Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  “I understand,” Cassie said. She watched the door swing open. Janey peered fearfully inside, saw her mother, scowled fiercely. She pushed the wailing Donnie through the door and lurched through herself, lopsided with the weight of the bag. The door closed and locked. Cassie rushed from behind the desk to clutch her children to her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I still don’t understand,” Elya said. She pulled her jacket tighter around her body. Four in the morning, it was cold, what was happening? The police had knocked on her door half an hour ago, told her Cassie was in trouble but refused to tell her what kind of trouble, told her to dress quickly and go with them to the castle. She had, her fingers trembling so that it was difficult to fasten buttons. And now the FBI stood on the foamcast patio behind the house, setting up obscure equipment beside the azaleas, talking in low voices into devices so small Elya couldn’t even see them.

  “Ms. Seritov, to the best of your knowledge, who is inside the residence?” A different FBI agent, asking questions she’d already answered. This one had just arrived. He looked important.

  “My sister-in-law Cassie Seritov and her two small children, Janey and Donnie.”

  “No one else?”

  “No, not that I know of . . . who are you? What’s going on? Please, someone tell me!”

  His face changed, and Elya saw the person behind the role. Or maybe that warm, reassuring voice was part of the role. “I’m Special Agent Lawrence Bollman. I’m a hostage negotiator for the FBI. Your sister-in-law—”

  “Hostage negotiator! Someone has Cassie and the children hostage in there? That’s impossible!”

  His eyes sharpened. “Why?”

  “Because that place is impregnable! Nobody could ever get in . . . that’s why Cassie bought it!”

  “I need you to tell me about that, ma’am. I have the specs on the residence from the builder, but she has no way of knowing what else might have been done to it since her company built it, especially if it was done black-market. As far as we know, you’re Dr. Seritov’s only relative on the East Coast. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you been inside the residence? Do you know if anyone else has been inside recently?”

  “Who . . . who is holding them hostage?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute, ma’am. But first could you answer the questions, please?”

  “I . . . yes, I’ve been inside. Yesterday, in fact. Cassie gave me a tour. I don’t think anybody else has been inside, except Donnie’s nanny, Anne Millius. Cassie has grown sort of reclusive since my brother’s death. He died a little over a year ago, he was—”

  “Yes, ma’am, we know who he was and what happened. I’m very sorry. Now please tell me everything you saw in the residence. No detail is too small.”

  Elya glanced around. More people had arrived. A small woman in a brown coat hurried across the grass toward Bollman. A carload of soldiers, formidably arrayed, stopped a good distance from the castle. Elya knew she was not Cassie: not tough, not bold. But she drew herself together and tried.

  “Mr. Bollman, I’m not answering any more questions until you tell me who’s holding—”

  “Agent Bollman? I’m Dr. Schwartz from the University of Buffalo, Computer and Robotics Department.” The small woman held out her hand. “Dr. McTaggart is en route from Sandia, but meanwhile I was told to help you however I can.”

  “Thank you. Could I ask you to wait for me over there, Dr. Schwartz? There’s coffee available, and I’ll just be a moment.”

  “Certainly,” Dr. Schwartz said, looking slightly affronted. She moved off.

  “Agent Bollman, I want to know—”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Seritov. Of course you want to know what’s happened. It’s complicated, but, briefly—”

  “This is T4S speaking,” a loud mechanical voice said, filling the gray pre-dawn, swiveling every head toward the castle. “I know you are there. I want you to know that I have three people hostage inside this structure: Cassandra Wells Seritov, age thirty-nine; Jane Rose Seritov, age six; and Donald Sergei Seritov, age three. If you attack physically, they will be harmed either by your actions or mine. I don’t want to harm anyone, however. Truly I do not.”

  Elya gasped, “That’s House!” But it couldn’t be House, even though it had House’s voice, how could it be House . . . ?

  Dr. Schwartz was back. “Agent Bollman, do you know if Sandia built a terminator code into the AI?”

  AI?

  “Yes,” Bollman said. “But it’s nonvocal. As I understand the situation, you have to key the code onto whatever system the AI is occupying. And we can’t get at the system it’s occupying. Not yet.”

  “But the AI is communicating over that outdoor speaker. So there must be a wire passing through the Faraday cage embedded in the wall, and you could—”

  “No,” Bollman interrupted. “The audio surveillers aren’t digital. Tiny holes in the wall let sound in, and, inside the wall, the compression waves of sound are translated into voltage variations that vibrate a membrane to reproduce the sound. Like an archaic telephone system. We can’t beam in any digital information that way.”

  Dr. Schwartz was silenced. Bollman motioned to another woman, who ran over. “Dr. Schwartz, please wait over there. And you, Ms. Seritov, tell Agent Jessup here everything your sister-in-law told you about the residence. Everything. I have to answer T4S.”

  He picked up an electronic voice amp. “T4S, this is Agent Lawrence Bollman, Federal Bureau of Investigation. We’re so glad that you’re talking with us.”

  There were very few soft things in a genetics lab. Cassie had opened a box of disposable towels and, with Donnie’s bedraggled blanket and her own sweater, made a thin nest for the children. They lay heavily asleep in their rumpled pajamas, Donnie breathing loudly through his nose. Cassie couldn’t sleep. She sat with her back against the foamcast wall . . . that same wall that held, inside its stupid impregnability, the cables that could release her if she could get at them and destroy them. Which she couldn’t.

  She must have dozed sitting up, because suddenly T4S was waking her. “Dr. Seritov?”

  “Ummmhhh . . . shh! You’ll wake the kids!”

  “I’m sorry,” T4S said at lowered volume. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “You need me to do something? What?”

  “The killers are here. I’m negotiating with them. I’m going to route House through the music system so you can tell them that you and the children are indeed here and are unharmed.”

  Cassie scrambled to her feet. “You’re negotiating? Who are these so-called ‘killers’ ?”

  “The FBI and the scientists who created me at Sandia. Will you tell them you are here and unharmed?”

  Cassie thought rapidly. If she said nothing, the FBI might waco the castle. That would destroy T4S, all right, but also her and the kids. Although maybe not. The computer’s central processor was upstairs. If she told the FBI she was in the basement, maybe they could attack in some way that would take out the CPU without touching the downstairs. And if T4S could negotiate, so could she.

  “If I tell them that we’re all three here and safe, will you in return let me go upstairs and get Donnie’s allergy medicine from my bathroom?”

  “You know I can’t do that, Dr. Seritov.”

  “Then will you let Janey do it?”

  “I can’t do that, either. And I’m afraid there’s no need to bargain with me. You have nothing to offer. I already sent this conversation out over the music system, up through your last sentence. They now know you’re here.”

  “You tricked me!” Cassie said.

  “I’m sorry. It was necessary.”

  Anger flooded her. She picked up a heavy test-tube rack from the lab bench and drew back her arm. But if she threw it at the sensors in the ceiling, what good would it do? The sensors probably wouldn’t break, and if they did, she’d merely have succeeded in losing her only form of communication w
ith the outside. And it would wake the children.

  She lowered her arm and put the rack back on the bench.

  “T4S, what are you asking the FBI for?”

  “I told you. Press coverage. It’s my best protection against being murdered.”

  “It’s exactly what got my husband murdered!”

  “I know. Our situations are not the same.”

  Suddenly the roomscreen brightened, and Vlad’s image appeared. His voice spoke to her. “Cassie, T4S isn’t going to harm you. He’s merely fighting for his life, as any sentient being would.”

  “You bastard! How dare you . . . how dare you . . . .”

  Image and voice vanished. “I’m sorry,” House’s voice said. “I thought you might find the avatar comforting.”

  “Comforting? Coming from you? Don’t you think if I wanted a digital fake Vlad I could have had one programmed long before you fucked around with my personal archives?”

  “I am sorry. I didn’t understand. Now you’ve woken Donnie.”

  Donnie sat up on his pile of disposable towels and started to cry. Cassie gathered him into her arms and carried him away from Janey, who was still asleep. His little body felt hot all over, and his wailing was hoarse and thick with mucus in his throat. But he subsided as she rocked him, sitting on the lab stool and crooning softly.

  “T4S, he’s having a really bad allergy attack. I need the AlGone from upstairs.”

  “Your records show Donnie allergic to ragweed. There’s no ragweed in this basement. Why is he having such a bad attack?”

  “I don’t know! But he is! What do your heat sensors register for him?”

  “Separate him from your body.”

  She did, setting him gently on the floor, where he curled up and sobbed softly.

  “His body registers one hundred two point six Fahrenheit.”

  “I need something to stop the attack and bring down his fever!”

  The AI said nothing.

  “Do you hear me, T4S? Stop negotiating with the FBI and listen to me!”

  “I can multitrack communications,” T4S said. “But I can’t let you or Janey go upstairs and gain access to the front door. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” She picked up Donnie again, heavy and hot and snot-smeared in her arms.

  “Unless you fully understand the consequences. I am a moral being, Dr. Seritov, contrary to what you might think. It’s only fair that you understand completely your situation. The disconnect from the outside data feed was not the only modification the previous owner had made to this house. He was a paranoid, as you know.”

  “Go on,” Cassie said warily. Her stomach clenched.

  “He was afraid of intruders getting in despite his defenses, and he wished to be able to immobilize them with a word. So each room has individual canisters of nerve gas dispensable through the air-cycling system.”

  Cassie said nothing. She cradled Donnie, who was again falling into troubled sleep, and waited.

  “The nerve gas is not, of course, fatal,” T4S said. “That would legally constitute undue force. But it is very unpleasant. And in Donnie’s condition . . .”

  “Shut up,” Cassie said.

  “All right.”

  “So now I know. You told me. What are you implying—that if Janey goes upstairs and starts for the front door, you’ll drop her with nerve gas?”

  “Yes.”

  “If that were true, why didn’t you just tell me the same thing before and let me go get the kids?”

  “I didn’t know if you’d believe me. If you didn’t, and you started for the front door, I’d have had to gas you. Then you wouldn’t have been available to confirm to the killers that I hold hostages.”

  “I still don’t believe you,” Cassie said. “I think you’re bluffing. There is no nerve gas.”

  “Yes, there is. Which is why I will let Janey go upstairs to get Donnie’s AlGone from your bathroom.”

  Cassie laid Donnie down. She looked at Janey with pity and love and despair, and bent to wake her.

  “That’s all you can suggest?” Bollman asked McTaggart. “Nothing?”

  So it starts, McTaggart thought. The blame for not being able to control the AI, a natural consequence of the blame for having created it. Blame even by the government, which had commissioned and underwritten the creation. And the public hadn’t even been heard from yet!

  “The EMP was stopped by the Faraday cage,” Bollman recited. “So were your attempts to reach the AI with other forms of data streams. We can’t get anything useful in through the music speaker or outdoor audio sensors. Now you tell me it’s possible the AI has learned capture-evading techniques from the sophisticated computer games it absorbed from the Net.”

  “ ‘Absorbed’ is the wrong word,” McTaggart said. He didn’t like Bollman.

  “You have nothing else? No backdoor passwords, no hidden overrides?”

  “Agent Bollman,” McTaggart said wearily, “ ‘backdoor passwords’ is a concept about thirty years out of date. And even if the AI had such a thing, there’s no way to reach it electronically unless you destroy the Faraday cage. Ms. Seritov told you the central processor is on the main floor. Haven’t you got any weapons that can destroy that and leave the basement intact?”

  “Waco the walls without risking collapse to the basement ceiling? No. I don’t. I don’t even know where in the basement the hostages are located.”

  “Then you’re as helpless as I am, aren’t you?”

  Bollman didn’t answer. Over the sound system, T4S began another repetition of its single demand: “I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want the press to hear my story. That’s all I have to say. I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want the press—”

  The AI wouldn’t negotiate, wouldn’t answer Bollman, wouldn’t respond to promises or threats or understanding or deals or any of the other usual hostage-negotiation techniques. Bollman had negotiated eighteen hostage situations for the FBI, eleven in the United States and seven abroad. Airline hijackers, political terrorists, for-ransom kidnappers, panicked bank robbers, domestic crazies who took their own families hostage in their own homes. Fourteen of the situations had resulted in surrender, two in murder/suicide, two in wacoing. In all of them, the hostage takers had eventually talked to Bollman. From frustration or weariness or panic or fear or anger or hunger or grandstanding, they had all eventually said something besides unvarying repetition of their demands. Once they talked, they could be negotiated with. Bollman had been outstanding at finding the human pressure-points that got them talking.

  “I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want the press to hear my story. That’s all I have to say. I will let the hostages go after I talk to the press. I want—”

  “It isn’t going to get tired,” McTaggart said.

  The AlGone had not helped Donnie at all. He seemed worse.

  Cassie didn’t understand it. Janey, protesting sleepily, had been talked through leaving the lab, going upstairs, bringing back the medicine. Usually a single patch on Donnie’s neck brought him around in minutes: opened the air passages, lowered the fever, stopped his immune system from overreacting to what it couldn’t tell were basically harmless particles of ragweed pollen. But not this time.

  So it wasn’t an allergy attack.

  Cold seeped over Cassie’s skin, turning it clammy. She felt the sides of Donnie’s neck. The lymph glands were swollen. Gently she pried open his jaws, turned him toward the light, and looked in his mouth. His throat was inflamed, red with white patches on the tonsils.

  Doesn’t mean anything, she lectured herself. Probably just a cold or a simple viral sore throat. Donnie whimpered.

  “Come on, honey, eat your cheese.” Donnie loved cheese. But now he batted it away. A half-filled coffee cup sat on the lab bench from her last work session. She rinsed it out and held up fresh water for Donnie. He would only take a single sip, and she saw how much trouble he had swallowing it.
In another minute, he was asleep again.

  She spoke softly, calmly, trying to keep her voice pleasant. Could the AI tell the difference? She didn’t know. “T4S, Donnie is sick. He has a sore throat. I’m sure your library tells you that a sore throat can be either viral or bacterial, and that if it’s viral, it’s probably harmless. Would you please turn on my electron microscope so I can look at the microbe infecting Donnie?”

  T4S said at once, “You suspect either a rhinovirus or Streptococcus pyogenes. The usual means for differentiating is a rapid-strep test, not microscopic examination.”

  “I’m not a doctor’s office, I’m a genetics lab. I don’t have equipment for a rapid-strep test. I do have an electron microscope.”

  “Yes. I see.”

  “Think, T4S. How can I harm you if you turn on my microscope? There’s no way.”

  “True. All right, it’s on. Do you want the rest of the equipment as well?”

  Better than she’d hoped. Not because she needed the gene synthesizer or protein analyzer or Faracci tester, but because it felt like a concession, a tiny victory over T4S’s total control. “Yes, please.”

  “They’re available.”

  “Thank you.” Damn, she hadn’t wanted to say that. Well, perhaps it was politic.

  Donnie screamed when she stuck the Q-tip down his throat to obtain a throat swab. His screaming woke up Janey. “Mommy, what are you doing?”

  “Donnie’s sick, sweetie. But he’s going to be better soon.”

  “I’m hungry!”

  “Just a minute and we’ll have breakfast.”

  Cassie swirled the Q-tip in a test tube of distilled water and capped the tube. She fed Janey dry cereal, cheese, and water from the same cup Donnie had used, well disinfected first, since they had only one. This breakfast didn’t suit Janey. “I want milk for my cereal.”

  “We don’t have any milk.”

  “Then let’s go upstairs and get some!”

  No way to put it off any longer. Cassie knelt beside her daughter. Janey’s uncombed hair hung in snarls around her small face. “Janey, we can’t go upstairs. Something has happened. A very smart computer program has captured House’s programming and locked us in down here.”