Catalyst

by S. J. Kincaid

  “You never told me any of this.”

  “After that surgery Vengerov had done to your brain, you didn’t seem to remember her. Not anything. I couldn’t change what happened. I thought it was better not to tell you right away. And the older you got, the harder it became to tell you. You didn’t have your mother because of me. Because of what I did. I wasn’t sure you’d forgive me, Tommy.”

  “You seemed happier without me,” Tom muttered.

  “Worrying about you has put some lines on my face, but I wouldn’t trade you. Not for anything. If you hate me, I don’t blame you, Tommy. I’ve hated myself for a long time.”

  “I don’t hate you. It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  “Mom’s dead.”

  Neil caught his breath.

  “I turned off her neural processor.” His voice was the barest whisper. “I’m sorry.”

  Neil stared at him for a long moment. “That wasn’t your mother. If there’d been anything left of her, any trace, do you really think—” His voice broke. “If there’d been the slightest bit of your mother left in that shell, I wouldn’t have let them keep her. If you turned off that machine in her head, you did the right thing for her. One of us did the right thing for her, thank God.”

  Then his father reached forward and drew him into his arms, and for a moment Tom stiffened, feeling a hand cup the back of his neck. Then he relaxed, the ghosts of the past receding.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy. We’ll go home, and then I’ll do what I should’ve done years ago and tell you all about your mom. The person she really was on the best days. The woman I loved. And she loved you. She loved you so much . . . Also I’ve gotta meet your little girlfriend.”

  Tom pulled back, feeling a flash of pride at the reminder that he was with Yaolan now. Then he realized something.

  “Wait,” he blurted. “What do you mean, we’ll go ‘home’?”

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  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  NEIL’S NEW REGULAR job was supervising a local casino floor, watching for people using their new neural processors to cheat.

  “So I was cutting back on drinking, and I landed this job, but I had this hole in my life I couldn’t seem to fill,” Neil remarked, showing Tom the two-bedroom condo he’d rented. “Something seemed to be missing. Now I know what it was.”

  “Your own place.”

  “No.” Neil ruffled a hand through Tom’s hair. “You know what I didn’t have.”

  Later, Tom lay sprawled out in his own bed, in his own room, in his own family’s apartment for the first time in his life, with his own girlfriend right next to him, her chin resting on his shoulder. “And your father has no issues with me sleeping here?”

  “I told you, my dad’s pretty laid-back about everything. Believe it or not”—Tom raised his eyebrows at her—“I was kind of more responsible than he was.”

  “You’re right: that’s very difficult to believe,” Yaolan teased. “When we visit my family, I assure you that you’re going to be sleeping in the location most distant from me.”

  “As long as they’re heavy sleepers, I can work with that,” Tom said, grinning.

  She drifted off curled up against him, and for a long time he just watched her. He’d realized he loved her that day in space, and even though she’d never said the words back to him, his feelings had never changed.

  Not even, well, after . . . after getting away from Vengerov.

  Tom tried to avoid thinking of Joseph Vengerov, because even now the memories were like a spear stabbing into him. He stared up into the darkness, thinking of the oligarch still at large somewhere out there, eluding the entire world and even the most advanced technology combing continents for him.

  Unwittingly, his father’s words drifted back into his mind: I think of him as a computer, not a person, a machine trying to act like the rest of us.

  And then suddenly, Tom felt like he’d been struck.

  It all came rushing back to him, those memories came back to him, the ones Vengerov gave him to create the other identity, to create Vanya.

  All of the memories featured Vanya . . . Ivan by himself, excluded, an outcast unable to understand anything, unable to communicate anything, his only advocate his older brother, Joseph, who seemed some golden god in a world of chaos. Tom had taken for granted Vanya’s memories were fakes, manipulations, because they all featured Vanya’s big brother, Joseph, a genuinely decent guy. He thought Vengerov made them just for him.

  Even Olivia believed Vengerov invented Vanya’s memories purely to manipulate Tom and cultivate a sense of “learned helplessness” that would fool Tom into thinking he’d always been inept, an outcast . . . and dependent on Joseph Vengerov.

  But Ivan was real. Ivan had been real. Maybe those memories were really Ivan’s genuine memories, too.

  Cold sweat broke out over Tom’s skin. No. Ivan may have been real, but Ivan was dead. How would Vengerov have gotten Ivan’s memories to give to Tom?

  Then it came to him.

  Why would Joseph Vengerov, the perfect son, get the very first neural processor in his head? Why would Alexei Vengerov risk that with the son who had no need of it?

  Tom’s head spun with the answer.

  Because he didn’t. He didn’t.

  Ivan Vengerov really had been excluded, the shame of his father but unable to understand why, unable to grasp what he’d done wrong or what was so different about him in a world that made no sense to him.

  Until a machine was installed in his head.

  Ivan Vengerov got the first neural processor. Not Joseph. Ivan.

  Tom imagined Vanya with a neural processor. He imagined the sort of a person Vanya had become after being given a superhuman intellect. Vanya must have understood the world for the first time, and he did so with the cold precision of a machine. He looked around at the way people treated him and saw the scorn and cruelty and ostracism in his life, all due to his disability. Vanya must have taken for granted that being human meant being pitiless to those weaker than him.

  Neil had figured that out, too. Vengerov’s neural processor calculated exactly how he could become the best. And he hadn’t started to become the best by aiming to be the world’s most powerful CEO, he’d begun by becoming the perfect son in his family.

  He’d become Joseph Vengerov.

  Ivan hadn’t died. Joseph had.

  The person Tom knew as Joseph Vengerov was really Ivan, the actual, real-life Vanya with the computer in his head. That’s where the memories came from. They were all real. All of them. Vengerov knew exactly what memories to give Tom to make him feel helpless because he’d lived through them himself.

  And with that understanding, Tom grew certain to his very bones he knew exactly where Vengerov had hidden himself. He lay there paralyzed with the knowledge for a long moment, Yaolan sleeping against his chest, and one clear thought penetrated his mind.

  He had to talk to Vik.

  “TOM?” VIK SAID sleepily, peering at him in the conferencer, his dark hair tousled. He straightened instantly, growing more alert at something he saw on Tom’s face. “Hey, Tom, what is it? What’s wrong?”

  Tom realized he was shaking all over. “Doctor. I know where he is. I know.”

  “You do?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Tom scraped his hands through his hair. “I have to handle it. I have to do it myself.”

  “Then we’ll go together.” And Tom was so thankful that Vik didn’t call it “glorious revenge.” There was nothing glorious about it this time around. It simply had to be done.

  VANYA’S FAMILY USED to stay at a dacha, a cottage in the countryside far removed from civilization. It wasn’t listed as an official family property or an Obsidian Corp. property. It was far out enough that that there was no
internet there, no technology to speak of.

  It was one of the only ways Vengerov could have disappeared in the modern world.

  And Tom remembered the fondness Vanya had for it. Ivan was given a pet rabbit there.

  Certainly, Vengerov wasn’t expecting him when he strode right through the front door. “Hi, Ivan.”

  Vengerov looked up from where he was flipping through old blueprints, staring at him like he was a ghost. Tom shifted subtly so Vengerov could see the stun gun in his hand. He had no intention of killing him. After all, Vengerov had no machines guarding him here, no lackeys, nothing even remotely accessible to a network. He was just one man.

  And Tom and Vik were two.

  Vengerov lurched to his feet and backed toward the rear door, but when it slid open, Vik was outside, smiling blandly.

  “How’s it going?” he said, blocking his escape. “I help Tom on all his vengeance crusades.”

  “He’s a good friend that way,” Tom said.

  Vengerov considered the situation, then looked at Tom and raised his hands. No panic was on his face, just a cool sort of speculation. “Bravo, Mr. Raines. You located me. Are you here to kill me?”

  “Actually, no,” Tom said flatly. “I’m taking you into custody so you can stand trial. If you fight me, then I’ll change my mind, Ivan.”

  Vengerov’s gaze sharpened. “Why do you keep calling me that?”

  “The same reason I knew where you’d be.” Tom glanced around the cottage in a leisurely manner, trying to hide how disconcerting it was, recognizing it from Vanya’s memories. The entire world had been combing the various inactive ships in space, searching for Vengerov’s hidden spot in orbit. No one had considered the possibility he’d simply cut off all contact with technology or the internet and concealed himself on Earth.

  “You didn’t create Vanya’s memories just to screw with my head,” Tom said thoughtfully. “They already existed. They were yours. Your memories. You’re Ivan. And because I had your memories, I knew about this great hideout. So I guess I wanted to say thanks, Ivan. You led me right to you. Now it’s time to go.”

  Vengerov didn’t fight. Tom had realized a long time ago that Vengerov had machines to do battle for him and thousands of underlings. He never did anything himself, not if the computer in his head calculated there was any possibility he could come to physical harm. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, away from the prying electronic eyes that could give him away to a world searching for him, Vengerov had no allies. His optimal course of action was to cooperate, and bide his time until he had a sure route of escape. Tom knew that.

  So he cooperated. Vengerov’s steps faltered at the sight of one of his own suborbitals, jury-rigged by Tom and Vik. They locked him in the back cabin, and then Vik launched them into space.

  “You do realize, Mr. Raines,” Vengerov’s voice floated over the speaker, “if I am taken into custody, I’ll have to show them my memories with a census device of all your time with me.”

  Tom tensed up. “So? I don’t care.”

  “You seemed to care very much one upon a time,” Vengerov said, sounding almost amused. “I seem to recall you begging me not to share your experience with your friends.”

  Vik slapped the intercom, muted it. “You don’t need to listen to him.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” Tom said, staring at the console before him.

  “Forget him. We got the bastard. That’s what matters.”

  Tom looked at Vik, his best friend, his unconditional support. He finally told him the truth. “You know, he didn’t reprogram me. I know I said that, but he didn’t. Blackburn locked him out of my processor.”

  There was a long silence. Then Vik said, “I know.”

  Tom caught his breath. So Vik had realized it all along. Blackburn hadn’t lied to them. His best friend had pretended not to know he’d been totally broken to make it easier on him. A hand seemed to catch his throat. Strange that Vengerov had broken him down by threatening to show his friends all those shameful weaknesses he’d tried to hide from them for so long . . . but it hadn’t been necessary. He’d never needed to hide from them. Vik accepted even the worst of him.

  And Tom realized suddenly that nothing Vengerov ever said again would hold any power over him.

  At that moment, there was movement on the screen showing Vengerov. Vik pointed to it. Tom nodded. There were two camera feeds from the aft cabin. Vengerov had disabled the one he knew about. Tom and Vik exchanged a significant glance, knowing what was about to happen.

  Vengerov was making his choice: whether or not he would undergo a fair trial. They watched him find the space suit, and secure it on his body. Vengerov flashed a look at the door separating him from their cockpit, and then with the space suit in place, he moved to the hatch. His hand began to twist it open.

  Then as Tom and Vik watched, he jerked open the hatch and the current of air blew him into space. Naturally, Vengerov had to intend to use the space suit’s propulsion system to seek shelter on one of his yet-undiscovered orbiting vessels.

  He didn’t realize Tom and Vik had removed the propulsion unit.

  Tom gave Vengerov just enough time to realize he wasn’t in control of his momentum and enough time to try activating his transmitter—and realize it had also been removed from the suit. He couldn’t even send a message with net-send on his neural processor: there was a jammer sewn right into his suit. If he tried to dig it out, the suit would rupture.

  Tom flipped on the one-way speakers that he knew would pipe into Vengerov’s helmet and said, “Hi, Ivan. I guess you’ll have noticed by now that you have absolutely no control over your space suit and you’re drifting aimlessly. I wanted to give you a decision. Just like the decisions you gave me. You could go and face trial, or you could decide not to go to trial. You’ve obviously decided not to.”

  Vik wheeled them about so that directly in front of them their sensors could pick up the lone space-suited man drifting out against the dark tapestry of stars, Vengerov’s momentum sending him floating away from Earth. His back was to the planet. That meant he would never see it again.

  “It really is a waste,” Tom told Vengerov. “You had the technology to change the world. The neural processors have allowed the singularity to begin. We all could’ve risen together, but that wasn’t enough for you. The only way you felt powerful was to use that tech to stamp the rest of us down. If you’d tried to help humanity, you would’ve been the greatest person in history, the catalyst who changed the world for the better. People would’ve revered you. But here you are, just another megalomaniac about to die alone, and people will forget you. But you do have one last choice, Ivan—the same one you gave me. No one is coming to save you. You can float alone in space until your oxygen runs out, or you can take off your helmet.”

  And with that, Tom cut off the transmission.

  Vik’s hand was clenched in a fist. “Want to circle around so we can get a good glimpse of the look on his face?” he said darkly. “I’d like to get a nice long look at his expression right now.”

  Tom felt a surge of affection for his friend. He laid a hand on Vik’s shoulder. “No, man. Let’s go home.”

  He didn’t need to see the shock, the disbelief, and then the fear on Vengerov’s face when he ran calculation after calculation and still found no escape from his situation, when he understood there was no surviving this. That primal fear of death might be the first emotion Vengerov had truly felt since getting his neural processor, but Tom didn’t care to relish it. He couldn’t help thinking that the man who’d wreaked so much suffering on others had been a twisted outgrowth of the mistreated Vanya.

  All he really wanted was for Vengerov to disappear. From his memory, from the world, from the universe. Tom and Vik soared away from that tiny space suit floating into the vast emptiness, drifting, drifting away—traveling a lonely path into the void until it vanished against the distant stars.

  Sliding into view ahead of Tom and Vik, where
Vengerov would never again see it, Earth stood bright and glorious. Lights glowed all across its surface, human civilization entering into its golden age, the final oligarch winding off into oblivion.

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  EPILOGUE

  “SERIOUSLY, HOW ARE you feeling?”

  “Vik, I don’t care,” Tom assured him. “You go first. We’re cool.”

  It had been months since they’d jettisoned Vengerov in space. Today, Tom and Vik were on a ship again on a far more significant mission. Vik flashed Tom a crazy-eyed grin, and then he stepped first through the hatch of their lander, his boots crunching on the crimson sand of the planet Mars.

  And in that way, Vikram Ashwan, an Indian astronaut with the Galactic Legion, became the first human being to step foot on an alien planet.

  Vik and Tom had trained for the mission for months, ever since they’d been selected for the mission to become the first humans to walk on Mars. The newest technology made the trip quick, painless, and cheap, and it was only a precursor mission to the big one happening later this year—but the whole world was watching.

  Vik went first, and then Tom followed him out of the ship, amazement spreading through him. Now the sky hung scarlet and vivid above them, the iron-red landscape stretching into the distance on all sides.

  Vik stood in silent awe. Tom took his first steps and stared down at his boots now officially on Mars. It was the same location his avatar had conquered in that first training simulation for the Intrasolar Forces. Now he was here for real. In person. As some fourteen-year-old kid living out of VR parlors, Tom never would have thought it possible.