by Eikeltje
"I think we might be lost," the man confesses, holding up a crude
paper map.
"What kind of doctors?" Martin asks breathlessly.
"Large-animal vets, actually," the man says.
Martin's presses his lips together and keeps his hands by his side. Finally
allowing himself to speak, he begins with a stutter, and asks, "Any experience
with medical nano?"
"In the Republic?" The woman snorts. "You must be joking."
"Are you all right?" the man asks.
334
GR pounds BEAR
"No broken bones," Martin says. He lifts the flask and examines its contents,
hand shaking.
Feeling something coming, irresistible as a freight train, he places the flask
on a lab bench. The fit hits him full-force and he barks at the doctors furiously,
driving them back into the corridor.
44
On the last of the five floors, Seefa Schnee opens the door to the elevator cage
and walks across a path between the rows of legumes to a glassed-in enclosure
at the back. Here, they are near the roof of the larger chamber, and the walls
round off to form a cap, meeting the back of the glass enclosure.
Jonathan follows, wiping his face with the cloth, completely at a loss what
tO do.
Schnee is already destroying the heart of Omphalos. Marcus and his cronies
did not reckon on Schnee having a conscience--however peculiar and distorted
it might be. He does not need to act, merely to observe, and somehow that
hurts. He wants to exact his own vengeance.
Jonathan looks around for a heavy tool, a rake or a hammer.
Schnee stops ahead. He hears another voice, a man.
"You've done it," the man says. He stands at the end of the path, near the
eoor
to Jonathan does not recognize him, nor does he seem to
the
enclosure.
know or care who Jonathan is.
Schnee backs off, then straightens and squares her shoulders. "C-come to
rescue your precious daughter?" she manages to say, but her voice is weak and
quavery. "I didn't mean for Jill to be caught up, Nathan," she adds. "That
was Roddy's doing. He's embarrassed me."
"So you're giving him a spanking, shutting him down?"
"This is the last of his functions. All the final samplings and decodings are
done here."
Jonathan notes that while standing before this man, Seefa Schnee seems less
twitchy. She does not break out in muffled curses or kiss her hand.
"I can't find Jill," Nathan says.
"Do you work here?" Jonathan asks him.
"No," Nathan says. "Who are you?"
"Doesn't matter." Jonathan spots a gardening pick, lying on a platform
half-hidden among the peas. He plods out through the rich mud to the platform
and grabs the pick.
/ SLANT 335
"No," she says firmly. "Roddy and I, we screwed up from start to finish.
It's time to shut it down and do it over, that's all."
"You succeeded. You made Roddy," Nathan says, unable to conceal his
admiration. He notices that the other man is pushing through the trellises,
with a pick, toward the enclosure.
"They paid me," Seefa says. "Not much, but it was enough. You guys could
have had Roddy, not them."
"What would he have been like?" Nathan asks.
Jonathan hesitates, finding the mud and rows of plants tougher going than
he thought, and looks around for another way, but apparently decides to avoid
the direct path. He turns instead toward the old INDAs arranged near the
edge.
"You could have been his daddy," Schnee says. "They insisted I use them
for templates, for his basic personality model. You would have been better."
"Jesus, Seefa," Nathan murmurs. He spreads his arms and shakes his hands
up and down in wordless question.
"I don't know," Seefa says. "I've been deeply embarrassed. Roddy is a disappointment."
Nathan has run out of words. He just stares at her.
Schnee looks down at the pathway, then to one side, just as Jonathan's pick
strikes the first INDA. She leaps across the dirt toward him.
"No!" she shrieks. "Not you! Stop!"
Nathan follows and for a few minutes, they struggle with the man, manage
to take the pick away, but he's already done enough damage. Seefa stands back,
hugging herself with her thin arms, then runs for the elevator.
Jonathan stares at Nathan, out of breath. "I need to get out of here," he
says, as if this might serve as an explanation.
"I don't care, go," Nathan says, and turns to walk to the glass enclosure.
Mary and the agents enter the high chamber. They walk through a pungent
ground-hugging mist toward a small, thin woman with black hair and wild
black eyes. The woman stares at Mary's pockmarked face as if seeing a ghost.
"What's wrong with you?" she screeches. She looks at all of them. "Get out
of here! There are too many!"
Mary looks up with stinging eyes at the structure that fills most of the
chamber, like stacked planting trays in a giant's garden shed. A man wearing
a filthy and disheveled gray longsuit walks toward them from the elevator
336
G R E G B A /
"Disinfectant and insecticide," he says to them. "We have to leave soon or
it might make us sick."
"Yes, get out!" the small, intense woman demands. "None of you belong
here!"
"Are you public defense?" rhe man asks Mary.
"I am," she says, and starts to choke. The man examines her closely, the
sores on her face, the trembling in her hands.
"My god, you're ill," he says. "You've got it, haven't you?"
She nods. There's no need to ask what he's talking about.
"Seefa Schnee?" Daniels asks, approaching the thin, agitated woman.
They're all coughing now.
"Get her out of here," Torres orders.
The woman refuses to leave, flailing and kicking up the noxious mist. Torres
finally maneuvers behind her and picks her up bodily, carrying her like an
angry child through the door.
Mary looks up at the top of the chamber. Anorher lone man gazes down at
her from the top level.
"Come on up," he says. "Somebody has to see this. Use the elevator."
Mary considers, nods, and enters the cage. At the top, she gets out.
"You look pretty bad," the man tells her.
She nods. I'll survive. Who are you?"
He makes a sympathetic face and offers her his hand. She shakes it weakly.
"Nathan Rashid," he says, and turns to walk down a path soaked with antiseptic.
"She shut down most of it, and that other fellow did a job on the
INDAs up here. But... You're PD, aren't you? Not FBI?"
"Seattle PD," Mary confirms.
"I don't know why you're here," Nathan says. "But somebody has to see
this. They killed my daughter. I mean, my friend, my project. I think I've
found one of the culprits."
"One of whom?"
"The money men. Seefa must have scanned them for personality patterns.
They're still here, parts of them. The system's collapsed. We're down to basics,
some simple memories. Roddy probably never accessed the memories, just the
patterns, but they're here."
He takes her into a glass enclosure and shows
her the decorated chair, the
console, the displays. The image of a man floats above the console, in three
dimensions.
Mary comes around to view the man directly.
"Welcome," the image says. "My name is Terence Crest. I'm forty-one years
of age, married, with two daughters." He says this with a little twist to his
face. "I've been asked to participate in this scanning, and they tell me it's an
honor to become part of a future thinker. A well-financed honor, to be sure.
Well, here I am."
/
SLANT 337
rigor of drug-induced death. Crest looks like any other man his age, a little
better dressed, a touch impatient. Nothing worth making a fuss about.
"I'm here," the image repeats. "Is there anything you need to ask me? I'm
dynamic, they tell me some of my memories are here. Please don't waste time."
He chuckles. "This machine, if it is a machine, has lots to do."
"Do you know him?" Nathan asks Mary.
"No," Mary says. "How do you turn this off?"
"There's not much left. Just these patterns. If you flip these switches, we
pull the remaining INDAs off line, and since that fellow with the pick destroyed
the memory backups, it will all fade."
Mary reaches for the switches.
"I'm waiting," says Crest, the image of Crest, the last, almost living part
of a dead man.
"Do you mind?" Mary asks Nathan, fingers poised. She does not know
whether she can stay on her feet much longer.
"Not at all," Nathan says. "There's nothing I need here. She's gone."
Mary flips the switches, and the image folds into a lattice of glowing lines,
the lattice collapses, and it is all gone.
"The others are dead," Jonathan says. He tells them what he knows. Exhaustion
leaves him feeling like a zombie. Mary records his words carefully and tells
him that Marcus Reilly has been taken out of the building for treatment.
Helena Daniels sits beside them in the circular room filled with old computers.
Her pad is also set to record. Nathan Rashid stands near the middle of
the room, looking like a man who has lost everything. He finally sits on a
narrow bench near the exit.
Jonathan looks at Mary with heavy-lidded eyes. "What time is it?" he asks.
"It's four in the morning," Mary tells him.
"It's tomorrow," he says. "I should have been home hours ago. I have to
talk to my kids..." He points vaguely around the room, trying to find something
obvious, something representative. "Is anybody going to do anything
about this?" His finger ends up pointing at Mary's face.
"I hope so," she says. She packs up her pad and stands on wobbly legs. She
has reached her limit. "I have to leave."
"Finally," Daniels says. "There are medevac helicopters from Boise and Seattle
outside."
Mary looks down on Jonathan where he sits on the bench, hunched over.
"Did you want all this?" she asks him.
"I don't know what I wanted," he answers. "Not this."
"All right," Mary says, and turns to go. Her legs fail her and she holds out
her bleeding hands for balance. Jonathan is the first to reach her, and helps
her down slowly. Medical arbeiters are summoned and bring in a stretcher,
338
Martin Burke, surrounded by county deputies and several medical personnel
from Moscow's largest hospital, hands his sealed flask to Torres and helps Mary
arrange herself.
"I'll be leaving soon myself," he says.
"Can anybody fix us?" Mary asks him, and for the first time he sees more
than just concern or duty in her eyes. There's fear and pain.
"Yes," he says, though he really does not know.
Jonathan has dropped back to the bench again, and Martin sits beside him.
"What a mess," Martin says.
"What's in this?" Torres asks, holding the flask out at arms length.
"The best I could do for a sample," Martin says.
"Shit," Torres says, and places the flask carefully in a sealed bag, handing
it to the nameless, broad-shouldered agent. In turn, he passes it to a man in a
full body suit, who packs it in a sealed metal case.
"Sorry," Martin says to no one in particular. "Best I could do."
They all sit or stand in silence, as the room fills with officials, the sheriff,
longsuited members of President Kemper's staff. They owlishly watch the
technical and medical people parade by.
Martin wonders how many helicopters and airplanes have landed in Moscow
in the last hour.
"What are you going to do with Seefa Schnee?" Jonathan asks Torres.
"How the hell should I know?" Torres responds.
"And Marcus, the Aristos?"
Torres shrugs.
"Me?"
Torres simply looks at him.
stares at to that touch. To my family."
Jonathan
the
floor.
need
make
Torres hands him his pad. "Go ahead," he says. "Direct to a satlink. It's
on us."
Daniels listens to a voice on her own pad, and then shouts, "Fifteen minutes.
Jesus Christ!" She whirls on the nameless agent. "What is this? What is this
fifteen minutes shit?"
"Orders, I guess," he says flatly. He shrugs; he's not in the loop on this part
of the action.
Daniels shakes her fists. "Goddamn it all to fucking hell!"
Martin wonders if she is going to be afflicted, as well. His lips move in
sympathy. He is about to start snorting and barking when Daniels shouts,
"Everybody out of here, now. NOW!"
They barely make it before the real fireworks begin.
From her supine position in the helicopter, Mary has her last look at Omphalos.
The craft banks west and flakes of snow swirl in its wash. A medical arbeiter
/
SLANT 339
The pyramid is crossed with searchlight beams. The surrounding snow-
covered grounds are packed with cars and trucks and helicopters.
People pour from the garage opening on the south side. Something flashes
like a gunshot and Mary jumps in surprise.
"Please keep still," the medical arbeiter tells her.
On Omphalos's corrugated face, flames erupt in brilliant patches like wild
roses in the night. Pieces of the building fly outward. Lines of bright sparks
carve a blackened groove near the base. The helicopter is leveling and she just
catches a glimpse of the pyramid's tip collapsing, followed by the levels beneath,
like falling blocks in a child's toyroom. The sound reaches her as & run
of staccato punches overlaying the chopper noise.
Night fills the window. Mary feels the sedation kick in. She's out of everything
for now. Nussbaum couldn't possibly expect any more.
Never in her life has she felt this weak, this reduced.
Still, she smiles pityingly into the dim red lights of the cabin. She isn't
going to be around to help Torres and Daniels work with the sheriff or Kemper.
She won't be able to fulfill that part of the bargain.
Night fills the window. The lights in the cabin dim.
The long, whispering shimmy of the helicopter lulls her.
She sleeps.
340
GR pounds BEAR
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