"Have they ever hurt anyone?" Laura asked.
Gray seemed shocked. "Of course not! They're programmed not to harm humans."
"But you said they program themselves. That's why you have to reprogram them over and over?" Laura shook her head and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Do you realize the power of these things that you're unleashing on this world. On an unprepared and completely unsuspecting world at that."
Gray turned abruptly to face her. "I know exactly what's being unleashed on the world. And you're right. It's unsuspecting." Laura heard a weight, a gravity in his voice that wasn't there before, and it left her searching for a deeper meaning. "We once had an Eight whose battery ran down. It was… sad, actually. Got its foot caught in the rocks, which also blocked his calls for help over VHF and microwave links. After that happened, we pulled them back into the yard where they're safer. But when the first prototypes were functional about six months ago, we gave them the full run of the empty quarter."
He frowned and chewed on the inside of his cheek, lost in thought.
"What happened to the… to the one who died?" Laura asked.
"We took him back into the shop. There were a total of six Model Eights in that first series — version 1.0. All of them had the same software age as the one we lost. The 1.0 was a very good class, and they were awfully close-knit. None of the others would leave the room where we laid him out. They all just stood there. It was a fairly odd moment, to say the least. They grew agitated when we began to cable the simulators up. We were getting ready to reprogram its mini-net with an upgraded simulation package, and had already redesignated the decharged robot the first of the 1.2 series. 2.01R. But its classmates began to fidget all about, and I have to admit I got a little nervous. Not that they were dangerous, of course. It was more like I was doing something… wrong, like I was a stranger violating the social mores of a totally alien culture."
"Desecrating the dead," Laura said. Gray looked up at her and nodded. "So what did you do?"
"I left him alone for a few days. The others came back to him every once in a while — made sure his power cable was plugged in — but after a while they stopped. One day we just quietly reprogrammed him."
"Did the robots think that it might come out of its 'coma' or something?"
Gray shrugged. "I've been so busy that I don't know as much as I'd like to about the Eights. But they're special. I think we've broken through." He didn't explain what he meant, but Laura thought she understood. His new Model Eights were alive, thinking, conscious.
"Then why do you keep the Model Eights in the 'empty' quarter of the island?"
"They're prototypes. Experimental. You can't make them school crossing guards right off the assembly line."
"But why are their facilities buried inside the mountain?"
"The technology is proprietary. I have to protect my assets."
"Haven't you heard of patents?"
"Patents are based on trust. I don't trust governments to serve my interests, and I've got billions tied up in these technologies."
Gray's attention was again drawn to the busy room's launch simulation. "Look, I'm sorry to rush you, but was there something else you wanted to know?"
"Well… where do I start? I want you to explain that bizarre field trip that I took in virtual reality yesterday. I want to know why this space launch tonight is so important that you've abandoned all else to make sure it gees off. I want to know why you're building an army of ten-foot-tall robots who respond to your every command. And," she thought to add for good measure, "I want to know what Dr. William Krantz is doing here."
Gray arched his eyebrows when she mentioned Krantz's name, then he nodded slowly. "I forgot. Krantz is from Harvard, too. Tell a car to take you to the high-energy physics lab. I'll clear you through. I'm sure Krantz is there now. He's always down there."
"I don't want to talk to Krantz. I want you to tell me what's happening here."
"I have an emergency!" someone on the floor below shouted.
"Go meet with Krantz. The launch is at eight. We'll talk at dinner afterward."
And with that, Gray was gone.
26
Laura's car pulled slowly into a tunnel burrowed into the side of the mountain. The black stone seemed to absorb the white light cast by lamps that ran along the domed ceiling. The road led toward a heavy steel door, which opened to reveal an identical door just beyond.
The car stopped in between the two. A heavy clank preceded a low rumble as the door behind Laura began to close. Her stomach churned.
She was inside the mountain. The Model Eights were in there too.
The moment the first door clanged shut, its clone just ahead cracked open. The car began to inch toward a well-lit intersection, picking up speed as it passed the heavy blast door. It turned down a tunnel to the right. The car — and the Other — knew the way.
The ride was short. The car entered a huge, high-ceilinged cavern located deep inside the mountain. It passed rows of windowless structures that dotted the concrete floor. The black walls bore ugly reminders of the brute force used to gouge the chamber from the earth.
Laura's car stopped in front of a prefabricated metal building indistinguishable from a dozen others she'd passed. The door beside her opened with a hiss.
She got out. There were no echoes to be heard across the great open space. The silence was so complete she could almost feel the oppressive weight of the rock around her. She headed for the door of the nondescript gray building, eyeing the shiny tubes that rose from its roof like a great cathedral's organ. They were bracketed firmly into rough cuts in the wall, and Laura had no idea what purpose they served.
She opened the door and was relieved to find several people inside.
They looked up in surprise to examine the new arrival. Laura introduced herself and asked to see Dr. Krantz.
A woman in a white lab coat headed into the buildings interior. Laura stood by the front door, shifting from one foot to the other and looking around. There was no receptionist, no waiting area, no chairs in which Laura could rest. Just three bespectacled nerds, who glanced awkwardly her way from their paperwork.
"Come with me, Dr. Aldridge," the woman said from the hallway upon her return.
Laura followed her off through a warren of narrow corridors. At irregularly spaced intervals, closed doors with shiny doorknobs lined the walls. "You don't have automatic doors down here?" Laura asked. The woman shook her head without turning, which ended Laura's attempt at conversation.
They passed a door that was decidedly different from the others. It was made of heavy metal, rounded, and bolted into its raised frame like a hatch on a ship. A yellow-and-black radiation symbol was prominently displayed just below a small porthole.
Laura followed her mute guide around the corner. The woman opened a door, allowed Laura to pass, and then disappeared. Krantz sat alone at the front of a room that reminded Laura of a surgeon's amphitheater.
Angled glass dominated the far wall, and beyond the windows was a dimly lit chamber several stories in height. Between the door and Krantz were rows of consoles, their instruments darkened and their padded swivel chairs empty.
The physicist was hunched over a notepad, oblivious to Laura's presence. A few strands of hair — each at least ten inches long — swept across his otherwise bare and pasty scalp. Like Laura's escort, Krantz wore a white lab coat, and he propped a single foot in a chair.
"O-o-one second," he said without looking up. His pencil worked its way down the small pad, which he held high in front of his eyeglasses.
He was lost in the abstract world of his discipline, and he noticed nothing about the real world around him.
Laura took the opportunity to look the place over. The room itself revealed nothing about its purpose. At several places along the control panel beneath the large window there protruded the glove-like apparatuses that operated robotic arms. They were all in the old style, not the new virtual-reality gear. In the semid
arkness of the room behind the thick glass, a slaved robotic claw hung suspended in air.
Laura wandered down the broad steps toward the windows. At the bottom of the room below, Laura saw, there was a cluster of black rods suspended in a blue pool. The clear liquid was still and totally translucent. Bright underwater lights were the room's only illumination.
"There!" Krantz said, making his final mark on the pad with a flourish. He looked up, beaming at Laura hospitably. With the difficulty either of age or of cramped muscles, he struggled slowly to his feet with a groan. "How do you do, Dr. Aldridge," he said, and Laura shook his hand. "You caught me in here getting some quiet time."
One strand of Krantz's greasy hair hung loose, dangling all the way down to his shoulder. His eyes behind the thick lenses were the size of lemons.
"We only met once," Laura said, "I'm surprised you remembered me."
His smile revealed a mouth full of crooked teeth. Krantz held up his little finger, whose last joint looked slightly bent. "How could I forget? Tackling you ended my flag football career." He shrugged — staring at the misshapen digit. "So, what can I do for my esteemed colleague and erstwhile athletic competitor?"
"Actually, I don't know. Mr. Gray suggested I come down here to see what you were up to."
"Oh. Well, right now I'm working on yields." Krantz raised his notepad — drumming on it with his pencil's eraser like a conductor demanding the attention of his orchestra. "Most of the recent research, on the applied side anyway, has been on enhancement or reduction of effects. It's been years since anyone concerned themselves much with the fundamentals of yields."
"I'm sorry, Professor Krantz, but I have no idea what you're talking about."
He looked momentarily surprised. "Oh!" he burst out, then turned to the instrument panel beneath the darkened glass. Krantz flicked a switch. Bright white light flooded the room below. "This is the latest batch," he said.
She peered down at the room below the window. A dozen metal containers sat on the [unclear] beside the pool. Laura had seen the containers before… on the dark world she'd visited in virtual reality.
"What are those things?" Laura asked. She looked at Krantz's eyes but saw only the light reflected in the lenses of his glasses.
He had a faint smile on his face. "They're re-e-ally low-yield nuclear devices." Laura eyes shot back down to the canisters.
"What?" she shouted. Krantz was startled, looking over at her as if he'd just said something terribly wrong. "What did you say?" she demanded.
"Oh, my," he mumbled in a tone of great concern, pulling his notepad back to his chest to hide his scribbling. "You said Mr. Gray sent you?" he asked.
"Dr. Krantz, are you telling me that you're building nuclear weapons in this lab?"
"Good God, no. They're devices, not weapons."
"They blow up, don't they?"
"Well, yes, but they're not deliverable. They can't be employed in any tactical or strategic system."
"Gray has rockets that can go into space," Laura shot back. "How much effort do you think it would take to put a few things on a rocket? Or two, or ten, or twenty?"
"But they're so small! Those devices down there are rated at only point two kilotons. It's hardly of military value!"
"But you'll see to that, won't you Dr. Krantz? With your research and Gray's money you'll have multi-megaton weapons just like the big boys."
Laura rose and headed for the door. "I can't believe I've been so stupid!"
"Wait! You've got it all wrong! Mr. Gray wants me to lower the yields, not raise them!"
When Laura turned, Krantz held up his notes as if the scribblings were formal proof.
"But…" — her mind reeled—"but why on earth does Gray need those things?"
"Industrial purposes," Krantz said, clearly resurrecting some long-ago satisfactory explanation. "Mining — things like that!"
Laura was crushed by the weight of her disillusionment. She knew now what she had to do. Gray had made the decision for her.
"If you don't mind my asking, Dr. Aldridge, what is it that you've been hired to do?"
"Psychoanalysis," she mumbled, her head hung low.
"Psychoanalysis of whom?"
His question caused Laura to think. Slowly, she looked up at Dr. Krantz. "Actually, I'm not entirely sure."
Laura had the car stop just outside the tunnel to Krantz's facility.
She got out into the darkness. The empty road was cut out of the hillside above a desolate island shore. She edged her way down the hill toward the dark ocean and sat on the exposed volcanic rock above the beach.
At other times, the steady rhythm of the ocean waves and the fragrant breeze off the water would have been Laura's idea of paradise.
But she was stricken with a crippling sadness, and they meant nothing to her now. She poked and prodded the dull pain she felt, trying self-abusively to assess its nature and cause. The feeling seemed to be wrapped tightly around Laura's false idol — around the sad child who had grown up to be Joseph Gray.
This was more than just a case of failed expectations, Laura realized. Gray was more to her in every way than anyone had ever been. The old Gray of her fantasy world held the promise of all the great things yet to come. She felt her loss of that Gray almost as grief, and she lay back against the rough stone and gazed up at the stars.
Time slipped by, measured only by the sound of the waves.
Laura knew she had to find Gray. To find him and tell him she was leaving. But she couldn't bring herself to budge from the spot.
The beach lit up in a blazing white light. For a moment she felt a rush of fear on seeing the chalky white illumination. But the cascading roar of the rocket's thunderous launch broke over her, and she turned to see the fantastic plume of flame ascend toward the heavens. Despite the considerable distance of her vantage, Laura's ears itched from the full-throated fury of the engines' noise.
Slowly, the fiery trail receded into the black sky as it arced [garbled] toward the equatorial horizon. Then all was quiet again.
Laura brushed off her jeans and headed up to the car. The time had come for her to do the right thing.
27
"He's gone," the smiling woman said, slurring as she swilled champagne from a slender goblet. Everyone in the Launch Center was celebrating.
"I guess this means the launch was a success," Laura said glumly.
"Picture-perfect," the beaming woman replied. "If you're looking for Mr. Gray, I'm sure the computer can find him."
Laura headed out to the car.
Gray had said they would talk at dinner. She would resign then. Sitting inside the motionless Model Three, she formed the words in her head. They would be seated in Gray's palatial dining room — just the two of them. "Mr. Gray," she would say, "I have major ethical problems with what you're doing here, and therefore…" or something like that.
"Computer, please take me to Mr. Gray."
The electric car sprang to life, its speed rising in time with the motor's whine. It whisked Laura past the assembly building and the computer center and up the gentle rise toward the Village. It didn't head toward Gray's house, however, but turned instead toward the coastal road that ascended the mountain above the airport. The car finally emerged from the tunnel in the empty quarter, taking Laura along the same route as earlier that day.
The robotic car slowed as it climbed a hill. It pulled to a stop behind another Model Three that was parked squarely in the middle of the road. The door opened with its familiar [garbled] a tide of cool mountain air. Laura looked all around but could see no one. When she climbed out of her seat, the car just in front took off. Laura nervously watched her own car, but it remained motionless on the road where it had parked.
Suddenly, a bright light shone down on the road from above. "I'm up here!" Gray called out, the light shining briefly in her eyes before falling to illuminate the steep slope. Laura recognized the place immediately. She had been there only hours before.
T
he climb up the bare rock would've been easy if it weren't for the burden of her purpose. At the top, Laura stepped into a puddle of light that flooded the small, flat ledge. A large electric lantern cast its beam downward onto a thick quilt that Gray had spread over the rock. Gray's profile was dimly visible just outside the tight circle of light.
"Have a seat," he invited from the semidarkness.
Laura lowered herself to the soft quilt. The wind cut right through her light sweater and T-shirt, and she raised her knees and tucked her arms inside her legs for warmth.
"Here," Gray said, unfolding a blanket and draping it over her shoulders.
Laura took a deep breath. "Mr. Gray, I have something to say."
The text was prepared, but still she found the words very difficult to speak.
"I would appreciate it if… if we could put that off just a little while," he said, his voice sad and lifeless. It was as if he knew what she had come to say.
Laura complied with his request, postponing the formal end of her dreams for a few minutes longer.
"I know you have questions," Gray said from the darkness beside her. "You met with Dr. Krantz, I suppose?"
"Yes, I did." She turned to look at his profile, annoyed that she couldn't quite see his face. His eyes. "You said you were just making electricity with that reactor."
"And that's true," Gray replied. "I bought the fissionable material on the black market in Russia."
"Oh! My mistake. I thought for a moment you might've been up to something shady." Laura heaved a loud sigh. His attempt at an explanation had made her task somewhat easier. "Mr. Gray—"
"I thought you were going to call me Joseph."
"I'd prefer Mr. Gray right now, if you don't mind." He said nothing, his head bowed as he waited. "Look, what you're doing here is wrong!"
"What is it that I'm doing that's wrong?" he asked quietly, as if he really didn't know the answer.
"You're building nuclear weapons, for God's sake!"
Society of the Mind Page 29
