by Mark Souza
“That’s not what the metrics say.”
“Sir?”
“Look at that board — two reds this quarter. And you didn’t show up Sunday for the overtime you promised to work. What am I supposed to think? You are the project lead and are supposed to set the example. The project is still behind with only twenty-nine days to deadline, and I don’t know if I can rely on you. I should put you on report. It’s not something I relish doing, but we all have quotas to meet. Am I clear?”
“Yes sir.” Moyer understood the threat. Just once on report authorized rehabilitation — a punishment Berman had no qualms doling out. But by the same token, Berman had identified him as the project lead, the man to set the tone. Petro had lied.
“Petro and I were talking,” Berman continued. “He and I both feel you have been under a great deal of stress lately, what with the Worm deadline and a baby on the way. We feel it best for all involved if you were moved onto a different project, something less demanding.”
Berman strolled toward his office. Moyer glared at Petro. The little affable Brazilian who claimed to be his friend had deftly stabbed him in the back, using the birth of his daughter to do it, and had successfully thrown him off the project. His career was now swirling near the bottom of the toilet. Sasaki stared at Moyer vacantly. Moyer wondered if he’d overheard, and if he had, would he have the wherewithal to understand what had just happened? Moyer snorted sardonically when it dawned on him that he and Sasaki were now on the same career path.
Chapter 26
When Moyer arrived home, Robyn was sitting in the dining room facing the door with the satchel, bomb, and saliva swab on the table. She was seething, jaw muscles strumming. Moyer wished he could step back into the hall and pretend he’d opened the wrong door, that if he tried again, dinner would be on the table and Robyn would be happy to see him.
“You said there were papers for the baby in here. Then you didn’t touch them. I know you have been busy and a little distracted, so I thought I would help out. But there were no papers. What is all this, Moyer?”
Moyer’s cheeks flushed hot. Should he spare Robyn from worry, or tell her the truth?
“Please, Moyer, talk. Why are you lying to me?”
“Viktor Perko gave that to me.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the price for Jessica,” Moyer said. Robyn glared at him, confusion registering on her face. “It’s a bomb.”
“A bomb?”
Moyer nodded. “He wants me to plant it in the Judge’s apartment.”
“Judge Hawthorne?”
“Yes.”
“There must be some misunderstanding.”
Moyer shook his head. “Perko says if I don’t do it, he’ll flush Jessica.”
Robyn’s face went slack.
“I don’t know if I can go through with it,” Moyer said.
Robyn’s hands came to her mouth, eyes wide. After a moment, she nodded, rose from the table and disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, she looked calm. “Let’s order out. I don’t want to cook tonight,” she said.
Dinner was Chinese, still a popular cuisine from a despised people wiped out over a century earlier by genetic plague. Robyn ate quietly, her mind whirring like a gerbil on a wheel. He couldn’t think of what to say that wouldn’t make things worse.
“I met with the leader of Begat,” Moyer said.
“Aren’t you full of surprises?” Robyn said, her voice tinged with bitterness. “What do you suppose Mr. Perko would do to our daughter if he found out?”
“He sent me.”
“Why?”
“He wanted me to get a biologic sample to taint the bomb with.”
“The vial?”
“Yes. Perko wants to take out Hawthorne and Begat in one fell swoop.”
Robyn nodded as if it all made sense.
“The Begat leader is an interesting man.”
“Oh?”
“He’s soldier-class, but quite thoughtful and bright. He claims Hogan-Perko unleashed the genetic plague to corner the market on human cloning.”
“Really? So how does he get around all the evidence that the Chinese released the plague?”
Moyer recounted the facts as the giant had laid them out. As he spoke, he realized he lacked the giant’s persuasiveness and conviction. He started doubting what he was saying, and from Robyn’s face, so did she. He told her of the pregnant woman, Margret, and how he’d felt the baby inside her kick.
“It was faked, a magician’s trick,” Robyn said.
Moyer looked at her earnestly. “It wasn’t.”
“And this story, that woman, that’s why you won’t do what Mr. Perko asked?”
Moyer nodded.
Robyn stood and started to clear away the dishes and boxes of food. When she returned, she opened the satchel and loaded the bomb and vial back inside, and returned it to the closet.
Later in bed, when Moyer put his arm over her waist, she stiffened and pulled away.
Tuesday, 3 July
Moyer awoke alone. He checked the clock, afraid he was late for work. He wasn’t. Robyn had gotten an early start. He opened the door into the living room. The apartment was tomb-like.
In the kitchen, a single dirty bowl sat in the sink with fresh soy milk ringing the bottom. Moyer went to the cupboard and pulled down a box of granola. After pouring the milk, he read the box as he had done habitually since he was a child. When he saw the GB logo in the corner, he pushed the bowl away.
He read off the ingredients — Inhibin wasn’t listed anywhere. But with the long menu of chemicals and their scientific names, it might be right in front of him and he wouldn’t know — that’s if it was listed at all.
He went to the cupboard and began pulling down boxes, discarding those from Global Brands. No boxes were left when the sorting was done. Heeding the giant’s fertility warning seemed daunting if not impossible.
Robyn had cleaned the living room before she left. Books accumulating in stacks on the coffee table had been returned to their shelves. Moyer’s gold mesh cap had been stowed in its ornate wood box, an antique from Thailand his father had given him.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, one of his gifts from the giant, was missing. Robyn had railed against having contraband in the house, and Moyer understood why she might not leave it in prominent view. He reached under the sofa where he had left his new Bible. It was gone. He bent down to check. The recess underneath had recently been swept clean and the book was nowhere in sight.
A thought sent a jolt through Moyer. He went to the closet. The satchel was missing. He tried raising Robyn on the net and couldn’t find her. Any building where a judge lived was bound to be shielded. Robyn must already be at the Capital Arms planting the bomb.
Moyer wanted to chase her, stop her. But it was hopeless. He had no way of getting inside without a keycard. And if he missed work again, he’d go on report.
Moyer went to Digi-Soft and struggled to keep his productivity numbers in the acceptable band. He watched the clock until he couldn’t bear it. He reported that he was feeling ill and left for home before lunch.
Moyer was waiting for Robyn when she arrived home. She looked exhausted. She walked past him and dropped her purse on the table and flopped onto the sofa.
“What did you do?” he asked.
She gazed at him, eyes cold. “I did what had to be done for our daughter.”
“Are you willing to kill a man?”
Her jaw clench and eyes close down to slits. She seemed like a stranger to Moyer. He remembered a time when her eyes penetrated to the depths of his soul. It seemed so long ago now, years in fact, since she had looked at him that way. Had she tired of what she saw? Anymore her eyes stopped at the surface and he often felt as if he were furniture, an object barely seen.
Anger rose into his voice. “I told you last night that there was another way for us to have a child,” he said.
“No, last night you told me a fairy tale.”
>
“I saw it, Robyn. I had my hand on that woman’s belly when her baby kicked.”
“And I’ve seen a street magician make a dove appear from a scarf. Am I supposed to risk my daughter’s life on a trick? You’re as crazy as your father.”
Moyer stiffened. “My father wasn’t crazy. He was a sensitive and you know it.”
“He committed suicide.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Your whole family, I swear. If you hadn’t been genetically screened, I wouldn’t have married you. It was the one thing your parents did right. But now I wonder if even that was screwed up.”
Moyer went to the table. He opened Robyn’s purse and dumped out the contents.
“What are you doing?” she screamed.
He plucked her Capital Arms keycard from the pile. “I’m fixing this mess.”
“No.” Robyn jumped off the sofa and blocked the door. “Why are you doing this? He’s an old man. He’s going to die soon anyway,” she said.
“It’s not just an old man. That’s just the start. Then it will be the members of Begat. And then anyone else in Viktor Perko’s way.” He grabbed her elbow and shoved her aside.
“You need to think, Moyer. Think about what you are doing to our family.”
He glared at her. “I’m not the one who thinks assassination is an acceptable means to get what you want.” He reached for the knob.
“If you walk out that door, I’m calling security,” she said.
“And telling them what? That I’m breaking in to remove the bomb you planted? If you call them, you will lose the baby anyway.” He slipped past her into the hall.
“You’ll never find it,” she called after him.
Moyer turned back, strode into the living room, and pulled the mesh caps from the ornate wood box. He left again without saying a word.
“What are those for?” she asked. Moyer didn’t answer.
Chapter 27
Night arrived late in summer. It was almost 10 p.m. when Moyer left the apartment and the last gloaming of the day etched a blue line across the western horizon. Moyer knew nothing about breaking and entering, but reasoned his chances were better in darkness. With any luck, the Judge might be sleeping.
Riding the tube to Freedom Circle, Moyer recalled his fight with Robyn and her attack on his family. He thought of the day he found his father on the floor days before his wedding, the frantic call to Medical Aid demanding the highest priority. The two-man crew arrived twenty minutes later in red jumpsuits pushing equipment cases stacked on a wheeled gurney.
An adhesive patch applied over his father’s carotid relayed vital signs back to the Medical Center; thready pulse, dropping blood pressure, low respiration.
The older of the two technicians asked, “Is your father on medication?” His demeanor was no-nonsense and take-charge.
“Acetaminophen for headache, and Lithium for mood,” Moyer said.
“Does he have any preexisting conditions?”
“No.”
The younger technician glanced at the table. “What do we have here?” He picked up two hand-wound electromagnets. “Looks like he fragged himself.”
The older technician opened his case and removed a set of metallic paddles attached by cables to a roll-up screen. Placing a paddle on either side of his father’s head, he examined the image of his father’s brain on the screen. “Confirmed. We have chip fragments.”
“Can you save him?” Moyer begged.
The older man sighed and pulled a hand-held computer from his pocket. “Patient’s ID number?”
Moyer supplied the twelve digits from memory. The technician pecked out the numbers, his fingernail clicking noisily against plastic. His eyes scanned the screen for the critical piece of data, projected earnings. The technician clucked and looked pessimistic. He punched in the procedure code and scrolled to the bottom for the cost of treating Moyer’s father.
“Commercially unviable,” he said, “I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can do.”
“No.” Moyer keened. He clutched the technician’s wrist, and then quickly recognized his mistake and let go. “Do something, I’m begging you.”
“All I can do is administer Terminus to kill the pain and stop his breathing. It’s humane, and it’s better than letting him suffer.”
Moyer turned away. He thought of his mother, the last miserable years of her life, how they dragged on, how he hoped never to witness that degree of suffering again. Her death was slow and hard, too weak to swallow or speak, the last shreds of her dignity stripped away like wings from a butterfly. How he had hoped she’d been allowed to die quickly, on her own terms and without pain. But his father wouldn’t allow it.
His father didn’t intend cruelty; he simply wasn’t strong enough to live without her and clung to the hope of her return to health right up to her last breath. Her death devastated his father so profoundly, Moyer didn’t dare mourn for fear of adding to his father’s sorrow. Moyer missed his mother. And after her death, he missed his father as well: the humor, the optimism, the charisma — all the vibrant parts of his father seemed to follow his mother into the incinerator.
Moyer nodded approval to the technicians and turned away as the drug was administered. A long wistful exhale followed a gasp, and then silence. Frank Winfield was dead.
“We can remove and incinerate the body for two thousand credits. It’s cheaper than if you make the arrangements yourself. Do you plan to have a memorial?”
The younger technician zipped Moyer’s father into an orange bag. Moyer felt numb and apart from himself. What would be involved in setting up a memorial? He glanced at the bag on the floor and couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with the body.
Moyer shook his head. “I’m the only family he has left. Take him.”
The younger technician wheeled in a trolley and both men lifted the body onto it. After the younger man pushed the trolley into the hall, the older technician’s expression turned somber. “Mr. Winfield, though it pains me, I’m obliged to tell you that I have to rule your father’s death a suicide.”
Moyer couldn’t respond at first, trying to comprehend the ramifications. “But it wasn’t. He was only trying to remove the chip.” The technician’s brow rose slightly, as if he was amused though unmoved. “He was a sensitive,” Moyer explained, “He couldn’t deal with the constant input. His death was accidental.”
“I’m sorry. The rules are very clear. I really have no latitude.”
“But I’m getting married next month. I can’t possibly afford to reimburse his employer for his projected earnings,” Moyer pleaded.
The technician wagged his head. “I sympathize. Believe me, if it was up to me I would rule it accidental —” The technician’s voice trailed off.
“But it is up to you.” Moyer pleaded, “No one will check on this. No one will pay for an autopsy. It will be what you say it is.” The technician’s eyes remained hard and unyielding.
“Three thousand credits if you rule this accidental,” Moyer offered.
The technician’s face went slack and his eyes glazed. Moyer figured he’d gone to the net to see if anyone was watching. Moyer did the same. The hit counter was at two, the technician and himself.
“What about my partner? He was here. He saw. What happens to me if he won’t back me up?”
“Three thousand for each of you.”
The technician’s lips curled upward. “I want to see the money first.”
Moyer nodded and entered his bank account. After moving funds, he recorded the transaction number. The technician took the number. Even through glazed eyes, the technician managed a smile when he saw the six thousand credits moved to his account. When he returned, he punched a pair of keys on his hand-held and a document printed out.
Moyer said, “I’ll leave it to you to pay your partner.”
“Here’s your copy of the death certificate, Mr. Winfield.”
Moyer examined the page. Printed near the bottom was
the projected future value of his father’s life, the probability of his recovery, and the projected cost of the procedures to save him. Below that in red, the negative sum that was in essence a death sentence. His father had been reduced to an equation and found wanting. Commercially Unviable. In the upper corner under the heading CAUSE OF DEATH, ACCIDENTAL was marked. Payment Due = 0.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Winfield,” the technician said as he left. And Moyer was more alone than he’d ever been.
Moyer stuffed the mesh caps down his shirt before climbing aboard the elevator of the Capital Arms. It had been a quiet ride to Freedom Circle, the cars nearly empty. Moyer spotted security agents stationed prominently at the terminal and again in the Circle. At first he wondered if Robyn had perhaps called in a warning. He glanced at them out of the corner of his eye for a reaction. Maybe he was being overly paranoid.
Most of his visits to the Circle were when it was crowded. Perhaps the security presence was the same and only more evident now because the Circle was almost vacant. He tried to detect interest from them. There was none. Instead of being alert as he had always assumed, they seemed dormant, as if napping on their feet.
The Capital Arms was an old limestone building constructed centuries before. A keystone above the entrance was etched with 1949, the year of construction. Old halide wall sconces lit the lobby. Moyer swiped Robyn’s badge across the reader next to the door. The lock snapped open. Hawthorne’s name was not on the register, nor on the mail boxes, though there was a mailbox for 1501.
Old two dimensional photos in shades of sepia decorated the walls. They depicted tall cranes and men engaged in the construction of the building, walking girders, carrying hods, laying stone. The Capital Arms was built at a time when buildings were erected story on top of story placing men and equipment in danger high above the ground. Construction methods had changed. It was safer and less expensive now. Buildings were now built from the bottom. Each floor completed on the ground, the building then raised one story with hydraulics while another completed floor was slid in place underneath.
