An Eighty Percent Solution Part 23

"OK, Augustine, you're the ice jockey. Follow the money. It must've left some trail. It should lead right to her."

"Bloodhound on the trail."

The small pump room reeked bitterly of raw crude oil and mold. The defunct Alaskan Pipeline's abandoned pumping station offered a safe meeting place. Prior to the GAM scouts who found it, not a single person stepped foot inside for the better part of two decades. The dampness clung to every surface, and the tiny 60 watt incandescent bulb barely cut the gloom.

"We're here to discuss..." Sonya stopped to take a breath. Her words were extremely labored. Her breath capacity fell off each day as the disease now fully involved her lungs. This environment helped her not at all. She knew her time measured itself not in weeks, months or even years, but days...maybe even hours. She took as large a breath as she could before continuing. "...the future leaders.h.i.+p of our organization. I choose not to vote...as a veto. My vote will count exactly...the same as everyone else.

"Just so we're clear...Suet, Martin, Tolly, Colin, and Jonah are all too ill to vote. Linc, Andrew, and I are all showing frank symptoms...but are clear-headed enough to cast a valid vote. "Discussion?"

"Shouldn't you speak first, Sonya?" Linc asked weakly over the telecomm.

Sonya leaned back against one of the smaller pipes in the room, rusted and far larger around than she. "I'm reserving my right to speak last."

Augustine spoke up first. "Tony has performed every function that Sonya has. His plans have pa.s.sed every test we can throw at them, especially those that really count. They work. He directed us down a path that has us looking at victory. I nominate Tony for leader."

"Victory?" Andrea took the fight up instantly. "We're all dying...all except Tony. I've got the disease now. According to Sonya I have less than a thirty percent chance of living through it. I don't want the man who killed us leading the rest of the team right into the corporate maw. I think he should be vaped, not elected leader. I for one won't let this team be in any more jeopardy than it already is. I suggest Frances for our new leader. Her combat and planning experience in the Metros makes her an ideal candidate."

"I really don't want this opportunity," Frances reb.u.t.ted. "And while I don't feel quite as vehemently as Andy, I have to agree with her opinion of Tony. I personally don't care if Tony is guilty or not. Even if we rebuild our cadre, I don't know how he can lead us without making us sick."

"Even if I were to live," Linc said, "I wouldn't go back to our old, sloppy, hit-or-miss tactics. That isn't any reflection on Sonya, but Tony has put us on the right path. Can Frances implement Tony's direction? Possible. But I don't feel comfortable that she can improvise or adapt to changes."

"I haven't spoken up much because I understand and respect all of your feelings." Andrew grimaced in pain. "I'm afraid of what's ahead of me, but I believe in Tony. He saved me more than once. I'm not likely to forget that."

The conversation died with the sides clearly drawn. Sonya's fears found their way up from her soul and spilled in this room. The pain in her body manifested in her dream torn asunder.

"Tony, do you have anything to say?" Augustine prompted, her eyes widening and her face attentive.

"I don't."

Sonya gave the tiniest of smiles, knowing Tony couldn't resist the opportunity to talk. Pain in her abdomen wiped the pleasure in less time than it took to experience.

Despite his claim otherwise, Tony spoke anyway, just as Sonya knew he would. "Those against me feel I'm a menace, whether I acted with malice or not. Despite their feelings, I intend to prove to all my friends here, not just those behind me, that I never intended to do anything but help this group to its objectives. I never aided, planned, or agreed to be some kind of biological bomb.

"And one last thing-I never wanted to be leader. I'd rather have all your good will...your friends.h.i.+p."

A long pause followed. "If there are no more comments..." Sonya waved for Augustine to continue as she bent double, wracked in a coughing fit.

"Aren't you going to speak, Sonya?"

She violently shook her head back and forth as she bent over, hacking like a fifty-year smoker of the old tobacco sticks.

"Sonya is calling for a vote. This vote is to be secret. I would've made it electronic, but people might've thought I'd hacked the election. Instead, you're each being provided a bag containing one each of three different colored marbles." Augustine wrote in chalk on the least abused of the ceramcrete walls as she talked. "Here I have a bag. I will come by and each of you can drop one single marble into the bag: red for Tony, blue for Andrea or a clear marble if you abstain. Linc, I've got a mechanical arm here programmed to drop a marble for you. Just push one for Tony, two for Andrea, or zero for abstain."

Augustine moved quietly around the room collecting the marbles. With each, a sharp click echoed through the room as the gla.s.s...o...b..hit one of its brethren in the black velveteen bag. When the last person dropped their marble, Augustine rolled them around and dumped them into a dish for all to see. Four red, four blue and two clear b.a.l.l.s rolled around.

"It appears we need more discussion," Sonya said optimistically.

Three hours and six votes later, they still needed more discussion. The vote changed to five red and five blue, but the debates didn't cause any other alterations.

"Linc and I are too tired to continue. We'll resume in two days," Sonya said stiffly as she barely kept the pain from las.h.i.+ng out at her friends.

Tony started, awake in a strange bed as his percomm shrilled its urgent tone against his skull.

"Good morning?" Tony said, craning his neck around to find the time in the ma.s.sive room of the Seattle Grand Hilton. The clock proclaimed him correct by a little over seventeen minutes.

"All right, Tony, I have what you were looking for," Augustine said without preamble. "Carmine went up."

"Sorry, I'm still groggy. Not too much sleep in the last few days."

"Yeah, I've been on dazers myself for over a week."

Tony realized why Augustine's abrupt manner seemed more like a burn when he talked to her lately. "OK, I think I've finally got my head screwed on straight."

"Carmine went up."

"That's what money will do for you. Where?"

"Denny Towers, Penthouse Two, Seattle."

"Figures. That b.i.t.c.h loved status. Denny Towers. Rubbing elbows with all of the who's who of the government, film industry, and business. She has to be wallowing in that lifestyle."

"One more corpie wannabe."

"I think she may have bypa.s.sed the corpie stage and gone right to owner, but we'll see. Denny Towers, eh? How convenient for me. That's only about one TriMet hop from here."

"I thought you might feel that way. Security codes to the building and her flat coming on separate line to your handheld."

"Thanks. Talk to you later when I have something."

"Time for a late night visit?" Gregori asked from the darkness.

Tony flipped on the light to find one of his bodyguards sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. "Where did you come from?"

"You don't think Sonya just pulled two people at random out of the woodwork, do you? Can't protect someone from another room."

"Yes, you are quite good. I expected you were, or you wouldn't be welcome in the Family. But I'm off on Greenie business now. Why would you want to stick?"

"Two reasons. One, we were hired to protect you, whatever you were doing. And two, while we work for the Family, our sympathies lie with your organization. Who do you think introduced Sonya and Jamie initially?"

Tony smiled. "OK, Greg. Are you up for breaking some laws?"

"Just tell me which ones, sir. Will we need my partner, Tuan?"

"Doubtful. For that reason I'll probably not need you, either, but always nice to know I have some backup."

"Yes, sir."

"First stop is an all-night bowling alley," Tony said, getting up and dressing, so intent he missed the odd look he got from Gregori.

"How can we come to a compromise?" Augustine asked before Andrea and Frances even got seated.

Sonya thought a meeting of the key members of both sides might break things free. She vowed to herself not to speak. Even as she did she hacked hard enough to cough up blood.

"You do know all we have to do is wait," Andrea said as sweat rolled off her brow. She mopped it about every three seconds with a damp towel looped over the back of her neck.

"Wait for what?"

"The first one that dies will break the deadlock."

"That's gruesome."

"What the h.e.l.l, I've got it too. Besides I don't see that there's any middle ground. You want Tony to lead. We don't."

"Even if he's innocent?"

"We're split on that, but there's no way he could possibly prove it."

"Actually, we have a source that may prove it."

"No chance!"

"He's after it tonight."

Frances held up an arm to interrupt. She got it in spades. Her long-sleeved s.h.i.+rt slid up exposing pox covering a good portion of her arms. Sonya reached out for the diseased limb, but Frances flinched away.

"That puts a new spin on things," Augustine said. "You want us to choose someone to lead us who's likely to die?"

"Who doesn't have some symptoms?!" Andrea barked.

"Martin came down with a fever and muscle aches last night, and Jackson is in his bed shaking with chills. That only leaves you, Augustine, and Christine that haven't shown any signs."

"I have a suggestion," Sonya croaked. Her voice wouldn't stand the strain. As it was she could taste the blood at the back of her throat. She scribbled something down on a small whiteboard and handed it to Augustine.

"She says for us to pick someone without the disease as interim leader. If Tony can prove his innocence, then we have another vote."

"Well, we aren't going to vote in a lunatic, as much as I love Christine. That only leaves you, Augustine."

Sonya nodded profusely.

The laughing outside the door announced their presence long before the electronic chirp approved entry. Carmine and a couple staggered in, wearing as little as the public would tolerate. Carmine's tiny blue crochet dress made 6 centimeter-wide bands down her body until they met at her crotch and then flared into a tiny skirt. The other two wore less.

"Noth mush of a housekeeper are ya, Carmine?"

"What happened?" Carmine looked around at the contents of her living room strewn around the floor.

"I guess that would be me," Tony said from a chair in a still-shadowed corner of the room, like something out of an old dime-store novel.

"Tony?"

"Whoz t'is Tony fella? Thought we was going to have some fun," the drunk man said, slapping Carmine on the a.s.s.

"Shut up."

"For once I have to agree with her. Why don't you both just be on your way. I have nothing I want from either of you."

"You Nil," the other woman screeched. "Get outa here!"

Tony slowly revealed his hand from around the edge of the seat to show his flechette pistol. The couple disappeared faster than free food at a mission. Carmine edged her way over toward the door as well.

"Don't, Carmine. I don't mind killing them both to get at you. I also don't mind cutting your legs off to get at what I want." Her eyes met his as if searching for a cue. Tony heard the ding of the elevator. It opened and closed before Carmine made her choice.

Her emotions opened up like a flatie to him. The thought of seducing him discarded itself almost immediately. "You've grown tough, Tony."

"A lesson you taught me."

"Likely true. So if you want to kill me, why haven't you?"

"I'll be honest with you, Carmine. I only want information. You give me what I want and I'll walk out and never come back."

"Do I have much of a choice?"

"Well, you could keep me talking, hoping your bodyguard will come in here and protect you, but you'd be waiting a long time."

"Killed him, eh?"

"Nope. He's just incapacitated. You don't have to worry about your deposit on him. Since he's not around, I suppose next you might think about edging over to the cupboard for the shotgun or maybe the laser behind the bar."

"No chance, eh?"

"I don't think so, but you might surprise me. You did once before."

"Well, can I at least sit down?"

Tony tilted his head in a.s.sent. Just as she started to sit on the couch, Tony spoke. "Not there. Over on the Windsor chair."

"Boy, you don't trust anyone, do you?"

"Yes I do, Carmine. I just don't trust you specifically. Trust is earned." The seductive way she stretched her legs reminded him of other times.

"I'm dead if I tell you, Tony. These aren't the kind of people you metro on."