rayl considered his opponent and shrugged.

“I'd be doing a disservice to the shareholders if I went lower than ten percent as house,
there's going to be costs involved, and eight hundred is highway robbery. Six hundred.”

“Seven fifty.”

“Seven.”

“Done. I'll geek to ten.”

“Then we have a deal,” Rayl said, standing up. “I'll need to go get the check cut
personally. Eight AM Wednesday morning?”

“Can you get the right people here by then?” Tyler asked. “We're talking cases of atacirc.
And it has to be all sub-rosa.”

“We've gotten used to working around the Horvath,” Rayl said with a sigh. “They,
fortunately, either don't pay as much attention as people think or can't count. We've
simply
had
to sneak materials through the system beyond what they allow. We are, in other words,
used to this sort of thing. I can get the right people here.
With
their checkbooks. Speaking of which, stay here. I'll go get the check.”

***

Tyler tried not to bounce as he walked to his truck. He still had a lot of stuff to get
done and if the Horvath were watching it still could get very sticky.

“Mr. Vernon! This is a surprise!”

“Uh, yeah,” Tyler said, trying to remember the red-headed guy's name. No chance. “Good to,
uh, see you again, uh...”

“Dan,” the man said, holding out his hand as if to shake. In it was a badge. “Hey, could
we talk?”

“Sure... Dan...” Tyler said, trying not to curse. “I'm sort of busy at the moment. E-mail
me?”

“My van is right over here,” Dan said, putting his hand on Tyler's arm. “Come on. Won't
take a second.”

Tyler, feeling both pissed and a tad nervous, got in the black-tinted van. It had been
rigged as something of a mobile command post but what was interesting was that there were
no electronics. There were some cameras that looked as if they were fifteen years old but
super advanced at the time.
Chemical
photography cameras. And lots of paper.

“Mr. Vernon,” a man in a suit said. Fifties and a bit chubby with an incongruous goatee.
“My name is Senior Special Agent Aaron Spuler. Welcome to the command post of Project
4038.”

“Which is spying on Tyler Vernon?” Tyler asked. “There are laws, you know.”

“Which is spying on aliens who can... what was the phrase? Go through our most advanced
firewalls so easily it's like 'looking through an open window,'” Spuler said. “And anyone
who has interaction with them. Because every interaction with ETs is a potential national
security problem as long as that God damned Horvath ship is in the sky.”

“Which is pretty indiscrete of you to say,” Tyler said.

“Give us some credit, please,” Agent Poore said. “This is a shield car and we made sure
you were not carrying your cell.”

***

“Maple syrup?” Spuler asked, incredulously. “They're addicted to maple
syrup
?”

“Shhhh!” Tyler said. “Christ, now everybody's going to know!”

“Our job is
gathering
information, Mr. Vernon,” SSA Spuler said. “Not giving it out. And don't worry about
Congressional investigations or something.
Nobody
wants to know we exist.”

“Their chemistry is incompatible with ours,” Agent Poore said. “How can they metabolize
it?”

“No clue,” Tyler said. “But they reacted like it was booze or something.”

“We saw the reaction,” Spuler said, waving at the cameras. “But the problem is the
Horvath.”

“The Glatun apparently have as much control over Horvath information systems as Horvath
have over ours,” Tyler said. “Or so they say. We're going to meet tomorrow night. I need
to go get some money and then, somehow, get my hands on a truck-load of maple syrup
without the Horvath finding out. They'll come to me and give me cover for the transfer.
Frankly, it feels a bit like a drug deal.”

“Your truck?” Spuler asked.

“Yes.”

“That should escape their notice as long as they are not actively watching you,” Spuler
said. “More would be harder. The flip side is that if this is popular among the Glatun, it
could give us some leverage.”

“I've thought about that,” Tyler said, holding up a hand to forestall a reply. “Let me
just be clear about something. I'm not going to play puppet to the government. By the same
token, yes, I care about that damned Horvath ship and this country and the world and
humanity. And I will do my level best to figure out a way to get it out of our sky. But
right now, I need to go get some money and find six fifty-five gallon drums of maple
syrup. In about thirty hours.”

“We're not going to get involved in a purely commercial enterprise,” Spuler said. “But
this isn't on one level. If you need our help, we'll be around.”

“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Can I get out, now?”

“Feel free,” Spuler said, waving at the door. “Just... try not to get the world destroyed,
okay?”

“Doing my best,” Tyler said, yanking open the door.

***

When he got to his truck, Tyler picked up his cellphone and brought up his contacts.

“Hey, Petra,” Tyler said, trying not to sigh.

“Tyler,” Petra said. It was that tone. That 'I'm unsatisfied with the situation but I'm
not going to bring it up' tone.

“Sorry I've been behind in my payments. I'm going to slide some money over this week.”

“Thank you,” Petra said, civilly.

“I'm doing some projects with AT&T so the money should be better,” Tyler said. “So...
hopefully no more money issues.”

“That would be nice. It's hard enough to make it on the settlement as it is. The girls are
right here...”

Tyler thought about his kids every day. What he had
not
thought about, until that moment, was what that meant in terms of his current doings. It
took him less than a second, a very brief pause, to make the hardest decision of his life.

He hadn't talked to his kids in two weeks. And he realized he might not be talking to them
for months.

But when you sail in harm's way, you don't take hostages.

He squelched the screaming inside.

“Don't really have the time,” he said, airily. “Got to go. Bye.”

***

Petra Vernon closed her cellphone and looked at it with a puzzled expression. She and
Tyler might have had their differences and schedules might have prevented him seeing the
girls much, but he
always
wanted to talk to them.

They'd been married for ten years and even over the phone she could read him like a book.
Something was going on and it was very odd. And if he didn't want to talk to the girls
there was a reason.

She made a face and put the phone in her pocket. She'd find out what was going on when it
started to smell.

***

“Hey, Mr. Haselbauer!” Tyler yelled, waving at the tractor.

Jason Haselbauer was one of the old farmers in the district. A lot of people had moved in
from outside the area of late. Most of those were Vermonters and people from the People's
Republic of Massachusetts looking for somewhere cheaper to live. And immediately wanting
to change things so they were as screwed up as Vermont and Massachusetts.

The Haselbauers, though, were descended from Hessians who'd decided they'd rather farm
alongside the Scotts and English of the White Mountains than fight them.

“Mr. Vernon,” the farmer said in a slow New England drawl. “Pleasure to see you. Fine
weather we're having.”

“Great,” Tyler said. “Leaves are coming out a treat.”

“Be good winter for the sap,” Haselbauer said, climbing off the tractor. “Good leaves
means good sap. And how are you doing?”

“Well, sir, well,” Tyler said. For all he dressed like a homeless guy, Haselbauer probably
owned more land than Mrs. Cranshaw. And, notably, a maple syrup distillery. And about as
renowned for keeping his own counsel as Mrs. Cranshaw was for being a revolving bitch. He
was also, Tyler recalled as he craned his head up and up and then up
again
, the single most
massive
guy Tyler had ever met. He looked more like a mountain than a human being. “I have a
rather unusual request. Are you carrying a cellphone?”

“Don't hold with them,” Mr. Haselbauer. “If someone wants me they can call me at home. An
if I don't answer they can come to find me if it's that important.”