Safe House

spurious as far as Laurent could tell, while Maj followed her brother through the door into his own work space and made scathing comments about his dress sense. Laurent smiled a little as he followed them through the space, which resembled nothing else so much as a huge warehouse piled up with wildly assorted objects of all kinds. “Welcome to Icon World,” Maj said to Laurent. “My brother is a little object-oriented, as you can see. Rick, was there a reason for this intrusion, or were you just practicing being a nuisance?”

“Oh, I heard you doing the ‘Behavior Police’ act and thought I’d come see what it looks like when you do it to other people…. This door shuts your implant off,” Rick said to Laurent while stepping over the sill of another doorway which was standing, incongruously, in the middle of the huge warehouse space. “I understand that your presence is being requested in what we laughably refer to as the Real World.”

A moment later Laurent found himself sitting in the implant chair in the Greens’ den, and the sound of someone running down the hall made him stand up. A few seconds later the Muffin came charging in and grabbed him around the legs. “I have to read to you now,” she announced, breathless.

“That depends. When is dinner?” Laurent said.

“Half an hour,” said Maj, putting her head in through the doorway. “Muffin, no dinosaurs now. You’ve exceeded your Net time for today. And so have you,” she said, wagging a finger at Laurent, “so behave.”

“We will be good,” Laurent said, with a rather helpless smile as the Muffin grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the den and toward her room. Maj smiled at him and went off; and Laurent, following the Muffin, reflected that though the family he preferred the most was his own, there were others which could, very temporarily, make an acceptable distraction.

He found his hands shaking just a little, a fine muscle tremor, as he sat down on the Muffin’s bed and watched her start rooting through her bookshelves. The jet lag is finally catching up with me, he thought. Or maybe it’s just nerves. Why am I spending time scaring myself? Things are happening as fast as they can. And Popi is smart…smarter than they are. He’ll be here soon enough, and if I’m wrecked with worrying, he won’t be happy.

Laurent let out a long breath and watched the Muffin settle down on the floor and open the book….

The Quality House Suites in Alexandria was as relentlessly chainlike as most of the other hotels in the chain, or so the major heard one businessman telling another over drinks in the hotel’s downstairs bar. Herself, she could not understand what his problem was. There was nothing wrong with one hotel being like another. The same kind of service everywhere, what was wrong with that? These people were too individualistic for their own good.

She tried to put the locals’ quirks out of her mind, though it was hard, stuck here among the millions of them, trapped in all this offensive opulence and conspicuous consumption. This whole country was vulgar, a vast expanse of expenditure for its own sake, money spent just to prove it was there in the first place. Other countries would have used these resources more wisely…if they had had them, and if this country had not spent so much time and spite making sure that other countries did not.

Well, the major thought, sipping her mineral water as she sat alone at the little table in the hotel lounge and made shorthand notes on a pad, they will soon see the tables rather painfully turned, for a change. Once this recovery operation is over and the results start to be developed, our balance of payments should show a great improvement…and the countries around us which have been so busily shoring up their connections to the Western democracies will start wondering whether they should instead have looked closer to home for financial aid. Not that they will get any from us…not now. They have shown all too clearly where their loyalties lie.

But that was in the future. Right now the major was busy reviewing what had been done so far since she arrived, making sure everything was sorted out. It was no small matter to arrange the theft of an ambulance, but she was working on it. Money talked, even to the local organized-crime groups, and she thought she would shortly have all the necessary resources in place. She already had what little weaponry she needed — in this country there was never any problem with that, no matter what the government tried to do, or said it wanted to. Its own people, unable or unwilling to discriminate between their condition now and that of three hundred years ago, had it hamstrung there. In any case, it would not be firepower that would make the difference to this operation, but speed, surprise, and the amount of traffic between here and the Embassy. Two out of three of those elements, the major could control. They would be more than enough.

She folded up her pad and put it away in her sidepack, and sipped at her mineral water again. Things were now progressing nicely. Her source back home had informed her via coded message to her pager that the first “burst” signal had been sent — the microps were awake and accepting new programming, and would also relay directional information the next time the boy was in the Net. Now the clock was running. Within about twenty-four hours there would be a call for an ambulance…and she would be ready with its “crew” to take the poor sick boy someplace where he would be “properly” cared for.

Something bleeped softly behind the concierge’s desk, and he looked up. “Mrs. Lejeune?” he called. “Your car is here. It’s waiting out front.”

“Thank you,” the major said. She finished her mineral water, then walked out the front to where the rental car had just settled into the pickup pad.

She slid in behind the driver’s seat, lined up her implant with the car’s Net access, and let it confirm her identity and credit information — all very routine stuff, which (having been planted here long since by her own service) confirmed that she was Mrs. Alice Lejeune of Baton Rouge, owner of a small printing company. Anyone at Avis whose eye happened to fall on her rental details would think she was probably up here on business, just as the people at the hotel had.

She knew exactly where she was going, for she had memorized the maps before ever passing her own country’s borders. Now the major took the stick and drove along sedately for some miles, idly noting the seenery. This whole area had become relentlessly suburban over the years, affluent, smug. Well, there was at least one family here who would have its smugness ruffled somewhat in the next twenty-four or thirty-six hours.

She hung a right out of the main north-south artery, letting the car drive on auto for the moment while she activated the small video camera she had brought with her, using it to look around and take careful note of what cars were parked in this area. One of her assistants would be making another pass later, in another locally registered car, to compare those images with these. She was fairly sure that Professor Green would have called for some kind of external surveillance by now. But over the next twelve hours the major and the operatives who had been onsite until now would get a complete record of which vehicles were the same, which ones changed…which were registered to genuine locals, and which belonged to people trying not to look like they were keeping an eye on the Greens’ house.

The major looked down as the car turned right and proceeded along the small quiet suburban street…and there it was. A longish house, looking as if it had been built in stages. A front door with steps leading down to the standard suburban front walk through the standard suburban lawn. A back door leading out into a large fenced garden with a child’s play set. A garage, not connected to the house, and a driveway out in front of it, with the family car sitting on it at the moment. Lights on in several rooms, and — as she pulled down her “sunglasses” and looked through them — one, two, three, four, five, six blurred heat-shapes in the dining room, with other shapes over to one side; the oven, the refrigerator, the microwave.

Family dinner. How charming.

In her mind she made note of the entrance and exit routes — distances, obstacles — and smiled slightly. Shortly the Greens’ suburban bliss would receive a wake-up call. Well, they would have brought it on themselves. And Professor Green in particular would be taught a sharp lesson in not interfering in other countries’ affairs. At the national level there was no hope that any notice would be taken…but at the personal level, she imagined there would. The message would be plain enough—This could have been your children. Back off, become wiser…or next time, it might be.

The car continued on by. The major sat back, looking at the last dregs of the broad sullen sunset, and smiling slightly at the prospect of action. Tomorrow, about this time, or a little later.

Poor little Laurent…I’m sure you’ve had a nice holiday. But it’s time to go home.

The evening tapered off into one of those informal we’re-all-here-at-once, isn’t-it-amazing family evenings which were Maj’s favorite kind, rather than the more structured “family nights” which her father insisted on once a