Eric James Stone's Blog, page 24
April 27, 2011
Codex Blog Tour: Rick Novy
After getting to know Rick Novy online through CodexWriters.com, I met him in person at the 2006 Nebula Awards Weekend in Tempe, Arizona. He was personally responsible for my meeting Harlan Ellison and the ensuing "Harlan story." Rick shares my love of puns, and like me, he's been published in InterGalactic Medicine Show. Rick edited the recent anthology 2020 Visions. Here are my questions for Rick and his answers:
1. How did you end up editing an anthology of stories set only ten years in the future?
This is one of those cases where the whole idea formed around the title. Early in 2010, I realized that 2020 was exactly 10 years out, and the window of opportunity to do science fiction with this delicious double-entendre title would quickly close. I couldn't let such a perfect title and timing pass me by, so I contacted Christopher Fletcher, who edits M-Brane SF and has a fledgling small press. I had guest-edited issue #12 of M-Brane SF and it turned out to be one of the more popular issues, so he got on board very quickly.
2. Can you give us a taste of what some of these speculative futures are like?
We've got everything from sentient robots to new fad diets. Dystopian and hopeful. Dark and light. The book has a good mix with something for every taste.
3. Recently, you've been doing a lot of work with ebooks. What do you think publishing will look like in 2020?
Certainly electronic publishing is going to continue gaining in importantance, but print publishing isn't going away. That said, I think we are starting to see the beginnings of the true storm that has been on the horizon since Amazon incorporated. The traditional publishing model has been broken for many decades, and big box stores have pushed most of the little guys out of business.
Now we are witnessing the liquidation of the vast majority of Borders locations. We recently witnessed Terrill Lankford walk away from a six-figure advance because the terms his publisher offered for the electronic rights were absurdly lopsided against him. Publishers have been less than honest about how much work goes into creating electronic books once the paper copy is finished. Take away the transportation, duplication and storage costs of physical inventory, the ebook is almost free to create once the paper copy is done. I have converted a short story final manuscript with cover art I created into PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats in under an hour, and most of it by hand. But that was a year ago. Now there are tools now to do a lot more of that for you, and faster. Scrivner 2.0 for Mac and Atlantis Word Processor for Windows both export decent EPUB files that need only a little tweaking.
There is still a lot of fear in the industry. Publishers are realizing that savvy authors don't need them to be successful. Agents are realizing that authors are keeping that 15% and wonder if they are still relevant. Authors are questioning whether they would be better off on their own, they haven't forgotten that agents used to take 10%. But a lot of writers are not tech savvy and the change for them is terrifying, too. Some publishers and agents are building business models to take advantage of that situation. Some are doing what should be hourly labor for a lifetime percentage of the sales. It's absurd. Heavy emphesis on the word some. There are also honest publishers and agents trying to figure out their proper role in this new landscape. I don't know how the gears will align in the end, but clearly, though, things are not going back the way they were.
So what will the publishing industry look like in 2020? I think we will see a resurgence of small bookstores, though it may not have traction by 2020. I think we will see at least one major publisher collapse under its own weight. I think we will continue hearing about indie authors doing just fine on their own.
But I also see some publishers surviving, sharing honestly with writers, and providing print books for the people who want that. But it's going to be the publishers who figure it out who survive.
The others will either change or perish. But I also see print books doing similar to vinyl record albums. People like their ipods, but they like the analog sound, too. There's room for print and digital to coexist because people still like reading from paper.
Change is happening quickly, but in some ways, it's like a slow-motion train wreck. I think there will still be a few wheels on the tracks in 2020, but they will derail eventually. When the dust settles, I think the writers who work the best parts of both sides will win. Use traditional publishing when it makes sense, and go indie when it makes sense. The proportion will be very much a function of the individual in question.
4. What's your favorite story you've written, and where can readers go to read it?
That's a tough question to answer. I tend to write what I like to read, so I don't really have a favorite. But, if you put my back against a wall, I'd have to say the "How to…" series where I use myself as the point of view character and strange things happen whenver Didier Forneau comes to town. Didier is a French guy who claims he is an alien, and he forces me to save the universe against my will and against my better judgement. They are humorous stories and just plain fun to write. All three stories are packaged together and available on my website or from Amazon. But, I always have a short story available for free on my website in the free area. It's always available in PDF, EPUB and MOBI formats. My free stuff page is here: http://www.ricknovy.com/catalog/free-stuff/ I put new stories in the free area before they move into the shoppe, so somebody who likes my short fiction can collect a lot of it for free by checking back every month or two and snagging it while it's free.
5. Besides 2020 Visions, are there any books, stories, websites, etc., you'd like people to know about?
I have opted to go the independent route with my long fiction for the time being, and I am getting ready to release my first novel, Neanderthal Swan Song, electronically in the very near future. In the story, a fully-intact Neanderthal body is discovered in northern Greenland. A tissue sample is used to clone the Neanderthal, and the novel is his story. Interestingly, Neanderthals never migrated as far as Greenland, but I needed a place where I could plausibly give minor figures significant power over national politics. There is a back-story that explains how the Neanderthal body came to be in Greenland, but that material was removed from the novel due to length. At some point I will also make that back-story available, but it needs some serious rewriting first.
April 26, 2011
Unforgettable – Chapter 4
I knew he could take the gun from me, so rather than try to keep it, I tossed it behind me as far as I could, then turned as if to run toward it but my handcuff link to Yelena held me up.
With a grunt, Jorge pushed past me.
"Come on," I said to Yelena, yanking her to her feet.
We ran through the open door, and I clanged it shut behind us. Yelena turned the key to lock it, then pulled the key out and kept the keychain. We could hear Jorge pounding on the door behind us as we rushed down the corridor.
"Elevator's this way," I said, pointing to the right as we approached an intersection.
"They trap us in elevator," she said, pulling on the handcuffs toward the left.
Yelena was right — the guards might forget about me, but they wouldn't forget about her. As long as I was attached to her, my usual methods of escaping wouldn't work. I needed to get the handcuffs off.
And I still needed to go to the bathroom.
We headed down the hallway to the left. If I recalled the plans to the building correctly, a door near the end of the hall led to a stairwell. There would be an emergency exit on the ground floor, so we could bypass the lobby and escape.
Except I needed to find my clothes. Not because I minded fleeing into the dark in my underwear, although I did, but because the quantum key was in one of my pockets and the CIA wouldn't be happy if I didn't bring it back. The technogeek wouldn't remember he'd given it to me, of course, but it would be listed in my handler's notes.
We raced past a door with a sign that read Laboratorio de Entrelazar. I stopped running, forcing Yelena to stop as well. Did that mean laboratory of something-lasers?
"There might be lasers in that lab," I said, "or something else we can use to get these handcuffs off."
"Get out of building first," she said. "Guard call someone."
I had forgotten about Jorge's conversation as he approached the storage room.
"I need to get … something in my pants before leaving. But it's too hard with these," I said, raising our handcuffed wrists.
After a moment, she nodded.
The lab door was locked, but one of the keys on Jorge's keychain was a master key. We slipped quickly through the door and shut it behind us.
The room's lights were off, but a half-dozen flat-panel monitors displayed scrolling lines of data. Violet light radiated from a long apparatus of glass and metal that dominated the center of the room. At the far end, a pencil-thick shaft of bright violet hit a prism and split into two weaker beams that extended into holes in the wall.
"That must be the entrelazar," I said.
"What?"
"Never mind," I said. "Let's see if it's powerful enough to cut the chain on these handcuffs."
We raised our handcuffed arms over the laser apparatus, one of us on each side, and walked to the far end of the room. We stopped just before reaching the prism.
A nod from Yelena signaled she was ready, and we lowered our wrists slowly. I held my breath as the handcuff chain entered the violet beam.
The reflection off the metal dazzled my eyes, and I blinked back tears. But I held my arm steady, and so did Yelena. But the laser seemed to have no effect.
"It was worth a try," I said. "Let's get out of here."
"Wait," she said. She walked to one of the workbenches along the side of the room, forcing me to lean over the laser with my arm stretched out, and she rummaged in some of the drawers.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.
"Mirror."
"Why?"
"I help you get pants," she said. "Ah." She held up a flat mirror about one foot square.
"How will that help?"
She walked to the prism and deftly leaned the mirror against it at a forty-five degree angle. The violet beam reflected up into a ceiling tile, which burst into yellow flame.
"Fire," she said. "We go now."
I stared at the flames in horror.
Fire was not my friend.
* * *
The night I lost my mother in the fire, she shook me awake to the sound of sirens. Our apartment was on the fourth floor of a high-rise. I looked out my window to see fire engines pulling up in front of our building.
By the time we got to the hallway, the fire was in the stairwells. We went back into our apartment to try the fire escape, but the fire had started below us on our side of the building — the steps descended into flames.
By the time the firemen reached us and took us down a ladder, we were both suffering from smoke inhalation. I can still remember the way my mother's voice wheezed as she called my name, trying to make sure I was all right.
The paramedics rushed us both to the hospital.
In separate ambulances.
I saw my mother again, after she recovered, but she couldn't remember me. All her journals, everything that connected her to me, burned to ashes in the fire.
* * *
"Nat!" Yelena's insistent voice wrenched my eyes away from the flames. We exited into the hallway and raced for the stairwell. A fire alarm blared from a loudspeaker on the wall, and strobe lights flashed.
"Security office on second floor," she said, her mouth close to my ear so I could hear her over the alarm. " Handcuff key probably there."
"Why did you start a fire?" I asked.
"Cause evacuation, including security office."
It had been a smart decision on her part, I conceded. She didn't know my personal feelings about fire — and my feelings didn't really matter. All that mattered was salvaging what I could of this mission.
Water sprayed from fire sprinklers in the stairwell as we ran up three flights to the ground floor. I expected her to try to take the exit, but she didn't.
"Why are you helping me get my pants?" I said, squinting back at her through the strobe-lit spray of water.
"I need clothes, too."
I couldn't argue with that. A beautiful woman wandering around in the middle of the night, sopping wet, dressed only in her bra and panties would attract attention.
On the second floor, I opened the door an inch and peeked out. A security guard I didn't recognize was barreling down the hall toward us.
"Up," I said.
We ran halfway up to the third floor and waited until the guard I'd seen was safely on his way down.
On entering the security office, I spotted a pile of black clothes on a table — and, just lying there for anybody to take, the prototype.
Yelena and I both lunged for it, but I had entered the office first and had longer arms, so I managed to grab it first.
"I stole it first anyway," I said, "so it really should be mine."
"No, I stole it first," she said. Of course, she had forgotten taking it from me at gunpoint. "You came after."
She searched through a drawer and pulled out a metal knob. "Here is key," she said. She held it next to the handcuffs and they unlocked.
I sorted through the black clothes, extracting my pants and making sure Yelena's gun wasn't in the pile. "You don't think that safe drilled itself and opened its door for you?"
She grabbed her clothes and began to dress. "Ah, you hide when I come in?"
"Something like that," I said. The quantum key was still in my pants. I put the prototype in a pocket and then dressed quickly. Now all I had to do was get clear of the building, and I could chalk this one up as a victory.
"Then is fair," she said. "You do hard work, so you get prototype."
She seemed to give in a little too easily, but it might just be a combination of professional courtesy and gratitude for my help in escaping.
She pulled her ski mask on, and I did the same.
By the time we snuck out the emergency exit door, fire trucks had arrived. In all the confusion, no one noticed us as we ran away from the building. I decided to abandon my car in the parking lot. It was just a rental under a false identity, anyway.
After we climbed the fence, I said, "I suppose we should split up now." I felt strangely reluctant to have Yelena forget me.
"Nat, wait." Yelena pulled off her ski mask, then reached up and peeled mine back. "To remember me," she said, and gave me a long, slow kiss.
It was the best kiss of my life. It was almost, but not quite, good enough to prevent me from noticing that she was taking the prototype out of my pocket.
I grabbed her wrist and pulled back from the kiss. "Let me guess: you simply wanted the prototype as a reminder of the good times we've shared?"
She smiled and relaxed her wrist. "Do you blame me for trying?"
"No."
"Good," she said.
Then she kneed me in the groin.
April 24, 2011
Big news
I've redesigned my website.
You may notice something in the header that was not there before: a mention of my being a Hugo nominee.
That's right: I'm thrilled to announce that my story "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made" has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. I continue to be amazed at my good fortune.
In celebration of the Hugo nomination, I'm once again making the story available online for free until voting on the Hugos closes (sometime in July.) If you want a Kindle or Nook edition, they're only 99¢.
But that's not all! The celebration savings continue: I'm cutting the ebook price of my novel Unforgettable 67% to only 99¢ for the same period.
April 21, 2011
"Into the West" going into IGMS
Just realized I forgot to mention a sale: my short story "Into the West" will be appearing in InterGalactic Medicine Show later this year. It will be my eighth appearance in IGMS. I originally wrote the story for the 2008 Codexian Idol Contest (a motivational contest run by CodexWriters.com.) It took second place behind a marvelous story by my friend and Odyssey classmate Krista Hoeppner-Leahy.
"Into the West" is an apocalypse story, in which the laws of physics have undergone an abrupt and unexplained change. Here's the text of the first manuscript page:
According to Jorge, sometime after we pass through Denver the California Zephyr will run out of diesel. Jorge's already decided that when the train stops, he will, too–like a captain going down with the ship. He's got a wife and a passel of kids back in Chicago who he'll probably never see again, so I guess I understand.
Me, I plan to keep heading west with as many of the other passengers as care to go. Just keep on going till we drop dead of exhaustion or hit the Pacific or the darkness catches us.
We don't know for a fact that anyone back east is dead. Or alive, either. Some of the passengers just sit up in the dome car and watch the landscape behind us stretch like salt-water taffy as it reddens and finally fades into the blackness that…
April 19, 2011
Unforgettable – Chapter 3
"Give it to me, or I will shoot you," she said.
Handing the prototype over to someone who could be an agent of the SVR — the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service — was not a very attractive option. But getting shot didn't really appeal to me, either. I decided that it might be easier to let her have it and then steal it back from her later. After all, she wouldn't remember that someone else was after the prototype.
Careful to make no sudden movements, I reached down to the pocket holding the prototype and took it out. "Here it is."
"Put it on table," she said, pointing to one of the lab workbenches.
I complied.
"Turn around and lie down on floor."
I lay down.
She must have walked to the door very quietly, because I didn't hear her footfalls. I heard the door open, then shut.
I gave her a one minute head start, then got up and raced to the lab door. I needed to get out of the building in time to follow her or I might lose her trail.
I opened the door and rushed into the hallway, and almost bumped into her. She stood with her hands held behind her head. Her gun lay on the floor. A few feet down the hall, a guard pointed a gun at her.
"¡Alto!" said the guard, swinging the gun toward me.
I raised my hands. At least the Russians weren't going to get the prototype. And maybe I could try again later, although security would probably get tighter after this.
Making a run for it wasn't an option, because then the guard might follow me and allow the woman to escape with the prototype. But I might be able to get the guard to concentrate on her instead of me.
"Jorge," I said, reading his nametag, "I'm a CIA officer." I hoped this guard's English was as good as Carlos's. "This woman is a Russian spy I've been tailing. I tried to stop her from stealing—"
"He lies," she said. "I never—"
"Stop!" Jorge shook his gun for emphasis.
We both shut up.
"Take off your masks," he said.
I stripped mine off and dropped it on the floor. She did the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of auburn braids pinned up on her head.
"Now your pants, mister," he said.
"What?" I said. "You're not serious."
"You have too many pockets," he said. "Take them off."
Reluctantly, I obeyed. I had to take off my shoes to get the pants off, and I piled everything on top of my ski mask. It was embarrassing, but at least I had the consolation that no one but me would remember this ridiculous scene.
"And your shirt," said Jorge.
"It doesn't have any pockets," I said.
He shrugged. "I don't trust you."
I took off my shirt, revealing the bulletproof vest.
"That also," said Jorge, so I added it to the pile.
Standing there in nothing but my boxer shorts and socks, I straightened to my full height, looked him in the eye, and said, "If you want me to take off any more, you'll have to buy me dinner first."
Beside me, the woman let out a tiny, soprano snort. "You are right not to trust him," she said, pointing at me. "This man kidnap me and force me to help him break in here. I grab his gun and run away when you found me. Thank you for saving me." Her tone was so desperately earnest, if I hadn't known she was lying I might have believed her.
"Don't trust her," I said. "Arrest us both, and we can sort it all out later."
Another guard came running down the hall to join Jorge — Carlos from the front desk. Jorge turned his head to see who it was, and the woman dove toward her gun on the floor.
* * *
Becoming a thief was only partly out of necessity. At the time, I was a friendless teenager who had just lost the only person who cared about me, and I was angry at the world. Stealing was my revenge.
But my mother had not raised me to be a thief. She taught me right from wrong, of course. But more than that, she believed I had a destiny.
"You have your talent for a reason," she would say. "God must have something special he wants you to do." I guess that was her way of justifying the sacrifices she made for me — that it was all part of some grand plan. She was so sure about it that I believed her.
Until the night of the fire.
My mother was the reason I ended up joining the CIA: so that in some small way I could be the hero she always believed me to be.
But the CIA didn't spend much time training me for combat — partly because my instructors couldn't remember what they had already taught me, which led to some wasted time. But the most important reason was explained to me by my unarmed combat instructor, a petite blonde named Lydia.
"You're my instructor?" I asked, as she walked over to me in the training room.
"I am," she said. "Edward's just explained to me about your unique skills. Try to take me down."
"Take you down?" At six-two, I was about a foot taller than her, and I outweighed her by seventy pounds or more. I didn't want to hurt her.
"Yes, please," she said.
I reached out to grab her arm. She had me face down on the blue mat in less than five seconds. Her knee pinned my right arm behind my back.
She leaned in close to my ear and said, "You don't want to fight."
Even if she only weighed a hundred pounds, it all seemed to be concentrated on my lungs. "I don't?" I finally managed to say.
"No." She eased up, and I drew in a deeper breath. "You don't have the killer instinct."
"Can you teach me that?"
She laughed. "You can't teach instinct. Sometimes you can awaken it. But that's often a nasty process. Sometimes you can learn to fake it. But that's the wrong choice for you."
"Why?" I asked.
"Your talent is meant for someone who runs away and hides. That has to be your instinct. Training you to overcome that would be wrong. I'll teach you stuff to help you get away. But that's your focus: get away. Hide. Run, not fight. Don't try to be a hero."
* * *
So I could have dived for the gun and tried to keep it away from the Russian woman. Or I could have grabbed my bulletproof vest and used it to shield the guards from her.
Instead, I stood still and hoped nobody would shoot me if I didn't look threatening. Lydia's advice had destroyed my remaining illusions of becoming a James-Bond-style spy, but I had realized the wisdom of what she said and learned to play to my strengths.
Jorge must have noticed the woman's movement. He reacted quickly, stepping on her wrist as her hand closed around her gun. She cried out in pain. He pointed his gun at her face and said, "Drop the gun."
She did.
Carlos arrived and kept me covered with his gun. At Jorge's prompting, the woman got up and stood next to me again, hands behind her head.
"I warned you not to trust her," I said.
"Silencio," said Carlos.
They made her strip down to her bra and panties and then searched her clothes, where they discovered the prototype chip.
"I told you she was the thief," I said. "I'm on your side, really."
She glared at me. Jorge and Carlos ignored my comment and proceeded to discuss things in Spanish. The gist of what I could understand was that Carlos wanted to call the police, and Jorge wanted to talk to management first.
Police was good — I would eventually get away. Management could be better, or worse. There weren't a lot of prosecutions for corporate espionage, because the companies involved didn't want the stockholders to know how vulnerable they were. Sometimes management would pay a "security consulting fee" to a thief as an incentive to stay away and keep his mouth shut. And sometimes management decided that more permanent shutting up was necessary.
My Spanish wasn't good enough to determine which way the decision went, but Jorge pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Carlos became the subject of some rather heated scolding when it turned out he didn't have his handcuffs with him.
Finally, Jorge cuffed my left wrist to the woman's right wrist. Paying no attention to my requests that I be allowed to go to the bathroom, Jorge and Carlos then took us in the elevators down to the third basement level and shoved us into an empty storage room. The metal door clanged shut, and keys jingled as the lock clicked.
I smiled. In sixty seconds, Jorge and Carlos wouldn't remember who I was. When they came back for the woman, I would tell them some story about how I ended up here by mistake — although my state of undress might be kind of tough to explain.
First, though, I had to get out of the handcuffs, and my lockpicks were gone along with my pants.
"What's your name?" I asked the woman.
Her hazel eyes looked at me coldly. "Why should I tell you?"
"No reason, I guess. But can I borrow one of these?" I reached up to her hair, and before she could object I pulled out a bobby pin. An auburn braid flopped down beside her cheek.
"Ow," she said. "You pulled some hair."
"Sorry." With practiced ease, I bent the bobby pin at its curve until it snapped in two. Then I held my handcuffed wrist up so I could access the keyhole. The police generally don't spread this information around, but handcuffs are about the easiest locks in the world to pick. Once I get a bit of wire in the keyhole, it takes less than a second to pop the lock.
Except there was no keyhole. I blinked and twisted my arm around to look at the handcuffs from the other side. Where the keyhole should have been, there was only smooth metal.
"You've gotta be kidding me," I said.
"I make no joke," she said.
I shook my head. "That means 'I don't believe it.' These handcuffs have no keyholes."
"Oh," she said. She pulled her handcuff closer, dragging my arm along with it. "Is magnetic lock. Only opens with special key."
Obviously I needed to subscribe to Cat Burglar Monthly or Handcuffs Illustrated to keep up to date on the latest developments. In any case, this complicated things. I tried to visualize myself explaining my situation to Jorge or Carlos: "I was looking for the bathroom, and I accidentally lost my clothes and ended up here in this storage room, where this strange woman somehow unlocked one of her handcuffs and put it on me." No way that was going to work. And if management decided to put us in permanent storage, I wouldn't have another chance to escape. I wondered if my corpse would be forgotten.
"Okay," I said. "Let's find a way out of here. I need a bathroom." As long as she didn't have the prototype, I didn't have a problem with helping her escape.
"Yelena," she said.
"What?"
"My name."
"Oh, right. Pleased to meet you. I'm Nat." I suddenly realized I was alone with a beautiful woman, and both of us were in our underwear. My face grew hot.
* * *
I didn't date much as a teenager — or as an adult, for that matter. My talent did provide me with an initial advantage in meeting women, as I could try approaching a girl several times in order to find out what she liked.
As for the end of a relationship, I never had to worry about breaking a girl's heart or being pursued by a jealous ex-girlfriend. A minute after I left, she would be over me.
While all that would have been great if all I wanted were one-night stands with women I'd just met, I longed for something more than that. I would have been thrilled just to have a real date. I lost track of the times I'd take a woman out to dinner, only to have her go to the restroom and forget she was out with me. And begging a woman not to go to the restroom doesn't make a good impression. Neither does following her to the bathroom and trying to carry on a conversation through the door.
In that situation, bathrooms were not my friends.
* * *
A broken bobby pin worked great on normal handcuffs, but made for an awkward pick of a door lock, even after grinding it down on the concrete floor. After about fifteen minutes, I was getting close to opening the storage room door. Then I heard Jorge's voice in the hallway. He paused, then spoke again, like he was talking to someone on a cell phone.
"Quick," I said, handing Yelena the bobby-pin lockpicks. "Kneel here and pretend you were trying to pick the lock." I stood and pressed my back against the wall next to the door, with my handcuffed arm stretched awkwardly across my stomach.
She knelt, but said, "They expect we try to escape."
I chuckled. "They expect you. Not me."
Frowning, she glanced up at me. Then, with a jingle of keys, the door unlocked and swung outward.
"Move back," Jorge said. I still couldn't see him because he was standing outside the room.
Yelena scooted backward on her knees, holding her hands up so her right wrist wouldn't pull my left hand into Jorge's view.
"How did you undo the handcuffs?" Jorge asked, probably remembering having cuffed her hands together or to something in the room. And he moved forward enough that I could see his gun.
The situation was not ideal. Jorge was holding the gun in his right hand, with his finger on the trigger. I was to his left, which meant that in order to twist the gun out of his hand, I would have to turn the barrel toward me. From what Lydia had taught me, I knew I wasn't supposed to do that — especially not while wearing only my underwear.
So I varied the technique as I grabbed the top of his gun, pointing the barrel upward as I twisted the gun in his hand. I must have surprised him enough that he didn't think to pull the trigger, and I managed to wrench the gun from him.
Jorge didn't stay surprised for long. Holding the top of the gun, not its grip, meant there was no way I could fire it. He lunged toward me, reaching for the gun with both hands.
"Give it to me, or I will shoot you," she said.
Handing the prototype over to someone who could be an agent of the SVR — the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service — was not a very attractive option. But getting shot didn't really appeal to me, either. I decided that it might be easier to let her have it and then steal it back from her later. After all, she wouldn't remember that someone else was after the prototype.
Careful to make no sudden movements, I reached down to the pocket holding the prototype and took it out. "Here it is."
"Put it on table," she said, pointing to one of the lab workbenches.
I complied.
"Turn around and lie down on floor."
I lay down.
She must have walked to the door very quietly, because I didn't hear her footfalls. I heard the door open, then shut.
I gave her a one minute head start, then got up and raced to the lab door. I needed to get out of the building in time to follow her or I might lose her trail.
I opened the door and rushed into the hallway, and almost bumped into her. She stood with her hands held behind her head. Her gun lay on the floor. A few feet down the hall, a guard pointed a gun at her.
"¡Alto!" said the guard, swinging the gun toward me.
I raised my hands. At least the Russians weren't going to get the prototype. And maybe I could try again later, although security would probably get tighter after this.
Making a run for it wasn't an option, because then the guard might follow me and allow the woman to escape with the prototype. But I might be able to get the guard to concentrate on her instead of me.
"Jorge," I said, reading his nametag, "I'm a CIA officer." I hoped this guard's English was as good as Carlos's. "This woman is a Russian spy I've been tailing. I tried to stop her from stealing—"
"He lies," she said. "I never—"
"Stop!" Jorge shook his gun for emphasis.
We both shut up.
"Take off your masks," he said.
I stripped mine off and dropped it on the floor. She did the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of auburn braids pinned up on her head.
"Now your pants, mister," he said.
"What?" I said. "You're not serious."
"You have too many pockets," he said. "Take them off."
Reluctantly, I obeyed. I had to take off my shoes to get the pants off, and I piled everything on top of my ski mask. It was embarrassing, but at least I had the consolation that no one but me would remember this ridiculous scene.
"And your shirt," said Jorge.
"It doesn't have any pockets," I said.
He shrugged. "I don't trust you."
I took off my shirt, revealing the bulletproof vest.
"That also," said Jorge, so I added it to the pile.
Standing there in nothing but my boxer shorts and socks, I straightened to my full height, looked him in the eye, and said, "If you want me to take off any more, you'll have to buy me dinner first."
Beside me, the woman let out a tiny, soprano snort. "You are right not to trust him," she said, pointing at me. "This man kidnap me and force me to help him break in here. I grab his gun and run away when you found me. Thank you for saving me." Her tone was so desperately earnest, if I hadn't known she was lying I might have believed her.
"Don't trust her," I said. "Arrest us both, and we can sort it all out later."
Another guard came running down the hall to join Jorge — Carlos from the front desk. Jorge turned his head to see who it was, and the woman dove toward her gun on the floor.
* * *
Becoming a thief was only partly out of necessity. At the time, I was a friendless teenager who had just lost the only person who cared about me, and I was angry at the world. Stealing was my revenge.
But my mother had not raised me to be a thief. She taught me right from wrong, of course. But more than that, she believed I had a destiny.
"You have your talent for a reason," she would say. "God must have something special he wants you to do." I guess that was her way of justifying the sacrifices she made for me — that it was all part of some grand plan. She was so sure about it that I believed her.
Until the night of the fire.
My mother was the reason I ended up joining the CIA: so that in some small way I could be the hero she always believed me to be.
But the CIA didn't spend much time training me for combat — partly because my instructors couldn't remember what they had already taught me, which led to some wasted time. But the most important reason was explained to me by my unarmed combat instructor, a petite blonde named Lydia.
"You're my instructor?" I asked, as she walked over to me in the training room.
"I am," she said. "Edward's just explained to me about your unique skills. Try to take me down."
"Take you down?" At six-two, I was about a foot taller than her, and I outweighed her by seventy pounds or more. I didn't want to hurt her.
"Yes, please," she said.
I reached out to grab her arm. She had me face down on the blue mat in less than five seconds. Her knee pinned my right arm behind my back.
She leaned in close to my ear and said, "You don't want to fight."
Even if she only weighed a hundred pounds, it all seemed to be concentrated on my lungs. "I don't?" I finally managed to say.
"No." She eased up, and I drew in a deeper breath. "You don't have the killer instinct."
"Can you teach me that?"
She laughed. "You can't teach instinct. Sometimes you can awaken it. But that's often a nasty process. Sometimes you can learn to fake it. But that's the wrong choice for you."
"Why?" I asked.
"Your talent is meant for someone who runs away and hides. That has to be your instinct. Training you to overcome that would be wrong. I'll teach you stuff to help you get away. But that's your focus: get away. Hide. Run, not fight. Don't try to be a hero."
* * *
So I could have dived for the gun and tried to keep it away from the Russian woman. Or I could have grabbed my bulletproof vest and used it to shield the guards from her.
Instead, I stood still and hoped nobody would shoot me if I didn't look threatening. Lydia's advice had destroyed my remaining illusions of becoming a James-Bond-style spy, but I had realized the wisdom of what she said and learned to play to my strengths.
Jorge must have noticed the woman's movement. He reacted quickly, stepping on her wrist as her hand closed around her gun. She cried out in pain. He pointed his gun at her face and said, "Drop the gun."
She did.
Carlos arrived and kept me covered with his gun. At Jorge's prompting, the woman got up and stood next to me again, hands behind her head.
"I warned you not to trust her," I said.
"Silencio," said Carlos.
They made her strip down to her bra and panties and then searched her clothes, where they discovered the prototype chip.
"I told you she was the thief," I said. "I'm on your side, really."
She glared at me. Jorge and Carlos ignored my comment and proceeded to discuss things in Spanish. The gist of what I could understand was that Carlos wanted to call the police, and Jorge wanted to talk to management first.
Police was good — I would eventually get away. Management could be better, or worse. There weren't a lot of prosecutions for corporate espionage, because the companies involved didn't want the stockholders to know how vulnerable they were. Sometimes management would pay a "security consulting fee" to a thief as an incentive to stay away and keep his mouth shut. And sometimes management decided that more permanent shutting up was necessary.
My Spanish wasn't good enough to determine which way the decision went, but Jorge pulled out a pair of handcuffs. Carlos became the subject of some rather heated scolding when it turned out he didn't have his handcuffs with him.
Finally, Jorge cuffed my left wrist to the woman's right wrist. Paying no attention to my requests that I be allowed to go to the bathroom, Jorge and Carlos then took us in the elevators down to the third basement level and shoved us into an empty storage room. The metal door clanged shut, and keys jingled as the lock clicked.
I smiled. In sixty seconds, Jorge and Carlos wouldn't remember who I was. When they came back for the woman, I would tell them some story about how I ended up here by mistake — although my state of undress might be kind of tough to explain.
First, though, I had to get out of the handcuffs, and my lockpicks were gone along with my pants.
"What's your name?" I asked the woman.
Her hazel eyes looked at me coldly. "Why should I tell you?"
"No reason, I guess. But can I borrow one of these?" I reached up to her hair, and before she could object I pulled out a bobby pin. An auburn braid flopped down beside her cheek.
"Ow," she said. "You pulled some hair."
"Sorry." With practiced ease, I bent the bobby pin at its curve until it snapped in two. Then I held my handcuffed wrist up so I could access the keyhole. The police generally don't spread this information around, but handcuffs are about the easiest locks in the world to pick. Once I get a bit of wire in the keyhole, it takes less than a second to pop the lock.
Except there was no keyhole. I blinked and twisted my arm around to look at the handcuffs from the other side. Where the keyhole should have been, there was only smooth metal.
"You've gotta be kidding me," I said.
"I make no joke," she said.
I shook my head. "That means 'I don't believe it.' These handcuffs have no keyholes."
"Oh," she said. She pulled her handcuff closer, dragging my arm along with it. "Is magnetic lock. Only opens with special key."
Obviously I needed to subscribe to Cat Burglar Monthly or Handcuffs Illustrated to keep up to date on the latest developments. In any case, this complicated things. I tried to visualize myself explaining my situation to Jorge or Carlos: "I was looking for the bathroom, and I accidentally lost my clothes and ended up here in this storage room, where this strange woman somehow unlocked one of her handcuffs and put it on me." No way that was going to work. And if management decided to put us in permanent storage, I wouldn't have another chance to escape. I wondered if my corpse would be forgotten.
"Okay," I said. "Let's find a way out of here. I need a bathroom." As long as she didn't have the prototype, I didn't have a problem with helping her escape.
"Yelena," she said.
"What?"
"My name."
"Oh, right. Pleased to meet you. I'm Nat." I suddenly realized I was alone with a beautiful woman, and both of us were in our underwear. My face grew hot.
* * *
I didn't date much as a teenager — or as an adult, for that matter. My talent did provide me with an initial advantage in meeting women, as I could try approaching a girl several times in order to find out what she liked.
As for the end of a relationship, I never had to worry about breaking a girl's heart or being pursued by a jealous ex-girlfriend. A minute after I left, she would be over me.
While all that would have been great if all I wanted were one-night stands with women I'd just met, I longed for something more than that. I would have been thrilled just to have a real date. I lost track of the times I'd take a woman out to dinner, only to have her go to the restroom and forget she was out with me. And begging a woman not to go to the restroom doesn't make a good impression. Neither does following her to the bathroom and trying to carry on a conversation through the door.
In that situation, bathrooms were not my friends.
* * *
A broken bobby pin worked great on normal handcuffs, but made for an awkward pick of a door lock, even after grinding it down on the concrete floor. After about fifteen minutes, I was getting close to opening the storage room door. Then I heard Jorge's voice in the hallway. He paused, then spoke again, like he was talking to someone on a cell phone.
"Quick," I said, handing Yelena the bobby-pin lockpicks. "Kneel here and pretend you were trying to pick the lock." I stood and pressed my back against the wall next to the door, with my handcuffed arm stretched awkwardly across my stomach.
She knelt, but said, "They expect we try to escape."
I chuckled. "They expect you. Not me."
Frowning, she glanced up at me. Then, with a jingle of keys, the door unlocked and swung outward.
"Move back," Jorge said. I still couldn't see him because he was standing outside the room.
Yelena scooted backward on her knees, holding her hands up so her right wrist wouldn't pull my left hand into Jorge's view.
"How did you undo the handcuffs?" Jorge asked, probably remembering having cuffed her hands together or to something in the room. And he moved forward enough that I could see his gun.
The situation was not ideal. Jorge was holding the gun in his right hand, with his finger on the trigger. I was to his left, which meant that in order to twist the gun out of his hand, I would have to turn the barrel toward me. From what Lydia had taught me, I knew I wasn't supposed to do that — especially not while wearing only my underwear.
So I varied the technique as I grabbed the top of his gun, pointing the barrel upward as I twisted the gun in his hand. I must have surprised him enough that he didn't think to pull the trigger, and I managed to wrench the gun from him.
Jorge didn't stay surprised for long. Holding the top of the gun, not its grip, meant there was no way I could fire it. He lunged toward me, reaching for the gun with both hands.
