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An hour and a half later, a man came from the opposite direction, hands in pockets, a large paper bag tucked beneath his left arm, and entered the left-hand apartment.
Portis waited. Lights came on, then almost immediately died. The bluish flicker of a television danced in the blind-covered windows.
Portis crossed the street.
Standing on the small porch before Eisner’s door, Portis did a final sweep of the street, then pressed the doorbell.
He heard footsteps within, a deadbolt, then a chain sliding free of its slot, and the door opened.
The face that peered out at him looked pinched, nervous.
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Eisner?”
“What is it?”
“We should talk inside. My name is Portis. I have a message for you.”
Eisner began blinking rapidly, his mouth open. He licked his lips anxiously, then scowled. “You’re not—I mean
—who—?”
Portis pushed the door inward, shoving Eisner back. The small man scrambled away, arms akimbo, panic overtaking his confused expression.
“What do you want? Who sent you?”
Portis closed and locked the door. He stepped toward Eisner, who continued to back away.
Beyond Eisner, Portis saw a small living room cramped by stacks of magazines, books, and large drawing pads. A drafting table stood before an oversized armchair. On a roller cart beside the chair, pencils filled a tall drinking glass amid two calculators and a variety of drawing tools: compass, straightedge, the open case of a professional drafting kit, ink bottles. The light came from a fluorescent desk lamp suspended by a jointed arm above the table and a television screen displaying images without sound.
The drawing in progress drew Portis’s attention.
“Don’t look at that!” Eisner shouted, making a lunge to intercept Portis.
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Portis caught the man with a sharp blow to the shoulder that sent him spinning across the room to collide with a stack of magazines. Eisner spilled the magazines onto the floor, a plaintiff whine escaping his stretched mouth.
Portis examined the drawing. Precise lines, interrupted here and there with brief scribbled equations, half-electrical schematic, half vortex sections. Portis crossed the room to a pile of drawing pads and opened the top one. More drawings like the one on the table, more detailed. Amid the equations, cryptic notes competed for attention.
“It must come, it must end, it must begin, I’m ready” read one near the center of the page. Down in the right-hand corner, another read “Evolution cannot be denied, two nickels and a paradigm must change hands for tomorrow to be today.”
“Do you think you can rebuild it on your own?” Portis asked.
Eisner managed to get to his feet, staring at Portis
“Who…Are you from him?” Suddenly, he laughed nervously and came forward. He shuffled through a second stack of drawing pads until he pulled one out. Opening it, he held it out to Portis. “I kept the basic idea. It’s not so hard…”
On the sheet displayed, Portis recognized a lattice-like schematic, arrows indicating particle transfers from node to node, some of them bypassing entire clusters. To one side a series of equations ran the length of the page. Portis solved them, noting the errors. Eisner’s conclusions were wrong, but it would take very little insight to see that and find the flaws.
“You worked in support,” Portis said. “You never had access to Monk’s or Dyson’s work, not at this level. How did you deduce this?”
Eisner swallowed hard, retreating a few steps. He seemed embarrassed. Then he tapped his forehead. “It talks to me…he…talks to me. I’ve been trying to listen, to get it right.”
“We need to have a long conversation, Mr. Eisner. The future depends on it.”
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All at once, Eisner’s demeanor changed. He smiled, his arms dropping to his sides. He laughed, his thin frame heaving. The gasps of air turned briefly into sobs, and he dropped to his knees on the worn brown carpet.
“You’ve come back,” he hissed. “Thank God, you’ve come back.” He reached his hands toward Portis, palms upward.
“You left me alone so long, but now…tell me it’s gonna be fine. Please.”
“Everything will work out, Mr. Eisner. But first, tell me about it. Tell me about the past few years. I need to know.
Everything.” He looked past Eisner, to a connecting doorway. “Is that the kitchen?”
“Yes…Did you need something? I’ve got syrup, cornflakes, some—”
“Coffee, maybe. But let’s talk in there.”
Eisner hurried into the kitchen. The light winked on, yellow and dim. Portis looked up at the fixture—one of the two bulbs was burnt out. The sink contained no dishes; the old Formica table, red and marbled white, stood empty, surrounded by four tube-metal chairs with worn plastic seats and backs. A small refrigerator hummed. Eisner busied himself with the coffee maker while Portis went to the table and ran his fingers over the surface.
When the brewer began gurgling, Portis gestured for Eisner. “Come here. Sit down. Put your hands flat on the table.”
Eisner obeyed. He wore a calmer expression now, one of mingled fear and expectation layered over trust. Blind, hungry trust, Portis noted. Sad trust.
Portis took the chair opposite. He pressed his own hands flat to the cool Formica.
A film the color of graphite and the consistency of thick oil, seeped from his palms, his fingers, and spread out toward the center of the table. Eisner watched with large eyes as it came toward him. He almost took his hands away, but he glanced at Portis, who shook his head, and did not move.
As if alive, the film funneled toward Eisner’s hands, 103
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entering through the skin. The pool rippled between them.
Eisner gasped, eyes large.
“Relax, Mr. Eisner,” Portis said. “This won’t hurt at all.”
104
TEN
Pioneer Kelvin, Inc. occupied a brick building covering nearly a square block. Paul Patterson parked in the company lot across the street from the main entrance. The bleached brick wore a patina of grime and the small windows along the second floor reflected late morning light like scum-coated pools of water.
“Most of the buildings around here belong to Pioneer,”
Patterson said, pointing. He was Destry-McMillin’s number-two security man. McMillin had sent him along to introduce John to some of the Pioneer staff. He spoke quietly and economically, and John felt appraised under the man’s gaze.
He dressed well and carried himself with athletic confidence.
John took in the widely-spaced islands of industrial structures. At one time, he surmised, Pioneer had been one among many in this industrial park. The recession that was finally ending had been hard on marginally profitable businesses. Some of the buildings were clearly empty, waiting for new occupants. Pioneer’s main product, though, was magnets, for which there always seemed to be a steady market. They had not only survived, but had managed to acquire a number of the vacated structures around them, hoping one day to expand more.
“Who are we meeting first?” John asked as they neared the entrance.
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“Jeff Reinart, special projects director. Basically, he runs all the day-to-day operations, not just the special projects.”
“What they were doing for you, that was a special project?”
Patterson glanced at him, nodding. “I don’t know the details. Something to do with superconductors. But you already know that.”
John did not believe Patterson’s ignorance. Patterson seemed the type who would work overtime to know—and as far as he could, understand—everything Destry-McMillin did. But a boundary had just been set between them. John had been probing. That ended now.
; The air cooled sharply as they entered Pioneer. A short foyer led into a long, shallow front office. Two uniformed security guards flanked a white-shirted receptionist.
“Hey, Rich,” Patterson said, raising a hand. “We’ve got an appointment to see Jeff.”
The receptionist indicated the sign-in sheet for them. “Go right on in, Paul, you’re expected.” He handed two visitor badges across the counter after they signed in.
John clipped the laminated rectangle to his jacket and followed Patterson to the heavy door to the left. A raw buzz sounded and Patterson pushed through.
“This is the friendly entrance,” Patterson said over his shoulder. “They send you to the opposite one, you pass through an MRI.”
“That seems extreme.”
Patterson grunted. “They built it themselves. At least, they claim so. But nothing gets through. I assume you’re carrying?”
“That’s one assumption.”
Patterson gave a thin smile. Touché. Boundary for boundary.
They passed down a white-walled corridor, through another heavy door, into an office area. Patterson led the way through a maze of cubicles to the far side, to a glass-walled executive office.
Within, two men faced each other across a large desk.
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The one whose desk it appeared to be was a stout man, nearly bald, with a heavy mustache flecked with gray. He stood, hands on hips, scowling at the other man.
That man appeared to be nearly six-four, maybe two hundred twenty pounds, very solid. Dark hair, cropped short, clean-shaven, he stood calmly—not so much relaxed as unaffected. John imagined he had difficulty buying clothes that fit properly.
When the older man spotted them through the glass he straightened, said something to the other, and waved Patterson and John in.
“Hope we’re not interrupting anything,” Patterson said.
“No,” the older man said. “We were just finishing. Say goodbye, Gant.”
The big man turned. He only glanced at Patterson, but his gaze fixed on John. John felt a shiver start at the base of his spine. Gant said nothing for a few seconds, then walked toward the office door.
“I’ll be back,” he said as he left.
The door clicked shut, and the older man let out a long, weary sigh. “Tell me again why I wanted to be in management,” he said. “Paul, sorry.”
“No problem, Jeff. This is Sean Philicos, the security specialist Dennis wanted brought in.”
John extended a hand. “Mr. Reinart.”
Jeff Reinart’s grip was firm, dry, and brief. “That was my head of security, Ari Gant. He’s not thrilled to have you poking around here, Mr. Philicos.”
“No one likes to have their competence called into question,” John said.
Reinart grunted. “There may be more to it than that. But he’s not really upset. Just insistent that we shouldn’t do this. McMillin vouches for you, Mr. Philicos, and I know something about your company. You come recommended—highly—so I don’t personally have a problem. Pioneer might.”
“How long have you worked with Cyberdyne?” John asked.
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“Three years now. Small jobs at first. Now we’re building a superconducting accelerator for them. Small, it can’t be used for any cutting edge high-energy physics I know of, but not insignificant, either. There’s a lot of money involved.
But it’s not just that. We’ve had Cyberdyne personnel on site. Necessary. There’s some wrinkles in their design we had to work with them on. And that’s when the problems started.”
“Problems. More than one?”
“Two big ones.” He waved at chairs and sat down himself.
“Can I get you anything to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
Patterson shook his head.
“Anyway, two problems. First one had to do with other contracts. We lost several. Then we were informed that our bids on a new federal project were being rejected for security reasons. I checked into that myself. I thought, what’s wrong with you people? We’ve been doing government work for twenty years! It took a little doing, but all the lost contracts and this slap in the face stemmed from Cyberdyne. The feds pulled the plug on a number of projects because of the association. Customers we’d been doing business with for years had to find another vendor. Crazy.
So we informed Cyberdyne that upon completion of the accelerator, we intended to refuse any future contracts with them. They could see our attorneys for explanations.”
“That’s when the second problem began?”
“Combination of theft and sabotage. Nothing big with the sabotage, just nuisance stuff, with the net result that the only project proceeding completely on schedule was Cyberdyne’s. The theft, though, that’s another matter. All data theft, from our other clients. I can’t prove it, though.
Hell, I can’t prove any of it, for that matter, or I’d have the bastards in court. But we share a lot of confidential data with several of our customers. The database, in a lot cases, is two-way and open. So far we’ve found have a dozen trapdoors in sensitive files. Could be new viruses we caught online—it happens, you would not believe how sophisticated 108
HOUR OF THE WOLF
some of these assholes are, and they think it’s funny or that they’re liberating knowledge or some shit—but I don’t think so. I think Cyberdyne planted them. If I could prove it…”
John interrupted. “Data theft is virtually impossible to prove, especially in the case of companies like Cyberdyne.
Has anything physical left the premises that you suspect is related to this?”
Reinart looked chagrined. “Yeah, a couple months ago.
A mockup of a new optical array, part of a plasma containment design.”
“You’re building that here?” Patterson asked.
“Not the whole thing, no. It’s spec, something for the national lab. We thought we were going to get the contract till this bullshit with Cyberdyne came up. We still might if we come up with a solid design. I had a couple people working on it.”
“You sounded surprised,” John said to Patterson.
“Well, it seemed a little bit far afield from what they normally do here.”
“It is,” Reinart agreed. “Although containment fields are within our scope, but not something this size or for this purpose. The optics, though—we do a lot of glassless optics here.”
“What?” John asked.
“Magnetic fields can be bent and twisted,” Reinart explained, grinning. “If you do it just right, you can manipulate light through them, use them just like lenses.”
“Why would you want to do that instead of—”
“Heat, son. Magnetic fields don’t melt.”
“This array, then,” Patterson said, “it was like that?”
“Given some of the shit Cyberdyne used to do for the government, it bothers me no end.”
“So what could it be used for?” John asked. “I mean, given Cyberdyne’s record.”
“Fusion,” Reinart said. “The Holy Grail of energy research.”
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Sarah’s list of coincidental deaths now covered four sheets of yellow legal pad. Just names, dates, places.
On another pad—the one lying on the car seat beside her—the names of “J. Porters” in Los Angeles and surrounding environs, as far out as San Bernardino, covered less than two sheets. Four of them were already checked off—Janet, Janine, Jennifer, and Jordan. Of the Jeremiahs listed in the phone book, two had died within the last four months. One had moved. That left two, though one of them was only listed as “Jery” and might be female.
She looked down the row of frame houses, each of them much alike and yet each one different. Driving around Los Angeles, memories emerged from crevices she had thought long sealed. This used to be my home…
The city had changed since 1984. Another earthquake, urban modifica
tion, population shifts. But even with all that, it remained easily recognizable. Los Angeles was a big city, it took more than twenty-three years of continual movement and revision to make it wholly new.
Used to be my home…will be again…
Late afternoon sun slanted shadows between houses, cars, telephone poles, and set the street aglow. Sarah wanted to try to get to two more names on her list. This one was one of the remaining Jeremiahs. She had been taking them according to distance from the new office. When Lash’s people finally got their systems up and running and secure-linked to the federal databases to which Reed gave them access, she could do the wider searches from a computer screen, but for now she did it door to door in person.
She gathered up her clipboard and pen and climbed out of the car. She straightened her jacket, shrugged her shoulders, and assumed the attitude of a canvasser. She crossed the street to the house in question and rang the doorbell. She hugged the clipboard, conscious of the 10-mm holstered toward the back of her left hip, and working at keeping an innocuous smile on her face. In the glass of the front door she could make out her reflection—lean features, etched lines. Since returning from Jade’s world, Sarah 110
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had let her hair grow long, but she kept it dyed jet black now. Not much of a disguise, but given the wear evident in her face she had even surprised Jack Reed.
Shoulders straight, she still carried herself like a soldier when she moved without thinking. John and she kept up their physical training, though she took longer and longer to get over the aches and pains, or recover from an injury.
She rang the bell again. Through the door she could hear a television. After another minute, she glanced up and down the street, then tried the doorknob. It turned freely. She let go and stepped back.
A few cars rolled by. None of the vehicles parked nearby looked out of place. She wished she had done a Department of Motor Vehicles search for license plates, but that would have exceeded her patience.
She spotted no one paying her any attention. She stepped off the shallow porch and slipped down the gangway to the backyard. The patch of fescue she found was shielded from the neighbors by a chipped white privacy fence. The patio contained a barbecue pit and a set of cheap plastic lawn furniture, the round table complete with an umbrella.
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