Slant

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

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  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

  liil

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