A Perfect World





Chapter 17



"We don't get many folks in here who just want a plain van," the grinning 
car salesman told Ken. "Are you sure I can't talk you into a few upgrades? 
Some carpeting in the rear? Or at least some side windows?"



The van in question was a 2008 model. According to the research done by 
Spankworth in the computer records, it had just been delivered to Mission 
Motors from the factory two days before. It was as stripped down as a van 
could be. The paint was factory white, the floorboards were bare metal, and 
the only windows, aside from the windshield were on the driver, passenger, 
and rear doors. In short, it was the perfect vehicle for transporting a 
special forces team to Roseville and then bringing a captured enemy team 
back to San Francisco.



"That won't be necessary," Ken replied. "I'm gonna customize it myself. It's 
for a business I'm going to be starting up."



"Oh yeah?" the salesman said, feigning interest. "What kinda business?"



"A mobile coffee service," Ken told him, repeating the cover story he'd come 
up with back aboard the Calistoga long before they'd even come through the 
wormhole. "I'm gonna install espresso machines, cappuccino makers, coffee 
grinders, and brewing machines in the back. Once I'm set up I'm gonna go 
around to places where people work the night shift and deliver coffee drinks 
right to their work stations. I figure I'll make some contacts at hospitals, 
manufacturing plants, places like that."



"No kidding?" the salesman said. "You think people will go for that?"



"Fuckin' aye," Ken replied, only realizing after the words had come out of 
his mouth that it wasn't exactly a polite acknowledgment in this time.



The salesman-whose name was Bob-wasn't offended. He laughed loudly as if 
that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard and then began trying to get Ken 
to buy that carpet upgrade at least. "You don't want your coffee machines 
sitting on bare metal now, do you?"



"I've already got some carpeting in my garage," Ken told him.



"Well, I'm sure it's not like our custom carpeting though," Bob said, not 
missing a beat. He went on for several more minutes, explaining how Mission 
Motors' specially treated stain-resistant carpet was designed for use in a 
commercial van where standard home carpeting was not.



Ken listened respectfully, keeping a neutral expression on his face 
throughout the spiel despite the fact that he was annoyed as hell. He had 
always hated dealing with commission sales people of any kind but had a 
particular hatred for car salesmen. Being on Mars for the past few years, 
where there was no such thing as commission sales, had served to increase 
the annoyance he was feeling now. There was a certain satisfaction in 
knowing that Bob and all like him would one day be made obsolete by a common 
sense revolution.



"That all sounds very intriguing," Ken said when he finally wound down, "but 
I think I'll just take the van as it is."



"Whatever you want, Mr. Frawler," Bob said. "That's the way we like it here. 
Just like that hamburger place. So, how about we go talk some business, 
huh?"



"Sounds like an ass..." he snapped his mouth shut, cognizant that he'd just 
about told him it sounded like an ass fuck. He was really going to have to 
watch his Martian expressions. "It... uh... sounds like a plan."



They went inside the building, walking past the showroom, where shiny models 
of the latest SUVs and hybrids were set up on display. Attractive women in 
business dresses staffed a reception area in one corner. Soft music played 
on an overhead speaker system and a few salesman wearing suits and ties 
wandered here and there, eyeing for potential customers. Bob led him into a 
small office with a table and a few chairs and gestured toward a chair. Ken 
sat down and Bob gave him a Styrofoam cup of coffee unasked. Ken took a sip 
and almost gagged at the taste. Even the crappy coffee aboard Calistoga was 
worlds better than this garbage.



"Now then," Bob said. "I can see you're interested in the van there. That's 
one of our best models, even stripped down like that. The list price is 
$38,000 and I'm afraid there's not a lot of room for negotiation on that 
figure. That's not very much above invoice you know."



"Of course not," Ken said dryly.



"Why don't we start with what kind of payments you're looking for? You said 
your credit was good?"



"My credit is excellent," Ken said, hoping that was true. After all, the man 
named Ken Frawler hadn't even existed 48 hours before, but Sampson up on 
Calistoga had created an ideal person as far as Bob and his sales manager 
would be concerned. Ken Frawler owned his own home in Marin County, in which 
he had accumulated 35% equity. He had worked for the past ten years as a 
well-paid aircraft mechanic for United Airlines at San Francisco 
International Airport. He had very little credit card or other consumer 
debt. He also had more than twelve thousand dollars in his savings account, 
an amount that promised a nice down payment on an automobile loan.



He dickered back and forth with the salesman for about twenty minutes, more 
to keep in character than out of any real need to bring the price down. 
After all, when one could create money in one's account at will, one hardly 
had to worry about the price of a van. Finally he conceded the bickering 
after bringing the price down to $36,000, though he was sure he could've 
dickered down another two or three grand had he really wanted to. The Sales 
Manager came in at that point and collected Ken's driver's license and had 
him fill out the credit paperwork. As he did so, the Sales Manager took his 
shot at selling him a few upgrades and an extended service warranty, all of 
which Ken politely declined.



Ken's information was run through the computer and everything turned out to 
be just as perfect as promised. He was given nearly the highest score 
possible on his credit rating. That, coupled with the $3600 check he wrote 
as a down payment, entitled him to a 24-month loan at an interest rate of 
5.3%. The first monthly payment-which Ken knew would never be made-was due 
on December 1. By that time he should be well on his way back to deep space 
and the return wormhole and all records of the van's manufacture, ownership, 
and purchase would have been purged from Earth history by Sampson and his 
Intelligence Department. The only record of the van ever having been sold to 
anyone would be in Bob the salesman and Rick the Sales Manager's memory. And 
how likely would it be that they would remember him by then? Not very likely 
since he'd gone to great pains to make himself a forgettable customer.



The paperwork took the better part of an hour to complete but finally he was 
handed a set of keys and led out to his new van.



"Good luck with that coffee thing, Mr. Frawler," Bob told him as he climbed 
into the driver's seat. "And thank you for doing business with us."



"No skin off my ass," he said automatically.



"Huh?" Bob said, his eyes wide.



Ken winced internally. Gotta watch that, he chastised himself. "Uh... I 
mean... you're welcome. Thanks for all your help."



He closed the door quickly before he could make any more verbal errors and 
fumbled with the key for a moment, finally locating the ignition slot. This 
would be his first time driving an automobile in... well, nearly 195 years, 
but in a relative six years. Now he would have to drive a large vehicle with 
limited visibility in San Francisco traffic, which was among the worst in 
the nation. He hoped like hell he didn't crash the thing pulling out of the 
parking lot.



He fired up the diesel engine and spent a few moments familiarizing himself 
with the controls on this model. Things had changed little in the three 
years since he'd been placed in storage as far as dashboard layouts went so 
he took a deep breath, fastened his seatbelt, and dropped the gearshift into 
drive. He released the parking brake and pulled forward, ignoring the 
friendly wave of Bob the salesman as he weaved in and out of rows of 
vehicles in front of the service center. He waited a long time for a break 
in traffic on the main road but finally was able to pull out. He began 
heading toward the hotel.



The skills of driving, he found, were like riding a bicycle or performing 
cunnilingus. One did not forget them or lose them easily. Within three 
blocks it was like he'd never been away. He was stopping and starting 
smoothly, checking his mirrors when appropriate, his confidence high that he 
would be able to complete the driving portion of the mission flawlessly.



He arrived at the hotel and pulled into the parking lot, easing the van into 
a spot near the very back. Once the engine was shut down he pulled out his 
cell phone and dialed it up on Martian communications mode. Spankworth, the 
mission commander, answered his hail.



"I'm down in the parking lot," Ken told him. "Everything went well."



"That's what I like to hear," Spankworth replied. "We're on our way."



They came down and gathered around the van, all of their bags, including 
Ken's, with them. There was no need for them to officially check out of 
their accommodations. Spankworth had already accessed the hotel computer 
through his cell phone and erased all record of their ever having been there 
in the first place, even going so far as to remove the money Ken had paid 
from the hotel's bank account in case some auditor down the line noticed a 
discrepancy.



"We're going to be riding in this fucking thing?" McGraw asked nervously as 
she looked over the van. "It's a Laura-damned death trap!"



"It's safer than most of the small cars," Spankworth said reassuringly, 
although it was obvious that he was less than thrilled about riding in it as 
well.



"Yeah," said Wing. "The way a pistol is safer than a rifle."



"We knew this would be a dangerous mission when we signed up for it," 
Spankworth told them. "No sense complaining about it now. Come on, let's get 
these identification placards put on so we can get our asses out of here."



The identification placards were a set of forged California commercial 
license plates, part of the belongings they had brought down with them from 
Calistoga. While Ken used a screwdriver to install them on the bumpers, 
Spankworth used his PC to access the DMV computer and make them legitimate. 
He matched them to the vehicle identification number, or VIN, in the dash of 
the van and just like that, the van was officially registered to Ken Frawler 
of Mill Valley, California. A few more minutes and he had accessed the 
Interstate Insurance Corporation computer and programmed in full coverage 
for the vehicle.



"Everything's set," Spankworth said when he was done, which happened to be 
at the same time as Ken finished his task. "Let's move."



"Fuckin' aye," Ken said, stowing the screwdriver away. "Let's move."



They piled in and Ken closed the doors behind them. Spankworth, pulling 
rank, climbed into the passenger seat and spent a few moments fumbling with 
his seatbelt before finally figuring out how to secure it. Bingbutt, McGraw, 
and Wing sat unsecured on the bare floor, their backs against the metal 
walls. Ken fired up the engine once more and pulled out of the hotel's 
parking lot. He drove with the flow of traffic, making his way toward the 
freeway entrance that led to the Bay Bridge and their route out of San 
Francisco.



Traffic was about as light as it ever got during a weekday in San Francisco 
and it took only fifteen minutes before they mounted the span. At the far 
end of the bridge the highway split into two separate Interstates. Ken 
looked at the sign as they approached. Staying to the left would take him to 
I-80 East toward Sacramento. To the right was I-880 South, towards San Jose. 
He stared at the sign for a long time as they approached, his heart pulling 
him strongly to the right. He listened to his head instead, and kept the van 
in the far left lane.



+++++



"We have engine shut-down, Huff," reported Darla Ogle. "That oughta put us 
right where we want to be."



"Thanks, Darla," said Huffy, who was strapped into her command chair and 
smoking a cigarette. They had just completed a three-hour deceleration burn 
at .05G, about the lowest specific thrust their fusion engines were capable 
of producing. The artificial gravity generated by such a burn was so slight 
as to be unnoticed. Crewmembers could still float around and propel 
themselves up and down through the decks, the only difference a slight 
tendency to drift toward the floor. Huffy hadn't even bothered to sound the 
acceleration alarm at the beginning of the burn.



"Should I spin us around now?" Darla asked next.



"Hold off on that for a few," she answered. "Detection, how we looking on 
the target? Confirm matched velocities."



"Working it, Huff," Spammer said, his head bent over his screen. "At a 
glance, it looks good though."



"Facts, Spammy," Huffy said. "Get me some ass-tapping facts. I don't want 
what it looks like at a glance. It would be kind of embarrassing if that tub 
of shit detected us because we were moving a hair faster than they are and 
got into their feeble little range."



"Sorry, Huff," he said, somewhat taken aback by her gruff tone. Well, she 
was under a lot of stress, being in command of the most important mission in 
the history of the solar system. He began to work the numbers, confirming 
what he already suspected. "Okay, got it," he told Huffy. "We're ten 
kilometers from Rumsfeld, right in their baffles, orbits and velocities 
matched exactly. They've made no move that would indicate to me they know 
we're back here. No radio or laser transmission, no evasive maneuvers."



"That's what I wanna hear, Spammy," Huffy said, smiling. "That earns you a 
rim-job later. Helm, go ahead and turn us around so we can bring weapons to 
bear. Use minimum thrust. We aren't in a hurry here."



"Right, Huff," Ogle said, her fingers going to her controls.



The maneuvering thrusters began to fire, burning at their lowest settings. 
Slowly, meter-by-meter, Calistoga turned around on its axis, so its front 
end was facing Rumsfeld's rear end in the classic pursuit formation. It took 
the better part of thirty minutes to accomplish but the heat signature 
generated by the thrusters remained well outside the detection range of a 
front line WestHem stealth ship, let alone a Cheney-class.



"Weapons," Huffy addressed the weapons panel once the turn was complete, 
"how we looking? We got a lock on them?"



"Oh fuckin' aye, Huff," replied Lieutenant Kelly Killigan, the officer in 
charge of that particular section. "We got the lasers locked on their engine 
room, their APU, and their environmental control section. You just say the 
word and that piece of shit is Swiss fucking cheese."



"That too is what I like to hear," Huffy said, smiling in a predatory 
manner. Though they were much too close to use their matter/anti-matter 
torpedoes against Rumsfeld (not to mention that the Earthlings would surely 
notice a two gigaton explosion taking place in low orbit, especially since 
it would fry most of their communications satellites), the high-energy 
lasers would be more than enough to take out the ship if it became 
necessary. Hopefully, when the time came, they would surrender peacefully. 
Having a disabled WestHem stealth ship in Earth orbit would create 
complications for the exit strategy. Not that a contingency plan had not 
been made for such an event, it would just be easier for all concerned if 
they didn't have to tow Rumsfeld out of orbit and sling it into the sun on 
their way back to the return wormhole.



Now that Rumsfeld was safely bracketed, Huffy was able to turn her attention 
to other matters. She turned the con over to Killigan and unstrapped from 
her seat. With a few acrobatic twists and turns, she was facing the 
inter-deck ladder. She kicked off her chair and pulled herself down, 
arriving in an upside-down orientation before the Intelligence Department's 
secured doorway. A tap of her hand on the control gained her entrance and 
she pulled herself inside, flipping over to right-side-up orientation as she 
came in. The room was crowded, as usual, with off-duty crewmembers occupying 
every spare computer terminal to view Earthling broadcasts. A group of them 
over in the corner were watching something called Fear Factor with horrified 
concentration mixed with hilarity. In the other corner, Rigger Johannesburg 
and Slurry Frazier were sharing a terminal to continue gathering every 
cellular phone conversation they could home in on.



Sampson was in his own command chair, smoking a cigarette and paging through 
two screens worth of text files. A sealed cup of coffee sat secured in the 
magnetic holder beside him. He looked up as she came drifting over. "How's 
the juices flowing today, boss?" he asked her, picking up his pack and 
offering her a smoke.



"Nice and slippery," she told him, taking the smoke and leaning in to get a 
light from him. She blew out her drag and then positioned herself over his 
shoulder. Sampson and most of his staff were attempting to find the WestHem 
team's hideout location so they could be taken down there instead of at the 
hospital. Like the attempt to intercept the ship before it established 
orbit, it was a mission that didn't hold much hope. "Any luck?" Huffy asked.



"Nothing," Sampson told her. "I've been pouring through the records of every 
hotel, motel, and sleazy fleabag room rental establishment in the entire 
Sacramento region looking for something that stands out. There's just no way 
of knowing if I'm seeing anything or not. The rest of the team is looking 
through the credit reporting agencies, DMV, and automobile sales records, 
hoping to find an entry that doesn't fit well. Nothing from them either."



She nodded, taking another drag. "Well, what can you do? If nothing else, 
we've got the ship bracketed and our own team is almost in position. Things 
are still looking good."



"I just wish we could figure out how many people they sent down," Sampson 
said. "That's the vital piece of information."



Huffy shrugged. "I know what you mean," she said. "Hopefully, we'll bag 
everyone at the hospital. I can't imagine why they'd send down more than 
they need for that part of the mission. If worse comes to worse, though, and 
we do miss someone, at least there's the inoculation they gave them. If we 
have to leave one of their agents on Earth when we leave he won't be able to 
do too much damage since he'll be dead in ten days anyway."



"Cold comfort," he said gloomily. "There's just no telling how much damage 
to the time stream a person can do in ten days."



"Not as much as he could do in a lifetime," she said optimistically. "We 
work with what we get."



"Fuckin' aye," he agreed. "I'd just feel a lot better if we had a handle on 
every one they've put down there."



+++++



Roseville, California

October 27, 2007



The house where Mark Whiting lived with his mother, father, and older 
brother was unremarkable for the time period. It was a simple two-story 
tract house in a middle-class neighborhood full of similar houses. The 
neatly mowed front lawn was covered with a carpet of maple leaves from the 
tree planted in the middle of it. The window shades were all pulled, 
blocking visual examination of the interior, but Ken and McGraw knew their 
subjects were in there.



They were in the front seat of the van, parked two blocks away, pulled 
legally to the curb adjacent to the side-yard of one of the houses. In case 
one of the neighbors became curious about their presence and called the 
Roseville Police to come check them out, Spankworth, back at the motel, was 
monitoring the police radio frequency and had tapped into their 
computer-aided dispatch system. If a patrol car was sent in their direction, 
they would know about it long in advance.



"How much longer until they leave?" McGraw asked him, a hint of impatience 
in her voice.



Ken looked at the display on his forged Timex watch. It was 9:30 AM. "Any 
time now, I would think," he told her. "Mark's appointment is at ten. Most 
people like to get there a little early."



"Static," she said, leaning back in her chair and stretching.



The appointment he was referring to was with Mark Whiting's pediatrician-Dr. 
Martin Still. Today was the day that Laura Whiting's pre-pubescent 
great-great-great grandfather would visit Dr. Still, suffering from a nasty 
case of laryngitis, and the recommendation for surgery would be made. The 
Martians considered it unlikely that the WestHem team would attempt to move 
on Mark Whiting today, but it was not something that could be ruled out 
entirely. Therefore, Ken and McGraw had been assigned to tail him during his 
travels just in case. Ken was glad for the assignment, even though it would 
likely not bear fruit. It got him out of the motel room for a while and let 
him explore his time period a bit. As they drove around he relished almost 
everything he saw that was absent in his Martian life. He loved the traffic 
jams, the haze of smog that hung over the city, the smell of burned 
hydrocarbons, even the clothing of the natives. It had been years since he'd 
seen a woman dressed in anything but shorts and a half-shirt. Now he saw 
them in tight jeans, in business dresses, in pantsuits. He was forced to 
conclude that Martian dress did get a bit old after awhile and that there 
was at least something to be said for fashion.



"The vehicle access door is opening," McGraw said suddenly, perking up a 
bit.



"You mean the garage door?" Ken asked, looking and seeing that it was indeed 
sliding up on its track.



"Whatever."



As soon as the door was open a burgundy Chevy Suburban backed slowly down 
the driveway to the street. Zooming in with a pair of period binoculars, 
McGraw was able to make a positive identification of the two occupants. 
"It's the Whitings," she said, a bit of religious awe in her tone. This was, 
after all, the relative of a figure that Martians worshiped like God.



Ken fired up the engine of the van. "Right on schedule," he said. "I'll wait 
until they pass and then slip in behind them. I don't think Mrs. Whiting 
will notice a tail." Mr. Whiting might have, since he was a federal agent. 
He thanked Laura the patriarch of the family had gone to work today.



He pulled out and stayed about two blocks behind them, the large vehicle 
easy to tail through the light mid-morning traffic. Mrs. Whiting made his 
task very easy. She was a cautious and courteous driver, never running 
through yellow traffic lights or speeding. McGraw had the isotope scanner 
open on her lap. It was probing the surrounding area for any trace of the 
genetic manipulator device the WestHems planned to use. So far, nothing was 
jiggling it.



"Why are they driving in an all-terrain vehicle to the doctor's office?" 
McGraw asked. "They don't have to go onto unpaved roads to get there, 
right?"



"Right," Ken said with a chuckle. "Most of the people who own those things 
in this time have never taken them off the road and don't even know how to 
put them in four-wheel drive. They're just status symbols. Families buy them 
because they tell others that we're an exciting family that does off-road 
things and goes on adventures, even though that's rarely the case. What ends 
up happening is that the SUVs use so much gas and are so expensive to 
operate, that the person who stays home and shuttles the kids around ends up 
driving it while the person who commutes to work drives something smaller 
that gets better mileage."



McGraw took her eyes off the scanner to give him a look. Seeing that he 
wasn't kidding, she shook her head a little. "No wonder people like Slurry 
make a living out of trying to understand your people, Frazier," she said. 
"It's something that will take a career or two to accomplish."



Dr. Still's office was in a medical building about half a mile from 
Roseville Community Hospital. Mrs. Whiting pulled into the parking lot and 
slid her Suburban into a spot near the back. Ken pulled the van into the 
parking lot of a strip mall across the street and parked facing the 
building. They watched as Mrs. Whiting and young Mark got out of the vehicle 
and started heading for the entrance. Mrs. Whiting was 36 years old, a 
brunette, slightly overweight but attractive. She was dressed in a pair of 
jeans and a fashionable sweater.



"I'd do her," McGraw said analytically. "A pity she'll be dead in a few 
years, isn't it?"



"Yeah," Ken said bleakly, watching young Mark instead of his mother. He was 
dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweater as well, his hair cut short and 
spiked upward in what was apparently the latest rage. Even from this 
distance it was obvious the child wasn't feeling well. His skin was flushed 
as if with fever and he seemed to be shivering.



"What's it like to be sick, Frazier?" McGraw asked him once their targets 
had entered the building. "Have you ever had this tonsillitis thing?"



"I had it once or twice when I was a kid," he replied. "Not enough that they 
wanted to take them out. They just gave me antibiotics."



"Does it hurt?"



He shrugged. "It makes it hard to swallow," he said. "And when you get a 
fever, you get the chills and you shiver a lot and your muscles all ache."



"Sounds like torture," she said with distaste, the words of wisdom of a 
woman who had never been sick and never would, who lived in a world where 
fever and sniffles and body aches were a thing of the past.



The Whitings remained in the medical office for 48 minutes. During that time 
there was no sign of the WestHem team and their genetic manipulator. From 
the medical office, Ken tailed them to a Short's Drug Store pharmacy where a 
computer check by Spankworth confirmed they were filling a prescription for 
amoxicillin. From the pharmacy, they went home, pulling the Suburban back 
into the garage from which it had come. The WestHem team did not make itself 
known.



"Well, that's that," McGraw said once the door was shut behind them. It was 
now just before noon. "How about we pick up some of that so-called food for 
the troops on the way back?"



"Sounds like an ass-fuck," Ken told her, dropping the gearshift into drive.



The motel they were staying in was not nearly as luxurious as the 
accommodations they'd enjoyed in San Francisco. In fact, the Family Inn, as 
it was called, was little more than a dive. It was a three story building 
surrounded by parking lot on the corner of Douglas and Sunrise, just two 
miles from Roseville Community Hospital. Their room was what passed for a 
deluxe model there. It had two king beds, a television, an alarm clock, and 
a bathroom. A few cheap pictures hung on the wall and the television remote 
was bolted to the nightstand to keep it from being stolen.



When McGraw and Ken entered the room at 12:35 PM that day, the smell of sex 
assaulted their noses. Bingbutt and Wing were both naked on one of the beds, 
Bingbutt lying on his back while Wing ground up and down on his cock. Both 
were sweaty and seemed to be near the grand finale of their act. They didn't 
acknowledge the return of their teammates. Spankworth was sitting at the 
desk, his cell phone/PC before him. Ignoring the sexual activity going on 
behind him, he was grinning at whatever he was monitoring with the computer.



"What you got, Spanky?" McGraw asked. "Something good?"



"Fuckin' aye," he said. "I'm tapped into the good doctor's phone line. He 
just called Roseville Hospital to make the admission arrangements for Mark 
Whiting. He's now scheduled for a tonsillectomy at 1500 hours on October 31. 
Just like history says."



"Was there ever any doubt?" Ken asked, tossing the McDonald's bags on the 
unoccupied bed and grabbing a seat. On the other bed, Wing was in the throes 
of orgasm, her breath tearing in and out, her mutterings graphic and 
obscene.



"Nothing is a given," Spankworth told him, reciting a fundamental training 
credo of the special forces. "So what kind of shitty Earth food did you 
bring us today? Could it be worse than that Taco Bell crap you fed us last 
night?"



"Yes," agreed Ken, who had found Earth fast food just as distasteful as his 
companions did after so long enjoying Martian food. "It is worse, but it 
won't kill you. That's the best that can be said about it."



They opened their food bags and dug in unenthusiastically. They continued to 
wait.



+++++



October 31, 2007 (Halloween)

Roseville, California



The Roseville Community Hospital was the centerpiece of a vast medical 
center campus that stretched over nearly seventy acres of land in the 
northern portion of the suburb. Surrounding the main ten-story hospital 
building were dozens of outpatient clinics, medical office buildings, and 
administrative offices. Access roads wound between the buildings, and 
parking lots were strategically placed amid groves of oak trees the real 
estate developers had been forbidden by law to remove during construction. 
Since it was a weekday and since Halloween was not a national holiday, 
business was brisk at all of the medical center's offices and all of the 
parking lots were moderately full of cars.



In the northwest corner of the emergency room parking area the white van 
sat, its front end facing both the ER entrance and the side hospital 
entrance where it was assumed the WestHem team would attempt their entry. 
All five members of the interdiction team were in the van, Ken and McGraw in 
the front seats scanning the area visually, while Wing, Bingbutt, and 
Spankworth sat in the back scanning computer equipment that would detect the 
genetic manipulator isotope as well as provide digital images pulled from 
any of the hospital's 272 security cameras. The team had been in position 
since 7 AM. By 12:30 PM, they were all getting a bit restless.



"This is just disgusting," said Wing, who was utilizing the bathroom 
facilities-such as they were. She had pulled down her pants and underwear 
and was squatting over a mason jar, trying desperately to direct her stream 
of urine into it without spilling any on her hands or the floor. "Why 
couldn't we have brought some piss-catchers from the biosuits with us?"



"Piss catchers are modern equipment," Spankworth replied absently. He was 
staring at an image of the hospital receiving docks where a crew was 
unloading the contents of a delivery truck. "What would happen if we got 
into a traffic accident or something and the cops found the piss catchers in 
the van? They're made of synthetics that don't even exist today."



"Yeah yeah," Wing said, rolling her eyes a bit. "The things we have to put 
up with in special forces. I don't remember them saying anything in my 
indoctrination about pissing in little fruit jars."



"At least Whiting got his tonsillitis in October," Ken said. "If it would've 
happened in July or August, the temperature in this van would've been 
unbearable. It routinely got to be over a hundred degrees in the valley in 
summer. That would've made it 150 or so in the van."



"That Fahrenheit mumbo-jumbo don't mean shit to me," McGraw said. "What's 
that in real temperature?"



"About 65," Ken said.



McGraw whistled. "That is pretty fuckin' hot," she agreed.



Conversation waned and everyone went back to waiting for something to 
happen. Twenty minutes later, something did. Ken spotted the maroon Chevy 
Suburban pulling into the visitor parking lot two-hundred yards west of 
them.



"I've got the Whitings," he said, pointing at them for the benefit of the 
others. "They're circling the parking lot now, looking for a spot."



McGraw put her binoculars to her eyes to zoom in on the vehicle. She 
confirmed the identity both by license plate and by visualization of Mrs. 
Whiting, who was sitting in the passenger seat. Mr. Whiting, the father, was 
behind the wheel. This was not unexpected. They had been listening in on the 
Whitings' phone conversations since arriving and knew he had planned to sit 
vigil with his wife during the surgery. David Whiting, Mark's older brother, 
had been shipped off to spend the night with a friend.



Mr. Whiting finally found a parking spot and pulled into it. He, his wife, 
and young Mark exited the vehicle a moment later and began heading across 
the parking lot. McGraw and Ken tracked their movements while the rest of 
the team stood ready to spring into action on the off-chance that the 
WestHems tried to hit them in the parking lot. They didn't. The Whiting 
family made it safely into the building where Spankworth, monitoring the 
security cameras, soon picked them up at the main admission desk filling out 
paperwork. From the admission desk they moved to the elevators and up to the 
pre-operation area. They filled out more paperwork there and then moved to a 
waiting room down the hall where they took chairs and began to wait, all 
three of them looking extremely nervous at what was about to transpire.



"They have no idea that the fate of our entire culture rests on them," 
Spankworth said, staring at their images in awe.



"And hopefully never will," Bingbutt said confidently.



The day dragged on. Utilizing the security cameras, they tracked Mark 
Whiting's progress into the pre-op room where he was undressed, examined, 
and an intravenous line started on him. His parents remained with him there, 
holding his hand and talking to him in a soothing manner. His nervousness 
remained apparent until a nurse injected something into his IV line. A 
moment later he was smiling and happy, a dopey expression on his face.



"That would be the Versed," said Ken, who remembered his own encounter with 
surgical procedure when he had his appendectomy.



"What's it do?" asked McGraw.



"It's like Valium, only stronger. Gets you stoned and shuts down the anxiety 
center in your brain. They give you some of that shit and you're incapable 
of worrying about anything."



"No shit?" asked Wing. "And I thought your people had crappy intoxicants. 
You've been holding out on us."



They had a laugh at this and went back to waiting. At 3:10 PM, only ten 
minutes late, they finally separated Mark Whiting from his parents and 
wheeled him into an operating room. At this point Spankworth lost contact 
with him, as there were no security cameras in the OR. The older Whitings 
were hustled into a large waiting room down the hall. They sat nervously 
next to each other, holding hands and looking at magazines. They looked like 
they could use a little Versed themselves.



About forty-five minutes later, they caught a brief image of Mark Whiting 
being wheeled out of the OR and into a post-op recovery room. He was 
unconscious, an oxygen mask on his face and blood tinged around his lips. 
They lost him again when he went through the door, since post-op had no 
cameras installed in it either. Another twenty minutes went by before a 
scrub-suited man entered the waiting room to talk to the parents. He 
discussed something with them for about two minutes and then disappeared. A 
nurse showed up right behind him to escort them to the post-op room. They 
disappeared inside.



The next view they got of the Whiting family came an hour later when he was 
wheeled from post-op to the elevators. He was now awake though very dopey 
looking. Both the oxygen mask and the blood tinge were gone, though the IV 
remained and a suction tube had been inserted in his mouth. The parents 
seemed to be much more relaxed now and were even joking with the nurse who 
was pushing the bed. They got out of the elevator and went down a hall and 
past a nurse's station before disappearing once more into one of the 
admission rooms.



"Room 3111," Spankworth said with satisfaction. "He's now where he's gonna 
be when they make the attempt."



+++++



It was 1:30 in the morning when Ken spotted the headlights moving along the 
access road toward their position. Traffic had long since died down to 
almost nothing at the medical center and most of the parking lots were now 
empty. Though the ER parking lot still had plenty of cars, actual comings 
and goings were few and far between.



"Vehicles coming down the road," Ken reported, picking up the binoculars. 
"Looks like two of them."



"Nothing on the isotope scan," Bingbutt reported. "If it's our friends they 
don't have their genetic manipulator with them."



Sure enough, he was right. "It's another ambulance," Ken reported when he 
made positive identification. "And there's a Roseville PD car following it."



"Nothing that concerns us then," Spankworth said with a yawn that was half 
boredom and half fatigue. They had been in the parking lot for almost 
eighteen hours now. He went back to flipping through the security camera 
views, hoping to spot another sexual tryst such as the one he'd witnessed 
between an EKG tech and a security guard a few hours before in one of the 
stairwells. There was nothing doing at the moment though.



Ken watched the red and white ambulance and the black and white police car 
as they parked near the emergency room entrance fifty yards away. The 
ambulance backed into a bay right next to the doors while the cop parked his 
vehicle in a red zone just adjacent to it. A female paramedic jumped out of 
the driver's seat of the ambulance and went around to the back where she 
opened the doors. Her male partner jumped out and they removed the gurney, 
which had a scraggly looking man strapped to it. Even from this distance Ken 
could see that he was the victim of a severe beating about the head and 
face. The cop-a bald male in his mid-thirties dressed in the traditional 
dark blue uniform-strolled over and a brief conversation ensued between the 
paramedics and him. There were a few head nods and shoulder shrugs and then 
the entire group went inside, disappearing from sight.



"Oh my Laura," came Wing's voice from behind him. "This is fucking 
disgusting."



Ken looked and saw that she had just bitten into a pre-packaged convenience 
store sandwich-part of the food supply he'd secured for them on the way out 
here. It was the ham version, different only from the roast beef or the 
turkey in that the meat was a different shade of gray.



"I told you," he said with a chuckle, "if you have to choose between 
starvation and one of those sandwiches, it's something you'll have to think 
over first."



She spit the mouthful she'd just taken back into the package and threw the 
whole thing into the garbage container. "There are people who eat this 
shit?" she asked.



"The bums and the other homeless people like them," Ken said. "But then they 
like digging food out of garbage dumpsters, too."



"At least that way you'll know the food was made this year sometime," Wing 
said. "To think, my ancestors lived on this disgusting planet."



They all settled back into their seats and quieted down. Bingbutt let out a 
yawn and McGraw let out a rather juicy fart (farting was considered an art 
among Martians). Ken sighed and watched as the female paramedic wheeled the 
empty gurney back to the ambulance. She pulled out a bottle of disinfectant 
and sprayed it down, then took out a blue towel and began wiping it off.



"I got something," Bingbutt suddenly announced. "The scanner is getting hits 
off the isotope from bearing 190."



Ken tore his eyes off the paramedic and looked down the access road. Sure 
enough, the glow of headlights was now visible. "There's a vehicle coming 
down the road," he said. "Can't make out just what kind yet."



Everybody suddenly perked up as adrenaline began to flow. "This looks like 
it might be it," Spankworth said. "Take-down team, let's get ready."



Wing, Bingbutt, and McGraw all checked to make sure their cell phone/tanners 
were in the pockets of the environmental services uniforms they were 
wearing. All seemed satisfied with what they found. The headlights continued 
to grow brighter and Ken, looking through binoculars, was able to identify 
the car. "It's an old Ford Falcon," he said. "Two occupants. License plate 
is California." He strained to read the numbers and letters. When he was 
able to make it out-it was 1NBC789-he read it off using standard Martian 
phonetic words. "One, Naked, Buttfuck, Cumshot, seven, eight, nine."



"Got it," Spankworth said. "Running it now."



The car continued into the emergency room parking lot and passed within 
twenty yards of where they were sitting. The isotope readings grew stronger 
and the bearing changed as the vehicle went by, confirming they were in 
possession of a genetic manipulator device. Meanwhile Spankworth got the DMV 
data on the license plate and cross-referenced it with other databases. The 
car was registered to a John Smith of 1234 Main Street in Sacramento. John 
Smith's driver's license number was listed as A1234567. His place of 
employment was listed as Smith Industries at 5678 Main Street in Sacramento.



"Very original with their alias, aren't they?" Ken asked, shaking his head.



"We're dealing with a bunch of morons here," Spankworth agreed. "Have they 
parked yet?"



"They have," Ken said. "Well away from the other vehicles in the parking 
lot. That's not very smart either. It just draws attention to their car."



"Par for the fucking course," Wing said. "At least they shouldn't be too 
hard to take down."



Ken kept the binoculars trained on them as they got out of their car. They 
met near the front of it and then began to walk toward the side entrance. As 
they passed into the arc of one of the overhead lights, he got his first 
good look at them. Both were Caucasian men, both about six feet tall. They 
had neatly trimmed crew cuts and were exquisitely fit. In short, they looked 
exactly like a couple of special forces soldiers dressed in environmental 
services employee uniforms.



"One of them is carrying a fucking briefcase," Ken said in disbelief. "He's 
pretending to be a janitor and carrying a leather briefcase with him. How 
stupid can you get?"



"That'll be where the genetic manipulator is," Spankworth said. "How about 
weapons, Frazier? Are they packing?"



"Nothing obvious," he said, his trained eyes looking for the telltale bulge 
at the waistlines that would indicate a concealed pistol.



"Okay," Spankworth said, taking a deep breath. "We'd better take these 
assholes out before hospital security gets a good look at them. Takedown 
team, get moving. Do it just like we planned."



McGraw, Bingbutt, and Wing opened the side door of the van and stepped out, 
leaving the door open behind them. Moving quickly and silently, they dodged 
between cars heading for the side door on an intercept course that would get 
them there at about the same time as the two WestHem soldiers. Unlike their 
prey, they actually looked like three janitorial staff members heading back 
to the hospital after a break. The WestHem men saw them approaching and 
didn't seem to be the least bit alarmed by them or by the cellular phones 
each held in his or her hand.



"I think this is gonna work," said Spankworth, who had moved up to the 
passenger seat to watch developments.



"I think you're right," Ken said, watching as the two groups drew closer and 
closer together. He scanned his eyes around the dark parking lots and saw 
the only other person in sight was the female paramedic, who was still 
wiping down her gurney. She was inside of a recessed wall, with no line of 
sight to the side entrance where the action was about to take place. 
Everything seemed perfect.



As was usually the case in such matters, when things went wrong, they went 
wrong quickly and for a reason that had never been anticipated during the 
hundreds of hours they'd spent going over every possible contingency. Just 
as the Martian team was about to make contact with the WestHem team, just as 
they extended the tanner probes on their cell phones to strike, the 
Roseville police officer who had followed the ambulance in came strolling 
out of the ER doors.



"Shit," Ken barked. "The cop."



"I see him," Spankworth said, his eyes darting back and forth between the 
cop and the WestHem team. "I hope he stays back there."



Ken silently agreed. Maybe he would talk to the female paramedic for a 
minute or two before leaving the recessed area. She was kind of cute. If Ken 
were the cop, he would have flirted with her for at least a moment or two 
before heading on to other calls.



But the Roseville cop didn't. None of the Martians would ever know that the 
cop and the female paramedic had once had a romantic relationship with each 
other-a relationship that had gone bad a few weeks before when the former 
had refused to leave his wife for the latter. All they knew is that he 
walked right on by without acknowledging her in any way and right out into 
the line of sight of the confrontation between the Martians and the 
WestHems. He glanced over that way only to make sure there wasn't a car 
coming from that direction but his timing was perfect. He saw a two flashes 
of blue ozone and two large men-obviously, to his eyes, someone pretending 
to be janitorial workers-drop to the ground as if they'd been shot.



"Fuck me with a piece of chickenwire!" Spankworth said, watching helplessly 
as the cop's hand dropped down to his holstered gun and he began to trot 
that way.



"Hey!" the cop yelled, pulling his gun out and positioning it alongside his 
leg. "What the hell is going on here?"



The female paramedic, hearing his tone, looked up and saw that he was 
heading purposefully in the other direction, his gun out. She immediately 
moved out of the enclave to see what was going on. Within two seconds she 
was able to view the entire situation.



"Oh, this just gets better and better, doesn't it?" Ken said.



"I don't think there's an easy way out of this one," Spankworth said, 
resigned.



The cop slowed his approach as he got closer but the gun stayed down. "Step 
away from those men," he told the Martians. "Bring your hands up where I can 
see them."



It was McGraw who acted. She brought her hands up to optimum position, as if 
she were doing what he'd ordered, and then extended the tanner probe on her 
cell phone out to its maximum length. The cop just had time to realize that 
something was touching him, had just started to bring his 9mm to bear when 
there was another blue flash, this time from his chest. He dropped like a 
rock, the pistol clattering to the pavement next to him.



"Victor!" the female paramedic screamed. "Oh my god!" She only wasted a 
second or two with this exclamation, however. Her instincts kicked in and 
she dove back into the ambulance bay, her hands pulling her portable radio 
from her belt as she went. As she rushed in the ER doors Ken was able to see 
her yelling into the radio.



"We need to get the fuck out of here now," Ken told Spankworth. "Like 
fucking yesterday!"



"No shit," Spankworth said, jumping out the doors. "Get them over here!" he 
yelled at the team. "Move it!"



While Wing secured the briefcase, Bingbutt and McGraw each grabbed one of 
the men by the armpits and began to drag them across the pavement toward the 
van. It was agonizingly slow work. The men were much larger than they'd 
anticipated in training and they themselves were not in the best of physical 
shape after spending so much time in zero-G. By the time they got them to 
the van Ken saw dozens of eyes looking out at them through the ambulance bay 
doors. Nurses, doctors, security personnel, the female paramedic who had 
called it in. None of them dared to come out and try to stop what was going 
on, but all of them would see the van as it left and would undoubtedly get 
the license number.



"Get them in," Spankworth said, grabbing the first man and helping to pull 
him inside. He rolled him toward the back and then helped with the second. 
Once he was in, Bingbutt, McGraw, and Wing jumped in after. "Go Frazier!" he 
barked. "Contingency three on their car."



"Right," Ken said, resigned, knowing that time was critically short. He 
fired up the engine and backed quickly out of the spot, pointing the van in 
the direction of the WestHem team's car, which needed to be taken care of 
before they left. The prime mission plan had been for the takedown team to 
be undetected and for Spankworth and Ken to search through their car for any 
futuristic items that might be found there. They no longer had that luxury 
but they still needed to make sure nothing was found in that Ford Falcon 
that would tell an investigator the occupants had come from the future.



Ken screeched to a halt and jumped out of the van, going quickly around to 
the side door. Spankworth handed him a can of gasoline, a freeway flare, and 
a crowbar. He used the crowbar to smash open the driver's side window of the 
Falcon. He then opened the door, poured the gas all over the front and back 
seats, and set the half-full can on the floorboard. He pulled the cap off 
the flare, struck it alight, and then tossed it in through the open window. 
There was a whooshing sound, a blast of heat, and the car was a flaming 
pyre. Within minutes it would be fully involved and everything inside it 
would be incinerated beyond recognition.



Smelling of gas, the back of his hand slightly singed, Ken jumped back into 
the still-idling van and dropped it into drive. He floored the accelerator 
and did a sharp U-turn, heading back down the access road, quickly getting 
up to nearly seventy miles per hour on the 25mph speed limit road. A glance 
in the mirror showed that Spankworth, McGraw, and Bingbutt had managed to 
get handcuffs on the two unconscious WestHem soldiers and were even now 
sticking air syringes into their arms to sedate them even longer.



"How much time do we have?" Spankworth asked as he whipped around a sharp 
turn.



"Not much," Ken said. "That was maybe the worst thing that could've 
happened. Nothing will get the cops here faster and in more numbers than 
having one of their own taken down. They'll put a perimeter around this 
whole fucking section of the city in a matter of minutes. They'll have 
helicopters and dogs and infrared cameras looking for us everywhere and they 
won't stop until they find us."



"What do you suggest?" Spankworth asked calmly. "Should we go with 
Assfuck-seven?"



Ken thought that one over for a second. Contingency plan A-7 was a plan of 
last resort, to be utilized if they couldn't clear the chokepoint at 
Roseville Parkway and Sunrise before the cops shut it down. It involved them 
dragging their prisoners overland, through creek beds and drainage tunnels, 
hoping to hole up in a tunnel somewhere and clear the perimeter when the 
heat died down. "I don't think we're that desperate yet," he said. "Besides, 
the dogs would be able to track us if we moved overland on foot. I think 
Buttfuck-five is a better option. It's been less than three minutes since 
the emergency call went out and it went out on the ambulance channel, not 
the cops'. That means more time went by before it got from one dispatch 
center to the other. We should be able to clear the chokepoint and get into 
the residential neighborhoods before the first cops get here."



"It's your call," Spankworth said. "Go with it."



"Fuckin' aye," he said, praying to Laura he wasn't wrong.



He wasn't, but just barely. As he ran through the red light at Roseville 
Parkway and Sunrise he could see the flashing blue and red light bars of 
multiple police units coming at him in the distance from the south, east, 
and west. He turned a sharp left at Roseville Parkway, heading toward the 
most distant set of oncoming lights, extinguishing his own headlights as he 
drove. A quarter of a mile down a two-lane road led off to the south, 
winding through a new residential tract. He turned down it, stomping the 
accelerator to the floor.



A half a mile down he turned left onto another two-lane road. A quarter mile 
after that, he turned onto another. As he had noted on his many hours of 
studying the geography of the region, this part of Roseville was still under 
development. He was now in a neighborhood of model homes and homes under 
construction. He pulled the van up next to a house that was nearly 
completed, and came to a stop.



"In there," he said, his eyes looking around for any other living being. He 
saw nothing but a curious raccoon about 200 yards down the road. "I'll get 
rid of the van and get back to you."



The team didn't hesitate. Thirty seconds later they were all gone, dragging 
their prisoners and all of their equipment across the undeveloped front 
lawn, intending to break in through a back door and hole up.



No sooner were they out before Ken was heading off again, taking left and 
right turns, driving himself further and further into the subdivision. At 
the south end was another section of half-completed houses. He pulled the 
van into a driveway and jumped out, walking up to the front door. He tried 
the knob and found without surprise that it was locked. Undaunted, he picked 
up a rock from the front yard and smashed in the front window, reaching 
through and undoing the latch. He climbed through, finding himself in an 
empty house where the drywall had only recently been installed. There was no 
carpet on the floor, just bare cement. There was no tile in the kitchen, no 
plumbing fixtures, no cabinetry. The smell of raw lumber, glue, and plaster 
dust was everywhere.



He worked his way through the dark house, stumbling into walls a few times 
but finally finding the garage. A few moments of searching led to the roller 
garage door. He felt along its length until he found the latch. He turned 
it, releasing the mechanism with a clank and then pushed the door upward on 
its track. The front of the van was directly in front of him. In the 
distance he could hear the wail of sirens and the whopping of helicopter 
blades. He jumped into the driver's seat and pulled the van into the garage, 
not stopping until the grill was against the back wall.



He jumped out, leaving the keys in the ignition and looked around under the 
glow of the interior lights for anything that might be left behind. It 
seemed all traces of the future had been removed so he slammed the door shut 
and then walked out through the open garage door. He closed it behind him 
and then set off on foot, moving through the unfenced backyards until he was 
two streets over. He then turned right, jogging past houses in various 
stages of construction and empty lots where houses would one day stand. The 
sound of sirens was even closer now and he could see the searchlights of two 
different police helicopters circling around to the east and south of him, 
probing for any sign of the men who had dared to assault a police officer.



When one of the helicopters started to circle in his direction, he took 
cover in a half complete house and hid in the one room that did not feature 
a window to the outside-the guest bathroom. The helicopter came closer and 
closer, flying in large circles over him and past him. The spotlight probed 
here and there but never lit up the interior of the house. This did not 
comfort Ken, however. He knew the helicopter was equipped with a forward 
looking infrared pod, or a FLIR, and that it was being used to sweep the 
area in search of heat sources, such as a human body. If he were to go out 
in the open while they were in the vicinity he would be spotted in an 
instant.



He pulled out his cell phone and dialed up Martian communication mode. 
"Spanky," he said into it, "this is Frazier. You there?"



"We're here," Spankworth's voice answered back. "We got a chopper circling 
over us but no sign they've found us yet. We're in the bathroom, like you 
told us."



"Good," Ken said. "The FLIR won't get a hit off you in there. I'm holed up 
in a house too, about half a mile from your location."



"A nice little clusterfuck we got going here, ain't it?" Spankworth asked. 
"I got Wing scanning the police frequencies. Those cops sound almighty 
pissed off at us. They're not sure what kind of weapon we hit their friend 
with, but they're under the impression he might die. In addition to the 
Roseville PD units, they're getting cars from the Placer County Sheriff's 
Department, the Rocklin PD, the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department, and 
the Citrus Heights PD. They've got a solid perimeter around us now. No way 
we're getting out of here until they break it down. Is the van secure?"



"Fuckin' aye," he replied. "All according to plan."



"Good old Buttfuck-five," he said. "I'm glad we brought you along for this, 
Frazier. You may have saved our asses back there."



"Be glad after we get out of this mess," he said. "Things aren't looking too 
cheery at the moment."



"True. So, how diligent are they gonna search for us? Will they go house to 
house?"



"If they find the van they will," he said. "If they don't find the van 
there's a good possibility they'll conclude we squeaked through their 
perimeter before they closed it on us. By then they'll have figured out that 
the cop McGraw hit isn't going to die and wasn't even really injured. 
That'll take some of the venom out of them and they just might break down 
the perimeter."



"Let's hope to Laura they don't find the van then," he said. "Be sure to get 
rid of all of the Ken Frawler identification you have. They've run the plate 
on the van and got that name out of DMV. I changed the photos in all of the 
computer databases, so they'll be looking for a bald male in his fifties 
instead of someone who looks like you. I also changed the fingerprints so 
they're different from yours."



Even with the danger he was currently in, Ken couldn't help but be amazed 
once more at the Martian computer technology and the ease with which they 
could manipulate Earthling databases. With only a few spoken commands from 
Spankworth, every picture that had been planted of Kenneth Frawler had been 
changed in every database in which it had existed, and every fingerprint 
record in every computer file had undergone a similar metamorphosis. Nor was 
that all. Since Ken Frawler was now supposed to look like a fifty-year-old 
man, his date of birth and work history would have been changed as well. In 
a matter of minutes, from a place of hiding in an unoccupied house in 
Roseville, Spankworth had erased one person's identity from the time stream 
and replaced it with another.



"I'll destroy the ID as soon as I can," Ken said, irrationally dropping his 
voice to a whisper as the helicopter made another pass over him. "Which ID 
should I use now? I don't have any of the papers with me-they're all in the 
bag that's with you, but I've memorized all of them. If they happen to pick 
me up, who should I say I am?"



"Use the Kevin Freeman persona," Spankworth told him. "I'll have the 
computer input it now."



"Kevin Freeman, got it," he replied, nodding. Kevin Freeman was a Roseville 
resident with a minor criminal background. He was homeless with a history of 
alcohol and drug abuse. If the cops picked him up it was plausible they 
would buy that he had just broken into an unoccupied house to stay the 
night. Assuming, of course, that they didn't find the van, which was teeming 
with Ken Frazier's fingerprints.



"Let's hope you don't have to use it," Spankworth told him. "I'll keep you 
updated on what the cops are doing. Spanky out."



"Frazier out," he said, clicking off the phone. He sat down on the floor and 
settled in to wait.



+++++



"Fuck a squirrel," Huffy barked after hearing the situation report from 
Spankworth. The situation down there was far from under control, and with a 
high potential to deteriorate quickly.



"Sorry, Huff," Spankworth replied, his voice issuing from the bridge's 
speaker system.



"It's not your fault, Spanky," she said. "Just plain old bad luck. I'm glad 
you had Frazier down there with you or you might've already been picked up 
by now."



"You and me both," he said. "In the meantime, though, I'm still scanning 
their radio frequency. They've decided we have to be in the housing tract 
somewhere. Four helicopters are circling above us and they've got two SWAT 
teams staging to move into the perimeter to start searching house to house. 
It's only a matter of time before they find the van or Frazier or us. Is 
there anything you can do about it from up there?"



"If I may," interrupted Ken Frazier's voice. Ken had been monitoring the 
conversation.



"You may, Frazier," Huffy said. "If you've got an idea, let's hear it."



"We need to draw their attention away from us, make them think we're 
somewhere else. If we do that, they'll move the perimeter in closer."



"How do we do that?" Huffy asked.



"Can you tap into the phone system and make a 911 call to the police 
department."



"Child's play," Huffy scoffed. "You should know that."



"No, you don't understand," Ken said. "You'd have to make it appear that 
this 911 call came from a certain house. The phone number and address for 
that house would have to register on their dispatcher's screen as being 
correct. In fact, to truly get their attention, we'd have to do this from a 
couple of different houses."



"What are you suggesting?" Huffy asked, not quite understanding.



"We send them fake 911 calls from the occupied corner of the perimeter up in 
the northwest area. If they think a few residents are calling in and 
reporting people moving through their backyard, and those people match their 
descriptions of us, they'll focus heavily on that area and take the heat off 
us over here."



"Hmmm," Huffy said thoughtfully. "Intelligence, are you copying this?"



"Fuckin' aye, Huff," Sampson replied. "I think I might be able to do that 
with a little work. But what's going to happen when they go to talk to those 
people and find out they didn't really make the call?"



"Frazier?" Huffy asked. "The pussy is on your cock."



There was a pause as he thought this over. Finally, he said, "It will be a 
while before they actually check on something like that, especially if there 
is a series of calls from the area. It's not a perfect plan, I'll agree, but 
it's better than just sitting here and waiting to get sniffed out by the 
dogs, isn't it?"



"You make a good point," Huffy agreed. "Sampson, start working on it."



"Right, Huff," he replied.



"Frazier, Spanky, we're gonna go with it. Sampson's figuring out the 
logistics of it now. We'll let you know before..."



"Con, detection!" barked Mike Spammer from his display.



"Shit," Huffy said. "What now? Surface teams, stand by a minute. We got some 
shit going down up here now." She turned to Spammer. "What's up, Spammy?"



"Encrypted radio signals being broadcast from Rumsfeld. They're hitting a 
com-sat in GEO. I'm sending the signal to Intelligence now."



"Okay," Huffy said. "Probably just a communication attempt to see if their 
team was successful. Sampson, you getting it?"



"The computer's crunching the code now, Huff."



"I'm getting a return signal from the same com-sat," Spammer said a moment 
later, trashing her theory. "Somebody answered them. More signals going out 
from Rumsfeld in reply."



"Somebody answered them?" Huffy said, alarmed. "What the fuck? Who in the 
hell are they talking to down there? We have their team in custody!"



"It seems they sent at least one more person to the surface with their 
team," Sampson said quietly. "Someone who wasn't there when they made the 
attempt."



Huffy buried her face in her hands. "I was afraid of this," she said.



The bursts of radio traffic went on for 45 seconds before ceasing. 
Calistoga's decryption software was quite adept at breaking WestHem 
encryption algorithms and two minutes after the last transmission a clear 
audio copy was ready. The two people talking were positively identified by 
the extensive database Intelligence kept on WestHem naval personnel. They 
were Captain Robert Stanhope, a career naval officer who had commanded three 
separate stealth attack ships and Dr. Stephen Lindley, who had spent his 
career as a physician aboard naval vessels.



"Put it on speakers," Huffy ordered.



There was a pop and then a male voice, speaking in a thick Earthling accent, 
confirmed their worst fears. "Lindley, this is Stanhope, do you copy me?"



"Lindley here," replied a cultured voice. "Is there trouble?"



"Something went wrong down there," Stanhope said. "And I think something 
might be going wrong up here, too. We're scanning the police frequencies in 
Roseville. There's a major commotion going on that started at the hospital."



"Did the police get our team?" Lindley asked calmly. "If they find that 
genetic manipulator, there will be no doubt it's from the future."



"They don't have our team yet, but it looks like the whole mission might be 
blown. According to the police broadcasts, two people, a man and a woman, 
dressed in the same sort of clothes as our people, disabled them before they 
made it into the building. They then disabled a police officer who tried to 
stop them."



"Disabled them?"



"They report hitting them with a blue flash of light that caused them to 
collapse."



There was a pause, and then Lindley said, "Police tanners."



"Which means someone from the future," Stanhope confirmed. "There's another 
ship out here somewhere. Martians maybe, but more likely EastHems. I don't 
think the greenies would be capable of mounting a counter-mission such as 
this."



"What do we do now?" Lindley asked.



"The mission is a failure, no matter what," Stanhope told him. "But really, 
what do we care? Since you were kind enough to reverse the little problem 
our superiors saddled us with, we can still set ourselves up quite the 
empire down there, can't we? This changes nothing. Our government tried to 
kill us for our service, so why should we give a damn if we weren't able to 
perform that service?"



"True," the doctor replied. "So we proceed with our plan?"



"We proceed," Stanhope told him. "But we have to assume that whoever sent 
down that team will be looking for us. We'll bump things up a bit. At the 
next window I'm going to bring everyone down in the escape pods. We'll 
gather them together at the pre-determined location and... you know... wait 
for the vaccinations to work on them. That'll be in about ten days, right?"



"Give or take a few hours," Lindley agreed.



"Get away from where you're at immediately," Stanhope said. "Start setting 
up our accommodations to wait out the vaccine. I'll bring the crew to you 
there."



"What about the interdiction team? What happens if the cops get them?"



"That has nothing to do with us," Stanhope said. "They'll keep their mouths 
shut long enough for the vaccine to work in them. Their part in this is over 
now."



"Sounds good, Bob. I'll see you down here."



"A few more weeks, Steve, and we'll be living like kings for the rest of our 
lives. Just keep the faith."



"You know it. Lindley out."



"Stanhope out."



There was silence on the Calistoga bridge for a few seconds after the 
transmission ended, all of the crewmembers looking at each other in horror 
at what they had just heard. Finally it was Huffy who spoke. "What do you 
think, Ron?" she asked Sampson.



"It sounds like the ship's doctor figured out that they'd been given the 
time release poison," he said.



"Fuckin' aye," Huffy said. "And he reversed it in himself and the ship's 
captain but left it alone in everyone else." She shook her head angrily. 
"The WestHem willingness to commit murder or to stand by and let it occur. 
I'll never understand it. Not if I live to be ninety."



"You realize they're planning to take full advantage of their 
pre-knowledge," Sampson said. "They have absolutely no compunctions about 
'living like Kings,' as they put it. They may very well be able to set 
themselves up as rulers within a few Earth years if they play their cards 
right. The entire stream of human history will change if we don't stop 
them."



"I have every intention of stopping them," Huffy said firmly. "How are we 
doing with that police call thing Frazier suggested?"



"It looks like it might work," Sampson said. "It'll take another ten minutes 
or so to insert a program into the computer to send false signals to the 911 
trace program."



"Let's get it done," Huffy said. She turned to the navigation officer. "How 
long until the Rumsfeld can start releasing escape pods toward the surface, 
assuming they're going to be landing somewhere off the west coast of 
California?"



"Nine hours, Huff," was the immediate reply.



"Right," Huffy said. "As soon as we get our people out of that trap they're 
in down there, we take down that ship. I'm done fucking around with those 
WestHem assholes."