The Unborn

by Brian Herbert

  “And if risk is eliminated, I assume there’s no need for insurance?”

  “For a very few examples, that is true. But it is safer to simply obtain a broad-form policy that covers a wide range of possible outcomes, including the ones that are low-, medium-, and high-risk.” She paused, said thoughtfully, “The policies exclude risks that are too high, or charge extra premiums to cover them. If a particular risk is too high, it is impossible to obtain insurance for it. As a risk manager, it is my job to control the exposure to perils in order to obtain coverage for my clients, at the lowest possible premiums.”

  She paused, and added, “There’s an acronym we use in the agency—RIP. Risk, Insurance, Premium. All three are related, and it’s such a serious subject that anyone who doesn’t get it right is dead. RIP.”

  “You make insurance sound so clever and interesting,” Riggio said. “I always thought it was boring stuff.”

  She grinned. “Well, to be honest, much of it is quite dull. Piers says if he goes to a party and tells someone he’s in the insurance business, they tend to move away from him. But if he tells them instead he’s a risk manager, it sounds more interesting to folks, and they continue to listen when he tells them that insurance is an offshoot of risk management, and that he likes to find ways to reduce insurance costs.”

  “Everyone likes to hear that.”

  “That’s right. Self-insurance is also an option, meaning that a client can choose not to purchase an insurance policy, and can instead set aside funds to pay for anticipated losses. But I don’t recommend that, not even to the very wealthy. It’s always safest to purchase insurance, where the premiums of thousands and millions of people are put into large pools of money, to pay for losses that might occur to any of the participants.”

  “And the premiums are based upon actual risks,” Riggio said, nodding.

  She nodded. “Insurance companies have never had a very good public image, largely because of the way they exclude things, and because of their parsimonious claims handling practices—looking for ways to exclude claims instead of trying to find coverage. But I don’t allow insurance adjusters to get away with anything. If there is no clear exclusion in the policy, I always fight for coverage on behalf of my clients.”

  Meredith led him out of the room. “That’s enough for now. I don’t want to put you to sleep on the job by talking too much about insurance.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Riggio sat on an elevated chair in the equipment armory, at a training module for one of the scanners that Mr. Johansen had invented.

  Alone in the room, the trainee ran through a selection of control sequences, watching a screen that showed a simulation of him holding a lightweight machine and running its pale yellow light over the engine of a converti-craft that was sitting on an airfield, outside a hangar. For each function of the scanner, he was taught how to make appropriate settings. This was one of the basic models, silver-colored and streamlined, with a comfortable handle and control buttons that were easily accessible.

  All the while he was being graded by the simulation machine, and this time he had failed to find a defect in the landing gear, a problem with one of the struts that he should have seen, had he aimed the scanner at it and used the correct setting. He focused on that area again, this time with a different setting, and figured out what he had done wrong. So far, he’d only been operating simulators, for nine machines. He looked forward to getting out in the field and using them for real—but that would only happen after he went through this self-tutorial process and the results were approved by Mr. Johansen.

  With a sigh, Riggio turned off the simulator and sat there for several minutes, thinking. If anyone approached, he would say that he was going over the training experience in his mind. But that would not be true. This time, his thoughts were elsewhere.

  Riggio liked to think about Meredith, and enjoyed looking at her, but still felt shame for having found himself outside her townhouse, secretly looking at her through the windows. His feelings for her seemed to be more complex than they should be. He didn’t really know her, except that she had a pleasant way about her, and a deep-seated kindness, as well as a sparkling intelligence. He thought she was really pretty, though he didn’t think he’d ever dated a black woman before. The color of her skin didn’t matter to him in the least, nor did the color of anyone’s skin. He prided himself on being able to look beyond that.

  He felt attracted to Meredith, but with his broken memories and strange, inexplicable actions it would not be fair to her if they were to get involved. He really liked her, wanted to be with her, but sensed strongly that it was not possible. Riggio couldn’t be certain of course, but he didn’t think he’d ever liked anyone this much before. It was painful staying away from her, and trying not to think about her, but he intended to do so anyway.

  His earlobes still itched where he’d found and removed the posts, suggesting that he’d worn earrings, and he remembered finding the purse in the car, with his wallet and ID by it. He scratched one of the lobes, hoped no one noticed the tiny holes. There was so much he didn’t know about his past. And he remained troubled by the strange, unsettling dream in which he’d seen four female versions of himself in a mirror.

  It was all deeply disturbing, with no answers.

  When other people interacted with him, whenever they looked at him, he didn’t want them to look too deep. He had something hiding inside that he didn’t want them to see. Meredith had assured him that only she and Mr. Johansen knew about his memory gaps, and Riggio believed her—so he didn’t think the other workers were thinking about that. So far he’d been able to tactfully resist the advances of three women in the office. He’d told one of them, Nicole, that he was recovering from a bad love affair, and that it would take some time. She’d looked disappointed, but after that she’d gradually flirted with him less, and so had the others. It was becoming common knowledge around the office that he was not available.

  Meredith was different from all the others, an unusual woman in the midst of common co-workers. He saw her enter the simulation room now, wearing a nicely tailored business suit. Her long black hair was secured attractively by a hair clip, pulling it back so that more of her face was visible. He found her stunningly beautiful—more gorgeous each time he looked at her, and more unattainable.

  Quickly, he turned back toward the simulator and switched it on. A number of icons appeared, each for a different type of business that he could select. Since the Johansen Agency had a number of clients who owned entertainment facilities all over the solar system, this was the area that Riggio had been told to emphasize in his training. He also needed to know how to scan other business types, but not all of them.

  “How’s it going?” she asked.

  “All right,” he said, refusing to look directly at her.

  She went to another part of the room, saying she needed to select a specialty scanner for an upcoming inspection trip. He heard clicks and whirring as she checked the machine, and saw multi-color scanner lights wash across one of the walls on his periphery.

  His standoffishness was not that Meredith was older than he was, of a different race, or anything else about her. It had to do with him, to strange feelings he was having inside. The night before, he’d awoken from a nightmare in which he saw the body of a young woman sprawled on the ground face up, her face and throat stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver and her eyes gouged out. It had been so deeply disturbing that he had not gone back to sleep. The dead woman had not been the same one he’d seen in his memories earlier, when he came to awareness in a car traveling from Denver to Seattle. This one had been a blonde, while the earlier had been a little older, and a redhead.

  From the registration on the car he’d thought that the dead redhead might have been named Latrice Baldwin, but other than recalling snippets of their relationship, and seeing her killed when someone reached out from behind him to stab her, he could not remember much of anything else. It had seemed horrificall
y real to him, a waking nightmare as he sat in the driver’s seat of a car, speeding west through the tubeway. Last night’s nightmare of death had been equally vivid—and like the earlier vision, there’d been an arm and hand coming around from behind Riggio, this time with a screwdriver, stabbing her repeatedly in the face and throat. Not a knife like the other one, but equally deadly.

  With such violent visions and memory fragments, Riggio didn’t want to get too close to anyone. He felt that if ever did, something bad might happen. In fact, he felt almost certain of it, though he didn’t know why. Whenever he longed for Meredith, whenever he tried to envision a personal relationship with her, feelings surfaced that he could harm her. He hated those feelings.

  And wondered if he was insane, or going insane.

  Peripherally he saw Meredith at his side now, watching him as he ran through another simulation sequence. He put the machine on pause, looked up at her.

  “I made a glaring error a few minutes ago,” he said, “one that would have caused a converti-craft to crash when it tried to land.” He smiled grimly. “No big deal, I guess. At least it didn’t really happen with people on board. I figured out what I did wrong, though, so that’s something.”

  She nodded. “You are making excellent progress. Mr. Johansen is very impressed with how fast you’re learning.”

  “He won’t be after seeing today’s results.”

  “No one is perfect on the simulators. We’ve all made mistakes on them, but that’s what learning is all about.”

  It was nice of her to say that, but he didn’t want to say so, or thank her. He didn’t want to make any personal comments to her whatsoever, or experience any more personal feelings of attraction toward her, or have any more bad thoughts about what he might do to her.

  He excused himself and left the room.

  CHAPTER 13

  Agent Sariah Jantz was in Seattle now, having learned that the car driven by the killer had been found in the city.

  For all intents and purposes she had gone renegade, even though she’d received grudging permission from her superior to be here. If this mission didn’t work out, she had no doubt her career would be over. The Director of the FBI would summon her to his office, thank her for her three decades of service, and ask her to retire. A request like that was tantamount to a demand.

  Then, because of Jantz’s service and the numerous successes she’d had, there would be an awards dinner with a ceremony, and she would be sent on her way to the pasture, never to return and losing contact with her former co-workers. She would become, essentially, a persona non grata. She didn’t care about that, and was going forward with this anyway. It was an obsession with her, had never gone away despite the years that had passed since Dr. Yordanius escaped from the FBI raid on his laboratory, and the lack of fresh clues until recently.

  This was an important case, and not just because she’d been seriously injured in the raid. She had a strong feeling that the eight known murders were only the tip of the iceberg, and many more were beneath the surface. It could be the most important case of her career.

  If her mission succeeded, if many more murders were revealed and the killer—or killers—could be stopped, the success of the case would add to the luster of her personnel file. Her rebelliousness would be forgotten, and she would probably be offered a promotion—one she didn’t want. She only wanted to continue with her career, handling cases personally instead of ordering others to do so. Jantz was in her early fifties, and would like to work at least ten or fifteen more years. Despite the challenges of her career, all the angst and lost sleep, she loved every minute of her job. Being an agent was tremendously exciting, even if some of it was dangerous.

  She felt as if this was one of those treacherous times, that the closer she got to her prey the more jeopardy she was in. It gave her a strange feeling of unease. But she was determined to press on, no matter what.

  Now she stood in front of a massive, unusual building on the north end of the city, one that kept changing its appearance in front of her eyes. The inside of the structure was visible through clearplaz walls, and she saw the workings of the floors and objects on them as the floors slid and folded and went around one another, as they shifted hypnotically, one way and the other. For all of the motion, the apparatus was surprisingly quiet, smooth shiftings that were operated by precision machinery.

  This was one of many FBI evidence-sifter buildings around the country, each of them situated in key regions. Other government bureaus, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Interplanetary Crime Investigation Unit, had similar equipment.

  The workings of these structures were almost amusing to her, at least in theory. But in actual practice, they worked surprisingly well, and produced pieces of evidence—big and small—for investigators who needed to see them first-hand. All of the sifter buildings in the United States were linked electronically, so that any agent in another location could also see the evidence—except that in the case of agents who were remote from the evidence—it was shown to them in an exact 3-D replica, a holo-image. She wasn’t here for that; she was here to see the real thing.

  She stepped inside a large, high-ceilinged lobby, heard the crackling energy field of her lower-body exosuit and felt the artificially smooth movements of her own crippled limbs. The prosthetic device cast its pale orange glow on the floor as she walked. Other FBI agents stood at control panels around the lobby, and walked into evidence rooms as the items they requested—real or 3-D—arrived for inspection, along with any supporting documentation.

  A control panel stood in front of Agent Jantz, mounted on a wall. She entered her code and instructions, specifying which evidence she wanted to see, and listened to the continually whirring and smooth clicking of the building. Someone with a sense of humor had designed and named this—so that agents could sift through evidence.

  A door opened next to the panel and she stepped inside a very large room. She looked up, saw a car coming toward her on a platform, lowering smoothly until the vehicle came to rest in front of her. It was the pale yellow Merkur that the killer had driven from Denver, and abandoned in one of the neighborhoods of Seattle.

  She took a deep breath, read a computer screen that hovered near her, summarizing the evidence that had been collected from the car. She touched the screen to obtain more information, then realized from a faint, shimmering force field around the car that it was not the real vehicle; it was a damned replica. She leaned close and was able to look inside, but when she touched a door handle with a gloved hand, she went right through. Nothing was really there. She saw the projected image of a purse on the floor, open with things scattered about.

  Jantz cursed the idiotic machinery of this sifter building. She could view a holo-image from any FBI office, and had come here for the original! If an original was on hand, stored inside this very evidence facility, it should be presented to an agent who was physically here, not a 3-D simulation of the evidence. It should be an automatic procedure.

  She waved her arms in the air and shouted, “I’m here, you dumb contraption! Why do you think I came here?”

  There was no answer from the building, or from the computer. She went back to the control panel, was more specific in her request to view evidence. The computer screen remained, but moments later the holo-image of the car was lifted away and vanished. She didn’t know why it had to be lifted at all. Minutes later, the real car was lowered down to her level.

  Wearing specially-issued gloves and a cap that sealed her hair and prevented strands from falling and contaminating the evidence, she opened the driver’s door and poked her head inside, taking care not to touch very much, even though she wore protection.

  Even her clothes were special FBI-issued, designed not to leave threads or other contaminants at crime scenes. This did not account for every possibility, such as her own skin cells that could flutter down from areas of her own exposed skin, but it was enough.

  In a way it didn’t matter,
because she knew the car had been gone over with the proverbial fine-toothed comb, and all of the evidence inside and outside the vehicle had been collected in packets and documented in the computer system. This included the purse that had been found in the car, as well as its contents, and a mag-gun found in a console compartment.

  Unlike local police agencies, the modern FBI was not known to leave anything undiscovered. Even so, she always liked to see crime scenes and evidence first-hand in order to make her own assessments. Sometimes there were things that an evidence collector might not notice or think was relevant, such as the way a person scuffed his shoes over the floor when getting in and out, or where he might have grabbed the door, or how he might have held the controls. The powers of observation and discernment that an agent had, especially those she had, were superior.

  She illuminated the inside of the car in a pale blue luminol beam, saw all of the fingerprints and smudges that were still there. Later she would also review the evidence packets, which were a keypunch away, should she want to see them.

  The inside of the car had a peculiar, musky odor. Not strong, in fact it was quite faint. But she smelled it nonetheless.

  She closed the door, reviewed the supporting documents, and found that the odor had not been mentioned anywhere. Sticking her head back inside the car, she smelled it again, until it seemed to fade away. Unpleasant to her, it might be a body odor, and she didn’t think it had any added scent or perfume. It was so faint that most people might not notice it; the evidence combers had not listed it, or at least had not seen fit to think it had any importance.

  But it was important to her. She thought it had a faint animal smell, like something that was not human.