Tyler Part Nine - Conclusion

Summary: two Middlemen enter. Who, or what, will leave?

----

Wendy's father always said troops should go into action rested and with a hot meal. Her mother always said not to leave the house without a shower and clean underwear. They took both sets of advice. When Wendy got out of her -- solitary -- shower she went to the back of the closet for her old uniform. The Girl Sidekick version with the jacket she'd never even been able to button right around her hips. What does this say about me, except that you're my boss? she'd argued once, angling for a makeover. Tonight she had no intention of saying anything else.

Making every uniform detail perfect was a comfort, in a funny sort of way. It was like his recurring phrase, the man I choose to be. She was going to be the best (trainee) Middleman she could, even if it killed her tonight. Especially then.

He barely said a word in the car, on the way to FATBOY. But he drove with his left hand only, an obvious safety violation, so the other hand never had to leave her shoulder. When Wendy said anything, once or twice, he focused on her so intently that she had real worries about getting there in one piece.

It was easy to find Manservant Neville's private section of the FATBOY building. It had its own two-level parking garage, separate from the larger employee parking. A security guard in a kiosk, U-Master headphones covering both his ears, waved them through the gate. Inside were two dozen or so parking spaces filled with classic cars, a modest limousine -- and one empty parking space at the back, right by the elevator.

"I'm changing my vote," Wendy said. "It's not fifty-fifty chance of a trap. It's about two hundred percent."

He parked the Middlemobile. "I know."

"Say the word and we can go in shooting anything that moves. Well, hopefully not Tyler."

"I'd like to save Tyler Ford if we can. He's as much an innocent victim as anyone." The Middleman shook his head. "No frontal assault. If there's the slightest chance of ending this without killing the ... distributed network of hostages, that would ruin it. We keep him talking, we look for a tactical opportunity. And if you see it before I do, Dubbie, act. Don't clear it with me, don't count the consequences. One full-fledged Middleman may not be enough for this mission."

Wendy was able to smile a little. "Do I get little plastic wings, like a kid on her first airplane ride?"

"You get to be Wendy Watson. I can't think of a higher honor." A ghost of his smile in return. He leaned close to kiss her. Stopped himself, glanced at the security camera only a few yards away above the elevator. It was pointing directly at them.

"Screw him." Wendy grabbed the back of his head, Took a long, self-indulgent, short-of-breath moment before she let go. "What's the phrase, moving with purpose?"

"That one will do." The Middleman opened his car door. The elevator doors opened by themselves the second he and Wendy left the car.

---

The private elevator opened to a two-story, ornate living room with a desk at the far end. Manservant Neville stood in front of it, clearly at ease. "There you are," he said jovially. "Practically late; that's bad manners."

It had occurred to Wendy, on the elevator ride, that there were plenty of places to shoot a man which would leave him able to answer questions. Also really, really motivated to get painkillers. Her right hand moved; Neville's quick dark eyes followed it instantly. "Now, now." He stepped to one side. Tyler Ford was seated behind the desk holding a handgun, muzzle pressed under his own chin. His eyes were clear, agonizingly aware of his situation. "Don't be rash," Neville said mildly. "Guns on the floor, I think, first thing. If it needs spelling out, Tyler has instructions to take it very badly if I'm hurt or threatened."

The Middleman laid his gun down calmly, and took a couple of steps further into the room. His eyes were cool, appraising. Measuring the precise distance to Neville's throat, Wendy thought.

She copied both movements. "Hang on, Tyler. We're going to help you."

The Middleman didn't say anything. Neville was beginning to look annoyed. "'You'll never get away with this?'" he suggested. "'Come out and fight like a man?' Or, let's be more original. 'I surrender.'"

"Give us access to your computers," the Middleman said. His eyes hadn't moved from Neville's face. "When the mind-control software is destroyed -- all the copies -- we'll take Mr. Ford and go. That still leaves you with a major corporation and enough money for ten lifetimes."

A short bark of laughter. "I'm sorry, but that's too amusing. Starting with the idea that you could find hidden backup copies in my network. Counteroffer. I get the planet, you get your lives. You stay here -- behind locked doors, but quite comfortably -- until the software is implemented. A few days, no more. Afterward you can both leave. Tyler stays; he really has been very helpful."

"So much for your promise to leave people's minds alone," the Middleman said. "I told you you'd become a monster."

"Did you? I'd forgotten." Neville stabbed a U-Master button on the desk. Tyler went white with pain. Wendy started toward him; the Middleman stopped her with one hand on her arm. "This could get tedious," Neville went on. "Can we take it as read that any impertinence will cost innocent lives, and go from there?" He released the button. Tyler slumped in relief, but his gun hand didn't move.

"He's still in there," Wendy said. "Fight him, Tyler. You're not like this, you know you aren't."

"What he is includes about forty percent of my conscious memories by now;" Neville said clinically. "When it reaches fifty-one percent, does that give me full voting control? It's an interesting question. I was hoping for a true copy of my own mind -- a kind of immortality -- but that doesn't appear to have happened. At least not yet."

"Keep talking, Shorty," Wendy snarled. "I called dibs on killing you five hours ago."

Neville's finger hovered over the button. "Where did you get the alien technology?" the Middleman said hastily.

"Oh, that." He shrugged. "I went shares with another collector of ... unusual artifacts, a salvage operation. Sadly, his portion of the material included an alien cyborg that wasn't quite dead. It's taken me nearly five years to adapt my share for human use."

"You know we can't allow that," the Middleman said flatly. "Whatever the consequences."

"And you know you aren't leaving this room alive." Neville smiled. "At least, I assume you know."

"Thanks, we stumbled onto that one," Wendy snapped.

Neville looked like he'd just been struck by an idea. "There may be some negotiating room after all. You do still have the ability to -- if not prevent, at the very least make it very inconvenient -- for me to get something I want." He was speaking directly to the Middleman. "And I have something, apart from the world, that I'm sure you'd gladly die for. I'm prepared to be generous."

"Your word's worthless," the Middleman said.

"If you're so good at your job, you'll be able to tell if I'm lying." Neville gestured casually. "I'll let her keep her mind. Out of my control, free to think, plan, observe. Who knows, she might foil my evil plans. It's a better chance than our Tyler has at the moment." He glanced back at the younger man, smiled indulgently. "And you can believe me because I don't want to be surrounded by drones. At least, not completely. I imagine she has a fine line in defiant speeches; I'd enjoy hearing that. Bear in mind I'm taking a risk. If she ever got free she'd burn my company down around me."

"What do you want?" the Middleman said cautiously.

"About the only thing I can't get over your dead body." Neville opened a desk drawer, brought out a fresh U-Master and headset. "Your mind for hers. You decide."

The Middleman stood absolutely still, facing Neville. "No," Wendy said. He acted as if he hadn't heard her. "No, boss." She touched his arm, and he turned. "I won't let you. Even plan B is better than this one." What had already happened to Tyler was hideous. Seeing it happen to him too would be ...

... intolerable.

Behind Neville, Tyler's eyes were fixed on her. He couldn't move under his own control, not even his lips, but he looked as horrified as she felt. He knows something. "Then I'll do it," Wendy said. "I'll do it, and you can save me."

"That deal isn't on the table," Neville put in. "Don't waste my time."

Wendy saw her Middleman consider the options. High on the list was attacking Neville -- the lack of weapons would be no hindrance -- and breaking peripheral bones until he revealed his computer codes. But that might end with five thousand dead a day later. Would end with Tyler's brains on the wall a half-second later. And that raised the stakes from intolerable to impossible, she realized. Strength or weakness, he couldn't see a human being die while he had the power to stop it.

"Don't worry, Wendy. It'll be all right." The Middleman took another step forward.

"That's far enough." Neville made a quick examination of the equipment, never quite taking his eyes off his opponents. "Excuse the delay. Tyler tried to sabotage his controller at one point. Impressive, when you think about it. But these work fine." Tossed the wireless headphones casually; the Middleman caught them. Wendy grabbed desperately at his arm.

----

Tyler didn't let himself hope; he knew too much about how Neville's mind worked. He tried hard to pull the trigger on himself. If he was out of the equation, maybe Wendy and her buddy could break the stalemate. You said yourself he's a monster; can't you see? Can't you guess? His hand, his whole body was utterly out of his control. Next instant, that guy was wearing the headset. All Tyler could do was close his eyes.

----

Wendy's hands closed around the Middleman's forearm. He didn't respond. His face had gone as blank as a rubber mask. "Boss," she said, a little desperate. Don't leave me alone.

"I put in a lot of failsafes, programming that particular U-Master," Neville remarked. "Working with Tyler has been very educational. He can hear you, young lady, but he can't react until I set him in motion." Neville's voice sounded light, but it carried an ugly edge. "So here we are. All those esoteric gadgets and near-superhuman powers, generations of secret mystique -- and it comes down to a muscular nitwit in a uniform."

"This is getting weird," Wendy snarked, trying to hide her rising panic. "I mean, obviously I get the part about you being a power-mad twit. But that's just twisted. Is it the whole height thing, or did somebody beat you up in high school?"

Neville smiled tolerantly. "That's not the level of damsel-in-distress speech I was hoping for. Perhaps we should concentrate on the distress. I believe traditionally, every damsel needs a monster." He pressed several buttons. "There'd be a lot less trouble in the world if people accepted their basic nature and got on with it. You, for example -- once a thug, always a thug. Speeches about honor and duty can't change that."

"No," Wendy said numbly.

"But yes," Neville said. "Clarence -- do you mind if I call you Clarence? -- have a look at her." The Middleman's head turned, his eyes as blank as an animal's. "When you think about it, she's the symbol of everything you tried to turn yourself into. All that hard work to be brave and noble and selfless enough to deserve someone like her. But it's never enough, is it? It must be an enormous strain, holding in all those impulses. All that frustration, metastasized into rage... I think it's time to let it out."

"You're so off base it isn't funny," Wendy said. Stepping back a little. "Tell him, boss..."

"I can't blame you for believing him. He certainly believed himself," Neville said. "If it's any consolation, he's going to be very sorry afterward." He glanced back toward his desk. "I believe Tyler already is sorry. I offered to let him keep you at one point. I shall have to see if I can't erase the nastier memories when I've got a minute; I don't want Tyler damaged. But you two are very annoying." His eyes went back to the Middleman. "Clarence, hurt her. Be creative."

Wendy backpedaled. He came after her, eyes unfocused, tracking on pure motion. "Boss." Wendy had fought his body once before, when he was possessed by a budding mad scientist named Eleanor, but Eleanor hadn't had a fraction of his skill. This ... being ... moved exactly like her Middleman in a murderous rage. His face was flushed brick red. "Good time to lose those headphones." Wendy darted in, hand out; he knocked her arm off line with a slap like a gunshot. She recoiled. Kept recoiling, as he moved forward like a juggernaut.

Wendy dodged, put a couch between them. "This isn't you, Boss. Not in a million years." Which was the best part of the sadistic payoff for Neville. Not that she'd die, but that later he could make the Middleman remember doing it. That would kill him from the soul out. Wendy could never win a full-on fight, on mass and raw strength alone, if he was at anything like normal ability. She wasn't sure she could bring herself to hurt him at all.

"You've got more willpower than anybody. Fight him." Wendy's left hand went to the back of her gun belt. She had a thermal grenade which would scrub this whole floor off the top of the FATBOY building. Maybe that was the best option they had left.

Her concentration split too long. When she took her eyes off him, he vaulted the couch and slung her bodily across the room. By trained reflex and luck, she landed soft against a chair.

Luck. Against a man who knew to a millimeter what she could and couldn't do in a fight.

If she'd guessed wrong, she was a dead woman. But Wendy's gut didn't believe it. A small pedestal table stood next to the chair. Wendy hurled it at the Middleman's head. He deflected it with both forearms in front of his face. Next he came straight in like a rampaging bull. Launched a sweeping closed-fist backhand that looked fit to shatter granite, except that his balance was off; all show, no stopping power. Wendy caught it on a forearm block of her own, staggered backward several feet with barely a bruise.

She risked eye contact. The Middleman's were still too bright, glazed with incipient psychosis, but one of them winked an instant while his back was to Neville. Moscow rules eighteen b -- don't break out laughing when you're supposed to be getting beaten to death. Wendy let her eyes widen with fear, moved lopsidedly as if favoring broken ribs. Manservant Neville looked delighted.

They couldn't pass off light-contact sparring as homicide for more than a few seconds. Wendy focused on his eyes. What's the plan? You could pound him flat anytime... They angled toward the desk. Tyler. Got it. Wendy dodged the wrong way. Big hands closed on her shirt collar and jacket front; she let out a terrified yelp. Mule-kicked him in the stomach. The Middleman got Wendy's neck in a wrestling hold, paused as if considering snapping it on the spot. Neville leaned forward a little, eyes glittering. When they had his full attention the Middleman launched her in the general direction of the desk, and Tyler.

The gun pressed under his chin was Wendy's only priority; all the other parts of her landing had to take care of themselves. She bowled him over and out of the chair, wrenching the gun sideways with one grip on the barrel and the other over Tyler's hand. It went off. Wendy had picked her vector expecting that it would. The bullet ploughed through a side wall, left a hole the size of a quarter dribbling plaster dust. I sure hope there aren't any houseguests. Tyler lay twitching feebly on the floor. She found his U-Master, ran through the shutdown sequence. "Stay down. We're still on the clock." Wendy patted his shoulder in reassurance. Kicked the gun into a corner, stood up.

The Middleman hadn't moved. He turned to Manservant Neville with an air of excuse me, you were saying? mild social interest. Wendy supposed he was entitled to a little mean under the circumstances.

"How did you..." Neville grabbed desperately at the U-Master, stabbed buttons.

The Middleman flinched a little but let it go on. Then he closed the distance. A smooth motion later he had both Neville's wrists pinned in one hand, the other closed around the shorter man's throat. "Yes, I do mind. I'm just the Middleman."

Manservant Neville pulled away desperately, with no visible effect. "Hostages." He spit the word out, clearly not sure he'd get a second one. "They'll still die if you do me any harm. Nothing's changed..." The words died away in a sound with a bent-cartilage quality about it. Feverish spots of red showed on Neville's cheeks. He had -- just -- room to breathe; he was suffering from spinal-reflex terror rather than physical damage.

"Then you shouldn't have lowered the tone of the discussion." The Middleman's voice was almost emotionless. Cold and sane in a way that made blood-red rage seem mellow. His eyes moved. "Wendy? I could use a hand."

"Right there." Wendy lifted the headphones off his ears. He flinched when she moved them; an eerie, tooth-grinding whine was audible from the speakers. She threw the thing down. "Are you all right?"

"Adequate." His light tone wasn't a complete success but Wendy got the message; personal damage could wait. "I have handcuffs in my belt, second pocket on the right. Let's try that chair."

The handcuffs were the single-use plastic kind. They attached both Neville's wrists to the arms of a wooden chair, antique but solid-looking. "I guess it's all fun and games until somebody loses their mind control," Wendy commented. "Did you ever see Road House? That one guy who got his neck..."

"Don't sink to his level, Dubbie."

"I was going to try and make him pee himself." It came out less of a snark, more of a real impulse, than Wendy had intended. She was still coming to grips with how profoundly Neville had intended to destroy them. Right back at you, pal. If there is a way to hurt you that bad when you don't love anyone. But having her Middleman back was worth everything, even if Neville got the benefit of his code of ethics. "I want to know too. How did you break the gizmo?"

"I didn't. But the U-Master was an obvious attack, given Neville's psychology. Equally clearly, the control system worked primarily by sound. I had Ida deaden my eighth cranial nerve pair before we left."

"The wha?"

"I'm completely deaf for about another four hours. It cut out almost all the coercive effects."

And you were lip-reading so he wouldn't catch on, Wendy mouthed. Switched to normal speech. "You could have told me."

"I couldn't be sure it would work." His eyes went distant. "I didn't want you to hesitate defending yourself, if it hadn't."

Wendy thought about the flinches when Neville tried to control him. About the difference between almost no mental attack and none. "How do you feel?"

"It feels like getting your brain raped," Tyler said harshly. Both their heads turned. The younger man had dragged himself to his feet. "Like you're a thing instead of a person, and there's nothing you can do but see it happen." He was braced upright with one hand on the desk. Tyler had the gun back, in the other. "Hey, Chief? I quit." He raised it.

The Middleman interposed himself, without drama. "I'm sorry. That isn't going to happen."

"For one thing, we need him alive," Wendy added. "He's got a code set up in his computer. If he doesn't give it a password every twenty-four hours, the new software will go out automatically and thousands of people will die."

Neville, still shaken, seized on the loophole. "That's right. Three hours in this case; I've been busy today."

"Lunch, defragging your hard drive, killing innocent people, stuff like that," Wendy put in.

"Is that all?" Tyler set the gun down, turned on the computer on the big desk. "Maybe I can help out with that." He worked through the first several screens with expert haste.

Wendy stared. "Since when are you a computer guy?"

"I hear I'm forty percent of one." Tyler kept on typing.

"I never gave you ... I never gave him that code," Neville said. "I'd be a fool to."

The Middleman crouched down a little, meeting the seated man eye to eye. "I hope that's another lie." Wendy had never heard him sound so tired. "Because if it isn't, I'll have to get the password from you directly. I've been trained to do a lot of things, as you know. I don't have to enjoy them."

Neville shrank back in the chair. "You wouldn't."

His expression wasn't remotely like a smile. "Two minutes ago I was a homicidal maniac, or that was your intention. Make up your mind." The Middleman's voice went even softer. "You haven't made any friends here."

"I've got something," Tyler said from the desk. "At least I think so."

The Middleman stood up. "Good work. Show me."

The two dark heads leaned close together in front of the monitor. Wendy reflected that her ex and her beloved probably would have been a good team if Tyler hadn't missed that job interview. Minus the benefits, of course. Wendy got their guns back from in front of the elevator, holstered her own and set the Middleman's aside until he had a minute.

Neville, watching it all, seemed to have decided Wendy was his best attack point. "You know they're going to kill me," he said in a voice of hollow terror.

Wendy showed her teeth. "Like you were going to kill me? Like you did kill Dave the roof-jumping guy? Aw, what a shame."

"You don't have to do this."

"Kinda do, actually." She couldn't sustain a snarky tone. Wendy just wanted the mission over with, now; gloating turned out to be no comfort. "We can't exactly dump you unemployed in Greenland and expect it to stick. And even if we erase all your software, given time and money you might be able to re-create the whole thing. Like the man said, your word's worth nothing. It's cost too much already getting to the point where we can stop you by killing you. Be damned if we're going to do it over again." Neville opened his mouth; Wendy laid a hand on her gun and he shut it again.

Her voice dropped. "Want to hear the funny part? I actually would spare your life if there was a way. Not for you; you're scum. Because even after all you've done, all you tried to do, putting you down like a mad dog is going to cost him."

"I think that's all of them," Tyler said, at the desk. "There might be inert copies in the offsite static backups -- but they'd be locked with the same security code he used to blackmail you guys. Unless either he or I go looking, any copies are a useless string of ones and zeroes."

"Can you trust yourself not to?" The Middleman made it a straightforward question, one team member to another. Wendy saw Tyler warm to the tone, the implicit trust, without fully realizing it. Yeah, he would have been good. "He's tampered with your mind over a long period of time," the Middleman went on. "You have some of Neville's memories; could part of his personality have come with them?"

"I feel like me." Tyler glanced across the room. "I hate him more than you can... well, I guess you can possibly imagine. Exactly that amount."

They looked at Neville with the same flat expression. Pure soldier, Wendy thought again. Cops could arrest people, preachers could tell them to sin no more, but some problems could only be solved by death. Nobody had to like it that way.

Then Wendy's eye caught something on the floor. She reached down, held it up. "Guys. What would you think of ..."

"Justice," they said almost in unison. Looked at each other. "Absolutely poetic," Tyler added.

"I'm good with that." Wendy stood up, the whispering, keening set of wireless headphones in her hands. The ones programmed to turn her Middleman into a wild animal and, indirectly, Wendy into a pulped corpse. Manservant Neville looked into her eyes and started screaming for help.

Epilog

They didn't reach their own bed until two in the morning. Wendy didn't expect anything after the physical and emotional stresses of the day. At most, a guilt-fueled quest for redemption -- which wasn't bad per se but could get exhausting.

His hands were on her as soon as they turned out the bedside lights, but there was nothing frantic about it. He was tender and thoughtful. His body was warm and sheltering above her. Slow shifting movements, aimed not at a single whiplash orgasm but a sustained, tingling sweetness that brought tears to her eyes. They'd never been closer.

"You're a lot more ... peaceful than I'd expected," Wendy said against his neck a little later. "I was worried. He pushed your buttons pretty hard."

"With a sledgehammer." The Middleman stroked her hair. "I wouldn't have looked for this myself, before. I suppose Neville over-reached himself. He had a very accurate instinct for my nightmares. Having my past uncovered, risking your affection ... above all, causing your death. He did his worst. But it was the nightmares that broke, instead of you and me ..." He shrugged, seeming surprised by his own words. "I'm not sure what's worth being afraid of any more."

You'll find something. Wendy didn't snark aloud. For one thing, she might be wrong. "Good. You deserve some peace of mind."

"Kantian teleology, Dubbie," he said, wry humor under the deadpan words. "Nothing in my life's been about what I deserved. I've been much luckier than that." He held her closer.

----

Tyler Ford called the paramedics at five in the morning. It seemed like a plausible time for an innocent houseguest to get up and discover, horrified, that Manservant Neville's personal U-Master had done something catastrophic to him. All the tumbled furniture was back in place. The single bullet hole in the wall was covered by a re-hung picture. The gun itself, wiped clean of fingerprints, lay at the bottom of Neville's underwear drawer as if it had been there for years.

The paper-thin story worked because there wasn't a physical mark on Manservant Neville. No chemicals in his blood either, no matter how thoroughly they'd test him when he reached the hospital. Wendy's guy has a lot of self-control The idea of killing the helpless man had crossed Tyler's own mind more than once during the long, sleepless night.

The lawyers and secretaries and Vice President of Corporate Public Relations arrived before Neville's comatose body left for the hospital. Tyler smoothed the rough edges of the cover story by not telling it very well. He made his pattern of hesitations and guilty flinches suggest an undignified sexual episode gone wrong, not a failed attempt at world conquest. The story got an unexpected boost when a red-faced lawyer revealed that Neville had given Tyler full power of attorney in his personal affairs -- and signed over a healthy block of FATBOY stock -- three days after Tyler joined the company.

You really did think you could make me into another you by overwriting my memories, Tyler said to the ghost in the back of his mind. Or at least you hoped so, and you didn't want either of your selves to be broke. Dumb idea. If you had turned me into another Neville, he would have been just as cutthroat mean to the original as the original was to the rest of the world. No honor among Evil Overlords.

Neville's specter was fading into a vague tip-of-the-tongue familiarity with company procedures and computer skills. Tyler used it while he had it, set up one more search of the company network and data backups for copies of the mind-control software. The last one he'd found had been fragmentary and hopelessly outdated, but it never hurt to be sure. In spare moments -- Neville had been a confirmed multi-tasker -- Tyler worked on an anonymous e-mail that described Neville's software meltdown in the scariest possible terms.

The PR department would be helpless to stop the rumors when Neville really was a vegetable, unable to show himself in public. Even if he did recover, in days or weeks or months, he'd have damn little corporate empire to come back to. Certainly no huge reserve of U-Master customers happy to let him into their brains. A device that had turned its own creator's mind to mush was going to be as popular as chocolate-and-cholera ice cream.

And you'll be dirt poor yourself, if you make FATBOY stock worthless, said the Neville in the back of his mind.

Been there, done that.

If the real me ever does regain his senses, he'll know you did this to him. Your straitlaced friends may be safe behind their organization and alien technology, but you'll be dead meat. He's bound to have that much money and power left.

That's not the worst thing that could happen. You taught me about worst things, remember?

Tyler hit send on the e-mail, and smiled. For the first time in weeks, he had an idea for a song.