Our pursuers came into view in a ragtag mob. They'd clearly not planned for this eventuality. Some were checking doors and alleys, others were running back and forth on all fours. I could see five tranq guns being carried in plain view. Then one of the group called out, and the others gathered around her. I tagged her as a probable leader, and made sure I got a close-up image.
The group had a conversation we couldn’t make out. Or maybe argument would be a better term. There was a lot of arm waving and interrupting, and one attempted bite. But eventually they settled on a plan. A couple of Quinlans took up positions in the shadows, where they can keep an eye on the street, while the rest marched off the way they'd come.
“Looks like were to be here a while,” Bill noted.
“I need a coffee,” I added.
Leaving the Mannies AMIs on Sentry, we all popped into my VR and grabbed our favorite seating. I pulled up the four video windows from our surveillance roamers, and put them on the wall. Bill leaned forward and made a point of making eye contact with each of us.
“I guess the first question we need to deal with is how they knew we were coming.”
“That's got some assumptions in there.”
“Reasonable ones. We didn't do anything to attract attention in Elbow.”
“Like peeking into a cart,” Bridget gave me the sideways eye.
“One frigging mistake…”
“Good point, though. This had the smell of setup right from when we asked…” Garfield stopped abruptly and stared into space, his eyes growing slowly wider.
“What? What??” We all knew that facial expression, it was the light bulb look.
Instead of answering, Garfield pulled up another video showing our encounter with the helpful citizen who'd given us directions. He paused the video, then pulled up another video from our subsequent encounter. He fast forwarded a bit, then paused that video and place them side by side. Sure enough, the helpful giver-of-directions was also one of our ambushers.
“Well that pretty much settles it, if there was any doubt the first place,” Bill swept us with a glare. “They were watching for us. Us, specifically. In a town we'd never been in.”
“The general population doesn't have anything like telephone a radio, or telegraphs.” Garfield popped up the report from Hugh. “They explicitly are pre-steam and pre-electricity.”
“And Hugh confirmed that they didn't have any electronics and Galen,” I added. But there are ways to communicate over long distances that don't depend on those technologies.
Garfield shrugged dismissively. Pony express, ship based mail system, semaphore telegraph towers, like in Lest Darkness Fall… we’ve seen no signs of any of that.”
“Actually, they do have a river-based mail system, but it's kind of what you might call ‘relaxed’ in its execution. News of us would reach Elbow in about two weeks.”
“Which means our erstwhile captors have some more immediate form of communications. The Administrator?
“It does seem to be the most likely explanation.”
“But using locals?”
“Who says they’re locals?” Bill said, cutting into my discussion of Garfield. “I mean they’re Quinlans, obviously, but they might go home at the end of the workday to their underground fully-tech-enabled bunkers.”
“Ah. Secret police, sort of.”
“Wait,” Bridget said. “You don't think these are Resistance? Why?”
“Quick communications between cities,” Bill replied, “multiple tranq pistols.”
I nodded. “Well it makes sense, if you think about it. There’s some kind of secret society with full technological assets that is either controlling or at least monitoring the general population. They are probably responsible for Scattering's when people break some set of rules.”
“Wait, hold on. The people we took on in Galen Town and were trying to kill Skeev talked about Scattering as something that someone else did to them. They couldn’t be part of the Administrators group.”
Garfield held up his hands in emphatic negation. “Unless it was Skeev or his contacts that tagged us, Bridget. Maybe they noticed us trying to grab Skeev.”
“Nope, that doesn't make sense either. Skeev was Scattered twice, remember? He wouldn’t know anyone in Galen Town.” I grimaced in frustration. “Dammit. Are we running from Skeev and company, or from his attackers? And if the latter, does that mean there's more than one group? And do any of them represent the Administrator?”
“Well, one way or another, we attracted someone's attention.” Bill drew a deep breath and leaned back, hands behind his head. “If they have some kind of back-channel communications than it doesn't matter. Either way, they’re a step up from the common population.”
I sighed. “We have a lot of theories, but not much in the way of answers. The question is, should we let them succeed?”
“What? Are you insane? That's ridiculous.”
Not one of my more popular suggestions. I contemplated the shocked and outraged expressions. “It's just a thought, guys. And I guess it's always available, if we get desperate. But it would presumably get us in touch with someone, one way or another.”
“We’ll keep in mind, Bob,” Bill said, “but I think we’d have to be pretty desperate. It's an all or nothing action. And if we've guessed wrong would send us back to square one. Even worse than square one, I think, since the administrator would then know exactly what they are dealing with.”
I nodded, feeling obscurely disappointed, although weather that was with myself for the suggestion or my friends’ reaction to it, I couldn't say.
It was now very early the next morning and the street surveillance had given up and gone home, or wherever, so we'd gone back to our Mannies. The first order of business was getting down off the roof. I didn't want to go the same way we came
