The Janus Syndrome | Page 7

clean ones on -- the others had wound up damaged. "Is there anything other than the lecture on the futility and expense inherent in using a quarter pound of explosive F on snipers?"
"No. You might as well return to your quarters."
"Wonderful," I said, and started to head for the door.
"Kevven."
I stopped. "What now, monocircuits?"
"I apologize for the shortness of your stay here this time."
Don't you believe the sentiment; there was a smirk in the SOB's voice, and I could hear it. Area Fourteen just had to have an accountant's mind -- sneaky, nasty, evil, various other epithets.
"And your mother, too," I said.
And left before he could say anything else. Not that running out of a briefing room would stop him. It just made me feel better.
My quarters were located on the opposite site of the base; I'd never seen it from the outside, and I wasn't sure I knew my way around the inside all that well. I could reach the emergency boats -- some lifeboats they were, dustpipes; anywhere a personal transmission beam could get, so could they -- as fast as anybody inside, but that was because of training. I hadn't spent all that much time on the base, despite being born on it. One of the disadvantages of setting up a legitimate and solid cover.
University on Earth, even.
The part that strained my mind was trying to work out where the hell the bases had come from -- they were everywhere in the universe, as far as I knew -- as far as anybody knew, come to think of it. Mostly, they were located -- still are -- centrally; Area Fourteen was just in a convenient location within his sector, which includes a few assorted civilizations in a two hundred light-year span.
And, you can bet, wherever the Builders' bases were, there was also a bunch of Enemy skulking around. I once tried checking back in records for the first appearance of the Enemy, and gave up after five hours and thirty thousand years. I could have asked a Base historian, but that would have been cheating. And it wasn't just us little old humans getting it; from what I'd learned -- and Enemy-ID was kindergarten stuff for us -- the rest of the known Universe had Enemy around them, looking like the natives.
The worst of it was, one Enemy hit-attempt wouldn't be the only one. I could guarantee another one, and more afterwards if that failed. We lost agents regularly.
It made life painful, not knowing what to expect from the people who didn't like us much. It made it even more so not knowing who or what the Builders were; we didn't even know what they looked like. But the Builders' mystery could be lived with; the Enemy preferred us dead.
That was the Enemy for you.
I slipped my comkey into my left hand and put my thumb over the plate, and went through the door as it irised open.
As the door irised shut again, the linkscreen at the bottom of the room flicked on, with a message for me from Area Fourteen.
It read: WELCOME HOME, MR. SPOCK. SIGNED: CAPTAIN KIRK.
I grinned and said, "I didn't think it would last that long, Area Fourteen."
"Highly illogical in the first place," his voice said, from my comkey. "A momentary review of my storage was all that was required."
"I thought you didn't understand jokes." I clipped my comkey back onto my belt and went over to the wall, touching the bedbutton. The bed obligingly slid out for me. There wasn't much to speak of in the place; it wasn't required, as I generally didn't stay around for long.
"I understand them all too well -- your idea of humor, however, I prefer not to understand."
"Good for you."
"Indeed."
He paused while I went and got myself a glass of water; I'm not much for alcohol. My vices are sex and smoking, no drugs of any sort. Fussy little me.
Then he said, "In the next one hundred and twenty seconds, mark, you shall have a visitor." I groaned, loudly. That meant a mission, and, if I knew Area Fourteen, I'd end up somewhere or other getting shot at, or ducking spears, or just running like hell with something twice as fast, twice as heavy, and twenty times as mean right behind me and gaining.
"Your visit was rather short, wasn't it?" he finished.
I looked at the linkscreen for lack of anything else, and grunted something awkward that roots in Harlem. It served well enough.
I waited Dryly, Area Fourteen said, "I didn't have a mother."
I raised both eyebrows and Uncle Tommed the screen.
"And further more, I don't find your parody of your genetic and ancestral roots to be very becoming. It makes you look like a sauerkraut pudding covered in chocolate sauce: most unsavory-looking thing indeed."
That did it.