Avatar is the property of people who aren't me. This work of fiction is not authorized by those people.

"It's been thirty-six hours," he said sternly. "Don't tell me you don't have anything."

The younger executive on the video call hesitated before he said, "I don't have a lot."

"That almost sounds worse than having nothing."

"Mister Chairman, the debris field covers a mile and a half, and the resulting fire spread over fifteen acres. They couldn't even get to the heart of the crash site until last night. Between the fire and the firefighters, there just wasn't a lot left," he explained. "It will take time for forensics to start putting the pieces together."

James Savage sighed, although to some it sounded more like a growl. "Who do I have to call?" he asked. "Who's leading the investigation?"

"That's the second problem," his subordinate, Franklin Ashworth, for two years the head of AMIS, replied. "It's a jurisdictional nightmare."

"A spacecraft falls out of the sky, and nobody knows what to do with it?" He snorted. "That's what the ICA is for!"

"ICA has definitive jurisdiction over the Cybele investigation," the executive said. "The crash, on the other hand, happened on American soil. As such, NTSB is claiming jurisdiction over the scene, since we don't allow the UN to conduct domestic investigations. In the meantime, both ICA and the FAA are fighting it out over the illegal reentry of the craft."

"That seems secondary."

"It is, sir, but it also means that neither ICA nor FAA is going to release any recordings to us until there's a final determination and they can protect the chain of custody."

Savage sighed again. "Do you know who would've gotten the recordings by now?"

"Who, sir?"

"Abe."

The executive frowned. "I'm not Abe Scheller."

"That's who I'm paying you to be!" he yelled.

Soon after James Savage learned about Abe's treason, he purged the AMIS staff, starting with Abe's hand-picked successor. However, the man he hired to head up the department was incapable of following through in destroying the Scheller family. After a string of embarrassing, semi-public defeats in court, Savage hired Franklin. Although he was a shrewd investigator, he was annoyingly deferential to protocols.

"Well, Mister Chairman, how would Abe have gone about resolving all this?"

"I don't know," he replied. "The less I knew about how he did what he did, the better off I was." Savage got out of his chair and walked towards the glass wall of his penthouse. He took a moment to survey the RDA campus before he turned his eyes to the San Francisco skyline. The first rays of light had emerged over the horizon, although their radiance was diminished by the smog which blanketed the city. At half a mile up, sitting atop RDA's headquarters, his penthouse offered an unrivaled, panoramic view of the Bay Area.

"So what do you want me to do, sir?" Franklin asked.

"Nothing," he replied. "You haven't done anything so far, so why bother starting now?" He turned back towards the video screen and continued, "I'm going to have lunch with Justice Keane, and we're going to figure out this jurisdictional mess. One of our ships just crashed, and we're sitting around waiting for the news to tell us what's what."

"Actually, the media blackout has been effective," Franklin replied, a hint of optimism in his voice. "So far they're playing that it was a light aircraft crash. The public knows less than we do."

"And we know less than we should!" He returned to his chair and asked, "Has ICA said anything about the Cybele itself?"

Franklin sighed, apparently in relief that he was being asked something he could respond to in detail. "Yes, we do have some preliminary findings from the recovery team. There is evidence of some kind of impact or shielding malfunction that resulted in an inner hull breach. It was severe enough to prevent the crew from accessing the command module."

"Do they know what caused it?"

"Not yet. There was also one crewmember left behind in cryo, a Devon Angler. According to Abe's files, he…"

"He was the infiltrator," Savage interrupted. "Yeah, I remember Abe's crew. Is he talking?"

"No, sir, he's a vegetable."

Savage shrugged. "We can fix that nowadays. Get him woken up. He has to know something."

"Yes, sir."

He sighed again and said, "All right, until we find a corpse with Abe's ID, let's assume he's still alive. Where does he go? What does he do?"

"If his goal is to expose us, he'd go to the media," Franklin replied. "There hasn't been any chatter so far."

"He's been gone for eleven years," Savage said. "It will take him time to reestablish contacts, and he certainly didn't win any friends in journalism while he had your job."

"He'll need a base of operations to do that, and he certainly can't use our facilities."

"Where does his family live?"

"I – I don't know. Somewhere in the Bay Area, anyway."

Savage's patience was beginning to wear thin. He glared at Franklin and asked, "How do you not know? We've been at this for over a day, and you haven't run down his basic information?"

"Sir, we didn't expect him back so soon," Franklin replied. "Furthermore, we expected him to be in custody, not missing in a spacecraft accident. We don't have any assets lined up for this investigation."

"You don't need assets to pull his employee file."

"No, sir." Franklin diverted his attention for a moment, and then looked back at the camera. "The last known address is in Livermore." He shook his head, "Mister Chairman, with all due respect, Abe Scheller is a legend in our 'profession.' Running home when you're trying to evade detection is a rookie mistake."

"So you don't expect him to be there?"

"No, sir."

"Then he's there. I think they call it, 'hiding in plain sight.'"

Franklin did not appear to be persuaded, but he was smart enough not to fight back too hard. "You're aware that his wife owns and operates a private security and investigations consulting firm, right?"

"Yeah, so what?"

"By all accounts, she's very good at it; and she probably has every half-decent and better private investigator on the West Coast in her list of contacts," he replied. "God knows she knows who all of our assets are, or at least their tactics. Finding someone 'off the grid,' so to speak, to investigate is going to take time."

"By which I hope you mean to say that you'll have somebody identified by the time I'm sitting down with the Honorable David Keane for lunch," he replied.

"I mean it's going to take time," Franklin said resolutely. "Sir, do you want this done right, or do you want it done quickly?"

Savage hardened his glare and replied, "I'm the richest man on Earth. I get to have it both ways." He took a breath and continued, "You said it yourself, 'Abe is a legend.' He's smarter than you are, and he wrote the playbook you're using. You need to step up your game, and step it up fast. If you make a mistake now, he'll win."

"I understand, sir."

"I hope so," he replied. "I want the next update at two o'clock, and it had better be more impressive than what you gave me this time around."

Norm woke up to someone pushing his shoulder. The only thing more unpleasant to him than that was when he heard who it was.

"Get up," Abe said. "We have a long day ahead of us." Norm rolled over to see what Amy thought of Abe's bold intrusion to their room – even if it was Abe's house – but Abe was ahead of him. "She's already up."

"Where is she?"

"Everyone's having breakfast. Shower quickly and join them."

Norm snorted and said, "Good morning to you, too." Abe left without saying another word.

Although he disapproved of Abe issuing orders to him as though he were a subordinate, he followed the instructions anyway. Sure enough, the rest of the team, minus Tseyo, was picking away the last of a light, buffet breakfast, while Natalie and Krysta washed the cooking utensils and already discarded dishes. The spread and the others' casual attitude towards the meal made the house feel more like a private bed and breakfast than a rich family's residence.

Norm was further surprised that Abe had shed his usual business-like attire for faded jeans and a years-old button-up shirt that he left open to display a tee-shirt. His hair was also barely styled, if at all. But the moment that he let himself believe that Abe could be truly causal was fleeting. Abe looked up from his plate and said, "Took you long enough."

"Abe, I don't know what the Hell you've got planned today," Norm replied. "How am I supposed to be responsible for not keeping to your schedule if you haven't shared it with me?"

Abe nodded and said, "That's fair. We have some errands to run in the city."

"Why can't you do it alone?"

"Because this kind of work is better done with a teammate than solo," he replied. "Plus, this factors into your mission role."

Norm was inclined to ask if the kind of work Abe had in mind was illegal, but given his current situation, he knew that would be a ridiculous question. Instead he asked as he approached a tray with strips of bacon laid out, "Who's going to look after Tseyo? I assume he's not coming."

"Doctor Patel will keep him company."

Norm shook his head as he bit into the imitation pork product. "Max doesn't speak Na'vi."

Abe sighed. "I know," he said. "But Dawn has her part of the mission to prepare for, and Doctor Patel has made it clear he's only staying with us until he sees his own agenda through."

Norm nodded. While he had spent most of his time working with Jake to prepare for RDA's return, Max had spent his years on Pandora consolidating Doctor Augustine's field notes. Rather than let them fall into the black hole of RDA's archives – or be used by RDA's researchers for less than noble purposes – he was lining up contacts throughout academia to distribute the body of work as widely as humanly possible.

"I can look after him," Natalie offered from the kitchen. "I think we're getting along well enough."

Abe shook his head and replied, "I thought your mother and I made it clear that we don't want you spending time with him alone."

"And I thought it would be obvious to you by now that I'm twenty years old and can make decisions for myself," she retorted. "Besides, neither of you has given me a reason to stay away from him."

"Because Tseyo isn't here to make friends," he said. "He's here to help us stop the Chairman from making a really, really big mistake, and then he's going home."

"So if it were up to you, you'd just keep him boxed away until you needed him, and then get rid of him when you're done?"

"She's smart," Norm said with a grin.

Abe shot him a glare and then replied, "No, that's not what I'm saying."

"Are you going to lock me up until this is all over?"

"No!"

"Then it's pretty ridiculous to think that our paths aren't going to cross, isn't it, Daddy?" She snorted and added, "I mean, he's sleeping right outside my room."

Abe seemed at a loss for a response. While normally this would not have bothered Norm, for Tseyo's benefit, he half-heartedly came to Abe's defense. "Natalie, we've taken Tseyo out of his normal surroundings," he said. "You don't know if you might say something that will trigger a stress response."

"Do you?" she asked.

When she turned her attention from her father to Norm, he was startled by the intensity in her eyes, even from a distance. Her expression was calm, but she was clearly not going to back down from her position. It was, without question, a look that Norm had only seen Abe pull off to any effect. It had been unnerving to him on their first encounter; but having taken Natalie for being more compassionate, seeing her use it to effect almost knocked him off his feet.

He just shook his head and replied, "No."

"All right," she said with a nod. "So the way I see it, either we can all sit here and wait for Tseyo to crack, or we make the effort to be good hosts and keep him calm."

"There isn't a zoo we could just turn him over to, is there?" Krysta asked.

"Mom!"

"It's a legitimate question, Natalie," she snapped back. "Because once this plan of yours is over, Abe, I'm not going to let him come back here – somehow I think a lot of people aren't going to let humanity's first alien visitor just hang out in our basement once they're aware he's here."

"They certainly didn't let the Roswell aliens chill with a farmer," Matthew said from the living room.

"That's because they all died in their crash," Dawn replied. "Tseyo survived ours."

Abe stood up from the dining room table and said, "We don't have time to keep arguing this."

"You owe me an answer," Krysta said.

"Homeland Security," Abe replied with a grin. "They have jurisdiction over deporting illegal aliens."

Norm was repulsed by the quip, but he also could not help himself from chuckling. "Yeah, I'm sure Tseyo would love Arizona's concentration camps."

Abe shook his head and continued, "You're right, Love, that when we finish with our work, every three-lettered federal and international organization will descend to take Tseyo off your hands – and we're not going to stop them. I'm sure, though, RDA will be forced to float the bill for sending him home."

Norm was more serious when he asked, "So you've figured that part out, then?"

"No." He shook his head again and said, "We need to go." He looked at Natalie and said, "All right, since you're probably going to defy me and your mother no matter what we say, if you want to take on Tseyo as your responsibility, fine."

She gave him a slight bow and said, "Thank you, Daddy. I..."

He held a hand up to stop her from saying anything further. "But – and I'm only going to tell you this once – that means you have to make sure he's focused when it comes time for him to do his job. If he's not, forget that I'm your father and that you're twenty. You will be accountable. Understand?"

An uneasy silence settled over the house. Norm took a quick survey of Abe's one-time employees, and the expressions on their faces seemed to say that they had heard that tone from him before, and that it was not something to challenge. Krysta seemed perfectly comfortable. Natalie, however, appeared, if only for a moment, taken aback.

Natalie's expression hardened, but she nodded. "It's a deal."

Abe smiled and gave Natalie a hug and Krysta a kiss on her cheek. "Thank you for breakfast," he said. "We'll be back this afternoon."

"I'll call Tom a little bit later this morning," she replied. "And remember that anything above six is a rip-off."

Before Norm had a chance to process that snippet of information, Abe began walking towards the garage. It was built to hold three cars, but there was only a single minivan parked. Abe sighed as he took the keys out of his pocket and said, "I can't believe she sold my car."

Norm was far from heartbroken.

The seatbelts automatically came down once they were seated, and when Abe inserted the key into the ignition, a series of lights flashed from the sides of the rearview mirror. A panel on the center of the dashboard activated, displaying a keyboard, and a voice said, "I'm sorry, but the optical scanners do not show that the owner or licensed driver of this vehicle is present. Please enter the security code in the next fifteen seconds, or this vehicle will be permanently disabled."

"What the hell?" Norm asked.

"No big deal," Abe replied as he typed in a code. "You've never seen an anti-theft device before?"

Norm snorted. "The anti-theft devices I'm most familiar with are pretty low-tech."

"Thank you," the disembodied voice said. "Where would you like to go today?"

"Cancel auto-routing," he said. "Activate manual drive."

"I'm sorry," the voice replied, "but manual driving is not available in your area. Where would you like to go today?"

It was Abe's turn to be surprised. "What the hell?"

Apparently the developers of the guide software anticipated a few angry drivers. The voice replied, "Manual driving was permanently discontinued on all roads in the San Francisco Greater Metropolitan Area after September 30, 2167. Any attempt to disengage your vehicle's automated driving software will result in notification to local authorities, and you may be subject to applicable fines and jail time, as determined by your municipality. Where would you like to go today?"

Abe rubbed his temples and said, "Fine, intersection of Mission Street and Twenty-Fourth Street, San Francisco."

"I'm sorry, but as part of the San Francisco Greater Metropolitan Area's congestion remediation plan, that location has been restricted to pedestrians and non-motorized traffic. Would you like me to find the nearest parking garage?"

Abe rested his forehead on the steering wheel, which given the earlier announcement, seemed to be a most impractical addition, and sighed. "No, go back to previous destinations." He looked at the list again and said, "Holly Park Parking."

"Calculating route." A moment later, the garage door opened. "Integrating you to the local traffic grid." The minivan moved forward. "Estimated time to destination is one hour, seven minutes. Would you like me to find a station for you?"

Norm felt his stomach turn at the thought of being stuck in a confined space with Abe for that period of time.

"National news," Abe replied. He then quickly added, "Disable voice commands."

The dashboard panel cascaded the route map in order to display a commercial for luxury vacations to the last pristine beaches on Earth. At its conclusion, the screen cut to a talk show-like news set, where a male and female anchor team was engaged in quiet, idle banter. A second later, the female turned to the camera and said, "Welcome back to 'American Weekend,' the country's longest running, number one source for in depth analysis of all the news which made headlines this week.

"Turning briefly to California, authorities are still investigating the cause of Thursday evening's crash outside of the central valley city of Tracy." The screen showed firefighter crews battling blazes in the middle of the night. "Some independent sources have suggested that the crash was prompted by an emergency onboard a ship returning from the Alpha Centauri system. RDA spokesperson Janet Tullman refuted the allegations in a statement, saying all of its ships are accounted for, and the advance team sent to Pandora over eleven years ago is not due back for another nine months. Neither ICA, NTSB, nor California Highway Patrol have commented, saying that their investigation is ongoing."

Abe chuckled and shook his head. "Amateurs."

"What?"

"No news network should be covering this crash, so that's a containment breach on RDA's part." He looked at Norm and said with a smile, "It means we're not going up against real talent."

Norm sighed and said, "Indulge me, Abe. If you were on the other end, how would you be managing the cover up? How do you keep a spaceship crash out of the news?"

"You can't," Abe replied. "But you can keep it from being covered in the first ten minutes of a news show's broadcast. So, okay, these 'independent sources' are probably RDA's competitors who listen to all orbital traffic for any mention of an RDA ship in distress. Now, they can't say that they're conducting that kind of corporate espionage, so they route the information through some third party, 'independent source.'

"So, I'd go back to the press with, say, falsified travel logs of some junker transport that hasn't been used in six or seven years and say that's what crashed. The press goes back to its 'independent sources' to get verification, which would force the competition to reveal their tactics – which, again, they won't want to do. So the press runs with our story. Since nobody gives a shit about some unmanned, junk shuttle going between Earth and the Moon or Mars, it maybe gets linked to on national media websites, and then goes away."

"Then what about the government?"

Abe shook his head. "They've got too much to worry about. If the people aren't demanding answers, and if you know your way inside a bureaucracy, these sorts of things get buried. I mean, sure, some diligent bureaucrat will eventually produce a report in a few years, but nobody will pay attention to its release – and we can just buy off anybody who might."

Norm took a moment to think about what Abe had said, and then asked, "Did it ever occur to you, at any point in your professional career, that you might want to do something else with your life other than manipulate information for a corporation?"

Abe raised an eyebrow and replied, "Whom would you rather I do it for? A politician? The news?"

"I'd rather you not do it at all."

He snorted and said, "I should have expected that. Norm, the whole of human history is built on manipulations. I'd hazard a guess and say that it's as old a profession as prostitution."

"That's a fair comparison," Norm said with a chuckle. "I mean, you kind of were RDA's whore, weren't you?"

Abe paused, looked at him sideways, and then continued, "The point is that in the information age, the ones who control the information are kings. Who hasn't wanted to be the lord of their own kingdom?"

"You're not just controlling information," he replied. "You're exploiting people's ignorance."

Abe shrugged. "That's what we whores do," he said. "It's all about exploiting people's weaknesses."

They were quiet for a while longer. The news continued with stories about ever-degrading air quality, famine in Africa, fires in what few forests remained in Australia, and flare-ups of violence in a number of energy-producing nations. Norm shook his head and said, "They sound like headlines from when I left."

"Yeah," Abe replied quietly. "Not a whole lot's changed."

"If nothing's changed in twenty-four years, in a way doesn't that mean things have gotten worse?"

Abe did not respond.

Several minutes later, the minivan turned onto the Five-Eighty interstate. As it crested a hill just outside Dublin, the tallest spires of RDA's headquarters came into view. They ducked behind a canyon wall shortly thereafter, but remained visible from Castro Valley onwards.

Up to this point, Norm had not noticed much different about the cityscape. Livermore, Pleasanton, and Dublin were, as when he left, a loosely connected suburbia of upper class, gated communities which managed to survive urban sprawl due to the wealth and influence of its residents. However, on the other side of the mountain range, it was clear to him that urban development had continued on unchecked.

Earthquakes annihilated San Francisco in the latter half of the last century, just as the effects of climate change were being felt in force in the United States. City planners, engineers, and politicians felt that they had been given a golden opportunity to construct a model urban environment: Alternate modes of transportation, green spaces, and self-contained apartment towers. Nature had taken care of bulldozing or burning down almost every structure in the Bay Area – and either killing off or forcibly relocating most of the property holders – allowing the reconstruction to go as planned for the first couple of decades.

By the time Norm was born, the global rail network had effectively connected every major urban center on the planet. As conditions worsened in the ever-developing world, workers poured into San Francisco by the millions looking for work – and then when the work was done, they refused to leave. San Francisco's downtown was "green" insofar as only the extremely wealthy could afford to live there; and communities like Livermore fought with everything they had to keep the population from spilling over and interfering with their accustomed lifestyles.

And so, with rare exception, the area between the mountains and the eastern shore of the Bay had become a continuous, poorly planned urban slum. Where once had been middle class housing now towered low-income apartment blocks. Every once in a while they would drive past an outpost of higher-class condominiums, but they maintained a large buffer zone with the rest of the city.

It was not until they crossed the Bay that Norm saw a semblance of the kind of planned city of the future that the revivers of San Francisco had in mind. The roads were wider and lined on either side by maintained parks. The buildings which constituted the core of the downtown area were all built to the highest standards of environmental design – even RDA's half-mile high headquarters was designed to meet such standards.

Unfortunately, downtown San Francisco was an oasis caught in a sandstorm. Whatever benefits its design offered were outweighed by the worldwide decay – not every city could be so fortunate to be obliterated by an earthquake and start over. So it was that Norm was able to spot a morning jogger who, as he made a circuit on the roadside park in the morning shadows of LEED-certified-platinum office buildings, had to stop to adjust his exopack.

The winter Sun was comfortably over the horizon when the minivan finished its automated route at the parking garage underneath Holly Park. Abe found the garage was frustratingly automated, even if it was in the name of convenience. Although he was sure there no sane person would, if given the choice, choose to circle a parking lot for minutes on end looking for a space, Abe always reveled in being able to spot that one open parking space that no other driver had yet seen.

The parking garage's computerized terminal interfaced with the computer in the minivan. After it stopped at a kiosk so they could get a ticket, the parking garage continued them on a path to an elevator. A voice came into the cabin, and it instructed Abe and Norm to leave the car on and exit. Once they were clear of the elevator, the minivan dropped six stories to a lower level, where it would continue on to a parking space.

Abe and Norm made their way to the surface and then on to Mission Street. They walked north where, at the intersection of Mission and Cesar Chavez Streets, a sign welcomed them to the San Francisco Congestion-Free Zone. Abe looked at the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Cesar Chavez and snorted, wondering how much of it could be alleviated if they opened the roads up again.

As they crossed into the pedestrian haven, Norm asked, "Do you want to tell me where we're going?"

"An 'independent source' of mine," he replied casually.

"Are you sure he's still around?"

"Positive."

They walked for another half mile until they reached the site of Abe's contact. A hole-in-the-wall pub named, "The Bog," it saw its best business weekend nights, although it was far from one of San Francisco's hot spots. It being Saturday morning when Abe and Norm arrived, Abe was not surprised when Norm displayed some skepticism at Abe's choice for a rendezvous. "This is it?"

"This is it," Abe replied.

Norm went to the door and gave it a pull. "They're not even open!"

"Of course not. It's not even ten-o-clock." He grinned and asked, "What time do you usually start drinking, Norm?" Norm scoffed as Abe ducked into an alley which led to the service entrance at the back of the pub, then knocked on the back door – twice before someone answered.

A peephole cover opened, and a man asked, "Who the fuck are you?"

"Is Pablo around?"

"You answer me, maybe I'll answer you."

"Eric," Abe replied. "Old friend of Pablo's."

"Maybe you should come back when we're open and see if Pablo's around," the man said. "Get out of here."

"No."

"What?"

"I'm not going anywhere," Abe said. "The guy lives above the bar, for crying out loud. Go get him."

The door swung open. The doorman was near a foot taller than Abe and far more muscled – not that the muscles mattered much compared to the shotgun he was holding. He grabbed Abe's collar and said, "Hey, asshole, you don't tell me to do! I tell you what to do, and I'm telling you to get out of here!"

Abe took a deep breath to steady himself and said, "I've come from way too far away, and I've got too little time, to get told off by a steroid pumping doorman," Abe replied. "I want to see Pablo."

The doorman let go of Abe only to punch him in the stomach, forcing him to his knees. He then pointed his shotgun at Abe's head and said, "I don't care if you came from fucking Pandora. You're going to go back to wherever you came from, and if I see you around here again, you're going to Hell."

Abe struggled to his feet. When he got his breath back, he said, "Pablo would be very, very upset with you if you shot me."

Once again, Abe was forced to his knees by a body blow. "We'll see about that."

The doorman's finger moved to the trigger, but then a familiar voice cried out, "Ray, stop!"

Ray turned to look behind him and said, "Crazy son of a bitch says he knows you, but I ain't never seen him around here."

"That's because he hasn't been here since before I hired you, you dumb shit," Pablo replied. "Jesus, it's no wonder nobody comes to see me anymore – you've shot them all!"

Ray stepped aside as Pablo approached and said with a laugh, "Nah, boss, I just shoot the annoying ones."

"Like I said: you've shot them all."

Abe got to his feet to look at his old associate, and immediately he was shocked. "What happened to you, man?"

Pablo patted the side of his wheelchair and replied, "Some kid thought he'd make a quick buck by robbing me. He got a lucky shot off after I put two in his face. Took out my spine."

"You know that they can fix that these days," Abe said.

Pablo laughed. "Yeah, if you're rich!" Then he grinned and said with a slow nod, "Besides, chicks will do anything for a guy in a wheelchair, man."

Abe chuckled and replied, "Well, I'm happy to see that you've kept your perversions throughout all this. Now, can we come inside?"

"We?" Pablo asked. Abe nodded at Norm, who was still slack-jawed by the scene which had unfolded, causing Pablo to frown. "You know the rules, man," he said. "We don't invite people both of us don't know, and I don't know him."

"I know," Abe said with a nod. "But somebody has to pay for the drinks."

"You didn't tell me I was paying for anything," Norm replied.

Pablo looked at Norm again, and then he turned back to Abe. He sighed, "Only because I haven't had a visitor in forever," and wheeled himself back inside. "All right, Ray, let 'em in."

Abe and Norm walked past the doorman, who did not wait a second after they were inside before he slammed the door shut behind them – loudly enough that Abe almost mistook it for the shotgun going off. They followed Pablo into the bar, which was hosting just one other patron. An old man in shabby clothes, snot running down his nose, sat at the bar milking a beer. Pablo nodded at him and said, "Aqualung, my friend, we have guests."

The old man stared at them as they took seats at the other end of the bar and said, "I'm just warming my feet."

Both Norm and Abe nodded as though what he just said made all the sense in the world, but then Abe raised an eyebrow at Pablo. He waved Abe off and said quietly, "Just some homeless guy. He comes in during the day if he has any money, leaves before we open."

"Yeah, well, I'm not so sure I want more ears than necessary listening in on this conversation."

Pablo was quiet for a moment, and then replied, "Yeah, well, you don't know him," he said with a nod towards the homeless man, "and I still don't know him," he finished with a nod towards Norm.

"This is Tom Parker," Abe replied. "He works with me. Good enough?"

"That all depends on what drinks he's buying."

"You got whiskey? Something vintage."

Pablo nodded, and then turned to the homeless man. "Hey, why don't you go put your leg up on one of the couches in the back room?" The old man gave a rattling cough, and then limped away into another room. Once he was out of sight, Pablo put three shot glasses on the counter and quickly filled them with an aged spirit. The three raised their glasses, and Pablo asked, "What should we drink to, Eric?"

"In the way-old days, men would drink to their lords," Abe replied. "Let's drink to our lords, whoever they may be."

"Glad to see you're still so full of shit," Pablo said with a laugh, and then knocked back his shot glass. Abe and Norm followed suit. "So, what else can I get for you?"

"I'm going to assume your food still sucks," Abe said. "So, how about a refill and then a couple of names?"

Pablo chuckled and shook his head as he refilled the glasses. "You've been out of town too long, Eric. I don't play the name game these days."

Abe felt Norm glaring at him, but he paid him no mind. "Bullshit," he said. "You've always made more money doing that than running this place."

The barkeep knocked back his second shot and smiled. "Well, I do still have the ears for it," he said. "With the right stimulation, I might be able to recall a couple of things that have passed through here."

He chuckled and took his second shot. "All right, Pablo. I need to know who's in and who's out at RDA, and then I need you to set up a meeting for me on short notice. I'll give you five-thousand for the package."

Pablo shook his head and said, "We'll set the price for the meeting after you tell me who you're looking for, and then it'll be seven-hundred fifty for each name."

Abe snorted. "The meeting? Fine. But I'm not giving you more than five-hundred per name. I know inflation hasn't gone that high since I left town."

"Don't play me for a chump," Pablo said as he poured himself a third shot. "Just because your wife can negotiate other people down to five-hundred doesn't mean I'm going to give you a bargain. You've been gone a long time, so consider this a credit check."

Abe bit his cheeks, and then said, "Six-fifty."

"Seven."

"Fine." Pablo drank his shot. "Let's start with the meeting, though. Who's it with?"

"Soldiers of Gaia."

Pablo began to laugh uproariously. "Did you lose your mind while you were gone? Keep your money, Abe. I'll hand you over to them, and then I'll just collect the bounty they've got on your head."

"Let me worry about my sanity," Abe replied. "Could you do it?"

He looked at Norm and asked, "Has he been this crazy around you?"

"He's given me a couple of reasons to worry," Norm replied.

Pablo shook his head and said, "I'm not going to guarantee it, Abe, but for three-thousand, I'll give it a shot."

"I want a little more than 'a shot' for three-thousand dollars," Abe replied.

"They're not as strong as they were since you were around," Pablo said, "but they're way, way more aggressive. Some chick's calling the shots now – nobody knows her name. The Feds keep trying to infiltrate, but all their agents go missing. I swear, one day they're just going to roll the military through the Sierras, shoot everyone and then nuke 'em from orbit, just to be sure." Pablo frowned and added, "Ever since she took over, I haven't really felt comfortable doing business with them. You know what I mean?"

Abe nodded. "If I didn't think they were the ones who could get what I needed, I wouldn't ask you to set this up. I'll give you three-thousand up front, and throw in another five-hundred if you can make a meeting happen tomorrow."

"Fine," Pablo replied. "So if you're still looking to walk away at five-thousand, you've got two names. Choose wisely."