Chapter 16
Between the ending to the battle and losing Lily, I was still feeling discouraged the next morning when we all trooped into Prime Commander's office for the debrief. Angie must have noticed something, because she drew me aside just before we entered.
"Hey, listen, big brother," she said seriously, "I didn't mean to, you know, walk in and take over your cooking gig here. I mean, I know everyone voted for my stuff instead of yours last night after the battle, but if you're really bummed about it, I can . . . you know . . . make other kinds of food besides Chinese. I mean, I know how to --"
She stopped because I had started to laugh. I put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a quick squeeze. "Thanks for the offer, little sis," I said, still chuckling, "but I am absolutely not bummed about losing the contest last night. You won fair and square. Heck, I even voted for you. The fact is, I've already got a pretty good idea of what I'm making for my next three or four dinners, and it's not Chinese."
"Oh." She looked puzzled. "Then . . . why are you so down this morning?"
"We'll talk about it during the debriefing," I told her. "Speaking of which . . ."
I ushered her into the office and showed her to the Prime Violet chair. Bill and Mayumi had apparently decided to join us, which was a little unusual. The Emeriti have a standing invitation to attend any debriefing they wish, but most of the time it's just us regular Primes. Bill opted to stand, and I gave my seat to Mayumi.
Shelley looked around at us. I suppose a different kind of executive director would have made a point of mentioning that this had been Angie's first battle as a real, grown-up Prime and made us all applaud for her or something equally stupid. Not Shelley; she just nodded at Angie and murmured, "Welcome to your first debriefing, Prime Violet." Then she asked Mike to begin the narration.
It was a confusing sequence of events we were trying to reconstruct for Shelley's benefit, with teams separating and re-joining each other at various times, but she navigated it smoothly enough. She doesn't usually ask too many questions during our debriefings, but she has not been shy about stopping any time something isn't clear or even asking a different team member to explain what had happened.
Shelley let Mike tell his story up to the point where he rejoined Trina's group. I saw Angie tense up when Mike was arguing with her onscreen about the healing coma, but no one said anything about it. I guess we all figured she had learned her lesson.
Then Shelley went back and had Trina describe her team's adventures up to the same point, which were mainly Toby and Nicolai baiting the lizard. She looked a question at Padma after that, but Padma simply shrugged and said, "Nothing happened worth reporting."
Then it was my turn. I picked the story up from where I got knocked off the scorpion. My conversation with Wizzit pretty much explained what I was doing, so thankfully I didn't have to do a whole lot of narration. Then, when I vaulted into the top of the pyramid and confronted Lily, Mayumi inhaled sharply and asked Wizzit to pause the vid.
"This is Lily?" she asked incredulously, and I nodded. She stood up and walked to the vid screen, examining the image closely. After a moment, she murmured, "Oh, my! Trevor, she is exquisite! You must not let this one get away from you."
"I, uh, I won't," I stammered. "But I actually have to, you know, get her first."
"Of course you do," she replied absently. "Wizzit, could you zoom in on her face, please? As closely as you can."
He obligingly made Lily's face about twice the size as it had been. "This is the best I can do from the images recorded by Trevor's belt," he explained.
"That's fine, thank you." She leaned in, inspecting the image. "This is very interesting," she said, as if to herself.
"What's interesting?" Shelley asked her, and there was something in her tone that I would have to term 'respectful'. That made sense, I guess. Mayumi is, after all, our oldest living Prime, although I'm sure she would not appreciate my pointing out the fact. She had been the original Prime Orange, back when Shelley was Prime Violet, and had taken over as Prime Red when Bheka Nkosi was killed and Mike was brought in as the new Prime Violet.
Mayumi stepped away from the screen and turned to face us. "There is something peculiar about Lily's face," she told us. "It . . . does not appear to be natural."
"What do you mean?" I asked, maybe a little too sharply.
She laughed, a silvery, tinkling sound. "There is no need to get excited, Trevor," she said warmly. "I am not insulting your lady friend. I am simply making an observation. Come up here and look closely at her skin, would you?"
"What am I looking for?" I asked as I moved to the screen and leaned in to examine Lily's right cheek.
"Blemishes. Flaws. Irregularities in her complexion. Imperfections of any kind. You will not find any. It is literally flawless."
I studied the image closely. "You're right," I admitted, shaking my head. "I can't see any flaws at all."
"And now," she continued, "if you would step away from the screen for a moment, I will show you all something that I think will surprise you."
I stepped back behind the Prime Blue chair, where I had been standing earlier. "Wizzit," she said, "please cut away the background so that only her face is visible, and then duplicate the image, so that we see two pictures of her face."
When we saw two identical Lilys looking out at us, she went on, "Now flip the image on the left along the vertical axis, so that it becomes a mirror image, please. Good, and now please bring the two images together slowly."
As the two pictures of Lily moved toward each other, she explained, "One objective way to measure beauty is to see how symmetric one's face is, how closely the two sides match each other."
She lifted a hand to indicate the screen, where the two images had now coalesced. I heard Trina gasp. "It is a perfect match!" she exclaimed.
Indeed it was. There was some fuzziness in her hair where it had become disheveled and the two images didn't agree, but her face appeared completely unblurred; there was nothing to indicate that we were looking at two superimposed mirror images.
"Yes, Trina, her face is perfectly symmetrical," Mayumi went on. "And you can take my word that the underlying structures -- the nose, the cheekbones, the eyes, the jaw -- they are also . . . perfect."
"You're right, this is very interesting," Shelley said. "A woman who is just too . . . well, too perfect to be natural."
Mike asked, "Is she wearing makeup? That can hide a lot of flaws, can't it?"
"I do not believe she is wearing any," Mayumi replied.
"That is correct," Wizzit confirmed. "I detected only human skin, without chemicals of any kind applied to it."
"Maybe she had plastic surgery," Angie suggested.
"Negative." Wizzit again. "Checking my previous scans of her, I detect no scars or other signs of surgery anywhere near the face, or anywhere else, for that matter."
"But what does it mean?" Shelley said thoughtfully. "Besides the fact that JB Swift obviously devised some non-surgical means to enhance feminine beauty, that is."
Mayumi gave her a wry smile. "I can think of a number of women who would pay tens of thousands of dollars or more for a secret like that." She glanced at me. "I am curious. Do you happen to know how tall she is, Trevor?"
"How tall?" I repeated. "I don't know exactly. Just a little over five feet, I think -- maybe five-one, five-two."
"Lily is approximately five feet, one-and-seven-eighths inches tall," Wizzit said proudly.
It struck me as he spoke that he was trying to impress Mayumi. Interesting, I thought. I remembered that Wizzit also seemed to like Lily, and everyone knew he had taken quite a shine to Angela. So, did he just really dig Asian chicks or was it something else? I realized I would probably never know.
"So small?" Mayumi was saying. She looked disappointed. "That's a shame. It appears she is not so perfect
after all. If she were a foot taller, she could make a fortune on the runway."
The runway? For a moment I had confused visions of Lily piloting an jetliner or serving drinks to disgruntled passengers. Then my sense of reality reasserted itself. I knew that in her real life, Mayumi designed clothing, and she was fairly successful at it, which would certainly explain her interest in Lily's looks. "You mean, working as a fashion model?"
"Naturally," she replied. "But not at five-two. Even six inches taller, and I could find her plenty of work in our Asian shows." She sighed and shrugged. "Zannen, ne?"
I grinned. Only Mayumi would express regret over something like that. Personally, I thought Lily was fine the way she was. "Sou desu ne," I agreed politely, and I heard Bill quietly echo the sentiment.
She winked at me. "Your accent continues to improve, Trevor," she said. Then, addressing the entire group, she said, "But Shelley asks a good question -- what does it mean? Why would JB Swift expend so much effort on someone whose only purpose is to fight?"
No one was willing to venture an opinion, it appeared. I decided not to tell her that fighting may not have been Lily's only purpose, that her so-called companion mode was designed to provide 'social and sexual companionship for those operating the attack doll,' according to what Lily herself had told us. Something told me that there was no way I could exit that particular conversation without an industrial-grade blush on my face. Especially since the only one who could operate the attack doll these days appeared to be me.
Mayumi's Japanese cultural programming must have kicked in at that point, because she resumed her seat and said apologetically, "I am sorry. I did not intend to take over your discussion; I simply saw something that I thought was of interest. Please continue."
Shelley smiled at her. "Nonetheless, it was an interesting and perhaps valuable observation," she said, giving her a very Japanese bow. "We all benefit from your insight." Then she looked up at me. "Trevor?"
"Uh, right. Wizzit, could you restart the vid?"
Wizzit rewound the last few seconds, so that we again saw me vaulting into the enclosure at the top of the pyramid. He let it run without comment until I teleported away with Lily; this time it was Mike who had him pause it.
"So, you're telling us that Lily had an actual force shield?" he asked incredulously. "Like one of ours?"
I shrugged. "That's sure what it felt like. You saw the way she cracked that stone. I'm not sure I could have done that with a front kick, and I'm fifty pounds heavier than she is."
"What Lily possessed," Wizzit interjected, "was a very crude implementation of something much like our technology. Similar in many ways, but the mechanism was much bulkier and much heavier, and the power requirements were a whole lot greater. And there were key technical differences as well."
I glanced at Nicolai. I would have thought he would be caught up in this discussion, but he didn't seem to be paying attention to any of us. He was leaning forward, chin cupped in his hand, staring hard at the floor somewhere near the direction of Padma's left foot.
"What number was she?" Trina asked. "She couldn't have been the same as any of ours, right? There would have been . . . problems if she had been, correct?"
"She was . . . er, yes, that's correct. Her number did not match any of yours." Wizzit sounded oddly hesitant, almost embarrassed. "It was not, in fact, a prime number at all."
"That can't be right," Toby objected. "Even I know that much. If her device wasn't set to a prime number, then it should have been too weak to support a force shield. At best, she would have been like a Junior Prime Pink, or one of the Emeriti; they're all based on prime squares."
At first, no one spoke. Then, in the silence which followed, Nicolai murmured, "She was Unity." Something in the ominous way he said it sent chills down my spine.
"No, she couldn't have been!" Bill said after a moment. "We tried for years to create a Unity belt, Nicolai. Remember how long and how hard you and I worked on it? And we couldn't ever get it to function properly. It's impossible!"
"I know that," Nicolai replied quietly. He looked up at the ceiling speakers. "But I'm right, aren't I, Wizzit?"
Wizzit has no lungs with which to heave a long, mournful sigh, but he nevertheless gave a very good imitation of it. "Yes, Nicolai, you are correct. Lily was Unity."
"Um, excuse my asking," Mike said, smiling and sounding sweet as pie, which usually means he's starting to get ticked off, "but would someone please mind telling me just what the hell Unity is?"
As usual, it was up to Padma to translate. "Unity," she began, glancing uncertainly between Nicolai and Bill, "is a fancy term that mathematicians use occasionally when they are referring to the number one. Sometimes it's to avoid confusion, because 'one' can be used in so many different senses, not all of them mathematical; other times it's just to be poetic or simply as jargon. In this case, I'm not sure . . ."
"So, what you're saying is that Lily was Prime One?" Mike interrupted.
There was a chorus of negation from our three mathematician-techies. Nicolai waved Padma and Bill to silence. "She couldn't have been," he told Mike with an amused smile, "for the very simple reason that the number one is not a prime. See?"
"Sure it is," Angie said confidently. "It's divisible only by one and itself. That makes it a prime, right?"
"It's definitely not a composite number, like two times three," Trina added, frowning, "so it has to be a prime."
Nicolai's face fell. "Yes, it's not a composite," he agreed reluctantly. "But . . ." He glanced helplessly over at Padma.
"You'll just have to take our word for it," Bill said. "No sane number or ring theorist would ever tell you that one is a prime number. There are all kinds of reasons why it should not be considered so."
Nicolai snorted. "It would destroy unique prime factorization, to start," he muttered.
"It's classified as a 'unit' instead," Padma explained. "Different from primes or composites."
"So, to summarize," Shelley broke in, taking in everyone in her look around the room, "Lily had something like a primitive force shield. Instead of a prime number, it was based on unity, or the number one, which is something we have never been able to accomplish, despite years of trying. Is that correct?"
Wizzit emulated another drawn-out sign. "Not exactly, but close enough for the moment."
"But why are you so glum, Wizzit?" Trina asked. "Is it that potent a weapon?"
"Or are you just mad that the Harley twins were able to figure out something you couldn't," I said.
"It is that potent a weapon," Wizzit said defensively, "and I'm definitely not mad. They undoubtedly stumbled onto it by accident, that's all. Or, more likely, out of sheer ignorance of how a force shield is supposed to work."
"Then there are substantive differences?" Nicolai asked eagerly.
"There are indeed. For one thing --"
Shelley interrupted, "This is all very interesting, Wizzit, but I'm not sure everyone would benefit from the discussion." That's our Shelley, a born diplomat. I could see Mayumi discreetly stifling a yawn. "Could you go into more depth with Bill, Nicolai, and Padma at a later time?"
Padma nodded eagerly, her eyes bright with anticipation. Bill shrugged. Nicolai said, "Sounds like a good idea."
"Will do," Wizzit said, sounding almost happy again. "The weapons room, right after the debrief."
"Good," Shelley said. "Trevor, continue with the rest of your story, if you would."
Wizzit picked things up from the time when Lily and I teleported away from the pyramid. When he showed me slamming her down head-first onto the asphalt and then trying to break her nose, I think everyone winced. I know I did; Lily really did take a couple of wicked bumps there. We all winced again when I slide-tackled her, leaving shreds of skin on the concrete, and yet again when she kicked me in the noggin. It was a weird feeling watching myself cr
umple to the ground and not having any memory any of it.
Mike whistled. "I like watching a good scrap as much as the next fellow, but man oh man, Trevor! The two of you really do beat the living hell out of each other, don't you?" he said, shaking his head. "What a pair! I can hardly wait for the wedding."
"Or the honeymoon," Trina added with a sly wink at me.
"Darn it!" I exclaimed, snapping my fingers. "I didn't ask her to marry me. I knew I'd forgotten something!"
Toby smirked. "You can ask her the next time you see her. I'm sure she'll be popping up again."
Grinning, I glanced up at the vid screen. Wizzit had stopped it at a point just after my collapse. Lily was looking down at my unconscious form, and maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that there was a certain softening of her expression, a hint of concern or regret or even compassion.
In this light, her face appeared gaunt, and her eyes were deeply shadowed. She looked exhausted in a way she hadn't before, not even when we had captured her and she hadn't slept for over a hundred hours. I felt the grin slip from my face; suddenly, things didn't seem quite so funny any more.
"I hope so," I said quietly. "I really hope we see her again." I looked around at my teammates, who were staring curiously at me. "Guys," I said, "we have to find a way to get Lily away from Enclave. We have to." I jerked my chin at the vid screen. "Seriously, look at her. Perfect bone structure and flawless complexion aside, she doesn't look all that good. I don't know if they're not feeding her or letting her sleep or . . . or what, but . . ." I shrugged. "If we don't take charge of her soon, I'm afraid of what's going to happen to her."
Shelley cleared her throat. "Up to now, capturing Lily has never been high on our todo list," she said. "Dispatching the monsters of the day has always taken priority. I think now, though, we should consider moving it to the top of our list, especially with this Unity force shield business. What do you think, Wizzit? Mike?"
"Destroying monsters is an absolute must," Wizzit replied promptly, "but Lily has suddenly become a much more serious threat to your mission. I say we definitely need to remove that threat, one way or another."
"I agree," Mike said grimly. "I'd prefer to take her prisoner, but if that becomes impossible . . ." He grimaced. "Sorry, Trev."
I nodded mutely.
"All right, let's continue," Shelley said after a moment. "Mike, would you take up the story from the point where you rejoined Trina's group?"
I have already related most of what Mike described next, although I didn't realize at the time how much fun he seemed to have had destroying the Gila monster with his own personal scorpion blaster. He described the destruction of the giant scorpion after that, and then my ears pricked up when he asked Nicolai to explain just how he had destroyed the frog monster. I hadn't seen Nicolai do it, and I was curious.
"It was quite simple, really," Nicolai said modestly. "I simply speeded myself up and placed the spear beneath him so that he would impale himself on it when he landed."
"You . . . what?" Mike seemed speechless.
Nicolai repeated, more slowly this time, "I speeded myself up, the same way Trevor has been doing." He shrugged. "I thought I stood a better-than-even chance of succeeding, and it turned out I was right."
Without being asked, Wizzit began playing a vid. He must have slowed it down quite a lot, because we saw Nicolai slog forward, with the rest of us statue-like in the background, and set his spear upright, point uppermost, beneath the black frog as it inched its way down from one of its jumps. He crouched low, holding the weapon in place, until the point of the spear actually penetrated the monster's skin, and then he slogged away again.
"Very impressive," Shelley commented as Wizzit sped up the vid again and the frog began to self-destruct. "But what was it that made you think you had a good chance of succeeding?"
"It's very simple," he replied. "Just a matter of numbers, really. You see, up to now, the only ones who have been able to speed themselves up have been various Primes Red and Trevor, Prime Blue. Wizzit informed us that Trevor speeded himself up to one hundred twenty-one times normal, his prime number squared. A little research with Wizzit told me that the previous Primes Red had speeded themselves up by a factor of one hundred twenty-eight, or two to the seventh power."
I heard a gasp from Padma. "That had not occurred to me," she murmured, sounding astonished. "How very clever!" She must have been a couple steps ahead of me, I decided, because I hadn't heard anything especially clever yet.
Nicolai smiled at her. "That suggested to me," he went on, "that there just might be a . . . oh, call it a 'sweet spot' somewhere between, say, one hundred twenty and one hundred thirty times normal. A sweet spot that makes it, if not easy, then at least less difficult to speed oneself up. And of course, the only other Prime in our group with a power in that sweet spot is . . ."
"You," Bill finished for him. "Prime Five, because five cubed is one hundred twenty-five, right in the middle of the other two." He chuckled and shook his head admiringly. "Damn, Nicolai, that was brilliant!"
Nicolai nodded in acknowledgement. "Of course, my hypothesis has not been proved, just not invalidated." He frowned at me. "It's a curious sensation, isn't it? Moving in an accelerated timeframe, I mean."
"Definitely weird." I reached out and shook his hand. "Nice work and, uh, welcome to the speed-freak club."
Mike finished narrating our attack on the giant turtle, and then Shelley asked for any more questions. There were none, so we bid Mayumi goodbye and began filing out of the room.
"Mike and Trina," Shelley called out, "back here in five, okay?"
"Are they in trouble or something?" Angie asked me once we were out in the hallway.
"Probably just a leaders' meeting," Toby declared confidently. "Prime Commander and Prime Red tend to put their heads together a lot, and Trina's making more of her second-in-command position than Mike ever did." He nudged Angela's shoulder. "Hey, d'you fancy a practice session in the gym? Seems like you're finally back in the pink again. Er, so to speak."
Angie gave him a brilliant smile. "Sure, that sounds like fun. Do you want to come along, big brother?"
I saw Toby give me a minute shake of his head, and so I probably would have declined, but Angie went on, "Come on, you promised to teach me how to do 540-backwheels, remember? And I'm going to need some help with Pyongwon. I haven't been able to practice it for ages because of my legs, and I'm really rusty. Please?"
"All right," I agreed with a shrug at Tony. "Let's go get changed, and I'll meet you there."
Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee Page 16
