'I've trained with ExEx in the US,' Teresa said. 'Interdiction scenarios.'
'Were those terminal, or nonterrminal?'
'They were both.' Believing that there was no longer any point blurring the truth about her job, Teresa described the kind of scenarios she had used.
'OK,' said Angus jackson. 'We have plenty of those. Now 1 assume you know how to abort a scenario?'
'Yeah. LIVER is What we use in the Bureau.'
'I don't know it.'
Teresa explained the acronym, and at once he nodded his understanding. They had a different mnemonic, but it had the same effect. He left her for a couple of minutes, then returned with the familiar scaled phial of nanochips.
'Let me explain what I've done,' he said. 'We do anthology packages for new users, and this one is a randomized selection of the kind of scenarios that many lawenforcement agencies are currently using. You will
possibly recognize some of them. It's a real mixture, drawn from a library of about nine hundred different situations. You've booked two hours, so either you can surf through the selection until your time's up, when you'll be pulled out automatically, or you can abort when you've had enough.'
'Are we talking terminal or nonterminal?' Teresa asked.
'These are all nonterminal. Is that OK?'
'I prefer that. Yes.'
Teresa roamed around the familiar world of outburst violence, tackling each problem as it was presented to her, using whatever weapons were supplied by the writers of the software.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1995, there was a knife fight in a salsa club; this was tricky because of the darkness inside the club, but it took only a single disabling shot to bring the dispute to an end. LIVER. In Sydney, Australia, 1989, a young drug addict had run amok with a handgun; this had a fairly straightforward interdictandarrest resolution, but one which she found physically demanding. LIVER. In Kansas City, Missouri, 1967, and still out of breath from the last scenario, Teresa found herself in the McLaughlin siege, one on which she had trained with the Bureau. An excop called joe McLaughlin had barricaded himself in the house of the wife from whom he was separated, and was shooting at anyone who went near. Because of her familiarity with the scenario, and because she wanted to move on to the next, Teresa went impatiently to the side of the house, forced an entry into the basement and shot McLaughlin on the stairs. Had she been undergoing training Dan Kazinsky would have made her go back and get it right (McLaughlin had only to be arrested), but she wanted to try scenarios she hadn't used before. LIVER.
The next scenario was a more complex one, new to her,
and it absorbed her from the moment she entered it.
Sari Diego, California, 1950: William Cook was on the run from the police, having already abducted and murdered a family of five in Missouri, and with another man as a hostage had driven to San Diego in the car he had stolen from the family.
Teresa entered the ExEx scenario at the point when Cook's stolen Pontiac was spotted on Route 8; rather than try a dangerous interception on the road, the police and federal agents had decided to allow Cook to enter the outskirts of San Diego, and either stop him there or arrest him when he tried to leave the car. His progress was being monitored by unmarked police cars.
lt was another scenario in which the sheer quality of the detailed background, and the authenticating details, took the breath away. This was often a feature of the older incidents, Teresa had found. Dan Kazinsky said the explanation lay in the quality of memory. Moments of traumatic experience survive more completely and vividly in longterm memory. Teresa and the other trainees had noticed that ExEx scenarios about relatively recent events were sometimes blurred, as if parts of them had been mentally blocked by those recalling them.
She entered the Cook scenario on a blisteringly hot day, a sea wind bending the palm trees, making the dust fly at the street intersections, puffing the canopies of shops and swinging the overhead traffic signals precariously. The sky was cloudless, but there was grit from the sandy shore in the burning wind. Clothes pressed against bodies, and hair blew. Shiny, rounded cars moved in leisurely fashion through the streets. A DC3 of Pan American circled overhead, moving down towards the airfield; the brilliant sunshine glinted off the unpainted wings and engine cowlings. Men in Navy
uniforms loitered round a military truck parked in a lot beside an equipment office, where the Stars and Stripes was flying.
Teresa had no time to take in any more. The scenario was in progress.
She had a key in her hand, and as she entered the action she was hurrying towards a row of cars parked diagonally against the sidewalk. She was out of breath, and her back and legs were hurting. She reeled mentally, perhaps physically too, at the impact of the sensory overload from the collectively remembered scenario. She was too hot, the wind took her breath away, something in the air flew into her eye. She turned away, blinking hard, needing to concentrate instead on the unfolding of the scenario. She wanted to maintain her own individuality, her own reactions. With the grit out of her eye, she turned back quickly enough to see one of the buildings beside her some kind of motorspares or tool store flicker into solidity as her vision persisted in that direction. lt happened so quickly that she might have imagined it, but it was a breakdown in the extreme reality and she found it perversely comforting; even this dazzling technology was not yet one hundred per cent.
She was moving towards a silverandblue Chevrolet station wagon, but again she resisted the scenario and went instead to a green Ford saloon parked alongside. The driver's door was locked, and the key she was holding would not even slide in. Her hand burned on the sunhot metal of the door. She gave up and went to the Chevrolet instead. The door of this was unlocked, and after she had slid on to the bench seat, comfortably spreading her large body, she got the key into the ignition at the first try. She wound down the window on the driver's side.
A few moments later she was driving north along 30th Street, and at the intersection with University she moved
across into the turn lane and took a right.
