by Steve Perry
This was, Preston knew, only a “friendly wager” between two former coworkers; even so, his disposition didn’t allow any room for humility—at least when it came to losing bets to someone so far down the ladder of success.
Time to play a card in his hand.
Preston opened a drawer and pressed a button. A split appeared in the opposite wall of the office as four separate oak panels slid back to reveal the massive bank of video and closed-circuit television monitors hidden there. The largest of the monitors displayed a series of layout schematics—what used to be called blueprints in the pre-HoloTecture days—decorated with series of flashing red, blue, and green lights.
“You’ve seen these, of course,” said Preston.
“What do you think?”
“Getting grumpy in your old age, Zac.”
“It happens.”
Preston couldn’t quite gauge Robillard’s tone so decided to ignore it for right now.
He pointed to the oversized screen. “In case you’ve forgotten, the green lights are weight sensors; the blue, air-pressure sensors; and the red—”
“—temperature sensors. I remember.” Zac looked entirely too calm for Preston’s comfort.
“They’re not in here, Zac. Your people”—he entered a series of commands on his keyboard, noting that his hands were trembling ever so slightly—”aren’t even on the grounds yet, let alone inside this building.”
The schematics on the large screen changed more rapidly now, bringing up a new section of the compound and all its buildings every eight seconds, while the rest of the screens displayed pictures of empty hallways, quiet sidewalks, locked doors, computer banks running smoothly with no human assistance.
Preston felt smug, if not good.
Dammit, he thought as the twinge of fire flared again inside him. Not now!
No way was Zac going to beat him on this one. Oh, sure, when they’d been at WorldTech together, it became apparent to even the most self-involved of the researchers that Robillard possessed the superior scientific mind. Though Preston resented the respect and even awe with which Zac was regarded, it quickly became obvious that it was he, Preston, and not Robillard, who had the upper hand when it came to corporate political savvy.
Guess who made it all the way to the top, Zac, he thought, studying Robillard’s face.
Still, somewhere in the back of his mind, Preston knew that, ultimately, he was inferior to Zac Robillard in every way that counted.
But he’d become very good at denial.
Very good, indeed—he had the fire inside his gut to testify to that.
No way, no way in hell, would Zac Robillard beat him.
No way.
6
* * *
Ninety seconds after the mainframe security code changed, it changed again:
7
* * *
23:56:07
The child sensed the Bad Feeling again as he realized that he couldn’t remember the color of his hair.
Blond? Dark? Light brown?
Was it straight, hanging down in his eyes so he had to brush it aside all the time, maybe puff it away with a good burst of breath, or was it wavy, even curly?
The Bad Feeling quickly gave way to sadness.
He couldn’t remember.
And his sadness gave way to a deeper fear.
8
* * *
When the three I-Bots were less than nine feet from the fence, Radiant lifted her hands, signaling her companions to hang back. She adjusted her goggles, took a deep breath, then stepped forward into the range of the outside sensors.
Psy–4 was as still as death.
Even though he knew there was no security system that could defeat them, he’d been programmed to never, ever discard any possibility, regardless of how outrageous or illogical it seemed.
And so he was a little on edge right now.
In fact, he was a little on edge all the time, but never more so than when they were executing a mission.
You never knew what might go wrong.
Or when.
He pushed his anxiety aside and concentrated on Radiant’s movements.
She moved forward, hands straight out, palms up.
The air hit her hands and rippled backward like heat waves rising from an asphalt road in summer heat.
Psy–4 could smell the ozone, feel that crackling static electricity twisting through the atmosphere, brushing past him.
He looked at Stonewall, who nodded in his direction.
He felt it, too.
The night became blurred, shadows retreated, and the sounds of the crickets and dogs and countless other night creatures grew muffled wherever the sound waves passed through the ripples emanating from Radiant’s hands.
She moved closer to the fence.
The ripples turned to waves, rolling forward, frothing the darkness.
This close to the source, the buzzing of the electrified fence was a physical force against the humid night, its volume rising with every step she took, becoming the vicious snarl of a starving junkyard dog ready to tear into a trespasser.
She never hesitated, never faltered.
Psy–4 stared at her, transfixed; she appeared to be in a trance.
He wondered if she knew how compelling she looked at moments like this.
The searchlight came around again, but this time when its beam hit the ripple-shield around Radiant the light split, spread, became diffuse, and was swallowed.
There was an opening in the world where none had been before, a pit of night where nothing was seen or sensed; the maw of Death, wide and hungry.
But only for a moment.
As the searchlight completed its sweep, the split beams reformed, fused into one, then continued the arc.
She remained undetected.
Standing before the fence, the electrical waves were so powerful that a few tufts of Radiant’s startling silver hair, spilling from underneath her cap, stood on end with barely audible crackles.
Psy–4 saw her lips bloom into a small, self-satisfied smile.
Congratulate yourself later, he thought. It’s time to do your job.
She reached forward with both hands and gripped a section of chain-link.
There was a brief, soft pop! when her flesh came into contact with the fence.
Psy–4 looked toward the kiosk.
The two guards were too busy scanning their monitors to notice what was surely only another moth buying the farm.
Radiant held firm to the fence.
Unseen machines and invisible trembling monoliths, the computerized entities she was sensing were at once compromised, humming and singing, grinding, clicking, growing in force, coalescing into a silent, whirling dynamo, around, around, up and out into the heart of all whirling invisibilities, fed into, read by, then accepted within a million-plus copper wires, thrice as many microprocessors exchanging innumerable geometric capability sequences—
—Psy–4 felt the welcomed excitement that always overtook him when things were getting ready to shift into a higher gear, and he carefully watched Radiant as—
—an electric web poured over her, around her, the sizzling heat deflected by the ripple-shield, branching in four directions, then eight secondary directions as she hunched her shoulders and threw back her head—not only to signal her companions, but to direct the white-hot threads farther around and above her—
—Psy–4 and Stonewall emerged from the darkness, crouching until they were well under the protection of Radiant’s shield—
—somewhere in the compound turbines whirred and hummed and screamed as the electric sparks and bolts jumped away from the intruders and clustered on the dew-soaked grass beneath their feet—
—Stonewall knelt down and slammed a fist into the soil, creating a hole three feet deep, then dragged his arm six feet straight across, earth and weeds and worms and stones spitting upward as he dug his small trench. He rammed both arms down into the space until his vicelike fingers found the buried
base of the fence—
—he rose steadily, wrenching the fence base from the ground and pulling it higher, higher, the chain-links like scraps of tinfoil in his fists, peeling the fence back and up, rolling it as easily as a newspaper until there was enough room for his companions to walk through—
—Psy–4 went first, eyes darting this way, then that—
—Radiant followed him, quickly, quietly, her ripple-shield spreading over the barbed wire, then a few yards beyond, until she stood by his side—
—a nod from both of them, and Stonewall rolled the fence back down into the trench, straightening it, melding it back into the shattered ground below, which spread around the metal base as he pulled his arms out of the trench.
Quickly, with the expertise of a landscape artist, he replaced the remaining earth and rocks and worms and weeds that he’d disturbed—
—in a few seconds all was as it had been before, and Radiant brought her hands together, cupping them as if in prayer; the ripple-shield vanished as the wriggling electric strands shot back into the metal of the fence, humming and buzzing contentedly.
Stonewall retreated back into the darkness and the duties waiting for him there.
Radiant turned toward Psy–4, gave a quick nod, and they ran forward.
With a wave of Radiant’s hand here, a finger point there, every motion- and heat-sensing detector surrounding them, both those buried and those in plain view, blinked and went blind.
No cameras recorded their movements.
No audio-scanners detected the vibrations of their breathing.
No radio-controlled ground-pressure devices registered their weight.
Psy–4 felt pleased about how well everything was going thus far.
Very pleased.
Until he checked the time.
A little over seven seconds had elapsed since Radiant first gripped the fence.
Seven seconds.
It should have only taken five.
Sloppy, he thought.
And there were no excuses for that.
None.
Dammit!
Overhead, a triple-bladed HeliCam swept down toward them, its bright red tracking beam hitting Radiant squarely on the forehead.
“Sneaky, aren’t they?” she said. Lifting her index finger, she made a circling motion, and the toy-sized robotic airborne security unit did several loop-de-loops before she sent it on its confused way with a dismissive wave.
“Will you please not do that again?” hissed Psy–4.
“I can’t help it. It’s fun!” When this didn’t get a reaction, she sighed and said, “You have got to work on your sense of humor, Psy–4.”
“We’ll discuss my dreadful personality problems later. C’mon.”
“I thought this was going to be difficult.”
“Stop whining.”
“Oh, all right.”
“And tuck in your hair.”
“Aw, come on! Do you know how long it’s going to take me to get the kinks out after this? I swear, Psy–4, if you knew what it was like to have to—oh, don’t glare at me like that. I’ll be a good girl.”
She began tucking the loose strands of her hair back under her cap as they moved toward the target area. . . .
9
* * *
The child gasped (or so he thought/hoped).
Time was he could have told the difference.
Someone’s coming, he thought to himself.
He wanted to hope it was true, but would not let himself.
In this darkness, Hope was his enemy.
Time was, it used to be his brother—no, more like his older sister. Yes, he imagined it used to be his older sister, always looking out for him, cheering him up when he felt down.
But she had turned on him.
Even his own sister wouldn’t tell him what he had done that was so bad.
10
* * *
Preston hit another hidden button and two large speakers lowered from the ceiling above the monitors; both hissed, but not from any electronic malfunction in their circuitry: The hiss was the sound of silence.
Zac Robillard turned to watch the speakers descend into place, and Preston used the opportunity to pull two small white pills from his pocket, pop them into his mouth, and take a quick drink of water from the glass sitting on his desk.
Robillard saw none of this, and Preston was quite pleased about that.
He’d kept it a secret for a long time, and the last thing he wanted was for Robillard, of all people, to ask him if he was feeling all right.
“Those speakers,” said Preston, “are hooked into an audio tracking system that runs throughout this building. What you’re hearing right now—let me turn the volume down a bit—there, that’s better. Where was I?”
“You were about to tell me what I was hearing.”
Preston glared at Robillard for a moment: Was that actually boredom in the man’s voice?
Smug bastard, he thought.
Didn’t matter. Robillard would be eating crow soon enough.
Preston cleared his throat. “You’re hearing every sound that’s being made outside the doors of this office in this building at this moment. There’s nothing out there, Zac, except maybe a thousand or so mosquitoes.”
Robillard rubbed his eyes. “I’m guessing you’ve got some kind of sensor installed God only knows where that can give you a precise count?”
Preston grinned, noting with satisfaction that Robillard’s apparent boredom was swiftly changing to resignation. “I might. You never know.”
Robillard nodded his head. “You always were one to use an uncertainty to your advantage.”
“And you always considered that taking unfair advantage of someone. That was your biggest problem, Zac—hell, it probably still is.”
“And what’s that?”
“Your overwhelming sense of morality had no place in the business world, and because of it you could never tell the difference between duplicity and opportunity.”
Robillard tilted his head to one side, quiet amusement momentarily in his eyes. “Does this just come to you or do you write it all down ahead of time and memorize it?”
Preston swallowed.
Hard.
And it hurt.
Robillard was trying to upset him, needle him, throw off his concentration with irrelevant humor. He just knew it.
Preston leaned forward on his desk. “They won’t make it, Zac. Even if they manage through some fluke or divine intervention to get inside the compound, they’ll never get inside this building. I designed tonight’s security programs myself. Remember the old ‘Catherine Wheel’ theory we concocted back at WorldTech?”
Something jarred behind Robillard’s eyes. “You didn’t?”
Preston felt even stronger, even more in control now.
“Uh-huh. And it works, Zac. Only for short periods of time—in this case, five-and-a-half minutes—but it works.”
Robillard wiped some perspiration from his forehead. “The Catherine Wheel program was designed as a game on paper! Lord, Sam, you could wipe out half, if not all, of your mainframe computers, having that many deliberately—”
“—if the program ran for more than a quarter of an hour, yes, but right now it doesn’t.” Another look at his watch. “I reiterate, Zac: They aren’t going to make it.”
“Yeah, they are. I promised them Italian food later if things went well. They really love Italian, especially when someone else pays for it.”
“Must get awfully expensive for you.”
Then Zac said something Preston wasn’t expecting: “Oh, I fully expect it’ll be your treat tonight, Sam.”
“You’re that confident in their abilities?”
Zac gestured toward the open briefcase containing ten thousand dollars in cash on Preston’s desk. “You think I’d have taken you up on this if I weren’t?”
Beside Zac’s rather beat-up briefcase was an expensive attaché; this, too, was open, and als
o held ten thousand dollars in cash. Preston ran a hand over the money in both, a gleam in his eyes. “Hard to say, Zac. When we were both at WorldTech, I always had this sneaking suspicion that there was a reckless spirit hiding somewhere in all that girth.”
“This,” said Zac, slapping a hand to his protruding belly, “is not girth. I prefer to think of it as muscle in slumber.”
Both men laughed, but not too loudly. Then Preston turned back to his window, hands clasped confidently behind his back, emperor of all he surveyed.
After a moment, he shifted his gaze to a darker area of the window and began surreptitiously studying the inverse reflection of Robillard’s face.
Preston supposed that a lot of people—women in particular—would deem Zac Robillard’s face “romantic.”
Maybe.
Lucky S.O.B. had probably never exploited it to his advantage.
At a glance, it would be tempting to interpret Robillard’s demeanor as an uneasy marriage between the manic and melancholy—or simply world-weariness kept at bay with occasionally forced good humor—but a close look into his soft brown eyes would soon reveal the anger, grief, frustration, and fear roiling beneath the surface of calm that he often fought to maintain. Of all Robillard’s characteristics, this was the one that most unnerved Preston when he was face-to-face with the man: His eyes were haunted by phantoms. Beneath their surface, countless ghosts—perhaps of dead loved ones, or youthful idealism, or even belief in a world where scientific breakthroughs were for the benefit of all mankind, not just (as Robillard used to complain at WorldTech) those who could wield Damoclesean power to ensure that they chose who could and could not benefit—all these ghosts performed a never-ending dance of disillusion and regret, whispering, always whispering, Careful, our friend. Careful.
Preston figured if he himself had been blessed with a face like Robillard’s—one with a mysterious, haunted quality—his meteoric rise to power would have been even more swift and stunning.
