by Dave Swavely
I had realized it was his voice a second before he said that, and from these new words I located the shadows where he stood in time to see him step out of them. I didn’t lift the gun but still held it ready, feeling a streak of suspicion.
“Sorry about the cloak-and-dagger,” he said. And beard-and-bandanna, I thought as I admired his disguise in the half-light. I remembered that he had several such getups for occasional forays into the city—he was simply too recognizable to venture out as himself. “I had to talk to you about our … problem,” he continued, “and there was no way I could do it safely in the castle. When I heard that you walked off, I thought this was a perfect opportunity. But by the time I found you, Lynn was there.”
“And you didn’t know if I had told her,” I said, returning the gun to its holster. “So you were listening to us.”
“I thought that was why you noticed me,” he said with a relieved smile. “I was worried that you might have actually recognized me, and I’d have to scrap this look.”
“No, it’s quite good really,” I said, stepping a little closer and testing it further. It was amazing how different someone could look with just a few simple additions. “But now that I know it’s you…” A BASS siren screamed by out on the street, distracting us both for a moment. Then I said, “What’s happening?”
“Too much, too fast,” he said. “You won’t believe the timing, but I found out when Min is going in for maintenance.”
“Oh?” I said, switching off the glasses’ night vision and taking them off, but not before noticing in them that it was 8:22 P.M.
“Tonight, at three or four A.M.—we have to find out which.”
“Tonight?” I said, struck by the suddenness, my mind convulsing with the implications. “You’re kidding me.”
“No. This is it.” Paul’s eyes narrowed as he nodded, anticipating a grim satisfaction. “Tonight we will avenge D and your daughter.” I wondered again what this meant to him—would he want to put away his own father, or did he have something else in mind? I wasn’t able to ask him yet, because he continued. “But before that, we have work to do. I have a ground car on the street. Come with me.”
He didn’t speak as we made our way through the streams of people to the car, probably because he didn’t trust his disguise implicitly, or he was worried about my being recognized. But once we were sitting in the car with the doors safely closed, he turned his attention back to me.
“The tech is a problem,” he said, and at first I didn’t know what he was referring to, but then my conversation with Kim in the bookstore reemerged into my mind after being buried by the talk with Lynn and the encounter with Paul. “He’s very good at what he does, and if he decides to start snooping around the company for ROM 717, he may find out more than we want him to know … more than you want him to know. He may discover that you’re the murderer, and who knows what he’ll do with that. Or his snooping may be detected by the old man and ruin our chance to confront him tonight.”
I realized as Paul said this that he must have been watching and listening to me in the store long before I had noticed him. He knew what I had said to Kim, and had probably been worried about it right away, but couldn’t have done anything about it then because Lynn had shown up, and he’d wanted to see what that was all about.
“You told me the black op was called Mind Lift,” I said. “But now I hear it’s ROM 717. What’s up with that?”
“The old man changed the name along the way,” Paul answered. “He’s been going off the deep end into some scary religious stuff. But we need to deal with the tech, right now.”
“What do you suggest?” I said, feeling the aggression rising within me again, as if my subconscious knew where this was going before I admitted it to my conscious mind. When those thoughts started rolling in, I felt shame and tried to think of other options, but to no avail. “I don’t think Kim can be bought, judging from what I know of him.” I was thinking of the man’s spiritual slant, of course, and then another option did occur to me. “He has a strong moral sense … maybe we could confide in him to some degree, and he could help us once he knows what’s wrong with Saul…?”
“Maybe,” Paul said unconvincingly, “but if something happens tonight, I’ll have a much easier time tying up any loose ends if no one else knows what we know.” There was that hint of homicide again, for the old man and for Kim, which simultaneously made my blood boil more and brought back the flash of shame. It also felt so awkward and unnatural to be talking about covering up a crime when I had spent the last eight years of my life trying to uncover them.
“Either way,” Paul continued, “we have to do something about it. Call the tech and find out where he is. He said he was going to get something to eat.” Paul had heard that, too, and remembered it, which was more than I could say.
I fumbled for the glasses in my pocket and dialed Kim, confused about what to do and therefore retreating to the ease and safety of just doing what my friend and boss had said. The Korean man answered and said he was a few blocks away, finishing his food, and promised to wait for me there when I told him I wanted to talk with him again. I didn’t mention Paul, thinking that might spook him.
After I told Paul where the tech was, the younger Rabin turned on the car and put on his glasses, tapping them a few times and telling them to start a running trace on any Net activity by Kim, “just in case he gets curious before we get there.” And then, no sooner than he had pulled out into the slow-moving, stop-and-start traffic on the street, he said, “No way!” and informed me that Kim had already begun searching the Net and the BASS database for ROM 717.
“Wow,” I responded. “He’ll find it, right? Because he’s good.”
“He may be good,” Paul answered, “but I have the master keys.” He moved his finger on the arm of the glasses and recited some codes and commands into them, which I didn’t understand, but I knew he was somehow limiting the tech’s access to BASS data, effectively blocking the search. “There’s no way he’ll cut through that ice before we get there.” He took his glasses off and surveyed the traffic ahead, sighing. “If we ever get there.”
We sat in silence for a few moments as he navigated along one of San Francisco’s trademark streets, narrow and sharply inclined. One of the old cable-car trolleys, still used throughout the city as a reminder of its past and as an attraction for tourists, it added to the congestion until Paul could maneuver around it.
“Did you tell Lynn?” he then asked me. I hesitated for a moment, not understanding why my trust in him was no longer absolute but wondering if it had something to do with how he had trailed me—an experience I wasn’t used to having with friends.
“Yes,” I said, putting aside the feeling. “I pleaded with her not to talk to the old man, but I felt like I had to tell her.”
“I understand,” he said sympathetically, rewarding my trust and allaying my suspicions. “But this is all the more reason why we have to move soon.”
“Is there some other reason?” I asked, sensing that there was.
Now it was his turn to pause. Perhaps he was deciding how much he should trust me.
“The longer we go,” he finally said, “the more chance the old man will find out that you know, or find out that I’m…” betraying him seemed to fit, but he said, “not approving of what he’s doing.” Almost unconsciously, he touched a few buttons on the dash, making sure that his privacy system was on and working. “I’m just afraid he might make a move himself—if he suspects anything—like trip the hardware in your head.”
“And kill me?” I said, still mystified that all this was happening. He looked at me and nodded, then knitted his brows in thought as he turned back to the street.
“He asked me to bring you to a meeting tonight, at ten o’clock, in the Parthenon Room. It’s more than a little strange; I’m not sure what to make of it.”
“What kind of meeting?” I asked.
“A summit,” he answered, and I thought that it was
strange indeed, because I had never previously been invited to one. I knew what they were, though: a group of “powerful friends” (which was a considerable understatement) came to the castle to ingratiate themselves with the old man, hear about his latest achievements in technology, and perhaps wrangle about their sale and use—which, up until now, the Mayor had guarded penuriously. This frustrated the moguls to no end, but effectively elevated BASS and its leader to an ever-increasing position of power among them.
“He invited me just today? Or before today?” I asked.
“No one is invited before today,” he said. “That’s how the summits work. Day of … for security purposes. Any advance planning would be too noticeable by people who might be fishing the net for something like this. A revealing data pattern might become visible for a split second, and before you know it, an interested party could disrupt the entire global economy by taking out a whole handful of world leaders with one well-placed nuke. Even day of has its risks, but it’s unlikely anyone can put together a serious threat that quickly.”
And they had to talk face-to-face, I knew, from when I had asked the old man about these meetings in the past. Any discussions over the net were too vulnerable to data thieves, and, as Saul had said with his tired smile, “It still all comes down to real men.” I took this to have a double meaning: real as opposed to virtual, and those who could get it done as opposed to those who couldn’t.
“So … what about this is worrying you?” I asked, wanting to know if I should be worried.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said, appearing again like he was trying to decide how much to say. “Something has occurred to me, but it’s farfetched.” I looked at him and raised my eyebrows, indicating that I wanted to hear it.
“Well,” Paul continued, “what if he does know something, and he’s setting you up? Maybe he wants to make you look bad, or he’s hoping you’ll lose it in front of these people. Or maybe he’ll make you do something stupid, with the chip.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s just that your reputation isn’t spotless right now with that clip that was sent all over the net. You discredited Harris, but somehow stains like that linger in the public consciousness, even against all good sense.”
“You’re saying that the old man leaked that tape,” I said, “because he plans to kill me like D, and somehow that will prevent suspicion.”
“I’m not saying that,” Paul answered as he watched the crowd file by at an intersection. “It’s just a fear. But either way, we need to move. Tonight. With the way our Sabon technology is progressing, the old man is on the verge of becoming one of the most powerful men in the world, if not the most powerful—and we can’t let that happen.” He gave me a purposeful look. “We can’t let a psychopath shape our future. Too many people would be hurt.”
The anger in me had diverted from Lynn or Kim or anyone else and was now focused completely on Saul. I visualized killing him tonight, in his top-floor crypt, and I studied the eyes of my friend, which sparkled between the beard and bandanna.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.
“We go to Cyber Hole after we deal with Kim,” he answered, and I noticed that we were approaching the restaurant. “We find out exactly when Min will be there, and how long. Then we go to the summit, and pretend nothing’s wrong.” He looked at me, as if to see whether I was capable of that. “Then, when Min is gone, I’ll tell the old man that he needs to invite you up to his floor, right away, for a talk. He’ll do it.”
There was a long silence, until I realized he wasn’t going to continue, and it was up to me to raise the question.
“And then what?” I said finally.
“Then I would say it’s up to you,” he answered. “It was your daughter, after all. You can shoot the old man—we’ll put a gun in his hand, and I’ll say it was self-defense. Or you can try to get a confession out of him, and if you can, we’ll have him locked up.” I felt some surprise at his first option, even given the circumstances, but I asked about the second.
“How would we get a confession?”
“The original camera system is still there, in the penthouse, but it’s turned off. The entrance scan clears you from recording equipment, so he’ll feel safe to speak freely, and he might, if we confront him together. Before we do, I’ll simply turn on the system from his security room—I know how to do it. Whatever he says will be recorded.”
Just then we arrived in front of the restaurant, and seeing that there were no legal parking spaces open (of course), Paul pulled into a loading zone.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said as he activated the external windshield display that allowed him to park anywhere. “But I’m actually much closer to you than I am to him. And as I said, he’s lost it, and he has to pay the price. One way or the other.” I thought I saw his jaw harden, but wasn’t sure because of the beard. “So it’s up to you, Michael.”
He switched the engine off, and looked at me as if he was waiting for an answer.
“Turn the cameras on,” I said, “and we’ll see what happens.”
15
“This is the place, right?” Paul asked, looking through the windshield at the storefront on the right ahead of us. “Ridley’s Deli?”
“Yeah,” I answered, then noticed through the crowd on the sidewalk that Kim was standing just outside the restaurant, to the right of it, wearing his cyber rig and looking obviously nervous, his eyes panning from our car to the crowd and back again. “He’s out there waiting for us,” I told Paul, who grunted and stepped out of the car. I did the same on my side and we both took a few steps toward Kim.
When he saw us come out of the car, the little Korean blurred into motion and took off with abandon through the crowd and down the sidewalk, away from us, creating a ripple effect in the pedestrians and eliciting surprised shouts from them as he jostled them on his way.
“Why’s he running?” I said, as Paul and I looked at each other.
“I don’t know,” the big man said. “But we can’t lose him.” He thought for a second, then raised his eyebrows and nodded. He said, “Come ’ere,” and moved to the back of his car with the excitement of a young boy who finally gets to play with a favorite toy. And that was exactly what he was about to do, as it turned out. He spoke a voice command that sounded like “wintermute”—or maybe it was “interview”—I couldn’t be sure in the din of the street. But the trunk slid open and he was soon holding two cylindrical objects, one in each hand, that looked something like the handle grips on a bicycle or motorcycle, with slight depressions for each finger. He took a step back from the open trunk, held them in front of him just like he was riding a bike, and moved his wrists backward like he was revving a motorcycle. Two dark shapes rose from the trunk, sprouted wings, and hovered above the car.
“I haven’t practiced so much to never use them,” he said. After manipulating something on the remote-control stick in his right hand, he handed it to me and said, “Take a moment to get the feel while I start after him. It’s intuitive.” He grabbed his glasses with his now empty right hand, slid them on, and headed after the fleeing Kim on foot, the falcon speeding ahead of him above the traffic and the crowd. I put mine on then and immediately saw a flashing notice of a wireless interface beckoning me. I selected it and the hovering bird’s view filled my eyes.
“Tap your index finger to take it out of standby.” Paul’s voice said in my glasses. He was already puffing with exertion. I did as he had said, and the falcon immediately started to drop until I jerked the remote back up. “Your index finger is a mouse to select view and other options, middle finger squeeze twice to fire stopper rounds, ring finger for killers, and your pinkie for gas.” I moved my wrist forward and backward, like a motorcycle grip, and watched the falcon dive and ascend, then tilted my hands sideways each way for it to turn, then figured out for myself that the thumb controlled acceleration and reverse.
I sailed the bird in different directions above the street, then pointed
it toward an empty section of wall high up on a building, depressed my pinkie twice, and watched a gas pellet streak to the wall and explode against it. Satisfied that I basically knew what I was doing, I minimized the falcon’s view in my glasses by half, so that I could see in front of me, and immediately noticed that the crowd had parted from me in all directions, forming a circle from which they stared at me in shocked silence like I was some kind of alien invader. Taking this as my cue to move, I jogged off in the direction my two coworkers had gone, keeping my wrist and fingers stationary and pressing my thumb against the throttle so that the falcon stayed right above me.
As I progressed toward the corner that Kim and Paul had disappeared around, I practiced watching the street through the clear portion of the glasses and the falcon’s view through the rest. The former was harder than the latter: I didn’t have to worry much about the falcon as long as my hand was in the same position, because unless a BASS aero showed up at some point, there was nothing at that height that the bird could run into. Some of the ad holos were projected up there, and I couldn’t see much when the falcon was inside them, but I knew that if I just held steady, I could fly straight through them and out the other side.
When I reached the next block, Paul told me which way he had gone and sent me in the other direction. I combed that length of street for Kim, sending the falcon ahead to look around the corners at the next intersection.
“This would be a lot easier with the Eye,” I said.
“Which we can’t use, of course,” Paul replied. “Because it could be detected.”
“What if Saul already knows what we’re doing?”
“I don’t think it’s likely with the blocks I’m using,” he said. “They’ll keep Kim from diving too deep and keep us hidden at the same time. Hold on.” I kept combing my street and waited until he came back on. “According to the trace, he’s diving right now, so look for someone standing still. I don’t think he can move when he’s in.”
