Computers have no sense of humor, so Lacey avoided even the edge of a smile when he heard it refer to what it imagined had been his aiming point. He had raped, openly and with deliberation, and had forever lost his capacity for a similar act. He would not make the same boastful error if he ever found it necessary to kill: that must look to be an accident.
He was a violent man in a world of arrogance—of Sig Hanse and his Sepos, of the sneering Red Team which had taken him into custody years before, of the myriad counterclerks and bureaucrats taking their frustrations out on the nearest target. Lacey avoided an actual explosion only because he knew his hand had the power of life and death over every one of them individually. If the Psycomp had noticed that murderous streak, it had weighed it against Lacey’s depth of control and usefulness—then passed him as acceptable to the State.
Targets continued to flash. He sprayed the edges of five more—on one he hit a swinging medallion three times and got zero credit since, of course, a real medallion would have deflected the needles which grounded themselves only after penetration. Finally his implant announced, “Chauffeur 5 Damien has reported to her car.”
“Patch me through to her,” Lacey said, slapping a fresh magazine into his gun before he holstered it. He turned to the nearest window. For cleaning purposes the whole two-meter vitril panel pivoted inward.
“Ready.”
“Morning, Tamara. I’m in the target range, Level 15. Drop down and pick me up, will you?”
The girl’s voice was deepened by the car microphone and Lacey’s implant. “No landing stage on fifteen, sir.”
“Sure, but the windows open.”
“On the way.”
Lacey swung the vitril off its catch. The gush of air as the car dropped past it, then rose and steadied, brought a startled protest from the shooter beside Lacey. He ignored the other man, set his left foot on the sill and stepped into the back of the car. The slightest queasiness in the vehicle would have catapulted Lacey thirty meters to the pavement. Tamara kept it rock solid until he was seated, then moved off a few meters to where she did not have to fight the eddies around the building.
“You didn’t do that to save yourself a walk,” she chided. “Trying to prove something to me?”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “That I can safely trust you with my life.” He leaned forward, grinned up at the scanner, and said, “We’re going to the airport, friend Tamara, to arrest a man named William Anton Merritt for multiple counts of murder. He wasn’t in it alone, Lord knows, but it’ll be simpler for a Psycomp to dig out his accomplices than it would be for me and a scanner.”
She moved the car off smoothly without apparent emotion, gaining speed and altitude as she headed west. There were no lane markers in the sky, but cars were few and almost all drivers professionals. On balance it was safer than street traffic had been fifty years before.
“You are good, aren’t you?” Tamara said at last in a jerky voice. Lacey made no reply. “Don’t you even wonder why a, a citizen like Bill Merritt would start a p-plot like this?”
“Wonder?” Lacey repeated. “Not really. He was, is, a very damned able man himself. The killings, the planning for them, proved that. Hanse could and did shunt him out of the service, of course, but Merritt’s own contacts must have been nearly as good. As Chief of Operations he could have . . . not seen it, I think, because Hanse’s a sharp boy too . . . but felt it when some members of his own organization got together with rich men, men with connections outside the country where arms could be stockpiled and soldiers trained. You could take over this State, I think, with a few men in the right place and not too many more scattered around to look menacing. You could do it because damned few of the rest of them care. Of us care.”
“Bill cares. He found—a lot of us who do.”