Analog SFF, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Two of the agents rose to expel her, one reaching for her hip. “Stand down,” Hope said, and though they didn't back away, they stopped. “Yes, Dr. Peale, we did."

  "Why didn't you tell us?"

  "We needed time,” he replied slowly, “for confirmation."

  "Of what? The riots? You could have turned on a television!” Her mind began to register the several computers, one for every agent, all brimming with data of various forms. “No, that wasn't it, was it?"

  Hope stepped into the aisle. “I'm sorry, ladies.” Only then did Lucinda notice Kate and Nancy behind her. “Your colleague, Sam Jeong, was caught in the demonstrations. He's been taken to a hospital, but ... he isn't expected to survive."

  "No.” Lucinda could barely say the word. “No.” She recoiled, stumbled into the side of the television, and fell hard into her seat.

  Immediately, one of the agents slammed the door. A second later, Hope opened it, gesturing sharply at whoever had shut it. He went to Lucinda, shoving the still-running TV aside with his foot. “Are you all right?"

  All right? What could be all right? Sam was dying, and she had done nothing. Everyone was dying, or dead. Would she do nothing?

  She reeled. Hope reached out to support her, letting go quickly once she had her balance back. Kate and Nancy were crowding in close, too.

  Lucinda shut her eyes, summoning the remnants of concentration. When she opened them moments later, they went straight to Kate. “Kate, we have to get working. I think I have a viable methodology, but maybe you can spot any flaws in it.

  "Mr. Hope, you'll have my cooperation interrogating your conspirator, but I have serious doubts about my personal ability to perform a neural overlay. I've observed several procedures, but the last was over a year ago. I've never placed a single electrode or stimulator myself, and this is a bad time for trial-and-error learning.

  "Dr. LaPierre—” Odds were bad, but she had to try. “Nancy—"

  LaPierre's face carried her answer in its defiance and revulsion. “No, Doctor Peale,” she growled, but she hadn't needed to say a word.

  Lucinda shook her head wearily. “She's out, obviously,” she told Hope. “And I don't know whether Kate and I are enough."

  "It's okay,” Hope said. “We're working on it."

  * * * *

  III

  They raced across the tarmac: Lucinda, Kate, and a quartet of agents. Nobody had told her where they'd landed. “Grant County Airport” signs didn't help, but spotting the West Virginia plates on some utility trucks did.

  "What about Nancy?” she said in a gasp to Hope. “Are they taking her back to California?"

  Hope shook his head. “Nothing's flying that isn't absolutely vital, like you. Might put her on a train or bus, but those may not be running, either."

  They came upon a trio of helicopters. Hope bundled Lucinda and Kate into the back of one; his fellow agents piled into the second. Lucinda noticed, while strapping in, the turrets and launchers on the third one.

  The choppers shot into a dim, patchy sky. With their easting and the time in transit, dusk was approaching. From the sinking sun, Lucinda figured their course as northeast, following the Appalachians.

  She and Kate continued to consult. Could they risk keeping the patient awake, to get him talking faster, as Hope suggested? Brain surgeries often happened with conscious patients, but it introduced variables during overlay, extra input streams while they were trying to lay down very specific patterns.

  Could they imprint the new patterns faster? Maybe, but the gain in time would not be great. It would also risk lost precision, even possible injury to the subject's sense of identity. “I have no problem effacing the kind of personality that could do this,” Kate said over the rotor noise, “assuming we've got the right man."

  That thought had been nagging Lucinda, too. She reached across to get Hope's attention in his front seat. “How sure are you that the man in custody is the rocket shooter?"

  Hope squinted, shook his head, and reached for a set of headphones. On his signal, Lucinda and Kate found and donned theirs, and found the activating buttons. Lucinda repeated herself. “I can show you the police video of the launch tube they found in his vehicle,” he answered.

  "He took it with him?"

  "Guess he was worried about us getting fingerprints if he left it behind. We will get them, too, for whatever good that does. Turns out the car was stolen, though, so that dead-ended.” He snorted. “More of their planning."

  Lucinda thought a while about what to ask next. “Agent Hope."

  "'Morris is okay."

  She nodded mechanically. “The riots we saw on TV; the evacuations; the panic. That's what you're trying to forestall by moving so fast, right?"

  Morris grimaced. “Yes and no. That's just the rash—symptoms, I mean. Thing is, in times of great threat, people need a way to feel safer. Either they need someone to protect them, or they have to protect themselves. It can even be psychological protection: take Churchill's speeches during the Blitz, backing up the RAF's work: “If people don't have that sense of protection, they become useless. Fast or slow, they fall apart. The bigger the threat, the worse it is, and the bigger the group, the more vicious-cycle feedback pushes things over the edge. If we as a country don't believe, soon, that we're no longer as vulnerable to another mega-terror attack, this nation will fall apart—or tear itself apart. That means apprehending, punishing, deterring."

  "Does it mean we're going to wipe out the country responsible—if it is a country?” Morris tensed. “You can tell us. Dr. LaPierre's not here, and we won't back out now."

  "I really can't say. I don't decide; I probably won't even get to advise. But...” His jaw made short, grinding motions. “There are about to be two groups in America: those wanting reprisal, and those wanting restraint. There are the America-haters, too—a little minority, at least here—but they fit in on the fringe of the restraint group. Both sides think that their way makes us more safe, and that the opposing way is dangerous and immoral. Give them long enough waiting before something is done or decided, and those groups will rip this country to pieces.

  "So there has to be a resolution, soon. Now, if it's for reprisal—well, the restraint side sorta expects it. They're resigned to the violence in human nature. They'll be disappointed, not shocked. They won't revolt."

  "Their own restraint at work,” Kate said.

  Morris chuckled. “Not as much as you'd think, but let's leave the inner psychology out of it. The reprisalists, though, won't take a restrained response lying down. They'll find a way to lash out against the guilty. If we're lucky, that means a little ethnic or religious pogrom. If we're not, it means they go after the government that fiddled while D.C. burned.

  "So yeah, we'd better slam them hard—which, granted, is what I'd say in the first place without all that analysis. It doesn't have to be nukes, but it does have to leave them in pieces.” Morris turned back forward, his shoulders bowed, his head slowly sinking.

  Lucinda reached a hand toward him. “You haven't been thinking about this just today,” she said. “More like years."

  The corner of his mouth twisted. “Twenty-two years, four months, and eight days.” Lucinda didn't have to count backward to know. “I was gonna join the Marines or Army, but by the time I was of age, I could see how the wind was blowing. I took another career path."

  "Looks like you made the right choice."

  He looked back, his eyes suddenly sad. “I haven't accomplished anything yet.” His voice was soft, but the tone made it unanswerable.

  Lucinda tried to occupy herself by thinking about the work ahead, but there wasn't much more she could do that moment. Morris had said she'd have a link to the team's computers at their secret location, access to their brain pattern templates and the overlay-planning programs. Without them at hand, she could only plan the broadest strokes of their work. She had asked Morris to encourage whoever was on site to run some preliminary scans, but he didn't sound co
nfident about the advice making an impact. Did they even have MEG scanners and TMS machines on site, wherever it was? If they didn't, all this was going to be for nothing.

  "When did we turn around?"

  Lucinda had to take off the headphones: Kate was speaking without them, leaning in close. “We haven't."

  "We must have. We're going south now. I can see the sunset.” She pointed out her right-side window, toward the orange glow suffusing through the clouds near the horizon.

  Lucinda looked there, then snuck a peek at the light coming through her window. She swallowed. “Maybe we're doubling back,” she said behind a cupped hand, “to keep the secret location secret."

  Kate shrugged. Morris turned to say something, but Lucinda silently hushed him. She recalled Kate's earlier brittleness: she wasn't going to hazard its return. She kept a tense silence, taking scarcely any looks at the distant funeral pyre of Washington.

  The helicopter pilot started talking a lot more. Lucinda looked outside into the twilight, assuming they were close to landing. She saw the added choppers first, circling in a patrol pattern, then one swinging over as an added escort. Moments later, the denuded trees below gave way on one hillside to clearings with low buildings, linked by snaky roads. The area showed few lights in the enfolding darkness, but plenty of vehicles crawled along the roads, and smaller motes milled around the buildings.

  "We're about to land,” Morris said unnecessarily. “Get out on my side. Do not leave me. Understood?” Lucinda and Kate both nodded.

  They alighted on a corner of the nearest large clearing. Lucinda waited as Kate climbed out, then followed her. The first thing she noticed outside was two soldiers about twenty meters away, their large weapons leveled. That, it happened, was the lightly guarded side of the landing pad. She cleaved to Morris, close enough to step on his heel once.

  They stopped near a building entrance, plastered with signs she couldn't read in the fading light. Morris spoke to a waiting officer, who then lifted a machine to the agent's head. A moment later, it spat out something that the officer gave to Hope. He then advanced on Lucinda.

  "Ma'am, look directly into the lenses. Try to avoid blinking."

  She knew this drill. She held her eyes open for the retina scan, took the card the machine produced, and waited as Kate, and then the agents, got the same treatment.

  Morris led them into a building. Lucinda tried to read the signage outside the door, but in the haste and failing light, she could only catch disconnected words: “Weather,” “Unauthorized,” “Without Warning."

  Inside were a pair of railcar bays, one occupied. Her group clambered into the car. Seconds later, the rest of Morris's agents joined them, along with two large soldiers. The car lurched and began running on its track, downward. Light was soon far behind, save for yellowish bulbs at long intervals in the tunnel.

  Through all the disorientation, Lucinda remembered that she and Kate would be at work in a few minutes. She caught Morris's eye. “We're going to need to see your prisoner's scans immediately once we get where we're going. I assume your people have taken a proper baseline."

  "I ... don't know about that, Dr. Peale. They may not have been notified."

  "Find out, and notify them now, if you can. Kate, if they don't have a baseline—"

  "I'll handle it, Lucinda."

  "Good. We'll also need access to our project files at Berkeley. That is, if our lab building hasn't been burned to the ground."

  "They got uploaded a couple hours ago,” Morris said.

  "I'll need to review them right away. Hopefully, I'll be able to read them somewhere close to your interrogation room, and the surgery."

  "We'll do what we can.” Morris leaned away, tried his cell-phone, and snapped it shut with a grunt. He talked to his agents instead.

  It was strange for Lucinda, talking business this way, playing boss after hours of helplessness. Maybe it was the shock finally wearing off, or maybe a new kind of mental barrier rising up.

  The car rattled to a stop. They came out in a regimented jumble, toward a trio of electric carts. “This way, Doctor,” someone said, with a tug on Lucinda's arm.

  She found Lomax pulling her to the rightmost cart, as Morris took Kate to the left. She smothered an instant of clingy panic and got into the back seat, one of the guards stationing himself next to her.

  Only when they were driving did Lucinda notice her surroundings. It was a small underground city, inside a cavern maybe fifteen meters high. Floodlights on the ceiling gave enough light to match an overcast day outside. Buildings two and three stories high were all around, and down one road they crossed, Lucinda was sure she saw an artificial pond, with a fountain gurgling away at its center. People were meant to live here, for a long time.

  They stopped at the main door of one building, and Lomax bundled her out. Following the agent's example, she gave her card to the guard, who slipped it into a scanner and took another retina scan. They both passed.

  They wound through halls and a stairwell until they came to a door with yet another guard, who stepped aside smartly. “I'll be outside if you need anything,” Lomax said.

  "Um ... yes.” Cut loose, Lucinda could do nothing but open the door.

  Inside, the room was half bare, with a bank of monitors and interfaces laid along the opposite wall. A small figure in a thin white coat, with thin white hair, sat at one of the monitors, unmoving. The door clacked shut behind Lucinda, and the figure turned with a start.

  She knew him by sight, though they had never met. He was the lead neurosurgeon on Johns Hopkins's overlay research team. “Dr. O'Doul,” she said, stepping toward him.

  Edwin O'Doul's crinkled gray eyes peered. “They said they were bringing in others.” The eyes narrowed further. “Do I know you?"

  "Maybe by reputation. Dr. Lucinda Peale, California-Berkeley.” She held out a hand.

  "Oh.” A flash of distaste crossed his face, but he did take the hand for a second. “You've come a long way.” He blinked, and turned back to his monitor.

  Peale took the seat next to him. “Me and one colleague. Are any of yours here?"

  "What? Oh. Oh, no. I—they—they set off to Washington, to volunteer their medical services. I remained behind. I thought I should, to prepare our hospitals for the influx of cases. They'd be coming to us. We're Johns Hopkins, after all. But then the government people came and swept me away."

  "Us, too. We're in this alike."

  O'Doul made a soft sound, no more. Lucinda took a minute to figure out the interface, and another minute to get into the template files. While she was waiting, she looked over at the brain model projected in O'Doul's holotank. “How far have you gotten?” she said, hoping to draw him out that way.

  He shook his head limply. “Not far. Not anywhere. How they expect us to rewire such deep-seated hatreds in a man is beyond me."

  "Not hatreds. Conscience."

  She spelled out the theory she had developed on the plane. A light began to show in O'Doul's eyes. “Of course,” he said. “Use the animal levels of the brain to help reawaken the humanity of the human brain. Why didn't I see it?"

  "It took me time, too."

  "But you're right. We can—but will it be enough? Will the subject have ingrained opposition and refusal to help deep enough in his mind that it resists the flood of conscience by inertia?"

  "There's one way to find out."

  "Exactly! Here, this is what we have on him so far.” He linked their stations, and the neural map in his tank appeared in hers. They came alive in tandem, colors shifting as the brain performed its myriad inner functions.

  "There's the underarousal,” she said half to herself. The expected portions of the frontal cortex were blue, the medial prefrontal cortex deepening toward violet as she watched. “Where's the context?"

  "Here.” A timeline appeared under the image, with a green dot inching rightward. Ticks on the line produced dialog boxes when she moved the cursor over them. “Who provided you with
the stolen car?” was one; “Did you procure the rocket launcher yourself, or did someone give it to you?” was another. Someone must have recorded them as they were asked.

  "Where do I bring up his answers?"

  "They'd be on that line, but I don't think he's been answering them."

  Lucinda ran the recording faster. With a few parameters drawn from the prisoner's scans, she ran a first compatibility check with the neural templates in their files, Berkeley's and Johns Hopkins's alike. It pared away about a third as unsuitable, leaving plenty, she hoped, for the more exacting comparisons to come.

  "I suppose I should know,” O'Doul said, out of nowhere. “You've had more recent exposure to the news, Dr. Peale. How bad is it really, outside, there?"

  "I ... I'm sorry, Doctor. We were kept alone in the back cabin of a plane during our trip.” She regretted the half-truth, and hoped she wouldn't be telling more.

  "I understand.” He stared into the holotank. “I thought you might have heard something about Georgetown. Was there any—"

  The opening door saved Lucinda, even though this time she would have been honest in her ignorance. Morris Hope came inside. “Lucinda; Dr. O'Doul,” he said, seeing the elder doctor for the first time. “Barber is almost set up with the prisoner. You'll have live audio-visual feed access inside this room, along with real-time scans. Do you have any other requirements?"

  O'Doul roused himself. “I assume everything will be recorded for later playback?"

  "Absolutely.” Once O'Doul nodded, Morris beckoned to Lucinda. She walked over, fearing she'd be finding out why he couldn't have just used the phone.

  "We sent an agent to your house,” he murmured, “like I promised. Your dog's fine. Turns out someone had come over to look after him, a man named Joshua Muntz. You know him, right?"

  "Josh?” In her surprise, she finally managed a nod.

  "Okay. I'll let you get back to work, Doctor."

  He had the door halfway open before Lucinda touched his sleeve. “Thank you,” she said. Morris nodded, and walked out briskly.