The wall went black.
“What happened?” Murakami said.
“The transmission has ceased,” the AI said.
“Ship?” Bria asked.
“The robot ship has been accelerating at high speed toward the location of the signal, but the signal has ceased.”
Tarkos slammed a fist on the table. “They saw it coming. They saw it coming and shut us down. But how? Interference?”
“No,” the AI said. “There is no interference. The transmission ceased.”
“That poor girl,” Murakami said. “Oh that poor girl.”
_____
Within an hour, they had data from the robot ship. It made a hard stop at the precise location at which the AI had triangulated the signal.
“There’s no detectable object at the location,” the AI reported.
“Stealthed ship?” Tarkos asked.
“Why?” Bria asked. “Radio.”
Tarkos nodded. He got her point. Why have a stealthed ship, but allow a child prisoner to send radio transmissions from the stealthed ship? And Earth high orbit was supposed to be patrolled with the best Galactic Tech. A stealthed ship should trigger probability monitors.
“But that was the location of the signal,” Murakami said. “I’ve reviewed the data. The AI triangulated from stations around the Earth. It has to be a ship.”
“Very fast ship?” Bria asked.
“There have been no engine signatures detected at that location,” the AI said.
“It makes no sense,” Murakami said. “A ship that has better stealth tech than we can imagine, that has engines we cannot detect, but that is managed so poorly that a teenage girl held prisoner is able to transmit from inside, and they don’t stop her. It makes no sense.”
The wall pinged, a request for Murakami. She got a faraway look as she activated an implant. She frowned and stood. “Dr. Calvino is awake. She told my staff that… ‘Most of the voices have stopped.’ I have to go see her.”
“Alright,” Tarkos said. But then he held his hand out toward Murakami. “No. Wait. What if that is significant? I mean, it seems the mother received transmissions from somewhere. The noise she complained of, suppose it too came from this location. So more than just this girl’s radio signals were coming through.”
Bria blinked agreement.
“We keep assuming this girl, Margherita, was wrong,” Tarkos said. “But she seems damn smart. Really damn smart. So what if she was right? What if she is far from Earth? Then what would that mean?”
Bria lowered her head and showed her teeth. “Wormhole,” she growled.
Tarkos nodded. “Wormhole.”
CHAPTER 8
Victoria sat very straight, in one of the formal chairs in her living room. She looked out over the city. Clouds gathered darkly on the horizon. The city looked ominous, secretive. But here, in her apartment, the house AI system struggled to keep things absolutely calm. The lights above her turned on, keeping the luminescence constant as the coming storm shrouded the sun. A blast of sandalwood scent wafted through the room, a scent of a warm summer breeze.
She had sat in the bathroom for hours, crying, uncertain of what to do. She could hear, just outside the bedroom door, the faint hum of the galactic tech cameras as they bobbed in the air, waiting to film her.
Finally she got up and stripped. She took a shower, and then spent an hour on her makeup and hair. She left the bathroom naked—the drones would not film that—and picked a favorite new dress from her closet. Then she came into the living room and sat. She told her phone to screen all calls, letting through only calls from her husband.
The house looked immaculate. It smelled immaculate. She had built and sold a perfect life, peppered with the arguments and angry shouting just for amusement. Like spice in your food. And now it would come crashing down.
Her heart pounded, pounded still. But she kept her face calm as the drones filmed. She wondered where Bobby had fled to. She liked it, without him there. It seemed more real. Her alone, with her life and her audience.
She could almost be calm here. She could enjoy, for a little while more, her home. Maybe it would endure. Alfonso would find his way out of this little complication. Right? And he would forgive her. She would blame Sal, and maybe even quit the show. Or, better yet, make Alfonso buy the show, so she could fire Sal and do it all her own way.
The phone rang. An image appeared on the wall beside her. A smiling picture of Alfonso.
“Answer,” she said softly. Then she added, a little more loudly, “Alfonso? Honey?”
“Where have you been?” he growled. “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour. This is serious. You could get killed.” He growled again, a noise like words choking in this throat. But he managed after a moment to spit out, “What did you do?”
She looked at the phone and then looked away. She couldn’t bear to meet his eyes. He sat in the back of a car. A robolimo. Alone. His face red with anger, but his eyes sad and hurt.
She closed her eyes. So they had posted it to the internet already. She knew they would, but then again, some part of her had hoped that Sal would back out, fearful of a lawsuit. But no. He couldn’t resist making great TV. So, already her fans and maybe millions of others had watched the footage. But of course she knew that. When she had opened the phone program earlier, she saw two hundred messages in the queue.
“I’m sorry, Alfonso. I thought you had a lover. Another woman.”
He hissed, an angry, impatient sound. “There’s only ever been you, Vicky. Only you. And what did it get me? Nothing but your distrust and disrespect. You should have trusted me.”
A tear slid from her eye. “I’m so sorry Alfonso. I’m so sorry. I want to fix this. You’re so smart. You can fix it.”
“No baby, not this. Not this. But I can make sure you’re safe. I’m sending security people over there now. You understand? You have to leave. To leave the city.”
She shook her head.
“I won’t leave you.”
“Just for a little while,” he said.
She shook her head again, more emphatically. “You just said you can’t fix this. So you won’t be able to come behind me. And that means I’m staying here. I face whatever it is, I face it with you.”
His voice turned demanding and angry again. “You will do as I say. You betrayed me once already. Do not betray me twice. You will leave the apartment, go downstairs, and wait with the super. My security people have his number. They’re talking to him right now. And—”
His voice stopped. She frowned and looked to the wall, surprised to find it blank. Then the two galactic drones before her fell to the marble floor, landing with two loud crack s. The ceiling lights flickered and faded. The air conditioner fell silent. She felt the hair on her arms prick. The hair on her head lifted slightly away from her shoulders. A strange, electric smell filled the air. She was in the dark now, as if the storm surrounded her. She could even hear it now, faintly: the wind whistling against the glass walls.
A bang and crack came from the hall behind her. The door. Someone had smashed in the door. It fell clattering, a thunderingly loud noise. Clatter as footsteps came over the door where it lay on the marble.
“Not like this,” she whispered. To die alone, unwatched. To die like this, and not have her death be recorded. That would be like disappearing. Just slipping out of the world. It was too terrible, to die unseen, uncounted. Forgotten. “That’s so unfair,” she said.
Two people ran into the room, crouching slightly, holding guns. A low, wide man, with a mask half pulled over his head. But leading the way a tall woman. She recognized the woman immediately: she had seen her in the footage from the opera. The woman she had suspected of being Alfonso’s lover. What was she doing here?
She raised her gun and aimed it at Victoria’s head.
“You stupid bitch, do you realize what you have done?” she said.
A hint of white trash in that voice, Victoria thought. A hint of some
Eastern European coal town.
Victoria raised her head proudly. “I know what I have done. I made a life, filled with opera and art and all the best things that human beings have created, and then I shared it with the world.”
She barely heard the ugly cough of the gun.
CHAPTER 9
Alfonso kicked the screen in the limo when it went blank.
“Sir, any damage incurred to this vehicle is your responsibility,” the limo’s AI system said.
“Fuck you,” he swore, smashing the screen with his shoe’s heel. “Fuck you and fuck this traffic and fuck that my wife is so goddamn stubborn and fuck those worthless shits in the Terran Liberation Front. I’m going to kill them all.”
“Sir, any damage incurred to this vehicle is your responsibility.”
He threw himself back into the seat. What could he do?
His mind raced in circles, while he considered his options and the car worked its way uptown, to his apartment. Maybe they would kidnap Victoria. Or even just leave her alone, once they found her alone in the apartment.
But when the car came alongside Central Park, he could see, under the dark sky that just started to let loose a few fat drops of rain, the strobing colors of police lights.
His phone rang. He recognized the number: his security service. He touched the broken glass of the car’s phone. “What have you got?” he demanded.
The voice came clear, though the image sputtered and failed. “Sir, I’m very sorry sir, your wife—”
He slapped the shattered glass, cutting the transmission. “Turn right here,” he told the car. “Take me to Genmine’s labs, on 42nd Street.”
The car turned as he asked. The police, he realized, had not put a warrant out for him. The car would deliver him to the precinct station if they had. He would ditch this car when he arrived at the labs. Later, he would call a human taxi. A few such taxis still roamed the city.
He called his secretary.
“Mr. DiAngelo, you have an appointment with—”
“Get my boat ready,” he shouted. “Call the marina and tell them it has to be tied to the dock and fully charged and ready to go within an hour. No excuses. I don’t care what it costs. You understand?”
He hung up. A sheet of rain moved up Lexington, a gray wall approaching. A roar filled the car when the rain passed over. It hammered the metal roof with dense, dark drops. DiAngelo could see nothing ahead. The car drove on, using radar. Before him, the world shrank to a little pool of darkness.
_____
“Lee?”
The man started. He had been crouched over his desk, brow furrowed as he concentrated on the diagram on his desktop, a labyrinthine pattern for a new chip design, magnified ten thousand times.
He stared, mouth open. “Alfonso?” he said, almost not believing his eyes. “You’re soaked.”
DiAngelo nodded. “Got caught in a storm. A big storm. Swallowing the world. And it caught me. Time to get out.”
Tring Lee stood, frowning. “Come in.”
DiAngelo came into the scientist’s office and sat on the only free chair. The room was long, with a low ceiling. Not really an office at all, really a workspace. This was his firm’s skunkworks. DiAngelo thought of it as his lab of labs. He had acquired it a decade before, when he bought a hardware company. Only, he had recognized the skill of Lee and his team, and he had kept them on as his tech team after he sold the company. And he had made them all rich. They liked each other.
DiAngelo looked around. “Where is everyone?”
“New foundry demonstration down at the Neill factory.”
“Lucky I caught you then.”
Lee shrugged. “They can judge it well enough without me. I’ve got other things to do.”
“Just as well,” he said. He looked around. “I always love it down here. I should have come more often. This is where it really happens, you know? Progress. You people, people like you—engineers—making things. Carrying the human race along. I lost sight of that. I should have come down here more often.”
“You’re always welcome,” Lee said.
“Thanks.” He sighed, put his hands on his knees, and straightened his back. “Listen. This isn’t an easy thing, Tring. But I need the device.”
The engineer frowned. “It is not something that we should… move. Without a great deal of preparation. It’s very dangerous.”
DiAngelo nodded. “You’re going to have to trust me, Tring. I know you’re right. But this is a special situation. Very special. One of a kind. And… let’s just say everything depends on this. Everything depends on it. On you giving me the device right now.”
“I can prepare a battery set to move the containment field for the main container if—”
“No, Tring. Right now. Give me the original container. The one with the timed magnetic jar. I’m going to take it outside the city. Far from people. I have to do that. You have to trust me. It’s not safe here. It has to be with me.”
“Sir, it’s….”
“Yeah. It’s very dangerous. Tring, we’ve been friends a long time. And I’ve never lied to you or steered you in the wrong direction. I’m not wrong now, either. You have to hand it over.”
The engineer stared at him a long time, thinking. Finally he nodded. “Come on.” He stood, neatly pushed his chair up to his desk, and started down the long room. DiAngelo followed him, still dripping water on the floor. They walked to a metal door. Tring stood under LEDs hanging from wires that swung gently in some slight air current. He pressed his hand on the door, and after a moment it recognized him. Locks clicked inside, metal moving on metal, snapping into place under the power of strong electromagnets. The door swung open. Lights glowed into brightness over a descending staircase.
“Watch your step,” Lee said. “The steps are narrow.”
They clomped down into humid air. A basement hall, lined with doors. Lee opened the second, which let into a small cubicle of a room, four meters on a side, with batteries stacked on one wall, two backup generators stacked beside them, and against the opposite wall, a nickel cylinder crusted with frost.
DiAngelo pushed the door closed as Lee tapped at a keyboard mounted above the cold cylinder.
“Everything looks fine,” he said. “But are you sure about this?”
DiAngelo nodded. Lee tapped out some commands, and a terrible screech howled down at them from above. He tapped the keyboard again and it stopped.
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot to turn off the alarm. No need to tell you then that the main containment field just turned off. The device is being lowered to the floor of the cell. Give it a second to warm up.”
He pulled hard at a handle on the round end of the cylinder. Ice cracked off and fell clattering to the floor as a lid lifted up. He kneeled and looked inside. DiAngelo watched him, bathed in blue light, staring into the container. Then he reached in.
“You can touch it. It’s the super-reflective material. Mostly reflects your own heat.” He stood and held out his hand. “Forty pico-grams of antimatter. Suspended in a magnetic field. Safe up to a hundred gees of acceleration.”
A black pill lay in his palm. DiAngelo reached forward and took it. He closed his fingers, holding it tightly in his fist.
“I’ll need the codes to set the timer,” he said softly.
Lee shook his head. “Sir, that’s….”
“I give you my word, Tring. No human being will ever be in danger. We’ve come this far. Come on. The timing software.”
Tring tapped at his watch. He reached forward and tapped his watch against DiAngelo’s own watch. “There. That should have transferred the control software.”
DiAngelo nodded. “It’s been great knowing you, Tring. You’re a better man that you’ll ever know. Clear all this stuff out. Move it around, hide it, whatever.”
Before the engineer could reply, he turned and hurried from the room, leaving the door open behind himself.
_____
The rain was lighter no
w. He barely felt it when he pushed through the heavy double doors of the skunk works, out onto the street. A yellow cab waited there, checkerboard pattern along its body, just like the cabs of his own youth. A human being sat behind the wheel. Imagine that. Last cabby in Manhattan.
He got into the back. “Wall Street Marina,” he said.
“You got it, mack,” the driver said. A Pakistani man, by the look of him, but with an accent all classical New York. An act? DiAngelo didn’t care. He was just glad the driver wasn’t some code in the cloud.
Still clutching the pill tightly in his left hand, he pulled his phone from his coat and turned its screen on—the cab did not, he was pleased to see, contain any phone screens. He called his secretary. “You get my boat ready?”
“Yes sir. It’s at the dock. Very expensive sir. They didn’t want to do it in the storm.”
“Thanks, Carol. Listen, take the rest of the day off, OK?”
“Sir, I saw the news that—”
He hung up.
He was about to turn the phone off when it rang. He stared at the screen in wonder: the Harmonizer logo appeared there. He knew he should turn the phone off, but instead he tapped the screen with a knuckle of his still-clenched left hand.
That cocky Arab kid appeared on his phone.
“Mr. DiAngelo. This is Amir Tarkos with the Harmonizer Corp.”
“Hey. The Predator with his ray gun.”
“Mr. DiAngelo, where are you? There are some Harmonizers agents in New York looking for you right now. I think it would be best if you met them as soon as possible. We need to talk with you.”
DiAngelo laughed. “You and everyone else in New York.”
“We know about you and the Rinneret,” the kid said.
What kind of name was ‘Tarkos’? Not Arabic. Something Turkish, messed up in translation to US English, he suspected. Or Tariq, turned by some immigration agent into a New York novelty.
“Everyone knows about me and the Rinneret,” DiAngelo said.
Tarkos frowned. “I… I don’t see how that can be.”
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