The Media Candidate – politics and power in 2048
Page 62
CHAPTER FORTY
Guinda’s Demise
Elliott arrived at the entrance gate of the Lab in the back seat of a taxi, and the guard waved the car in when he showed his ID. Once at the main science building, he paid the driverless cab, and it sped away. He was glad to have met no one in the hall, for his sorry appearance would have led to unwanted attention. He collected the printed files on his way to his office and plopped himself with a loud sigh on the sofa.
He was on excellent terms with this sofa. It had been with him for nearly a quarter century, during which time he’d napped on it when he’d chosen the comfort of his work over his old family. It provided comfort all those years, and now he needed that comfort more than ever. The day’s events had exhausted him so much that everything seemed to dissolve into the background as he sprawled there. This was his first chance to relax in several hours. And those hours had been the most demanding of his life.
His thoughts began drifting aimlessly as in the final stage before sleep. But he sat up with a start. “Guinda!”
A cold hand gripped his stomach with the fear that it might be too late. He reached for his phone and caught himself in mid dial. What would he say to her? What if another spider had already gotten to her? Her only safety would be to join him here at the Lab, but how could she do that if a spider was waiting for the right time to strike?
I have to get her back here. We can study the rest of those files … and plan what to do next. He uneasily completed her phone number. As it rang, he prepared himself for the worst. He clenched the receiver and bit his lip.
“Hello,” came the response finally.
“Guinda! Thank God you’re okay! COPE knows everything. We’re both in danger! Can you talk?”
“Yes.”
“I found some really wild stuff in those Halvorsen files last night. I think there’s a plot going on to substitute holographic images for the real candidates. I think the networks are trying to control the candidates.”
“Yes?” came the less than enthusiastic response from Guinda.
“Not only that, they tried to kill me this morning. And I’m sure they know about you, too.”
“Are you okay now?” Guinda asked.
“Yeah, but I had some really close calls with this spider thing. I guess I was pretty lucky. It died and I didn’t.”
“Where are you?” Guinda asked automatically.
“At my office at the Lab. Security is pretty good here, and I think I’m safe … at least for a while. But I don’t think you are, Guin. In fact this call is probably being monitored. I think you’re in very great danger.”
“I don’t think I am, Elliott. I’m okay. I don’t think I have to worry.”
“You don’t understand, Guin. They know about you and me, and they tried to kill me. You may be next.”
“Don’t worry about me, Elliott. I can assure you that I’m all right. Just stay where you are, and I’ll come to you in about an hour. We need to talk about what’s going on and figure out what to do next. Just stay where you are, okay?”
Elliott paused for a long time and then responded, “Okay.”
He stood motionless beside the telephone. The words comforted him, but her voice boiled in him like an inferno. The conversation didn’t make sense. She’d seemed almost drugged when they first met at her office. He’d decided that her humanity was probably just repressed by the inhuman environment. He could taste the oppression of the setting himself and thought it must have an even more devastating effect on Guinda, working there day after day. But now at her home, she aired the same detachment. What’s going on? I wonder if COPE is there.
He imagined a spider or a spy car outside her house. Maybe she was too frightened to have him come to her now. Maybe a spider had gotten into to her house and was holding her prisoner. Maybe it wasn’t even her he just talked to. They might’ve killed her and installed a surrogate on her phone. Could be, he thought. COPE must have recordings of her voice and her telephone manner at work, and a computer simulation would sound like what I just heard. Elliott replayed the conversation in his mind and played it against his recall of their first meeting. She called him Townsend then, but COPE would know they were on a first name basis now and would expect her to call him Elliott. “That’s it,” he muttered, “she never called me Ted this time. She would have called me Ted … after what we … she would have called me Ted. They got her. I know those bastards got her.”
Elliott pictured one of those terrible spiders clutching her with its sinuous evil, pressing itself close to her delicate breasts, not to embrace her, but to exterminate the life in her young body. The vision of Guinda being strangled or poisoned by one of those monsters poisoned his mind. He saw the creature with its eight menacing legs breaking into her patio door from her upstairs deck. “No,” he said outloud, “the skylight … she keeps that skylight open in her bathroom. It would be easy for one of those things to climb up her roof and drop through the skylight … and kill her in her sleep. Those cowards are probably great at that. They probably killed her like they killed Halvorsen. And like they tried to kill me. How else can you explain that phone call? That wasn’t her. Somebody tried to make it sound like her—someone who didn’t know the real kindness in her voice.” His voice broke off to a whisper and then died on his lips. “How else can you explain it?”
He sank into a chair, staring at the phone. “It wasn’t her, so it must have been them.” He rose on his uncertain legs. “I have to find out, and if she’s dead …”