"How long have I been here?" he asked, taking a napkin from the tray and tucking it into his shirt.
"Just since yesterday," she answered, helping him prop himself up on the pillows, "but they tell me your accident was two days ago."
"Why doesn't my implant respond?" he asked, hoping this wouldn't be a secret.
"That was part of the deal," she said. "Mine doesn't work either. They set up some sort of black-out around my house, at least for a day or two. Eat up, young man. You need to get your strength back."
Jeremy smiled again. She seemed kind and a little bit crusty, just like an old lady should be. He thanked her for the meal and started with the stew. After the first bite, he realized he was starving.
Chapter 9
"No," Jeremy yelled as he sat bolt upright in his bed, sweat dripping down the sides of his face. The room was dark and the gentle breezes of the midnight air toyed with the curtains. A bright moon cast dim shadows of palm trees on the carpeted floor and the peach-colored walls. The silence of the room was broken only by Jeremy's heavy breathing as he made the difficult transition from his nightmare to being alone in a dark, strange place.
He had seen it again -- the wandering eye -- but, as usual, he couldn't figure out what it was, or why it was there, haunting him. All he could remember was the eye, twitching unnaturally, just like Weatherstone's had when the knife penetrated his lung, and then the dream switched to the horrible vision of his wife's dead body lying in the grass, her bare arm etched with her own blood as, with her last strength, she had written the first letters of a name before her life slipped away. Jeremy had seen it, he was sure of that. The memory of that horrible night had never faded. But when the body was taken to Dr. Elizah for examination, the bloody writing was gone, except in Jeremy's nightmares.
It was the only solid evidence identifying Amy's murderer, but he was the only one who had seen it, and under Community rules it was inadmissible as evidence. Had it wiped off against his shirt as he carried her dead body back to the house? Or had someone in Dr. Elizah's office washed it off to cover for Weatherstone?
Jeremy lay back on the pillow, reliving the grim decision that twist of fate had forced him into. He, alone of all people in the Community, had known who the killer was, but the evidence was gone. He could never get a conviction under the Community justice system, which required at least two reliable witnesses. Besides, the fact that it had been his wife would cast a shadow on his veracity. His testimony would be dismissed. "You're just looking for someone to blame," they would say. Bloody writing that mysteriously disappeared was just too coincidental, and nobody wanted to speak against Weatherstone.
The dark despair of that late summer's night settled over him again. He had been through it a hundred times, but it never lost its poignancy. His mind drifted in dark thoughts as he lay back, staring at the ceiling, indifferent to life, or death, or love, or hate, wishing only for an opportunity to seek further vengeance for the loss of his beloved.
* * *
Jeremy awoke again facing the window. The sky was clear now, and the palm trees moved under a slight wind. There was nothing to do but lie in bed, so he simply stared out the window, wondering what state he was in, if he was in the United States at all, and what was going to happen to him.
He had tried the door during the night, but it was locked, and he couldn't open the window. Overpowering the old woman was an option, but it didn't seem like the right thing to do as long as he was in no danger, and he didn't know who or what was on the other side. He made up his mind that he was going to try to escape sooner or later, but for now he was content to let his leg heal and eat the free food.
Still, he wondered who had done this to him. Not Dr. Berry, he figured. She would have put him in a regular hospital or, rather, in a mental institution. And besides her, he couldn't put names on any suspects. There were, of course, the phantoms, but what did he really know about them?
That he had been taken here, "for his protection," the old woman said, implied that someone was after him, or watching him -- someone with sufficient resources to make it necessary to travel far away to hide him. It also implied that someone else was protecting him.
So which side were the phantasms on? Were they looking for him, or hiding him? He pondered that for a while, enjoying the view from his window and wondering what he had gotten himself into, but a voice from the other side of the room interrupted his reveries.
"It's a nice view," it said. "Much nicer than anything in Washington. Don't you think?"
It was a man's voice, and Jeremy rolled onto his back to look at him, but as he turned to look he saw the last thing he expected -- a head. The disembodied head of one of the phantasms that had haunted his life for the last few days was floating two feet above him, staring down at him.
"Not again," Jeremy said, and closed his eyes, dropping his head on his pillow in resignation.
"So it's true," the voice said. "Don't worry, the image is gone, Jeremy."
Jeremy opened his eyes. The ghostly head was gone.
He wondered how MacKenzie would explain this. He'd turned his implant on last night, in case his network connection returned, but he still had no service. But MacKenzie said the images must have been coming through his hole connection. Was someone generating the images -- the phantasms -- locally? Perhaps it was created by something very close by? He knew that his implant was connected to the network by a very high-frequency, low-watt radio transceiver embedded in his skull, so it was a simple matter for someone to block his access to the hole by jamming the radio signals, but he needed to know more if he was going to figure out what was happening to him. He wished he had done more research on the communications technology that made his implant work.
Jeremy sat up and glanced around the room to make sure the image was really gone, and then looked at his uninvited guest. He was a middle-aged, unremarkable man, except for a slight irregularity in his features that made his head look slightly crooked, as if his left ear hung down lower than his right. His manner betrayed the confident, efficient, hopelessly bored attitude that a genius might have when he was forced to address the general public.
He produced a pair of cups from a tray at the bed-side and poured black coffee for the two of them.
"I'm sure you're wondering who we are."
He had Jeremy's full attention as he sat back down in the room's only chair, took a noisy sip from his cup and proceeded to explain things in a dull, lecturing tone. He worked for the government. "No, no branch you're familiar with," he explained, which implied national security or defense, Jeremy thought. His specialty was network security. Recently, the test routines his organization periodically ran on hole communications had turned up some possible breaches of security. As he tracked them down he discovered a complicated web of false signals, phony addresses, decoys and other tricks to hide some kind of high-level shenanigans. He feared that someone was getting ready for a major operation, and it was his job to stop it.
He reminded Jeremy that if anyone could crack the multi-layered encryption codes that protected all hole traffic, they could make a mint in stock and commodity speculations, getting an edge on competitors, leaking trade secrets, extortion or just plain old theft. The possibilities were endless. Even worse, if a breach of security became common knowledge, commerce would grind to a halt, and there wasn't a convenient back-up. Even though a breach was unlikely, the signals he had been getting from his search routines indicated that somebody might be on the verge of breaking a few of those codes.
More research confirmed that something big was going on, but he couldn't nail it down. It was clear that more than one person was involved. This group was very careful, very shrewd, and very well financed, according to his theory. So far, there was no hard evidence of wrongdoing by the organization -- he only had an operating profile from some detailed analysis of hole traffic. He couldn't make any arrests, and even if he could he couldn't make them stick. He had a few suspects, but there was w
ay too much of the puzzle missing to make any moves at this time.
Some of his agents -- he must be some kind of supervisor, Jeremy thought -- had been keeping an eye on one of the main suspects in this organization, and that's how Jeremy got tangled up in things. When he was taken to the hospital after his accident, Dr. Berry gave orders for him to be sedated and taken to a mental institution, but the people who came to take him away weren't staff of the mental institution, they were employees of one of his main suspects. Assuming that Jeremy was somehow involved with the organization, he had Jeremy taken away from the phony mental institution staff and brought to his house for questioning.
In the meanwhile, they started doing background work on all of Jeremy's friends and acquaintances. They monitored MacKenzie's lab work and found out she was working on a process very similar to some of the techniques used by the organization they had been tracking. Putting it all together, they developed a few working hypotheses, one of which was that Jeremy was working for the organization and was able to monitor hole traffic in some special way. Taking a cue from MacKenzie's work, they tried to send an image masked as noise and, as they had just proved, Jeremy could see it.
"But it seems, despite everything, that you're not a spy at all," he said. "In fact, you just recently left one of the Communities and got your implant, and Dr. Berry wanted you committed because you've been seeing things, and seeing things is a symptom of 'implant psychosis.'" He seemed to regard the concept with contempt. "But you don't have implant psychosis, Jeremy. What you have done, without trying, is become a very important player in a very big game."
His analysis was too precise to dispute, even if Jeremy had the desire. It seemed that he had become a pawn in a much larger game.
Jeremy fell back on his pillow and let it all sink in for a minute. Why did this have to happen to him, of all people? Hadn't he had his share of intrigue for a while? He had left the Community to get away from trouble, not to get a double dose of it. But then he wondered if it was truly only him. Were the other "victims" of implant psychosis really seeing the same things, only they weren't lucky enough to escape Dr. Berry's pharmacy? Such speculations would have wait for another time. Now he just wanted to get on with his life.
"Since you've decided that I'm not a spy, I guess you're done with me now," he said. "Can I go?"
"Go? Go where? I'm sure you realize you don't have a job any more -- Dr. Berry will have seen to that already -- and of course you've still got a cast on that leg. But if, as I hope, you are speaking somewhat figuratively, as in, 'can I be done with your investigation,' then the answer is a little more complex." He looked down and thought for a moment, but Jeremy didn't let him think for long.
"So I just have a cast on my leg, is that it? It's not broken? You put a cast on my leg to keep me still until you got around to me?"
He looked up nonchalantly, as if he had just asked about the time. "You're in perfect health. I'll have it removed this afternoon, if it bothers you," he said, and began to pace the room, as if the liberties they'd taken with him were of no consequence.
Jeremy rolled his eyes and shook his head. "And what is to keep me from walking out the door when you do, Mister, ... what is your name by the way?"
"Peter," he said, still pacing. "And what kind of answer do you want?" he continued. "We could still hand you over to Dr. Berry for 'treatment.'"
Jeremy shook his head. "No, actually you couldn't, because I imagine she's on your list of suspects and you wouldn't want me telling her about this little conversation we've had."
Peter stopped pacing and looked at Jeremy with a sudden, keen interest. "You have the right instincts, Jeremy. You just don't know the game." He shook his head and continued. "The truth of the matter is that we have drug treatments that can scramble your short-term memory so badly they're effectively erased, so we could still hand you over to the care of your precious doctor without much risk to my investigation."
Jeremy was appalled at this man's crass use of people. It didn't matter to him that Dr. Berry would medicate a healthy man into a fogged, useless existence, so long as it didn't impede his work.
Jeremy had always been taught in the Community that Society had become so large and so dependent on its industrial technology that it had to view the individual the way a machinist would view a screw -- just a piece that can be replaced when it's broken. Peter seemed to embody that attitude, and it disgusted him. His face had an almost inhuman detachment from emotion, as if only a machine could look that way. Jeremy wondered what series of circumstances and decisions led him to where he was today.
"Actually, Jeremy, I'd like you to consider working for me. You've got nothing else to do, nowhere else to go, and I've only told you one reason why you need me. No, my young friend," he said, the words sounding more than hollow from his unfeeling face, "you're stuck. If I'm right about this organization and what they're trying to do, you have an ability that threatens them. They'll want you sedated, or dead. Preferably dead. At the very least you need our help in keeping away from them."
And you can use me too, he thought.
"If that's the very least," Jeremy said, "why don't you tell me what the very most is."
* * *
MacKenzie lounged in her favorite chair in the lobby of her dorm, finishing up the homework for her noon lab and wondering, for the thousandth time, where Hanna had been for the last week. She did her best to cover for Hanna's absence from classes, but she was getting to the end of her options. She sighed, finished the last line of computer code and was interrupted by a message from her implant.
Forty three incoming messages from Hanna.
MacKenzie usually had her mail system send all messages into her inbox. She didn't want to be bothered with a mail notice while she was in the middle of a deep, theoretical computer question -- which was most of the time -- but ever since Hanna had disappeared she reset her mail parameters to put a priority on any message from Hanna, or any that mentioned her name.
Forty three? MacKenzie wondered, and before she had a chance to read any of them she saw Hanna herself stumbling in the front door to the dorm.
"Hanna," MacKenzie said as she saw her friend come in the L Street entrance. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you for a week. Everybody's been worried sick."
Hanna shook her head and looked at MacKenzie unsteadily. "A week?" Her eye wandered as she checked her calendar. Her face, already showing signs of severe stress and fatigue, grew pale, and MacKenzie quickly put out her arms to hold her in case she swooned.
"Here, sit down," MacKenzie said, lowering her into a couch in the dorm lobby. A crowd was starting to gather and MacKenzie resented the intrusion. She picked someone she vaguely knew and sent her for a glass of water, and then tried to get the rest of the onlookers to find something else to do. Hanna just closed her eyes and rested her head on MacKenzie's shoulder. "I don't know where I've been," she said, "but I feel horrible."
MacKenzie knew Hanna was going to need her for a while, so she attached her homework to a message to her professor and explained that she would have to miss class today. She let Hanna rest for a minute, made her drink the glass of water and then took her up to her room to sleep.
* * *
"Have you seen Jeremy?" Hanna asked as soon as they were in the privacy of her room. She sat on the bed and tried to give MacKenzie her full attention, but her head nodded and her eyelids drooped. MacKenzie gently pushed her down onto her pillow.
"No," she said. "I haven't heard a word, and I've checked all the mental institutions I can find, just in case that doctor woman got her way. He's just gone. Maybe he's had enough of Society and went back to the Community."
That was a thought Hanna hadn't considered. It would have been a natural way for him to escape, returning to his own people. The doctor couldn't get him there even if she tried. Still, Hanna hoped he was around, somewhere.
"But what about you?" MacKenzie asked. "Where have you been?"
"I don'
t know." Hanna shook her head. "I have a few, faint images, but it's like snatches of a dream you can't remember." She shook her head wearily, but MacKenzie told her not to worry about it.
"You rest," she said. "We'll worry about that tomorrow. Right now, you need to sleep. But I might be able to get some clues if you give me access to your mail headers. At least I might be able to figure out what zone you were in, and that sort of thing."
Hanna mustered up enough energy to adjust her security protocols so that MacKenzie could do her wizardry, and then she fell asleep.
* * *
Late that afternoon, MacKenzie was still working on Hanna's mail, trying to get a clue where she had been. Because implants had a limited communications range, the network had relay stations all over the country, spaced about a half a mile apart, to manage traffic. Each station had a unique code, and as signals passed from one relay into the main, high-capacity lines, the code from each station was embedded in hidden headers. If you knew about such things, as MacKenzie did, you could read those headers and trace the path of incoming messages.
It was the headers that allowed the mail routines to screen incoming mail, but clever programmers could get around that. Once MacKenzie went to a summer retreat in Colorado Springs and met a guy who just wouldn't leave her alone. He kept sending her mail, asking her personal questions, even telling her about his life and his dreams. She set her mail filters to screen for his name and automatically delete anything he sent, but he got around that quickly enough by using other user names, or sending from public terminals. But when MacKenzie found out about the hidden codes in the headers, she simply blocked out the state of Colorado and never heard from him again.
As Hanna slept the afternoon away, MacKenzie ran every analysis she could think of on Hanna's messages from the last three days. She had sent several from the hospital that made it into hole traffic, but for a week after that everything she sent was queued up in her out box. Wherever she had been, she had no contact with the hole at all. There were only a few places where blackouts occurred naturally, and none of them were close by. But it was an easy enough thing to contrive by jamming the radio signals.
The Intruder Page 10
