The Expert

short story

"The Expert" is part of a cycle of stories revolving around a mysterious organization of dissidents known as the Miranda Foundation, operating sometime in the near history of the world.

ice," said Sergeant Kon Strophy, tactical group leader, looking down at the last few components arranged in neat piles on the low camp table.

The munitions expert smiled, showing teeth. Hardly looking at his hands now, his fingers brushed over the tiny bits of metal and plastic and putty, sweeping them almost magically into place inside the square shell of the bomb.

He twirled the little electronic soldering iron once by its handle, running a single line of silver around the joints.

"A bomb," he said, speaking softly, for the first time in two and a half hours, "should be a work of art: compact, beautiful, and with enough kick to blow the crap out of the target."

The group leader touched the thin square with the tip of one finger, noticing unfortunately that his entire hand had begun to shake. If the expert's interest in bombs was unsettling, his own was completely unnerving. When had he become such a gore-hound? Was he actually looking forward to this mission? A war was one thing; an assignment to kill three people in cold blood was definitely another. The First World Congress had brought in its wake a new sense of restraint to military thought all over the globe – And yet, he couldn't take his eyes of the mute flicker of moonlight that dusted the little bomb. And yes, the expert was right. It was beautiful.

"And there's some sort of safety feature? I don't want our runner to get caught in the blast."

"Not prepared to suffer some losses?" The expert smiled coldly. "The boy will be safe."

The tiny bomb seemed to take on a life of its own, pulsing in the moonlight full of its deadly potential. Strophy, never a fanciful man, felt unease creeping up his spine with metal-chill claws. "This is enough explosive to do the job?"

The expert opened the black leather case that held such a vast array of silver instruments and began replacing the tools of his trade in their velvet beds. Acutely aware that his question had gone unanswered and would likely stay that way, the group leader turned away. He had other things to do, and he was damned if he would let this man's arrogance get to him.

He came around the table to the back of the glider, glad to have the expert's back toward him, and found the runner curled in a corner by the wheel well, shaking like an asthmatic shot up with adrenalin.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" the group leader hissed. "The thing's done. You're going at 0100, nine minutes. We fuck the schedule, we're going to miss these guys."

The runner rocked, holding his knees, his face upturned but his fear taking him somewhere far away. "Can't, can't, can't. Please, Sergeant Strophy, don't make me do it."

"Get up, damn you. Damn you." The group leader grabbed the runner by the collar and under one arm and hauled him over the end of the glider. The metal wings trembled. Shock. This was a condition he was trained to deal with. After the expert's passionless appraisals in the briefing, after his exemplary but frighteningly controlled behaviour here, it was almost a relief to see someone exhibiting emotion. The runner's legs touched the ground, and buckled, refusing to support him.

"What the hell's gotten into you?" said the group leader, the hiss of his voice breaking above a whisper. "You want to compromise the whole mission? You came to do a job, and you're going to do it."

He lifted the runner awkwardly and held him against the body of the glider. The guy was young, but good. It would be disappointing if his career ended this way, ignobly, in tears.

The runner was blubbering now, his lips wet, saliva bubbles forming at the corners of the dark mouth. "I can't," he whispered brokenly. "Bloody cold bastard. What a bloody cold bastard." He whimpered, low in his throat. "Just sitting there. Look at my hands. He's making the damn thing that's going to kill those people, and he looks like he enjoys it. Bloody cold bastard."

Strophy turned enough to see the munitions expert, his hands once again moving in their unnatural way across the table, instruments disappearing with each pass of his fingers into the brown case. Then, the expert's head swiveled smoothly up toward him, his cold eyes meeting and locking, one hand suddenly resting on the deadly little bomb with fingers arched like a pianist's. The group leader turned and slammed the runner against the glider again, as hard as he could. "Damn," he said, terse, and stood for a moment as the runner sobbed quietly, and slumped down, and curled himself up near the bumper.

"Put yourself on report, Private," ordered Strophy. Enough. The mission was a bust. He handed the young man the pocket fax and watched him scan the bar code implanted under the skin on his wrist and enter the appropriate information on the keypad.

"What's happened, sir?" said the voice of Jack Stothers in his ear.

Strophy shook his head. "It's over." Stothers was a good friend as well as a good soldier. They had come up from military college together, both dedicated, Strophy, the more ambitious of the two, advancing further.

But there was no place during a mission like this for relaxing into casual relations. Strophy, hating every moment he had to be close to the expert, turned away from Stothers and returned to the table.

The expert had finished and was leaning against a tree, his face inscrutable in shadow and placid in consideration. One of those clever, deadly hands tapped his throat, the other was locked in the cleft of the opposite elbow. "Problem?" he asked, smooth as silk.

"Boy's cracked," said the leader, caught suddenly breathless in the middle of a sigh as the expert once more met his eyes with those passionless hazel ones. He could have – should have sent Stothers to deal with this impossible man.

"No problem." The expert unhooked the hand, uncrossed the arms, straightened deliberately. "I'll go in myself."

"No. You're too valuable," said the group leader, almost hoping the expert would protest, that something would go terribly wrong inside, feeling the incredible opportunity they had discovered slipping away. "The mission is aborted." He turned back to the runner, and felt more than heard the munitions expert glide past his back. He whirled, two quick little steps. The expert held up the bomb, two fingers light.

"You don't have a choice," he said, and lifted his shirt to fix the bomb into the small of his back.

Two minutes later, right on time, the munitions expert slid into the shadows, leaving the group leader to clean the primary camp into the glider. He wasn't watching as the glider lifted straight up a few feet in the air and slid almost silently away. The expert was just where he wanted to be, especially with what he knew was hidden behind the tautness in his superior's face. The bomb weighed next to nothing, but the coolness of the plastic was better than any human touch in the world.

He knew the plans of the old factory; he knew them more exactly than the young man who was supposed to have gone in, more than he ever would. The mental blueprint, clear as an image burned on celluloid, guided his feet through the darkness, around the empty packing crates and abandoned machinery of a forgotten time.

Voices. Quiet, they intruded on the edge of his awareness. My awareness, he thought, savouring the ease with which the image came to him, is an ever-expanding circle, where the borders of consciousness ever more border a greater number of things unknown. They were, he smiled, exactly where they were supposed to be.

One more silent aisle cluttered with debris from the past, and their words were at last able to reach him without obstructions. Only three of them, as he had been told. He had hardly believed it. Three men had, in less than six months, come within an English-hare of destroying the most powerful government in the history of the world.

The munitions expert watched, intrigued to know just what sorts of creatures these men were. He had nothing at all against anarchists. It all depended on whose side he was playing for. Loyalty, it was as incestuous and transitory as any emotion. And right now, the people, the people of the government who had bought his loyalty, wanted these three dead.

The expert recognized Henry Falk immediately. There was no mistaking his handsome, slightly balding head, the strong, smooth features and compact body. Here was a man whose profile would be more at home on the back of a coin than in a sultry warm, dark and deserted factory, plotting the overthrow of a government. In another time, he might have been a great man, instead of a world-class criminal. Falk carried the yellow lamp they were using, pacing around the small table at which the others sat.

Falk's voice was a tight, tiny stream of waves. His was the one voice they hadn't been able to distinguish on the voice print. He knew enough to keep his voice pitched low. His companions were louder, and they were arguing.

The one whose face the expert could see was Ramir Loscantos, a fighter, this one. Loscantos had been a hard man to trail; like Falk he was a survivor, used to covering his tracks and improvising solutions in situations that would have struck a lesser man as hopeless. They had caught up to this one several times, only to find their leads disappear into a Gordion-knot tangle of backtracking and false identities. Loscantos was the charmer of the lot, a lizard with greater aptitude for concealment and adaptability than a chameleon. He had the confidences of no less than thirty multi-million dollar corporations with such an ability for deception that even now, with his face on the news every night coupled to reports of his actions, many of his victims refused to believe they'd been had.

The third figure was Georgina Salter, and the weak side of the triangle. The expert needed no more than the curly brown of the back of her head to make the positive identification. She had been a well-placed executive, a senior vice-president in a major multinational corporation: links to organized crime, never proven, and some nasty personal habits, never discovered until recently. Her position had been in robotics research and development, some of the most highly advanced androids ever assembled emerging from her plants and ending up with the government and eventually the military. The expert had a special interest in Salter's career.

With her disappearance, treated as a kidnapping, and finally her re-emergence as a member of Falk's triumvirate, came a lot of serious questions and more serious discoveries about the woman whose career to that point had been quite remarkably unspectacular. Salter had met Ramir Loscantos through the normal course of her work, and had almost certainly come in contact with Falk as well, but there had been no reason to connect any of them with anything world-shattering. Salter had gone on, long after her initial meetings with Loscantos, collecting a final tally of nearly sixty million dollars worth of state of the art electronics equipment, and a immeasurable amount of priceless knowledge covering everything from the latest in weapons R & D to military security codes.

And then the name Miranda began to surface.

All this would have been bad enough if Falk and his compatriots were working on their own, looking for private bidders. But the crazies at the Miranda Foundation were involved somehow, and the government would now rather have total destruction of the stolen technology than chance Miranda getting its hands on it.

It had been Salter that had given them the break they needed, Salter who was not as bright or as adaptable as either of her comrades, who believed herself invulnerable in a way that had caused a certain well-placed general to joke that she had a death wish. There was nothing light-hearted about the mission, though. Nothing would do except for these three to be brought to justice and the technology recovered, or, ideally, as the expert had been told in one of his more confidential briefings, dead and destroyed.

The expert flattened himself against the wall and pictured the bit of plastic strapped to his back.

Suddenly, as the expert watched, Salter tensed. The weak link had developed some kind of sixth sense.

"Something's out there," she said, her voice sinking to a barely audible thread.

"I think you're right," said Falk carefully in his modulated English, the first time his words had been clearly distinguishable. The expert smiled. This was a challenge.

Stothers finished calming the private, agitated and nervous. Something was wrong with Strophy, not just the mission, but the group leader was unapproachable. They had changed the location of their base to beyond the compound fence. In fifteen minutes, it would all be over, one way or another.

The glider was a lovely invention, a perfect craft for stealth operations. It hovered a maximum of fifteen feet over the ground, enabling it to cross small stretches of water as well as to sail over most security fences. It was a small miracle of engineering even in these days of limited anti-gravity experimentation - and it had come out of TechArcana just like everything Henry Salter had made off with. The group leader was not hard pressed to understand the vital nature of his mission.

Stothers was at his arm several minutes before speaking. "The boy's sedated," he said finally. "I thought it best, especially if there's trouble."

"I don't think there will be," said Strophy. "The kid is right. Bloody cold creature."

"What's troubling you?" Stothers felt the other man stiffen as he made the query. In the group leader's world, you didn't ever mix friendship with duty.

To his surprise, Strophy answered. "I'm in a crisis, Jack, that's the problem. I'm beginning to worry about my sanity."

This, they both knew, was an admission which could ruin him, even spoken casually. Stothers was respectfully silent, waiting for the other man to continue, giving his support the only way he could.

"We're not in a war. There's no enemy, exactly. The Mirandas may be heretics, but they're not militant. The First World Congress was supposed to stop this kind of reaction. Military strikes against social terrorism – it's crazy. This whole mission feels wrong. It's about money, not about lives." He paused. "And I don't seem to care."

"It's orders, sir," said Stothers hoping that the appropriate formality would help his friend. "No one can fault you for obeying a military command. And of course in a combat situation you will have to do things you regret."

"Damn it, we're not in a war!" Strophy exploded. "This is not about guns and body counts. This is about blowing three people to bits, and don't have me believe that that wasn't the intention all along. No one wants these three to come out alive. But it's not that either. It's that cold bastard of a munitions expert. He's got me looking forward to it."

There was an awkward silence between the two men. "He's what?" said Stothers finally, eyebrow arching, trying to make his tone light. Make it sound like a joke.

"Jack, I've flipped. This is what I always thought I would be safe from. I don't want to be another army juggernaut racing with guns blazing into every situation. That kind of thing should be in the savage past. I pride myself on my humanity and my discretion, and here I am discussing with a perfect madman how far the pieces of these three men are going to fly when the bomb goes off. That's what it is. And I'm going to spend the rest of my life in the military, there's no way around that. The only alternative is madness. A war is one thing."

"And if this prevents a war?"

"And drives us back into a past where a human life is valueless? We're supposed to protect people. This is a cold-blooded massacre, an assassination."

Stothers was silent. Strophy, embarrassed, turned to the glider. "It'll all be over soon. Then I can figure out what's happening to me."

The expert was quick, but Falk was quicker. The dog, straining its leash, foam forming on its broad maw, backed him down into the corner between two perpendicular rows of boxes.

"Well, well, well, look what we have here," said Falk. Loscantos had the leash, but Falk was controlling the situation.

They led the expert back to their nook and the card table that was serving to hold the array of papers and tiny models.

"A big step down from executive boardrooms," the expert noted.

Salter rose immediately. "What the – " she began, but Falk silenced her.

"Quiet, Salter," he said, conversationally. "This is one of us, although maybe he doesn't know it yet. The dogs know."

Loscantos tied the dogs. At a nod from Falk, the two of them took the expert off his feet and flipped him on to his stomach. Loscantos wrenched his arm up and stood with one foot resting on his neck. Falk, kneeling on the expert's legs, pulled up his jacket, then the shirt.

The bomb shone dully in the low light. Its display read fifteen seconds, fourteen seconds.

"Christ!" shouted Salter, and the expert threw the two men off him in a sudden explosion. The bomb came off into Falk's hand. Loscantos pulled the leash off the pillar where it was fastened and pursued.

The expert ran, and found himself again in a corner. "You've been redecorating," he said as Loscantos led him back to the card table.

"We thought it would be wise to change the layout of the warehouse." Loscantos' voice was calm and steady.

Falk was holding the little bomb up at eye level, display turned so the expert could see. "No need to defuse this one," he said. The numbers ran down from five – four – three – two – one – and then flashed back to five and began the countdown again.

"A safety feature," said the expert.

Falk's clear grey eyes narrowed. "You must consider yourself very good to only want five seconds of leeway.

"Life's ambition – to experience my work first-hand."

He made to run, but Loscantos was on him in a moment. "Don't move, funny man."

Salter was agitated. "I don't like this. Who is he? Government? The military?"

Falk considered. "A merc, rather, don't you think?" Without preamble, he aimed a heavy shot to the expert's middle. The other man doubled over, coughing – then looked crookedly up at Falk, a grin splitting the sharp face.

Falk shook his hand, then held it up to the light and examined it pensively, flexing it so the tendons bulged. "Yes, indeed," he said, and regarded the expert with something approaching surprise. "One of us, as I said."

Not giving time for expansion on the thought, the expert shoved Loscantos' hands off him and twisted away, running, choosing the route he'd come in by instead of trusting to his memory of the blueprints. Loscantos raced after, but Falk's voice carried to him – "Let him. We have to get out of here."

The expert, running, but with his voice level and not even slightly out of breath, called over his shoulder. "A voice command, Falk. It's operated by my voice." And louder – "Go!"

At the provisional center of the warehouse, Falk tensed and lobbed the tiny bomb with all his strength in the direction of that hateful voice – three – two –

"Run!" Falk screamed, knowing all the time there was no more time to escape.

The warehouse exploded in a fireball of heat and light.

The expert streaked by in a flash of drab army regulation colour and a quick gleam of metal. Strophy, on his hands and knees, threw himself toward the thicket where the other man had gone to earth.

He found the expert crouched, like a tensely coiled spring, his hands to the side of the face he kept turned away from the officer.

"A successful mission, Sergeant?" Even after the fireball, the expert was unshaken, a distinct note of triumph in his voice.

Strophy fought to keep his gorge down. This man had become the essence of all he considered distasteful.

"Congratulation, soldier," he said, keeping his tone gruff. "A successful mission."

"Excellent," said the expert, hands moving and exploring. The visible eye darted back and forth as if an uncontrolled spasm had taken hold. Strophy took note, the wild hazel globe seemed sightless, casting about blindly.

"Are you injured, soldier?" Strophy said, fighting his voice to a flat pitch. Slowly and cautiously, he began to move around the other man, circling with infinite care to see what those quick fingers had a hold of. As he did, one hand yanked, the expert's head jerked alarmingly, and there was a sound like cracking bone.

The expert turned those cold eyes on Strophy. "Well. . . sir?" he said.

Strophy stood in full view of that hidden portion of the expert's face. This eye was steady, but lost in a sea of destroyed tissue. The skin hung in thin layers from the undamaged perimeter of his face – but there was no blood.

"Surprised, Sergeant?" said the expert, more of that morbid glee entering his - its voice. Strophy felt his gorge rise and this time, there was nothing for him to do but to turn away and throw up the contents of his stomach. He retched painfully for a minute, then wiped his mouth and turned back, sure that greeting him would be the smug, ruined face of the munitions expert, half his face exposing burnished metal beneath the stripped skin, the eye rotating on a stalk of cables.

"I was injured in the blast," said the expert, calm as always.

"Machines can't get injured, only broken," Strophy spat, unable to control his distate, his shock.

"I had you fooled." The expert patted the skin back over the surface of bronze.

"Tell your masters –" Strophy felt his gut relaxing for the first time in days. "Tell your masters that you in no way resemble a human being emotionally. Tell them that I knew all the time."

"Your little conversation with your crony? – I have very good ears," he added when Strophy lunged toward him, violence on his mind. The group leader caught himself; the expert removed a tiny transceiver from one ear and picked a second off Strophy's shoulder. "No, Sergeant, you wouldn't be able to hurt me. I am nearly indestructible. I caught the brunt of that blast."

Strophy deflated, brushing the fatigues where he had been bugged. "And those three men are dead."

The expert smiled, the cheekbones wrinkling the loose flap of skin. "This is war, Sergeant – or at least in the minds of my masters it is. Henry Falk and the Miranda Foundation are no more."

"What a triumph for humanity."

The expert inclined his head.

Strophy continued. "If you overheard my conversation with Stothers, you'll know how delighted I am to discover your – true nature. I feel better than I have in days."

The expert broke in. "My being an android makes you happy to be human? My dear Strophy, you appear to be overlooking one thing yourself."

Strophy – "And what is that, machine?"

The expert grinned coldly. "You may be happy that no human being was involved in the slaughter – yes, slaughter – of three basically innocent people who for all their faults had never committed that most heinous of human sins, murder. It gives you a kind of moral victory over me, I suppose, believing yourself probably incapable of cold-bloodedly performing an act that so outrages your sensibilities. There's only one thing more to consider, you child of this gentler age."

Strophy pursed his lips. "And what is that?"

The expert smoothed a quick, cleverer than human hand over its self-satisfied face. "I wouldn't exist if a human being hadn't made me."

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