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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 86: Kondor 284
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 279
Adjacent to Imperial University, the two of them sat at a table behind paned glass overlooking the street where Doctor Philip Albert would park. He had bluntly refused any visit to his home last night before leaving from Blackett Laboratory. So the two were working their way through an early breakfast. Kondor’s was a bacon butty with HP sauce so he could use the other hand to read the textbook on particle physics, and Zeke had a crumpet with a poached egg, along with a manual on English electrical systems. Kondor had the deeper challenge as he had to get up to speed on superconductors and cold fusion. Zeke just had to find out the particularities of how the English did what he already knew how to do with electrical systems.
The professor’s car pulled up, and he parked. After dropping a single twenty pound note which barely covered the breakfast for the two of them in this expensive part of Central London, in Kensington, the two walked out to join the professor. He led them inside, and one or the other of them kept him company almost the whole time. This brought side-eyes from the two current research assistants, Bradley, an Australian, and Svaya who hailed from Poland. The other kept watch with the ‘ears’ and the other gear.
Bradley invited them to a rooftop party in a few nights, and the two allowed they might go. Svaya was more distant, but she would act like no one else was around, and swipe her long, blonde hair to the side, and chide loudly in Polish whatever machine was not giving her the results she hoped. Kondor spent most of the day reading his textbook, and asking a few questions. Both he and the professor had basic physics, but his had branched out toward artificial gravity, and the professor had gone in another sub-field. But even as Zeke was halfway up to speed, and beginning to actually help, Kondor thought it might take him a couple of weeks to read the professor’s notes, and use the particle physics book as reference before he could actually be of any service other than as a bodyguard.
The next day was more of the same except Kondor had sausage rolls for breakfast, and Zeke had the “I have no idea what it will be, but I’m curious” egg soldiers. This last was a soft-cooked egg cracked open at one end in a porcelain holder with thin strips of buttered toast to dip into the yummy yolk and soft white of the restrained upright egg. That day Zeke got fully up to speed, and both of them were treated to a Svaya Gale Force Five as she shrieked at her machine for nearly ten minutes. Both Kondor and Zeke had their guns half-pulled, but seeing the amused glances directed her way by Bradley and the professor as she shouted, they let it go.
As they packed up that night, Kondor asked Bradley, who had just reminded them of the rooftop party, “What was that all about?”
“Svaya’s a firecracker. To hear her tell it, when some oligarch tried to steal her father’s bakery, she snuck into his bedroom at night and stuck a pistol in his ear, and explained all sorts of really evil plans she had for an hour. They left her father alone after that.” He wobbled his right hand. “Not saying she lies, but I don’t know if I believe her either. Thing is, she blows up at least once a week, and we don’t mention it, and she’s good to go.”
Kondor had not planned to go to the party, but when he found that the professor was going, he and Zeke got dressed in their standard stock suits for such occasions or any occasion really that required more than combat fatigues, and went. It was on the roof of Blackett Laboratory, and the strings of bright lights along the edge or going from the smaller floor atop the other larger seven gave enough illumination for a party if not for reading. The occasional clay furnaces shot out enough heat to beat back the chill so that most of the girls were sleeveless in their colorful gowns. The men varied from suited splendor to a variety of more casual wear with one man surrounded by a circle expounding to a host of listeners. He wore a t-shirt and a pair of knee-high black shorts.
Getting closer, he saw that the man’s shirt read ‘Resistance is Feudal’, and it had a cartoon pic of a knight with lance on horseback skewering a cube vaguely familiar to Kondor from some science fiction television program he never watched.
“You Brits are in the best position to resist the coming of the tech lords,” he said loudly.
“Why would we want to resist? Technology, the internet, the worldwide web, it all frees us. I read on the blogosphere, and I can read a dozen different opinions--”
“By idiots,” someone in the circle interjected.
“You don’t think the readers are dumb?” another rebutted, and it took Kondor a second to remember than in Britain, what an American would call a TV news anchor was called a reader. They were not as respected as in America either, which he thought a positive as few anchors had more going for them than good hair.
“Getting back to the main point,” the first speaker said, “yes, now, the blogosphere is free. How long will that last? Not long my friends. The tech lords are all libertarian now, but once they get a taste of power, they will go bonkers. This is why you Brits are in good. You have the remnants of an aristocracy. You can rebuild it, have lines of loyalty and protection, and--”
“Go back to fleas and plagues, no thanks,” a familiar voice said.
“No, my dear, an industrial feudalism.” The speaker reached out and patted her on the arm. Her hand removed his, and he laughed a bit, and she turned away. Kondor might have thought nothing of it, but he saw a piece of paper exchanged between hands so smoothly that probably no one else in the circle saw it. So he was ready when she turned, and he saw Amanda Not Herrington, now in a blue shimmering gown down to just above her knees with spaghetti straps facing him.
“Uh, excuse me, sir. I need to--” She stopped as his face registered. “Why, Mister Kondor, I might think you were stalking me.”
“I’ve heard the best way to tail someone is to get in front of them. No one ever thinks the guy in the truck in front of them is a tail.”
“Lorry, not truck. Don’t want to be an Ugly American, now, do we?” She fished with her hair, which was bound up with red needles today.
“Are you going to pull a needle and stab me?” Kondor asked.
“Oh, no, I stay away from violence.”
“Tell that to the three guards you knocked out.”
“Well, that’s hardly violence. They were fine an hour later,” she came back at him.
“And what about dumping a heavy table and breaking a finger on a professor?”
Her eyes squinted, and then widened.
“Not us, my dear. Yes, we want the dataset in the thumbdrive, but we don’t beat up or terrorize old professors. There is another player in this game. So far he’s being cautious, using the local criminal element as threateners.”
Kondor noted that the group near him was breaking up, and he looked up and around. She did as well, and then she surprised him. Amanda slowly reached up and grabbed his chin even as she fiddled again with her hair needles. He let her turn his head to the left as she stood disturbingly close.
“See those four men in the suits who just got off the elevator? Unsavory sorts.” She turned his head again so that he was looking at the guy in black shorts and a t-shirt but from the back as he was trying to make his way through a crowd toward a low wall where some others were gathered. “The moving of the needles was a hand signal. First one was ‘pay attention’ and the second was ‘get out now’. Those four are here to kill my man Merlin.”
It hurt a bit to say it, but Kondor looked down into her lovely eyes, and ground out a response.
“This is my problem, how?”
“Because he’s an idealistic kid in over his head, and he’s trying to do the right thing in a world where no path is untainted, and I’ll owe you a favor.”
Kondor thought for a second, and then spoke.
“I will collect, Miss Not Herrington.”
“Stay alive to do so, Shaka,” she said, and as he turned away she slapped his bottom. Grimacing, he signaled Zeke, who was standing next to the professor’s daughter Deirdre, to move in on the four men.
Amanda was so not at all like Leah. He was not even sure he liked her. Interesting yes, even at times captivating, but trustworthy, well that was a question mark. So with grief fresh in his heart from his loss of Leah he fell, as Sun Tzu said, ‘like a thunderbolt’ on his enemies. He did so with good conscience, too, because he could see they were a pack, and armed, and they had about them a manner more associated with criminals than with law-abiding citizens. That plus the way they were looking, as if they were hunting, was enough for him.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
