up. What part of the cycle is your platoon in?”
“They’ve been jacked for two days. In the soldierboys for one.” I thought. “They’re probably still in Portobello, training. Breaking in the new platoon leader with exercises in Pedroville.”
“Okay. The first thing I have to do is see whether my pet general can have their training period extended—five or six days ought to be plenty. You’re sure that phone line’s secure?”
“Absolutely,” Mendez said. “Otherwise we’d all be in uniform or in institutions, including you.”
“That gives us about two weeks. Plenty of time. I can do the memory modification on Julian in two or three days. Have orders cut for him to be waiting for the platoon in Building 31.”
“But we’re not sure whether he should go there,” Amelia said. “If the people who sent Ingram after me got ahold of Peter and made him talk, then they know Julian collaborated on the math. The next time he reports for duty they’ll grab him.”
I squeezed her hand. “I suppose it’s a risk I’ll have to take. You can fix it so that they won’t be able to learn about this place from me.”
Marty nodded, thoughtful. “That part’s pretty routine, tailoring your memory. But it does put us in a bind . . . we have to erase the memory of your having worked on the Problem, in order for you to get back into Portobello. But if they grab you because of Peter and find a hole there, instead of a memory, they’ll know you’ve been tampered with.”
“Could you link it with the suicide attempt?” I asked. “Jefferson was proposing to erase those memories anyhow. Couldn’t you make it look like that’s what had been done?”
“Maybe. Just maybe . . . may I?” Marty poured some wine into a plastic cup. He offered it to Mendez, and he shook his head. “It’s not an additive process, unfortunately—I can take away memories, but I can’t substitute false ones.” He sipped. “It’s a possibility, though. With Jefferson on our side. It wouldn’t be hard to have him supposedly erase too much, so that it covered the week you were working up in Washington.”
“This is looking more and more fragile,” Amelia said. “I mean, I know almost nothing about being jacked—but if these powers that be tapped into you or Mendez or Jefferson, wouldn’t the whole thing come tumbling down?”
“What we need is a suicide pill,” I said. “Speaking of suicide.”
“I couldn’t ask people to do that. I’m not sure that I would do it.”
“Not even to save the universe?” I meant that to be sarcastic, but it came out a simple statement.
Marty turned a little pale. “You’re right, of course. I have to at least provide it as an option. For all of us.”
Mendez spoke up. “This is not so dramatic. But we’re overlooking an obvious way of buying time: we could move. Two hundred miles north and we’re in a neutral country. They’d think twice before sending an assassin into Canada.”
We all considered that. “I don’t know,” Marty said. “The Canadian government wouldn’t have any reason to protect us. Some agency would come up with an extradition request and we’d be in Washington the next day, in chains.”
“Mexico,” I said. “The problem with Canada is it’s not corrupt enough. Take the nanoforge down to Mexico and you can buy absolute secrecy.”
“That’s right!” Marty said. “And in Mexico there are plenty of clinics where we can set up jacks and do memory modification.”
“But how do you propose getting the nanoforge there?” Mendez said. “It weighs more than a tonne, not even counting all those vats and buckets and jars of raw materials it feeds on.”
“Use the machine to make a truck?” I said.
“I don’t think so. It can’t make anything bigger than seventy-nine centimeters across. In theory, we could make a truck, but it would be in hundreds of pieces, sections. You’d need a couple of master mechanics and a big metalworking shop, to put it together.”
“Why couldn’t we steal one?” Amelia said in a small voice. “The army has lots of trucks. Your pet general can change official records and have people promoted and transferred. Surely he can have a truck sent around.”
“I suspect it’s harder to move physical objects than information,” Marty said. “Worth a try, though. Anybody know how to drive?”
We all looked at each other. “Four of the Twenty do,” Mendez said. “I’ve never driven a truck, but it can’t be that much different.”
“Maggie Cameron used to be a chauffeur,”