Mindkiller

by Spider Robinson

  Both men looked at her.

  “Two of them. First, can we all stop lying to each other?”

  Norman and the Bear flinched guiltily.

  “All three of us know better. When there is no logic, you go on feelings, and I think we all have the same hunch, am I right?”

  The two men exchanged glances. “All right,” they said together.

  “Allow me,” Norman said to his friend. “Okay, the only reasonable hunch is Switzerland. Someone from there, call him…well, for the sake of argument let’s call him Jacques. Maddy mentioned that name once. If the psychics are even close to accurate, it has to be Jacques. Nobody else could have the resources. Even if the psychics are both frauds, it has more logic than the lone-psycho theory. Okay so far?” His friends nodded. “So the logical next step—”

  “—is to go to Switzerland and nose around,” Minnie finished. “And you’re hesitating.”

  “I’m right on the fence,” Norman agreed. “Have been for a couple of weeks. I was hoping you two would help me decide one way or the other—”

  “—and instead, he who defecates in arboreal regions here tried to play dumb. And you let him,” Minnie said. “And now he and I are being as neutral as we can manage. All right, you’re doing great, keep going: Why are we being neutral?”

  “Because I’ve got a job and responsibilities, and if you agree with me that Switzerland is the key, I’d dump the job in a minute and blow my career on a hunch. And you’re friends, so you don’t want—”

  “Think again,” the Bear said grimly.

  Norman looked puzzled.

  “Brother,” the Bear went on, “if that’s the only reason you can think of, I just got you down off that fence. On this side.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Exactly. Look, postulate Jacques. For reasons unknown he reaches across an ocean, locates a particular person without the slightest difficulty, leaving no trail, and puts on her a snatch so perfect that a pro like Amesby doesn’t smell him. Jacques tap-dances around everybody from Interpol on down and vanishes without a trace. Now tell me, and this will sting a little but hang on, it’s the killer: What has a guy like that got to fear from an English teacher?”

  Norman opened his mouth, closed it, and seemed to deflate. He looked down. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Norman, look at me. Listen to me. We were in cocky khaki together, and I’ll certify that you were sudden death with both hands, okay? Just looking at you I can see that you’re in real good shape, maybe almost as good as you were when you were a kid, even. Norman, our whole platoon couldn’t have made Jacques uneasy. Not with full combat ordnance and the air support we never used to get. The best you can accomplish is quick suicide.”

  Norman’s face was in his hands. “But Bear,” he said hoarsely, “she could still be alive.”

  “Certainly. That’s why suicide is the best you could accomplish. Look, if he’s got her, best guess is she’s involved in something he wants kept secret with a capital S. If she’s still alive, it’s because he doesn’t absolutely need her to be dead. But if you come poking around…”

  “But maybe I could—”

  “FORGET IT, NORMAN!” the Bear thundered, and furniture danced.

  “Your subconscious made the right decision,” Minnie went on in what seemed a murmur by comparison, “even if it didn’t keep you informed. There is nothing you can do that will help. We could all be wrong—it might be a nut that got your sister—and if so there’s no point in blowing your job. If we’re right you might endanger Maddy. If you ever get proof that she’s dead, and that a Swiss did it, then maybe I’d say it’s time to go lose your life in something too big for you. But not now—you don’t dare.”

  Norman was silent.

  The Bear shifted his weight uneasily. “My dear, a while back you said you had two suggestions. I’ve only heard one.”

  Minnie’s face lost all expression. “There’s only one thing you can do, Norman.”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “Kill her.”

  Norman jumped.

  Her voice was mercilessly hard. “Sit back in a comfortable chair. Get thoroughly stoned. Pick a psycho killer from Central Casting and replay Madeleine’s murder in your mind. In complete and vivid detail, 3-D stereo, a couple of instant replays. Feel the pain and the fear and the unfairness of it. Pick a possible method of corpse disposal and walk him through it—say, he walks her out onto the MacDonald Bridge to where he has wire and weights waiting. Picture her drifting in the currents under the harbor, bloating and being chewed, and when the horror is more than you can bear, cut it off. Sharp. Get drunk. Have her declared dead, and have a symbolic funeral. Picture her in that empty coffin, throw flowers on it, and begin formal mourning. Say goodbye to her in your heart, Norman, and get on with your own life. Pray that they catch the poor crazy before he does it again, but say goodbye to Maddy.

  “Otherwise you’ll—” She caught herself. “You could crack.”

  Norman sat perfectly still, features expressionless. But his skin was pale and his palms were sweaty. There was a moment of silence.

  “God, this is depressing,” the Bear boomed finally. “What a party. Let’s talk about something cheerful for a change. How’d your marriage come apart?”

  Norman broke up, and his friends joined him. The laugh went on for some time, faltered, steadied, became one of the great laughs, one of those where every time it starts to pause for breath, someone gasps out another punchline and it’s off again. A great laugh with the Bear participating took on epic proportions.

  Whereafter in due course Norman documented the decline and fall of his marriage, Minnie described life in the Neuro Ward of a big-city hospital, and the Bear narrated an intricate and hilarious story of revenge on a critic, which had generated income as a side effect. Having compared the water lately gone under their respective bridges, they let their conversation become more general, and by the time the brandy was annihilated and they had switched to Irish coffee they had remembered and retold all the jokes, puns, and anecdotes they had been saving for each other, and were waxing philosophical. The Bear propounded his Leech Theory of Economic Dislocation; arguing that no organism can survive without some control of the size of its parasites, he called for the establishment of a legal Maximum Wage. Then Minnie tried to explain in layman’s terms why the researchers attempting to crack the information-storage code of the human brain, who had been so confident fifteen years before, were now frankly stymied.

  That triggered Norman to bring up the newest and most alarming campus problem: a few students were having a plug surgically inserted in the skull, which allowed direct stimulus of the hypothalamus. Wireheading baffled Norman to the soles of his feet, and he said so. Minnie spoke at length about medical and psychological aspects of the new phenomenon, and the Bear described it as the natural bastard child of the two cultural imperatives be happy and be efficient, with a postscript on why wireheading would not be made illegal as lysergic acid had been thirty years before. That led them into recounting old drug experiences, which they gradually came to realize everyone present had already heard anyway, and by then the coffeepot was empty and the hour was late. Norman showed them the guest room, bathroom, and location of breakfast makings, hugs were again exchanged, and all three went to bed.

  Norman hovered on the edge of sleep for what seemed a long time before he heard his door click open. He rolled over slowly, and found his arms full of Minnie.

  “Where’s Bear?” he asked sleepily.

  “Too tired,” she whispered. “Heavy driving plus heavy drinking zonks him out. Just as well, this bed’s too small anyway.”

  “Heavy drinking zonks me out too.”

  Her lips touched him delicately at a place where neck joined shoulders, and simultaneously two of her fingernails found a certain precise spot with a facility that, all things considered, implied either terrific tactile memory or a high compliment. She pulled back and examined the
results. “Wrong.”

  “Uh, I take a long time when I’m drunk.”

  “No, love. You give a long time when you’re drunk. I remember. Now stop being so fucking polite and shut up.”

  “Make me,” he punned, and she did.

  6

  1999 I sat there for an indeterminate time after Karen had left, paralyzed by internal confusion: the slipping-transmission phenomenon mentioned earlier, except that now there were several thought loops cycling simultaneously. Intuitively I felt that something urgent needed doing, but I could not for the life of me imagine what it might be.

  No matter how many times I ran it through, I got the same answer: I had discharged all my moral obligations to Karen Scholz. She and I were square, all debts paid. I had meddled in her suicide, an immoral act. In reparation I had done all I could to ease her transition back into living. I had made her a present of my most essential secrets, given her the power to tamper with my own obituary date if she so chose. I had supported and maintained her at the absolute peak of creature comfort while she took stock and decided what to do next. When what she came up with was a more elaborate form of suicide, I had done my best to talk her out of it. Perhaps I had been small in refusing to get her the computer readings she wanted, but the procedure really was uniquely dangerous for me, and any of a dozen other professionals in New York could oblige her with less risk.

  She would have her crusade, and perhaps she would manage to die with joy, and perhaps it would be better than dying with pleasure.

  In any case, it was her choice and my responsibility was ended. It saddened me that she intended to kamikaze, but I had no rights in the matter. She had made it plain that she did not want my advice or assistance. Case closed. Exit Karen, urinating.

  Exit Karen.

  Yes, that was the way of it; she would surely fall. As a fighter she was all heart and no style at all; they would crush her like a bug. More likely sooner than later. Doña Quixote on a spavined horse, armored in rust, fielding a balsa lance against a twenty-megawatt, high-torque Wind Energy Module, in defense of righteousness. In defense of the right of people not to be tempted to their deaths. She wanted to slay the Sirens, she who had heard their Song and lived.

  She was welcome to try. If she saw herself as Doña Quixote, that was her business. I saw no percentage in playing Pancho Sanza. I am not capable of that kind of love. I think I was once, but something happened to me in a jungle. Enough brushes with death will permanently inhibit your urge to place your life on the line for any cause. When that final day came, when I heard the click-snap-spung! and saw the mine pop up to head height and ducked to try and take it on the helmet, I had a very clear idea of the sacrifice I had made for my country. When, much later, I discovered that I had survived the event, and the war, it left a lasting impression. As Monsieur Rick said, I stick my neck out for nobody. (And I never burgle veterans.)

  Furthermore, I was not at all certain that I approved of her crusade. If I had been wrong to meddle in her suicide, what right had she to tamper with the suicides of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who would plug themselves in over the next few years? People wanted juice rigs. It seemed to me a self-correcting problem: in a few generations all the people who could be tempted by pushbutton ecstasy would be bred out of the race.

  People like Karen…

  Who, let’s face it, was a loser. The term loser does not necessarily denote incompetence, stupidity, or major personality defect. It says that you lose a lot. She had been, through no fault of hers that I could discern, consistently unlucky all her life long. That can break even the toughest fighting spirit.

  Perhaps wireheading bred the race not just for competence and survival drive…but for luck?

  If so, was I that strict a Malthusian? Misfortune was no stranger to me, and might remember me at any moment. Out there in the jungle I had smoked opium admixed with heroin, though I had known it was insane. What would I have done if someone had offered me a juice rig then? What would any of us in my unit have done?

  This was stupid. Stipulating that the existence of the wirehead trade was undesirable, Karen’s silly secret-agent stunt was the wrong way to go about abolishing it. Lone operators do not bring down big multinationals. At best she would bring about a restructuring of personnel, a redivision of the pie. I did not see any effective way to put the egg back into the shell. Certainly, prohibiting wireheading could accomplish nothing useful, and I couldn’t design an effective way to regulate it.

  Regardless of whether or not I could see any right answer, I knew Karen’s way was a wrong answer. So I certainly did not want to chase after her to join her. There was no point in chasing after her to try and dissuade her; I’d had one fair try at that and failed. And there was no way in hell I was going to chase after her and forcibly restrain her. I had, in short, no visible motive to chase after her.

  And I wanted to get up from my chair and track her. It scared me to death.

  If we had even once made love, or even fucked, I could have attributed it to my glands. I had never so much as had an erection over her.

  What in Hell’s name was wrong with me?

  After a time I got tired of running it through, and decided to snap out of it. Find something useful to do.

  It was not hard. As soon as I let my eyes see what they were looking at, my search was ended. My television was a total loss. Its gaping glassfanged face had long since ceased to drool good gin on the carpet beneath. The air conditioning had left only a memory of a very bad smell.

  I got up and dried the carpet, cleaned up the glass, and disconnected the tube from the system, not bothering to reset all the tripped circuit breakers. The way I had it wired, not only had I lost phone, commercial and cable TV programming, computer display and storyscreen, but I would not have stereo until I could scare up some more patchcords. The most efficient system design is not necessarily the best. All I had left was books and booze.

  So the first thing to do…no, the first was to dispose of the dead telly. That took me fifteen minutes. The second thing was to steal another.

  It was a good plan. It steadied my mind, for while I am working I do not chew over my problems. I give it my full attention, by long habit.

  First I had my computer ask the power company computer for a list of customers whose power-consumption profile had been identical for more than five consecutive days, just as usual save that I had to work with printouts instead of display. When the list was filed down to a twenty-block radius from my home turf, it contained eighteen possibles. I had the computer dial all eighteen phone numbers and strike from the list those that had a record-a-message program active. Those absentee tenants probably planned to be home soon. The no-answers numbered seven. I asked the NYPD computer for information on defensive structures of those seven buildings, and selected the one that was hardest to crack. That tenant would have the most expensive TV. Standard procedure would then have been to tell that building’s security cameras to recognize me as a bona fide tenant, and take it from there. But this particular building also employed live guards in the lobby. Still no problem: the pigeon had recorded a message-program in his own voice, it just wasn’t in service. I hooked in the voder and had my computer use his phone and a fair imitation of his voice to call downstairs. It told the door guard to expect a TV repairman from TH Electronics. The guard welcomed it home, and it thanked him. It hung up and printed out a work order for me.

  My computer has so many interesting capabilities that to use it for something as trivial as grand larceny is almost a crime. But to exploit anything like its full potential I would have to compromise an even greater asset: invisibility. I am the man no one is looking for, and I like that a lot.

  I am deeply curious to know more about the extraordinary person who had that machine built and programmed. Almost I yearn to meet him or her. My recurring fear is that I shall: intuitively I know I would not survive the encounter.

  But surely he or she must be long dead. That’s what I t
ell myself when I wake up sweaty.

  I wiped all records of my transactions at both ends, stood up, and got disguise number four from the closet. Faded green coveralls, a GI jungle cap, grimy work boots laced with speaker cable, a tool belt that would have made Batman laugh out loud, and a stained shoulder satchel bulging with assorted electronic testing gear. I checked the picture ID in the wallet that went with the outfit, and corrected my facial appearance to match. It is a part of my job I really enjoy: trying on new faces. None of them, even the one I start and end with, ever looks familiar. I can’t imagine what would.

  I spilled coffee on the work order, blotted it with a dirty cloth, wadded it up and stuffed it in my breast pocket, and left. I was back within two hours with the tube and a couple of interesting audiocassettes from the van I’d clouted. I wired the new glass teat into the system, ran a few tests, and made a few adjustments. I punched for news display and sat down in front of it. I had the chair make me a bourbon and distilled water. After two sips I killed the news readout and concentrated on the drink. I had nearly finished it before I allowed myself to ask me:

  What is the next thing to do?

  (Follow Karen, of course. Do what you said earlier: play along and wait for her own momentum to falter, then give her something to distract her attention. Once she gets the readings she wants from someone else, the immediate danger to you is past.)

  Yeah, but getting those readings from anybody could make her hot. I could catch something meant for her.

  (Yeah, you’re really hooked on a safe, sedentary lifestyle. I can see that.)

  All right, I find a moderate amount of risk stimulating…

  (And you won’t do something stimulating to save a friend’s neck?)

  But how do I know she’d let me—

  (She’s used to you meddling in her life. For some reason she doesn’t mind.)

  Yeah. Father figure.

  (Okay, jerk. You adopted her. Be a responsible father. You’re in loco parentis, just like—)