Solve Gorgoni, page 8
Mooney took herself over to the entranceway where a watchman operated a gate that allowed only authorized tenants, visitors, and crew members access.
“Can I help you, Miss?” asked the watchman.
“I’m here to visit one of the tenants, Constance Shores,” said Mooney, not bothering to correct the watchman’s salutation.
“Is she expecting you?”
“No,” admitted Mooney, truthfully.
“Then I’m not authorized to allow you entry. I’m sorry.”
“I want my visit to be a surprise. I have a gift for her.” Mooney flashed the compact that she still possessed.
The man was unfazed. “Sorry.”
“Please?” Mooney placed as much femininity into her voice as she could along with a smile that never failed.
Well, almost.
The man shook his head in regret.
Mooney would have preferred not making her actual business known, the lower profile she could keep, the better. But clearly, she wasn’t going to get past the watchman as plain ‘Manda Conroi. Sighing, she produced her telcomm and accessed her MI identification pattern.
Holding the holo image up so the man could see it clearly, she said, “Happy to see you so steadfast in your duty...Begonal...” reading his badge, “But as you can see, I’m here on official business.”
Begonal studied the identification closely and gulped. If he had surrendered to Mooney’s earlier provocation, he might have lost his job!
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he said. “How can I be sure it’s for real?”
“Listen,” warned Mooney. “I’m in pursuit of a suspect in a sensitive investigation and I don’t want to call any more attention to myself that I can avoid. If you force me to call in back up in order to prove that this is legit, it might spoil everything. Do you want to be responsible for that?”
The man gulped again. Something in Mooney’s voice told him she wasn’t joking.
“All right, but you’ll have to sign the register.”
Mooney laughed, not in derision, but in delight at the naivete of the question.
“Not likely!”
Begonal caught her drift and laughed himself.
“Tell you what,” said Mooney. “I’ll fill you in later, on my way out, okay?”
“Thanks. I have a feeling I’ll need something to explain this to my supervisor.”
With that, he let Mooney pass the gate and into the parking area.
Quickly, she made her way to the gangplank that connected the siding with the steamboat which bulked larger and larger as she approached, surprising her with its size. In the background, beyond the black water of the river, the lights of New Washington shone with the Lincoln Memorial and Capitol Building beyond prominent amid Charles L’Enfant’s still recognizable street plan.
On the lower deck, crew members hurried to and fro and Mooney guessed they were about to cast off. In which case, she’d arrived just in time. Glancing to the rear of the boat, she noticed the paddle wheel, which towered over the second deck, was slowly revolving in place, as if warming up for full power.
“Sure you want to come aboard, Miss?” called the mate. “We’re casting off and moving down river to Alexandria.”
“That’s okay,” replied Mooney, clearing the gangplank, and stepping aboard.
The mate shrugged and signaled the shore party to raise the ‘plank.
As Mooney made her way along the deck, the big wheel picked up speed and the boat drifted away from the siding, heading for mid-river. But by then, she’d ducked into a side corridor looking for a way upstairs.
She found it in the main lobby where she double checked the tenant listings to make sure the unit number, she acquired at The Feminine Touch was correct.
It was.
She proceeded up the staircase to the second deck, passed a few cross corridors, and on a door facing the water, found the unit she was looking for.
Pausing, Mooney withdrew her ion pistol and held it at the ready, but being sure to keep it out of sight of the living unit’s annunciator with its standard video feed. She’d considered briefly calling in back-up, but dismissed the idea based on the highly sensitive nature of the mission. Besides, she was confident she could handle the situation on her own. Once she had her suspect in custody, she could contact Leclerc directly for pick up. Composing her features to give away as little as possible, she waved her hand over the annunciator and waited.
No reply.
Mooney tried again.
Still nothing.
She thought of the party she could still hear overhead and wondered if Shores was in attendance, celebrating her victory over the hapless Bikari.
On the other hand, she might not even be aboard. But was that likely if she knew the ship was scheduled to depart for Alexandria? Not unless she had no intention of coming back. Its usefulness being over.
What to do?
With a mental shrug, Mooney replaced her ion pistol and removed her MI laser key. But not just any kind of laser key. This one could quickly decrypt any door lock no matter how sophisticated. And how sophisticated could the lock be in a standard living unit? As it turned out, not very.
Putting away her laser key, Mooney once more armed herself with the ion pistol and slowly pushed open the door.
“Anyone home?” she ventured.
No answer.
Coming more fully into the room, Mooney looked around.
She stood in a small but comfortable living room with synth-carpeting and plush furniture. Shores had good taste in décor at any rate.
Beyond the living room, a small galley served as kitchen with a couple portholes giving a view of the outside. Nothing there. The bathroom was empty too. Wet towels had been thrown on the floor. Mooney tsked.
She was about to check the bedroom when she was stopped by a voice from the door.
“Who are you?”
Mooney whirled, gun in hand. A woman stood there, hands on hips, and judging by how much space she took up in the doorway, was not of the petite kind. Her dark hair was bobbed in the latest style and she wore her things just the way a man would like. Altogether, she cut a formidable figure.
“Constance Shores, I presume?”
“You have me at a disadvantage, dear,” was the reply. “And why the gun?”
In response, Mooney lowered her pistol just a hair.
“Very simple,” she explained. “You’re under arrest.”
“Arrest? For what?”
“For murder to start.”
“Murder? Just who are you? Why have you broken into my unit?”
“I’m with the police,” Mooney said vaguely. “We have reason to believe you killed Alfo Bikari.”
“Never heard of him.”
In response, Mooney used her free hand to retrieve the compact and show it to Shores.
“Recognize this?”
Shores sighed heavily and threw herself into a chair, as if unaware of the gun that tracked her across the room.
“So what’s next?” she asked.
Mooney pocketed the compact. “For starters, how about telling me where the book is?”
“It’s where it can do the most good,” replied Shores, making no attempt at protesting her innocence.
That came as a refreshing change to Mooney.
“And where is that?” she pressed.
Shores answered her with a question of her own.
“Ever think about the way things are?” she asked. “It could be different you know. Once it was. We used to have freedom.”
Aware that her prisoner was trying to change the subject, Mooney decided to play along, hoping she’d let slip something of significance.
“Don’t believe everything you’ve been told about Humanist times,” Shores was saying. “They were times of great freedoms for humankind. The greatest ever. People were freed from racism, sexism, and all the other isms. The patriarchy had been trodden underfoot. The rule of the European descended was leveled. The wealth of the elites had been transferred to the people. There was no more political strife. The people were in charge and they broke all the chains that had been holding them back since the beginning of recorded time. Genetics were mastered freeing people from the tyranny of gender...”
“Political strife was ended because any other opinion but the correct one was suppressed, crushed,” replied Mooney. “Anyone who dared to think differently, was made into a non-person. Ultimately, for those who refused to conform, there was the jackboot of the reeducation camp. In the end, it took war to restore sanity.”
“After that, it was the Constitutionalists’ turn to put people in the camps,” returned Shores.
“They couldn’t very well allow the poison that ruined millions of lives the chance to reinfect society. Freedom was restored and with a proper, enlightened education system based on the old United States Constitution, a healthier, more sane society could be built.”
Shores shook her head as if in pity for her captor. “You need to break loose from that moral and religious straightjacket they’ve put you in.”
“You’re not the one to be talking about straightjackets,” Mooney pointed out.
Realizing she wasn’t getting anywhere with her basic argument, Shores switched tactics going from a broad Humanist argument, to the more personal.
“Putting all that aside,” she said, “what about your position as a woman?”
“What about it?”
“Your own personal freedom is curtailed in ways you perhaps don’t even suspect,” argued Shores. “Woman are still trapped as the major component in the domestic arena. The state has withdrawn support for child care programs that would release women for greater participation in the work force or public life. The patriarchy...”
“And who do you think would be working in these child care programs?” retorted Mooney. “Other women of course. Don’t they get to be free? Why should they be cheated out of the satisfaction of a career? No, the concept of more freedom for women is a trap. True freedom comes in having a choice between career and family, not being made to feel guilty or unfulfilled by choosing to have children and taking the responsibility of raising them yourself instead of foisting them on strangers.
“I’ll decide for myself whether to pursue a career or a family,” concluded Mooney. “As for the opportunity of a career, seeing as how I’m here, with the gun, it’s obvious that opportunity is open to me. It could just as easily have been a man standing here, but it isn’t. It’s me. There’s no patriarchy holding this woman back.”
“But what if you found yourself pregnant?” persisted Shores. “Wouldn’t that interfere with your career? What if you were and you didn’t want it to interfere?”
“Not going to happen,” said Mooney. “I’ll get pregnant when I want to. I’m in control of my body. I have the freedom to choose.”
“But what if it was unplanned?”
“In this day and age?” said Mooney incredulously. “There are a half dozen ways to prevent pregnancy for anyone with forethought. Even for men. Any woman who gets pregnant by accident today is just a fool.”
For a brief moment, Mooney thought she’d struck home. There was a brief flash in Shores’ eyes that just as quickly vanished.
“Just for argument’s sake,” continued Shores, “what if someone did find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy, in our society, they wouldn’t have any choice but to bring the child to term.”
“What other choice is there? It wouldn’t be the child’s fault for being conceived. Why should it suffer death for something it had no role in?”
“But don’t you see? It’s the woman’s body, she has the right to control what happens to it!”
“That would be fine if the unborn child wasn’t a person but when does personhood begin?”
Shores was silent then.
Mooney persisted with her argument. “If you or anyone can identify exactly the moment when a fetus becomes a person, you might have an argument as to the value of the unborn child, but you can’t. Science proves that personhood begins at conception. There’s no identifiable break between a simple fetus and personhood. Because of that, no one has the right to end an unborn life. That life has its own natural rights that can’t be sacrificed to one woman’s moment of carelessness.”
At that point, it dawned on Mooney that she was being somewhat careless herself, but that moment of hesitation was all it took.
Having apparently lost her patience, there was only one thing left for her captive to do and before Mooney knew it, she was grappling with Shores for possession of the pistol.
As the old saying went, the best laid plans never survive contact with the enemy and what Mooney soon realized was that it went for personal combat as well. Trained initially as an agent of the Exterior Ministry before joining Military Intelligence, she was certified in different forms of hand to hand combat but all that did little good in the face of an opponent who didn’t follow the same rules of engagement.
Shores flew after her in a mad, undisciplined rush, throwing Mooney back on her heels. In that first unexpected assault, her wrists had been seized, she’d been forced back toward the door leading to the corridor outside, and her gun hand slammed against the door frame. Pain numbed her hand, forcing her to loosen the grip on her pistol.
It dropped to the floor, but Shores made no attempt to retrieve it. Instead, she continued to force Mooney outside and the next thing she knew, she was being forced over the railing that ran along the sides of the steamboat. Below her, she could hear the dark waters of the Potomac rushing along the hull and around her, the sounds of partying overhead and the revolving paddle wheel at the stern mingled to add to her momentary confusion.
Slowly, however, she recovered herself and remembered the lessons in the use of leverage she’d learned to throw off Shores and free her wrists.
“Don’t be a fool, Shores,” she warned. “There’s no place you can run to aboard this ship. Even if you get away from me, you’ll be found.”
“You think so?” Laughed Shores. “What if you weren’t around to call for help?”
With that, she charged again. Mooney stepped aside to avoid a bodily collision, but Shores was prepared for that, clipping her side with a knee.
Mooney doubled over, holding her side, cursing her carelessness.
But Shores wasn’t waiting for her to recover from the blow. Grabbing Mooney’s arm, she whipped her around, slamming her against the ship’s railing.
Now the vast swishing sound of the big paddle wheel filled her ears and Mooney took a moment to look over her shoulder at the wheel as it plunged into the water a few feet away. It had only been a second or two that she stood catching her breath from the strike against the metal railing, registering the position of the paddle wheel, but it was enough for Shores who charged in, grasped Mooney’s middle in a bear hug, and lifted her clear of the deck.
In a single motion, with Mooney’s hands still clinging to the railing, Shores tipped her bodily over the railing and threw her overboard.
Mooney’s grip on the railing was too weak, her wrists failed her and, in another moment, she was falling headlong into the narrow space between the plunging paddle wheel and the boat’s stern. Dark water closed over her head and she was gone...
Chapter Seven
More Insanity
Posing as a client worked well enough in getting in to see Jarel at QSS that Jules decided to try the same ploy with Lookout Safe.
This time, though, expecting to hit closer to home, he decided not to take any chances.
Before climbing aboard an Africa bound ‘liner, he called Leclerc at MI for some back up. The director agreed to dispatch a small but tight tactical unit that could then be kept incommunicado until the case had been wound up. The tac team would meet Jules at his eThekwini hotel after he arrived.
He’d also been somewhat reassured about Mooney when Leclerc relayed the information that she’d picked up a lead on Bikari’s girlfriend and was in pursuit. But the kicker was the information that this Constance Shores had escaped from a high security asylum on the Moon. What was that all about? Jules wondered as the ‘liner swept across the Atlantic toward what used to be known as South Africa.
It had been a long time since that country had been a single nation. Having been broken up in the Humanist years, the remnants of its White population hounded from the sub-continent, South Africa became several statelets, all of them currently failed. One of them, Zululand, was deemed the most chaotic. Little wonder that those behind the theft of the Elements of Humanism chose to hole up there. Complicating things for Jules, was the fact that none of the failed statelets belonged to the Consortium. For sure, individuals seeking movement out the area were not prohibited from doing so by the Consortium, but there was no clear identification of authority in the statelets themselves to negotiate membership.
All of which spelled out uncertainty and danger as Jules landed at Zululand’s ramshackle excuse for an airport.
He’d reserved a room at eThekwini’s finest hotel but he had little idea what that meant. Lacking smartways, he found himself conducted to the hotel by a rickety internal combustion vehicle that was actually driven by a human being.
“Get you there in a jiffy, Mon,” called the driver from over his shoulder. “No traffic today.”
The man laughed at what was obviously intended as a joke. The lack of traffic on the road seemed to indicate the man was being sarcastic. Likely, this was the normal condition of the city’s roads.
What vehicles Jules did see were technicals; civilian machines converted for paramilitary use with the addition of mounted pulse rifles or old fashioned smart rockets. They seemed to be stationed at every corner but from his background reading on the ‘liner over, he knew they guarded territories claimed by different political factions that ruled the city. Luckily, they cared little about foreign visitors deeming them no threat to their power.
Presently, the taxi halted in front of the hotel, clearly a building of pre-Consortium design, and Jules paid off the driver. Inside, he was relieved to find his reservation had gone through. Soon, he found himself in a room that had all the appearance of the latest domestic updates having been past-adapted to the average living unit, and that clumsily. Luckily however, he had no plans to use the room for very long.
