Heavy Weather

He poured himself some coffee and added steamed milk. "Instead of saving thousands of harmful human lives through public-health measures like clean water and sewers, why not train that doctor to do elaborate, costly measures, like neural brain scans? Usually, the heart and soul of a nation's public-health work are a few very lonely, very dedicated people. They are easy to find, and their organization can be structure-hit in a very subtle way. These selfless neurotics don't have to be shot out of hand or lynched by racists, for heaven's sake. Generally, all they need is a few kind words and a little gentle distraction."

"Yeah, a fad here, a twist there," said the Asian guy, "a brief delay in shipping to some hard-hit famine site, or a celebrity scandal to chase off news coverage of some lethal outbreak... The current muddled semilegal situation with drugs, for instance, that was a work of genius. .

A great source of finance for anybody's underground, and the people who shoot up heroin are extremely reckless and credulous. Street drugs will almost never be tested for additives, as long as they supply the thrill. There are narcocontraceptives-one shot makes a woman permanently allergic to the lining of her own uterus, something the woman would never notice, except that a fertilized egg will never adhere to her womb." He nodded sagely. "That works very well with mass inoculations too, if you can manage to contaminate the vaccines... . I suppose you could argue the technique's rather sexist, but we've tried covert sterilization with men, and statistics prove that the cohort of fertile women is the real crux of population expansion; it's all in the womb, that's just the way human reproduction works.....eople willing to take intravenous drugs are already flirting with suicide; there's no real harm in assisting them."

"Not to mention legalizing euthanasia on demand," said the second woman, testily. "And at least that form of suicide tends to be far more male-based."

"The whole military policy of structure hits was based on destroying enemy infrastructure-avoiding the political embarrassment of battlefield deaths so that the enemy populace died of apparently natural causes." It was the radio guy again, sitting ramrod straight in his chair before the sca

Leo sipped his coffee. "I'm going to miss all of you very much," he confessed.

"I told you he was sentimental," said Rosina.

"It seems such a terrible shame that the talents of a group like this should be wasted on entirely clandestine endeavors. That you'll never have your real due. You all deserve so much better."

"Oh, none of us are any worse off than Alan Turing was," objected the second chess player. "Just more deep, dark, digital spooks."

"Someone will track it down someday," Rosina told Leo, comfortingly. "We ourselves don't know the full extent of Game activities, but there must be tens of thousands of buried traces... . Someone in the future, the next century maybe, with time on their hands and real resources for once and some proper database investigation, they'd be able to dig us all up and piece the story together." She smiled. "And utterly condemn us!"

"That's their privilege. A privilege we're giving to the future. Two great privileges-survival and i

"That's why we're dead people now," Rosina said. "You know what we are, Jane? We are lifeboat ca

"It looks pretty good," Red said. "Real quiet."

"Then I want to go first. Get this damned thing off me, somebody." She lifted her left arm. No one moved. Rosina raised her voice. "I said I want to go first! I'm volunteering! So who's go

The very young man in the suit stood up. "You know what the hell of this is?" he said to Jane, his dark eyes like two oysters from a can. "The hell is that you bust your ass for five years finding some network doods that are truly elect, and then they turn out to be this crowd of middle-aged rich pols and lawyers! People who post way too much about academic political philosophy shit that doesn't mean anything, and then when it finally comes to taking some real action, it's always somebody else's fault, and they end up hiring some bent Mexican cop to do it for them. Jesus Christ!" He sighed. "Gimme that pneumatic. dood."

The second chess player reached under the leather couch and handed the young man a pair of pneumatic diamond-edged bolt cutters. "You want the safety goggles?"

"Do I look like I want fuckin' safety goggles? Wimp!" He hefted the bolt cutters and turned to Rosina. "Out. Out on the stairs."

The two of them left.

No one said anything for thirty seconds. They dealt cards, they studied the chessboard, Leo pretended huge interest in the broadband sca

Rosina came back in, her wrist bare. A big bright smile. Like a woman on cocaine.

"It works!" gasped the second chess player. "Me next!"

The young man came in with the bolt cutters. The armpits of his suit were soaked with sweat.

"Do me next!" said the second chess player.

"Are you kidding?" said the very young man. "I know statistics. Let somebody else do it this time."

"I'll do it," Leo told the chess player. "If you'll do me afterward."

"Deal, Leo." The chess player blinked gratefully. "You're a straight shooter, Leo. I'm go

They went out of the room. A minute passed. They came back in.

"We're real lucky," said the second chess player. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a canary-yellow washcloth he'd snagged from the bathroom.

"Either that," the very young man scoffed, "or they're not designed as well as we thought. What'd you do with the dead bracelets?"

"Left 'em in the hall."

"We'd better detonate 'em later. Wouldn't want anybody reverse-engineering that circuitry."

"Right," said Leo, with a glance at Jane. "You can see now why the Crimson Avenger became so integral to our group! Only nineteen years old-but there's one of those young rascals in every network; it happens to even the best of company."

"Why did you come here?" Jane asked the Crimson Avenger.

"I been in the Game five years now," the Crimson Avenger muttered. "It gets real old." His face clouded. "And besides, if I don't clear town but good, I'm go

Two of the poker players rose-the Asian guy and the second woman. They exchanged a silent glance heavy with deep personal meaning and the man took the bolt cutters and they left together.

Fifteen seconds later there was a loud explosion. Then, screams.

Everyone went white as paper. The screams dwindled to agonized breathy sobs.

The Crimson Avenger reached inside his jacket and pulled Out a snub-nosed ceramic revolver and walked stiff-legged to the door. He yanked it open, leaving it open behind him. There was a brief gabbling wail of anguished terror, and a shot. Then another shot. And then a long, meditative silence. And then another final shot.

Crimson Avenger came back in, with his suit lightly spattered with blood, flying little droplets of blood on the shins of his charcoal-gray trousers. He had the cutters-the diamond jaws of the device were blackened with impact. "Hers blew," he said. "We don't have to do his now. He's dead too."