The Boost

by Stephen Baker

  Stella’s only objection was that they’d be putting themselves closer to Vallinger and his henchmen.

  “You think he’ll lay off if we happen to be in Ohio instead of Virginia?” Suzy said. “He won’t be chasing us on horses.”

  “I guess you’re right,” Stella said, as she loaded the two bags into Suzy’s cobalt blue Shar-pei.

  Now, as they speed past the exits for Philadelphia, she cranes her neck and looks toward the sky. Suzy, sitting to her left, swivels in her seat and looks out the back window. “There are two guys in that green car back there that have been looking at us since we left the Parkway,” she says. “If you’re hunting for something to worry about, that might not be a bad place to start.”

  They continue south through Delaware and Maryland, and then angle west toward Virginia. Stella takes her grandfather’s book, Donkey Show, from her black purse and starts to reread it. “Getting ready for El Paso,” she says.

  “Don’t you find it distracting to turn the pages?” Suzy asks.

  “You get used to it.”

  “I don’t think I ever would.”

  As the blue Shar-pei drives through Washington’s Virginia suburbs, a tiny blue drone, no bigger than a hornet, hovers a constant two feet over the roof. The drone records the messaging and conversation occurring within the Shar-pei. It transmits the streams to the green Sheng-li following them and to Tyler Dahl, who monitors the conversation in his boost while exercising on his treadmill.

  The Flynn brothers, both in their twenties, ride in the Sheng-li. The older of the two, Al, is slumped in his chair, sleeping. He’s tall and dark. His sloped chin is nested on his chest. His little brother Gerry, twice as thick and a head shorter, is hunting in a virtual Serengeti. He sits erect in his seat, his eyes open, like someone who is waiting breathlessly for a fearsome black mamba to slither past. Neither man listens to the conversation coming from Suzy and Stella. But both the men are hoping that the order to apprehend them comes sooner rather than later. Early on, when they picked up Suzy’s car near Newark, they heard the two women arguing about whether to go through Pennsylvania. That was when they saw that this assignment could stretch far beyond Saturday morning. When they heard Stella mention El Paso, both groaned. “There goes my golf game,” Gerry said.

  Dahl, listening in his Dupont Circle apartment, was alarmed as well. If the two women were headed to El Paso, something was up in Juárez. It was going to be a long weekend. He messaged Vallinger that he had news on Stella, but received no response.

  It isn’t until nearly lunchtime when Vallinger’s angry voice erupts in Dahl’s head. He has just read yesterday’s Tribune story, about the Respect function in the boost, and is livid. “How did she know?” he asks.

  “Know what?” Dahl asks.

  “About Respect!”

  “They must have good sources in the DM,” Dahl says. Then he informs Vallinger that Stella and Suzy are headed to El Paso.

  “Well stop them, for Christ’s sake!”

  “And do what?”

  Vallinger tells him to bring the women in for interrogation. Dahl passes on the order to the Flynns in the green Sheng-li. For Gerry, the order pops up as a bubble of text above a herd of wildebeests in Tanzania. He sighs and returns from virtual Africa to the Sheng-li racing through the Shenandoah mountains of Virginia. He hears the women talking. The older one is saying something about the husband who left her a million years ago.

  He wakes up Al. “Gotta stop them,” he says.

  He sends a command to the bumblebee drone, which promptly transmits a signal to Suzy’s car.

  Suzy notices it first. She interrupts Stella, who is now going on about Ralf. “We’re slowing down,” she says, pointing to the speedometer. They sit, speechless, as their car signals a turn to the right. It exits the highway, followed by the green Sheng-li, and turns up a small rural road. After passing a farm, it pulls off near a grove of pine trees and stops with a wheeze of its hydrogen engine. The Sheng-li parks behind it.

  “You stay here, in the car,” Stella says to Suzy. “I’ll handle this.” She has no plan, but feels that the situation calls for leadership, even if it’s blind.

  She gets out of the car thinking: This is where I’m going to die. She doesn’t feel sad about it, at least not yet. She looks past the pine trees, toward a small brook, which gurgles noisily and disappears around a bend. That’s where they’ll throw my body, she thinks. She wonders if and when anyone will find it. Maybe not until nothing remains but her bones. She realizes that she’s analyzing the scenario with the coldness, and finality, of a physical anthropologist. She nearly failed that course in college.

  The two doors of the green Sheng-li open in unison, the one on the right banging against a pine tree. Stella sees two men emerge from the vehicle. These are my executioners, she says to herself. One is tall with a weak chin; the other one, much stockier, is placing a gray hood over his head, and fiddling with the string to tie it under his chin. His sweatshirt says St. Joseph’s, and Stella finds herself wondering if he’s from Philadelphia, and if he might be Catholic, and what bearing that might have on her chances. They say nothing, but the tall one, heading toward Stella, walks with a slight stoop and wears an embarrassed look on his face.

  These men don’t look like killers, she thinks. This is just a situation that must be managed. She opens her mouth to speak to them, when the car door opens behind her, slamming into the back of her thigh. “Sorry,” Suzy says, wedging out of the car.

  The Flynns stop, transfixed by the beauty of the domed Artemis.

  Before Stella can say anything, Suzy hurtles toward the shorter man with the St. Joseph’s sweatshirt. She yells a single word—“asshole!”—and tackles him. Using the power of her tall body and the leg strength gained through years of running, she drives him onto his back. He falls onto rocky soil still hard from winter and covered with yellowed pine needles. Suzy begins to pummel him with her fists and elbows. Stella and the tall man watch, their mouths agape. Then the tall man, as if remembering that he has a job to do, fishes a what looks like a wooden pellet from his pocket, steps toward Suzy,and raises his weapon above her.

  Stella screams. Suzy stops her attack and looks up, and the man cracks down on her forehead. Suzy collapses.

  Stella reaches into her own coat pocket and the Chinese-made tool of curved plastic that the messenger delivered. He included instructions, she knows, but she doesn’t remember them. The tall man is still staring at Suzy. Her arms frame her head, which looks like a painting of a sleeping goddess. He pays no attention to Stella. She points the zapper at his head just as he turns toward her, and presses the button. His expression changes from angry to confused, and then goes blank as his knees buckle. He sits back on the ground and then lies down and closes his eyes. For a moment his body shakes and is then as peaceful as death. The younger man is now climbing to his feet and rushing toward Stella, yelling. She points the zapper at his face and again pulls the button. He goes quiet, tumbles to the ground, and repeats the movements of his partner. In a matter of seconds, he too appears dead.

  Stella looks down at the three bodies. She is reminded of the last scene in Hamlet, and it occurs to her that the actors in the theater climb back to their feet as soon as the curtain closes. Are these three dead or just stunned? She returns the zapper to her pocket, but keeps her hand on it. Bending down over Suzy, she reaches with her left hand to Suzy’s face. It’s warm and seems alive. She puts a finger under Suzy’s nose and feels breathing. For her own safety, she knows, she should check on the two men, but she doesn’t have the stomach for it. If they’re dead, she killed them, and if they’re alive, they could jump up and kill her. For the moment, she’d rather not know.

  Instead, she concentrates on Suzy. She slaps her face gently and then a little harder, whispering, “Hey. Hey.” Suzy doesn’t respond. Stella lifts her right eyelid and sees only the white orb of the eye threaded with spidery red veins. This isn’t going to work, she thinks. She lifts
Suzy’s right leg and tries to drag her toward the car. With a big heave she moves the body about a half inch, maybe less. The space between the body and Suzy’s car, she judges, is about the length of her Montclair living room. It would be near impossible to drag the body that distance even if it were carpeted. Over stony soil, it’s out of the question.

  She hurries to the blue Shar-pei, thinking that she’ll back it up right beside Suzy, and then try to hoist her into the backseat. But when she presses the Start button, nothing happens. It’s locked, and it won’t start unless it reads Suzy’s irises.

  Stella slumps in the car and considers her options. She could take off on foot. But the nearest house or business is likely to be miles away. Why would anyone help her?

  She sees movement among the fallen. It’s the tall man. His hand is inching its way toward his face. Stella gasps. Should she zap them again? The first time, it was self-defense. But if she goes over to the bodies and re-zaps them, it will feel like an execution—assuming that it kills them.

  She grabs her purse and climbs out of the car. She starts to jog toward the woods. Then, on a whim, she stops and turns around, back to the green Sheng-li. She climbs in. She pushes the Start button. The engine starts with a whir. Must be a rental, she thinks. She looks toward the bodies. Only two are lying there. The tall man is up. He is lurching toward her. He has a childlike smile on his face, as if he has just learned how to walk. He reaches the car and pounds on its hood. He’s yelling. Stella, looking up, can see the white topography of his molars.

  “Take me to Washington, DC,” she tells the car. The car processes the command and calls up its mapping application. The man is at her window now, and his expression has changed from amusement to betrayal. He opens the door and grabs at Stella’s arm. As he does, the car pulls away, its tires sending up a cloud of dust and pebbles. Stella slams shut the door. The Sheng-li executes a neat U-turn, missing a pine tree with its left front fender by inches. Then it spins left on the road and accelerates in the direction of the highway. Stella looks back and sees the man standing in the middle of the road. However worried he is about losing the car or botching his assignment, Stella imagines, he has to be wondering about his zapped boost—if he’s as wild as he feels, and if he’ll be that way forever.

  Forty

  3/12/72 10:13 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

  John Vallinger reclines in his zero-gravity chair and gazes sadly at a hologram that hangs above him like a thunder cloud. It’s tuned to the highway traffic in the Washington area. The lobbyist looks every bit his age. The wrinkles in his face, from his forehead to his mouth, all tilt downward. He wears his black woolen tunic like a shroud. Vallinger could easily be running the surveillance video and intelligence from his own boost, and even watching it from his own home. But out of pure spite he has summoned his assistant, Tyler Dahl, to the K Street offices. It’s as if he blames Dahl for the disastrous news story that appeared in yesterday’s Tribune, the one exposing the Respect function. It could be worse, of course. The Tribune reaches only a tiny minority of Americans. A fair number of them are already in the know about the coming update and positioned to profit from it. But The Tribune article ties the Respect software to Vallinger’s business, providing privileged and embarrassing details. It also gives the clear impression that despite his rhetoric, Vallinger is moved less by patriotism than profits. In fact, readers of the article might assume that he works for the Chinese government.

  Earlier in the day, as Vallinger stepped into the office, he did not even bother to say hello to his assistant. “I don’t know what I’ll do if I learn that someone in my organization has been feeding her news,” he sputtered as he took off his overcoat. “That person will not enjoy anything worth calling a life.” He hung up his coat and walked toward his assistant.

  “Feeding news to who?” Dahl asked.

  “To whom.”

  “To whom, then?”

  “To Stella Kellogg, you dope!” Vallinger snapped his fingers in front of Dahl’s startled face. “Have you feasted your eyes on yesterday’s Mexican paper yet? Do you understand why we’re here?” Since that moment, he has berated the young man sometimes at high decibels, other times in muttered asides. When Dahl fails to hear his boss and asks him to repeat his instructions, Vallinger rants at him. Perhaps in protest, Dahl has turned his pants and shirt to the same bright green as the Sheng-li that appears to be carrying Stella Kellogg from the scene of the ambush, in the woody Virginia suburbs, toward Washington. The two men watch the image of the car as it inches its way across the suburban countryside.

  “Where the hell is she going?” Vallinger asks. Ever since he had Dahl prepare the headache signal for her boost, she has sped up to the maximum of 90 miles per hour. She’s passing lazy Sunday traffic, winding her way through Hay Market and past Bull Run.

  “Anybody’s guess,” says Dahl.

  Vallinger orders Dahl to study the log of the boosts involved in the incident in Northern Virginia. Within seconds, the young man provides the details. The Flynn brothers in their green Sheng-li overtook the blue Shar-pei carrying Stella Kellogg and Suzy Claiborne at 1:56 p.m. outside the town of Stephens City, in Virginia. The two cars stopped at 1:58. Three minutes later, the boosts of the two brothers appeared to go dead, one within seconds of the other. They might still be alive, he says, adding that boosts inside the body of the dead continue to function for weeks, even months.

  “What’s your point!” Vallinger snaps.

  “Just that you can be alive with a dead boost, or dead with a live boost. There’s no correlation.”

  “So, dead or alive, we know they’ve been zapped,” Vallinger says.

  “Either that or abducted by extra-terrestrials,” Dahl says.

  This leads Vallinger to conclude that the revolutionary DM, in addition to planting a source deep inside his own business, has gotten its hands on one of the limited supply of Chinese-made zappers. In a quiet, regretful tone, he instructs Dahl to communicate this breach to “our Chinese friends.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “LET THE CHINESE KNOW THAT WE MIGHT HAVE A GODDAMNED MOLE IN OUR HOUSE,” Vallinger says. After wiping the spittle from around his mouth with the back of his hand, he adds in a grim monotone: “For all I know, it might be you.”

  As Dahl obediently composes a message in his boost, Vallinger turns his attention to Suzy Claiborne, who is apparently heading in her own Shar-pei to Washington. He can track her boost, but can’t tell from boost scans or satellite shots if she’s accompanied by his two goons. They may be with her, or with Kellogg—or as Dahl suggests, with Martians. In the end, it makes no difference. Those wild men are as lost to him as they are to themselves.

  “Follow Claiborne’s car,” he tells Dahl. “She may lead us to the rest of her network. You never know. Maybe those beasts will bring her in. You should go over to Virginia,” he says, referring to his Detention Center, “in case they do.”

  PART IV

  Washington

  Forty-one

  3/12/72 10:13 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Stella looks blankly out the window as the green Sheng-li winds its way through Washington’s Virginia suburbs. She has to come up quickly with a plan. John Vallinger, she knows, has the means to track her boost, minute by minute. He can send someone or something to kill her, or more likely, deliver death or crippling injury through a short-circuiting software app. She has heard about such things. Vallinger, with his tight connections to the Chinese, is bound to have the full arsenal.

  As she passes Leesburg, Stella thinks about Suzy. She doubts they killed her, and she knows that at least one of the men is alive. So all three are probably awake by now, coming to grips with their new circumstances: Suzy a captive, the men newly wild. She wonders if they’ll take Suzy to Vallinger, or perhaps to an interrogation center. For all she knows, they might be a mile or two behind her.

  She looks at her messages. There’s one from a colleague at the DM. It’s written in code that Va
llinger’s team could probably untangle in a matter of seconds, she thinks. It asks her to confirm that John Vallinger actually paid a visit to her safe house in Montclair. Old news, she thinks, not bothering to respond. She flips to her outbox and is surprised to see that a message she sent to Simon appears to have been received. Could he be back in El Paso? She sends him another one, telling him that she’s taking a detour, and might not be in El Paso quite as soon as she had hoped. The message bounces back. A new message pops in. It’s from John Vallinger. “Are you coming alone?” he asks.

  Stella doesn’t know how to respond, or if she should.

  “I see you,” a new message says. “Answer me.”

  Stella’s heart races. She works to breathe deeply and evenly. She passes a sign pointing to Washington and Alexandria. Then the pain starts. It begins as a tingle in her mouth, near a molar, and then it creeps up the side of her face, intensifying until her cheek feels like it’s roasting from the inside. She moans as a new message comes in. “Answer me.”

  Stella does not answer. Through the blinding pain, she ransacks her messages for an address and then gives it to the car. The Sheng-li promptly crosses three lanes of traffic and angles toward Alexandria.

  Forty-two

  SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 2072:

  THREE DAYS BEFORE THE NATIONAL COGNITIVE UPDATE

  3/13/72 8:56 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

  Stella Kellogg looks around. She’s in a white room with smudges on the walls, the windows covered with tattered curtains. It takes a moment to recall where she is. Her head hurts, but the pain is on the skin, not inside. She reaches up to her temple and touches a bandage. Then she remembers. She consults her boost and gets no response. On a table next to her bed, she sees a small clear plastic case with her name printed on it. Inside is cellulose packaging, and inside that, she’s sure, is her boost.