Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief

by Alexander Jablokov

  “No one had it in for me,” Bernal said. “At that time, if your research had anything to do with cognition or AIs, searching through your mail for suspicious packages had become like looking for a letter from the Mac-Arthur Foundation. One of the guys on the second floor was looking for tenure. Things were tight, the market real competitive.”

  She thought about that. “He faked an explosive device in his mail as evidence to his tenure committee that he was a credible scholar?”

  “Yeah, well, if you’re not an academic, maybe that doesn’t make much sense. He didn’t fake anything. It was a real bomb. He was going to pick it up, then call the bomb squad and have a professional defuse the thing, but he got delayed on the way down by a graduate student with a question, something like that. He had no idea that a leak would smear the label and that I’d pick it up and assume it was for me . . . and did I really think it was the Minoan book, or did I suspect that the Resume Bomber had read my stuff and decided to pick me? I don’t know now. The guy did some jail time and now teaches high school science.”

  After Nordhoff’s capture at a gas station in northwestern Nebraska, the survivors had published an anthology of their work. A miscellaneous collection of learned essays by various people to honor an eminent colleague on a special anniversary, such as retirement, was called a festschrift, and Thoughts on Thoughts, After could have been regarded as a bizarre festschrift in honor of Caspar Nordhoff, who, of course, denounced it from his prison cell, extending its run on the New York Times bestseller list. Bernal had been invited, as kind of a collateral victim, to contribute. He had refused.

  He’d quit without finishing his degree, even though his school offered to grant it to him almost automatically, and had drifted around, unable to settle on anything, until Muriel Inglis, having read an old article of his and then learned of what had happened to him, called him and, out of the blue, offered him a job.

  _______

  “Let me ask you this question,” Charis said. “What the hell were you doing out there last night, anyway? How did you find where Hesketh was supposed to be running?”

  “I thought it was your turn to explain something to me.”

  “It is. This will help. If I understand it.”

  “Muriel often sends me messages that take a little effort to figure out,” Bernal said. “At first, I thought she was kind of making fun of me, giving me more hoops to jump through. But as time went by, I realized that she used it not when she was sure of what she wanted to say, but when she wasn’t. Or, rather, when what she wanted to say wasn’t just a discrete piece of information. If it involved a mood, or some allusion, or some piece of contradiction. Plus, it was fun for her.”

  “Oh, like this?” Charis pulled a sheet of paper off an old beige fax machine. The top part was an ad for a sales training seminar: want to improve your sales productivity 330%? After a few lines of promotional text, the letters wavered. Below some completely garbled letters was an irregular line, as if someone had torn off a piece of paper, glued it over some other content, and then faxed the result.

  The bottom of the sheet was part of a note in Muriel’s handwriting. The fragment started in the middle of a sentence.

  “—got most of Hesketh’s parts from Ignacio’s D&D. Must tell Bernal. The connection isn’t clear, but someone there should know a little more about—”

  And that was where it ended.

  “On my machine this morning. Came in while we were chasing that damn booby trap around the countryside.” She folded it in half and handed it to him. “Seems like this is for you. What message did you get before this?”

  “Yesterday morning. The one that took me to the power line.”

  “Ah. So she brought you there.”

  “Are you suggesting that she wanted to set me up? Kill me?”

  Charis spread her hands. “I’m just suggesting that someone asked you to put your head into what proved to be the mouth of a hungry lion. If it’s any consolation, I was there for pretty much the same reason. Muriel had given me Hesketh’s proposed test paths for the month, so I knew where it was supposed to be. I can’t claim any specific targeting on that one, though. I could have been anywhere along the path, and on any night. And Hesketh did not always follow its prescribed path. .. .

  “I’d checked into Hess Tech and its doings a couple of years back, since it was a scrappy start-up with a hell of a design for a planetary exploration vehicle. It was just a vehicle with some elementary route-finding algorithms, the ability to right itself, stuff like that. Pretty sophisticated, really, not technology to sneeze at, but nothing that implied the redundancy of humanity, or anything like that. We shelved it. These AI researchers will break your heart, if you let them.

  “Then, a few weeks ago, Muriel called me.”

  “She called you?” Bernal couldn’t believe it.

  “Hey, don’t take it personally. She needed special servicing. And deniability. I mean, she sends you sniffing around and you get spotted, could be a big problem with Missy Ungaro. Me—I’m just a loose cannon.”

  “Maybe.” Bernal had thought of himself as ultimately useful to Muriel. As someone who could take care of everything. He managed lunatic animal breeders in plans for urban ecologies and dropped incentives at just the right spots to get feuding subterranean artists digging tunnels off ICBM silos to compete rather than trying to arrange for cave-ins at each others’ works. Muriel saw the potentials in the situation, and he realized them. He’d never had so much fun. But it now seemed that there was something she did not think he should handle.

  Or even know about.

  “Let me ask you something,” Charis said. “You’ve got your eyes on the bottom line, right? How much stuff did Ms. Ungaro buy? How much circuitry, how many processors?”

  “None that I’ve been able to find,” Bernal said. “All she drew was a lot of power, and some mechanical stuff, for the body. I haven’t found anything that looks like high-end AI gear. Not since Muriel has been funding her, anyway.” He’d checked the numbers that morning before coming over.

  “That’s what I suspected.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the damn thing wasn’t an AI at all. I mean, it seemed kind of smart, running around there, but that’s just another step, not the end product. It was just a fancy gadget. Muriel had some reason to get me on Ungaro, and it wasn’t because Hesketh had suddenly transcended its mechanical nature. I got set up. Maybe you did too. Here.”

  She reached into a drawer and pulled out a high school yearbook with colorful pictures of student groups at various angles on the cover. It said Cheriton High School on it. She opened it to a marked page and spun it around for Bernal to look at. The double-page spread showed the rectangles of smiling senior photos.

  “What—?”

  “Just look. You’ll find it. You ever wonder why Madeline Ungaro ended up in Cheriton, Massachusetts, working on a low-budget planetary probe program? What the hell she’s after?”

  With that clue, subliminal though it was, Bernal found it. Two thirds of the way down the right-hand page, in the middle, was the gently smiling photograph of a beautiful blond girl named Madeline Cantor. There was no doubt that it was a photograph of a young Madeline Ungaro. He looked up at the grim Charis.

  “Okay. Now that you have her pegged, back in her previous incarnation, you can make sense of this.”

  She pulled out a clipped newspaper article with the heavy gothic masthead of the Cheriton Telegraph-Examiner, a decade and a half old.

  Local Boy Dies in Climbing Accident

  Paul Inglis, 17, son of Tommy and Muriel Inglis of Walnut Street, Cheriton, died yesterday in a fall in the Shawangunk Mountains of New York. Apparently, he was attempting a dangerous pitch in the Skytop area. A succession of cold nights and warm days resulted in some unexpected fracturing in the rock face, causing a large piece of rock to peel off, taking Paul Inglis with it. According to local climbers, Inglis had followed his partner beyond his level of ability.r />
  Inglis’s climbing partner, Madeline Cantor, also 17, was unable to revive him after his fall. She ran to get help, but by the time an emergency team reached him, it was too late. He was pronounced dead at Kingston Hospital at 6 PM.

  The funeral service will be held at the Inglis home, 217 Walnut Street, on Thursday....

  _______

  “And now she and Muriel are both gone.” Charis spoke with a kind of glum satisfaction. “I feel like a fool for getting anywhere near this personal revenge crap.”

  “What? Just because Ungaro was involved in the death of her son a long time ago? This all seems pretty elaborate.”

  “Believe me, people around here remember what happened,” Charis said. “He followed Madeline where even she shouldn’t have been going, and she was a much better climber than he was. Experienced enough to think about the rock, too. But that girl liked taking risks. Muriel thought she was testing him, seeing how far he’d go. All the way, as it turned out. Muriel always blamed the girl. No one thought that was fair, but they understood.”

  Muriel had never said anything, never mentioned that the AI researcher she was funding had once been involved in the death of her son. And now Muriel and Madeline were both missing. What else had Muriel been keeping from him?

  “I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being gamed,” Charis said. “Muriel tried to game me. I don’t think there is any AI. She just wanted to harass this woman, Ungaro, Cantor, whatever. Madeline. Maybe worse than just harass.”

  “But if Ungaro had no AI, then what’s she been doing here for the past two years?” he said.

  “Who knows? And I suppose there’s someone who cares, but it sure as hell isn’t me. Not anymore.”

  “Come on,” Bernal said. “You did the work. I know you did. No reason for it to go to waste.”

  “Everything goes to waste, eventually.” Charis sighed. “Oh, okay. Jesus. The girl did create herself an interesting life, looks like. Dropping someone down the side of a mountain was just a start. Somehow she slid right over and ended up at Caltech. Kept to herself there, did her work, moved on to graduate work, started her own research project, part privately funded. Cognitive algorithms having to do with movement, maneuver, orientation. Did animal work. Chimps, seems like. Hard to get the records, because at one point some radical animal-rights types broke into her lab and, seemingly by accident, started a fire that destroyed the whole thing. I never found a casualty list for the animals, and all that has to be registered. She was working on chimps, what I’ve found says so, and those animal-rights terrorists clearly thought she had animals, but there’s no sign any of them were killed in the fire. And it was a big one.

  “All her work was destroyed, whatever she was working on. So she quit. She gave up her research position and went to sit in a redwood tree in Northern California.”

  “What?” Bernal said. “Why?”

  Charis shrugged. “Someone was trying to cut it down. A lot of board feet in one of those things. Activists got all excited, decided to take a stand on the trees. Madeline was tough. She sat up there for over a year. Weather’s not like around here, but that still must have taken some ’nads. Quite a poster child for the movement. Bulldozers and lumberjacks sat there, she sat there. Even people in the movement found her odd, but she was useful because she didn’t seem to need to talk to anyone. Perfectly happy just sitting a hundred feet up in a tree, thinking about stuff. And she was damn good at evading the extractors the lumber company hired to get her out. One of those guys fell out of the tree while chasing her, broke his leg. Maybe that hit too close to home. Not too long after that, she climbed down and walked away. She didn’t tell any of her movement associates that she was leaving her post. So by the end of the day, the tree was down, and that particular environmental skirmish was over.”

  “Where did she go after that?” Bernal said.

  “Here.”

  “She came home to Cheriton?”

  “Yep. Doesn’t seem like the kind of girl to do that, does she? This one dedicates herself to something until, for one reason or another, she doesn’t, and steps smoothly away, moving on to something else. Returning to something seems out of character. Well, we’re all still allowed to act out of character, aren’t we? Her mother died about that time, so maybe she came back for the funeral and stayed. But I think she came back to see someone else.”

  “Muriel,” Bernal said.

  “Was there a weepy scene of reconciliation? Stranger things have happened . . . actually, no, they haven’t. I’ve met Muriel, I think I understand Madeline. That particular scene never happened. But Muriel did help Madeline find a job at Hess Tech. And when Hess Tech went under, spotted her some funding to keep working on Hesketh. Then got worried about what Madeline was actually working on, and called me. And I found out it was all bullshit. Because Muriel never did get over losing her boy, and probably wanted Madeline around to give her a hard time. So, now you know it all. Help any?”

  Bernal thought about it. “What was Madeline working on in California before she got burned out?”

  “Like I said, no idea. Didn’t get that far. I did have a contact, a guy I found who was one of the terrorists, from a group called the Bald Chimps, if you can believe that—”

  “Charis, there’s more to it than we see. This isn’t some kind of delayed revenge for a climbing accident. Muriel set Madeline Ungaro up with a lab and then began to realize that there was more going on. That’s why she called you. I want to know what Muriel figured out. This guy you were talking to, your Bald Chimp, any way I could get in contact with him?”

  Charis stared at him in disgust, big cheeks puffed out. “Tell you what. As my last act before closing the book on this case, I’ll let him know you’re interested. If George feels like talking, he’ll call you. Or you can go visit him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Prison. Facility in southern Illinois. Seems Ungaro’s lab wasn’t the last place he hit, and he ran into more trouble. This whole thing is full of charming types, isn’t it? I’m glad to get out.”

  “Don’t you care what might have happened to Ungaro, then?” Bernal said. “Or Muriel for that matter?”

  “No. I’m done. I’ve turned the case over to you, my friend. Go to Ignacio’s junkyard, talk to my prison buddy, whatever. I ask only one favor.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t keep me updated on the case. Thanks for the help on the fence, and good luck.”

  16

  Inside the office of Ignacio’s Devices and Desires, two men, one middle-aged, one young, but both with the look of calm satisfaction car guys always seemed to have, briskly processed customers from behind a counter laminated with old repair manuals. They produced, in short order, a cam shaft for a bushy-haired Latino in creased trousers and a NASCAR T-shirt who rejected offers of help, put the thing over his shoulder, and walked deliberately out; a power-steering pump for two largechested black guys in golf shirts; and an air-conditioning compressor for a tensely fit middle-aged white woman in a red dress, who asked about its provenance, maintenance record, and efficiency before finally accepting it. Bernal admired her calves as she walked out.

  Bernal went up to the desk. The young guy was alone, the older one having vanished through the door into the yard.

  “I need to talk to Patricia,” Bernal said.

  “We handle car parts here.” He was tattooed with a mixture of slashing monochromatic tribal patterns and delicately shaded, almost Pre-Raphaelite images of knights and damsels. “Other stuff too, by special appointment. Cyclotrons. Whatever.”

  “I just want to—”

  “Look.” His gray eyes were intense. “You guys come in. All the time you come in. Try to fix her. Help her out. I think some of us might have tried it, too. But she’s not interested in your help.”

  The older guy slid back behind the desk. He looked back and forth from Bernal to the young guy. “What’s up?”

  “This gentleman is worried about Pat,
”

  “I just want to ask her a question!”

  The older guy blew out his cheeks. “We don’t want trouble. We got a business to run.”

  Bernal had an inspiration. “It’s about a cooling problem. If you know what I mean.”

  The two men exchanged a glance. “Not that Freon shit again.” The young guy was irritated. He pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette and put it behind his ear. “I’m tired of it.” He walked out.

  “It’s just that Pat and the boss have an arrangement.” The older guy pulled out some brochures advertising a car show and made a show of fanning them out on the counter. “To others, it seems to be broken. But it works for them.”

  “I’m not interfering with anything. I just want to talk to her.”

  The guy paused, glanced behind him at a door, then shrugged. “If anyone asks, you snuck in through the automatic gate when a delivery came through.”

  A man wearing a cashmere sweater with a hole in the elbow came up to the desk.

  “Um, my car’s pulling to the left. It’s a Honda. Accord, ’04.”

  “Okay.” The counter guy was noncommittal.

  “It’s when I put on the brakes. Sometimes it’s pretty sharp. My wife’s worried about it.”

  “Your wife’s smart.”

  The man pulled out a piece of paper with a long drug name logo in purple across the top, and a penned list of parts. “I know what parts I need.”

  “Take it to the shop. I can recommend a couple of good ones. Buddies of mine. Won’t gouge you too bad. And you won’t get killed next week. Good deal.”

  The doctor’s manhood had been challenged. “I’ve already got it up on floor jacks.”

  The counter guy sighed. “Be a few minutes.” He took the list and disappeared through the door, leaving it half open. Late afternoon sun spilled through.

  The doctor sat down on a recycled bucket seat with Smurf decals on the back, pulled out a Chilton’s, and opened to a grease-stained page. He stared intently at a photograph of a disassembled brake.