Death Match

by Lincoln Child

  “So what we’re looking at right now are all of Eden’s current applicants.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “How many are there?”

  “It varies, but at any one time there could be up to ten thousand avatars. More are added constantly. There could be almost anybody in there. Presidents, rock stars, poets. The only people . . .” she hesitated. “The only people not allowed are Eden personnel.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Tara’s reply did not address this question. “It takes approximately eighteen hours for any one avatar to make contact with all the others in the Tank. We call that a cycle. Thousands upon thousands of avatars intersecting with every other, releasing a massive torrent of data—you can imagine the kind of computing horsepower required to parse the data.”

  Lash nodded. There was a low beeping behind him, and he turned to see Mauchly raising a cell phone to his ear.

  “Anyway,” Tara went on, “when a match is determined, the two avatars are removed from the Tank. Nine times out of ten, a match is made within the first cycle. If there is no match, the avatar is retained in the Tank for another cycle, then another. If an avatar hasn’t found a match within five cycles, it’s removed and the candidate’s application is voided. But that’s only happened half a dozen times.”

  Half a dozen times, Lash thought to himself. He glanced over at Mauchly, but he was still on the phone.

  “But under normal circumstances, you could take one of these avatars, put it back in the Tank a year from now, and another match would be found. A different match. Right?”

  “That’s a sensitive issue. Our clients are told that a perfect match has been found for them. And it’s true. But that isn’t to say we couldn’t find an equally perfect match for them tomorrow, or next month. Except in the case of the supercouples, of course—those really are perfect. But we don’t tell our clients about degrees of perfection, because that might encourage window shopping. Once we’ve found a match, that’s it. End of story. Their avatars are removed from the Tank.”

  “And then?”

  “The two candidates are notified of the match. A meeting is set up.” As she said this, her expression once again grew distant.

  Lash turned to the Tank, staring at the thousands of avatars gliding back and forth within, weightless and alien. “You mentioned the need for computing horsepower,” he murmured. “That seems an understatement. I didn’t know any computer could handle such a job.”

  “Funny you should say that.” It was Mauchly speaking this time, slipping the phone back into his jacket pocket. “Because there’s one person in this building who knows more than anyone else about that. And he’s just asked to make your acquaintance.”

  SEVENTEEN

  F ive minutes brought them to a sky lobby: a two-story space on the thirtieth floor, surrounded by banks of elevators. One end opened onto an employee cafeteria, and Lash could see workers clustered around dozens of tables, talking and eating.

  “We have ten cafeterias here on the inside,” Mauchly said. “We discourage people from leaving the building for lunch or dinner, and the excellent free food helps.”

  “Lunch or dinner?”

  “Or breakfast, for that matter. We’ve got technicians working shifts round the clock, especially in the data-gathering sections.” Mauchly made for an elevator at the end of the nearest bank. It was set apart from the others, and a guard in a beige jumpsuit was posted before it. When the guard saw them approach, he stepped aside.

  Mauchly turned to Tara. “You’ve got the latest code. Go ahead.” And he indicated a keypad beside the elevators.

  “Where are we headed?” Tara asked.

  “The penthouse.”

  There was a quick intake of breath, quickly checked. Tara punched in a code and, a moment later, the doors opened.

  As he stepped inside the elevator, Lash sensed something was different. It wasn’t the walls, which had the same glossy wood grain as the others in the building; it wasn’t the carpeting, or the lighting, or the safety railing. Suddenly he realized what it was. There was no pinhole security camera in this car. And there were only three buttons on the instrument panel, all unmarked. Mauchly pressed the topmost button, placed his bracelet beneath the scanner.

  The elevator rose for what seemed forever. At last it opened onto a brilliantly lit room. But this was not the artificial light Lash had seen elsewhere in Eden: this was sunlight, streaming in from windows that filled three of the four walls. He stepped forward onto a sumptuous blue carpet, looking around in wonder. Through the wall of glass, the dense cityscape of mid-Manhattan lay beneath a cloudless sky. To his left, and right—at what seemed great distances—other windows afforded unbroken vistas of Long Island and New Jersey. Instead of the fluorescent lighting panels of the floors below, beautiful cut-glass fixtures hung from the ceiling, unnecessary in this explosion of daylight.

  Lash remembered seeing, from street level, the figured grille that set off the tower’s topmost floors. And he recalled Mauchly’s words: The tower is made up of three separate buildings. Atop the inner tower is the penthouse. This aerie that crowned the corporate tower could only be one thing: the lair of its reclusive founder, Richard Silver.

  Except for the elevator door, the entire fourth wall was covered in rich mahogany bookcases. But they were not the leather-bound volumes one would expect in such a setting; there were cheap science fiction paperbacks, yellowing and broken-backed; technical journals, clearly well thumbed; oversize manuals for computer operating systems and languages.

  Tara Stapleton had walked across the wide floor and was staring at something before one of the windows. As his eyes grew used to the light, Lash became aware that dozens of objects—some large, some small—were arranged in front of the huge plates of glass. He stepped forward himself, curious, stopping before a contraption almost the size of a telephone booth. Rising from its wooden base was a complex architecture of rotors, stacked horizontally on spars of metal. Behind the rotors was a complex nesting of wheels, rods, and levers.

  He moved to the next window, where what looked like the metal guts of some giant’s music box lay on a wooden stand. Beside it was a monstrous device: a cross between an ancient printing press and a grandfather clock. A large metal crank was visible on one side, and its face was covered with flat, polished metal discs of all sizes. Large spools of paper sat on a wooden tray between its legs.

  Mauchly seemed to have disappeared, but another man was approaching them from across the room: tall, youthful-looking, with a vast mop of red hair rising from a square forehead. He was smiling, and his watery blue eyes peered out through thin silver frames with a friendly sparkle. He wore a tropical shirt over a pair of worn jeans. Though Lash had never seen the man before, he instantly recognized him: Richard Silver, the genius behind both Eden and the computer that made it possible.

  “You must be Dr. Lash,” the man said, extending his hand. “I’m Richard Silver.”

  “Call me Christopher,” Lash said.

  Silver turned toward Tara, who had turned wordlessly at the man’s approach. “And you’re Tara Stapleton? Edwin’s told me great things about you.”

  “It’s an honor to meet you, Dr. Silver,” she replied.

  Lash listened to this exchange in surprise. She’s the chief security tech. But she’s never met him before.

  Silver turned back to Lash. “Your name rings a bell, Christopher, but I can’t quite place it.”

  Lash said nothing, and after a moment, Silver shrugged. “Ah, well. Perhaps it will return to me. In any case, I’m curious about your theoretical orientation. Given your prior job, I’d guess you belong to the cognitive behavioral school?”

  This was the last thing Lash expected to hear. “More or less. I’m eclectic, I like to pick and choose from other schools as well.”

  “I see. Such as behavioral? Humanist?”

  “More the former than the latter, Dr. Silver.”

  “It’s Richard, pleas
e.” Silver smiled again. “You’re right to pick and choose. Cognitive behavioral psychology has always been fascinating to me because it lends itself to information processing. But on the other hand, strict behaviorists feel all behavior is learned. Right?”

  Lash nodded, surprised. Silver did not fit his image of what a brilliant recluse should look like.

  “You’ve got a remarkable collection here,” he said.

  “My little museum. These devices are my one weakness. Such as that beauty you were just examining: Kelvin’s Tide Predictor. It could predict the high and low tides for any future date. And note the paper drums at its base: perhaps the first instance of hardcopy output. Or how about the device on the stand beside it? Built more than three hundred and fifty years ago, but it can still do all the arithmetic, subtraction, multiplication, division of today’s calculators. It’s fashioned around something called the Leibniz Wheel, which went on to jumpstart the adding machine industry.”

  Silver walked along the wall of glass, pointing out various machines and explaining their historical importance with relish. He asked Tara to walk with him, and as they proceeded he praised her work, asked if she was happy with her position at the company. Despite the short acquaintance, Lash found himself warming to the man: he seemed friendly, free of arrogance.

  Silver stopped before the huge device Lash first noticed. “This,” he said almost reverently, “is Babbage’s Analytical Engine. His most ambitious work, left incomplete at his death. It’s the precursor to the Mark I, Colossus, ENIAC, all the really important computers.” And he stroked its steel sides with something like affection.

  All of the ancient artifacts, perched as they were before staggering vistas of midtown Manhattan, were still remarkably out of place in this elegant room. Then abruptly, Lash understood. “They’re all thinking machines,” he said. “Attempts at creating devices to do the mental computations of humans.”

  Silver nodded. “Exactly. Some of them—” he waved at the Analytical Engine “—keep me humble. Others—” he gestured across the room, where a much more modern 128K Macintosh sat on a marble plinth “—give me hope. And still others keep me honest.” And he pointed toward a large wooden box with a chessboard set into its front.

  “What’s that?” Tara asked.

  “That’s a chess-playing computer, built in France during the late Renaissance. Turned out the ‘computer’ was really just a pint-sized chess whiz who squeezed himself inside the machine and directed its movements. But come, let’s sit down.” And he led the way to a low table surrounded by leather chairs. It was littered with periodicals: the Times, the Wall Street Journal, issues of Computerworld and the Journal of Advanced Psychocomputing.

  As they sat, Silver’s smile seemed to falter. “It’s great to make your acquaintance, Christopher. But I wish the circumstances were more pleasant.”

  He sat forward, head slightly bowed, hands clasped together. “This has come as an awful shock. To the board, and to me personally.” And when Silver looked up, Lash saw anguish in his eyes. It’s rough, he thought. The company this man formed, its good works, put into mortal danger.

  “When I think of those couples, the Thorpes, the Wilners . . . well, words fail me. It’s incomprehensible.”

  Then Lash realized he’d been wrong. Silver wasn’t thinking about the company: he was thinking about the four dead people, and the cruel irony that had suddenly ended their lives.

  “You have to understand, Christopher,” Silver said, looking down again at the table. “What we do here goes beyond a service. It’s a responsibility, like the responsibility a surgeon feels when he approaches a patient on the operating table. Except for us, the responsibility goes on the rest of their lives. They’ve entrusted their future happiness to us. That’s something that never occurred to me when I first had the idea-germ for Eden. So now it’s our duty to learn what happened, whether . . . whether or not we had any role in the tragedy.”

  Once again, Lash felt surprise. This was a frankness he had not seen from anybody on the Eden board save perhaps the chairman, Lelyveld.

  “I realize the Wilner deaths took place just days ago. But have you learned anything useful?” Silver looked up with an almost pleading expression in his eyes.

  “It’s as I told Mauchly. There are absolutely no indications for suicide in the months leading up to their deaths.”

  Silver held his gaze briefly, then looked away. For a ridiculous moment, Lash feared the computer genius would burst into tears.

  “I hope to be going over Eden’s own psych evaluations of the couples shortly,” Lash said quickly, as if to reassure Silver. “Perhaps I’ll know more then.”

  “I want all of the resources of Eden put behind this,” Silver replied. “Tell Edwin I said so. If there’s anything I or Liza can do, please let me know.”

  Liza? Lash thought a little vaguely. You mean, Tara? Tara Stapleton?

  “Do you have any theories?” Silver asked in a quiet voice.

  Lash hesitated. He didn’t want to bring up any more bad news. “They’re only theories at this point. But unless there’s some unknown emotional or physiological agent at work here, the signs are pointing increasingly at homicide.”

  “Homicide?” Silver echoed sharply. “How is that possible?”

  “As I said, so far I’m only working the theories. There’s a small chance somebody on the inside is involved: one of your employees, or ex-employees. But it’s far more likely the suspect is somebody rejected by your selection process.”

  An odd look came over Silver’s face: the look of a child who has just been rebuked for something he didn’t do. It was a look of hurt innocence.

  “I can’t believe it,” he murmured. “Our security protocols are so stringent. Tara here can verify that. I’ve been assured—” He broke off.

  “Like I said, so far it’s just a theory.”

  Another silence settled over the table; this one longer than the first. Then Silver stood up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I guess I’ve been keeping you from more important things.” And as he extended his hand, some of his smile’s warmth returned.

  From out of nowhere, Mauchly reappeared. He ushered both Tara and Lash toward the elevator.

  “Christopher?” came Silver’s voice. And Lash turned to see Silver standing by the Analytical Engine.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Thank you for coming up. It’s reassuring, knowing you’re assisting us. I’m sure we’ll be meeting again, soon.”

  And as the elevator door slid open, Silver turned away, his face thoughtful, his hand once again stroking, almost absently, the metal flank of the ancient computer.

  EIGHTEEN

  B y the time Lash pulled into his driveway it was almost seven-thirty, and the curtain of night was dropping over the Connecticut coastline. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, listening to the tick of cooling metal. Then he stepped out and walked wearily to the house. He felt drained, as if the sheer volume of technological marvels he’d seen today had temporarily dulled his capacity for wonder.

  The house smelled of the lingering smoke from a Sunday fire. Lash turned on the lights and made his way back to the small office that adjoined his bedroom, the weight of the bracelet on his wrist still strange. He picked up the phone and dialed; discovered there were fifteen waiting messages; then sat down, steeling himself for the task of plowing through them.

  It took surprisingly little time. Four had been telemarketers and six others were simply hang-ups. There was, in fact, only one message that had to be dealt with right away. He reached for his address book, then dialed the home number of Oscar Kline, the covering psychologist.

  “It’s Kline,” came the clipped voice.

  “Oscar, this is Christopher.”

  “Hey, Chris. How’s it going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “Everything all right? You sound tired.”

  “I am tired.”

  “I’ll bet you wer
e up all night, working on this research project you’re being so secretive about.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why bother? I mean, you don’t need the fame—not after that book of yours. And you don’t need the money, God knows you live like a monk in that Westport cloister.”

  “It’s hard to drop something like this once you’ve gotten involved. You know how these things are.”

  “Well, there’s one good reason I can think of. Your practice. After all, this isn’t August, patients expect us to be around. You miss one session, fine. But two? People get restless. There were a couple of loudmouths in group today, troublemakers.”

  “Let me guess. Stinson.”

  “Yes, Stinson. And Brahms, too. You miss another, it’s going to get serious.”

  “I know. I’m trying hard to get this wrapped up before that happens.”

  “Good. Because otherwise I’m going to have to off-load some of them onto Cooper. And that wouldn’t be a pretty sight.”

  “You’re right, it wouldn’t. I’ll be in touch, Oscar. Thanks for everything.”

  As Lash hung up and began to walk away, the phone rang again. He turned back, picked it up. “Hello?”

  With a sharp click, the line went dead.

  Lash turned away again, yawning, forcing himself to think about dinner. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, in hope some meal might put itself together. Nothing did. And with his brain shutting down, Lash opted for the easiest solution: he’d phone the Chinese place on the Post Road.