Grantville Gazette 43 Read online

  "Good." I handed her a second chip marked with a "G." "Here's the custom version recording that goes to Garza. Wear a disguise, and hire a bum to deliver it. Watch from a distance and disappear when you're sure he's made the drop. No adlibbing, okay?"

  "Yes, dear. I can be compliant when I want."

  "I know." I kissed her forehead. "When I called Jenkins and told him that I'd extracted a conversation of the mayor plotting with Garza, he promised me a twenty K bonus instead of ten on delivery."

  "Can't you send that chip by messenger? What if they won't let you leave?"

  "The pay-off is forty-thousand dollars, Christine. Enough for us to disappear until this blows over. I've got to take the chance to get the cash. Once Thompson hears the mayor and Garza plotting to kill him, I think he'll hold off on me until he's sure I can't give him anything else useful. By tonight we'll be gone."

  "I don't like it."

  "It was you swapping voices with Janet that gave me the idea to substitute voices and words in the libretto so that the playback sounds like different people are in a conversation. The one you take to Garza is an almost identical libretto, but with the mayor and Thompson plotting to kill Garza. When Garza hears it, I'm hoping for a massive gang war to provide enough noise for us to escape. I also cranked up the underlying background bass—you know, the one voicing HATE, ENVY, and so on. Low frequency sound makes the listener uneasy and moody, perhaps enough to precipitate rash actions. Hopefully, some smoke will have cleared by the time the D.A. gets his copies. You and I will be out of the country before then." I hugged her and whispered in her ear. "Honey, I know you're pregnant. You didn't have to hide that from me. I can't see any other way for the three of us to get a fresh start."

  "Oh," Christine gasped and squeezed me tighter. "God is looking out for us, so I know we'll make it. I know you don't believe that you recorded the voice of God, but think about it, Wally. You never saw a bass line like that until we needed it for a warning, for inspiration. If God is the best listener in the universe, then maybe he occasionally has something to say."

  "If group consciousness is an attribute of God, I'll go along, but I have no idea how either God or group consciousness could manifest a separate voice." I grasped her shoulders and looked in her eyes. "You haven't been messing with Mozart's programming have you?"

  "Me?" Her eyelashes flutter. "You know I don't interfere in your work."

  I frowned, and she became serious.

  "Honestly, Wally, I haven't touched Mozart or any other man since I met you."

  "Okay, Baby." I smiled. "Let's go for it."

  ****

  Choose your climate in Costa Rica by how far you live up the mountains—the closer to the coast, the more expensive. We chose a spot about halfway up. The local college was happy to put me on staff without embarrassing questions, which gave me work permit status and free health care for the baby's birth. Living modestly allowed us to sock away thirty thousand dollars of Thompson's payoff for our future.

  I dragged Mozart from the closet a few months after the baby was born. Not only did I want an early voice sample from our daughter, I wanted to separate the kid's gurgling from Christine's baby talk and the yelling children in the next apartment.

  With only the three of us in the small apartment and the yammer of kids and neighbors as a soothing background, Mozart quickly extracted our family conversations. After Mozart decomposed the more distant conversations from our neighbors, an impressive bass line punctuated the final output on the orchestral score. The low frequency background sound had only one toneme. I hesitated, then asked Mozart to translate. While the word formed, I smiled and resolved to kiss my wife and daughter.

  The libretto line read LOVE.

  ****

  Table of Contents

  What is this? About the Grantville Gazette

  Farm Vet

  She Came Out (of India)

  Snared by a Good Book

  The Marked Man

  Gloom, Despair and Agony on You

  Ein feste Burg, Episode Four

  Second Chance Bird, Episode Eleven

  Airship Propulsion, Part Three, Steaming Along

  Heroes Rising

  Eavesdropping at the Keyhole to Forever