Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  Sommer shook his head. “I doubt it. Long before anyone else has the nerve to try another end run around us our status will have been properly defined. Congress and the states were caught napping, but they’re scrambling to write laws that’ll cover us.”

  Porath made a face. “That’ll take months. A new lawsuit could be filed tomorrow.”

  Everly stirred in his chair. “No. Ingersoll will be done with his checkup by this afternoon.”

  Porath frowned. “That wasn’t nearly as clear as you probably thought it was.”

  “I talked to Ingersoll for a minute after the press conference this morning, while Dr. Sommer was shooing out the reporters,” Everly explained. “He told me that as soon as he can get hold of his lawyer he’s going to have an attempted murder charge filed against Marsh.”

  Sands’s eyebrows went up. “You mean Marsh was responsible for that heart attack after all?”

  “Oh, I doubt that. But he was responsible for trying to destroy Ingersoll’s body while his soul was locked up here, and there’s a fair chance he was the one who made sure the hold-and-suspend protocol paperwork never got filed. Add those together, and you’re awfully close to attempted murder.”

  Porath whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “It’ll never stick,” he said thoughtfully. “But you’re right, it ought to scare the vultures away long enough for the legislatures to get moving.”

  Beside Sommer, the intercom buzzed. “Yes?” he called toward it.

  “Dr. Sommer, there’s a Mr. Douglas Grein on the phone for you,” Rita announced.

  Sands sat up straighter. “Grein? The Secret Service man?”

  “I called him this morning,” Sommer told her. “Told him we needed to talk. Rita, go ahead and send that press release out on the wire now.”

  “Press release?” Sands asked suspiciously. “Adrian, what are you up to?”

  “You’ll find out in a minute.” Bracing himself, Sommer keyed for speakerphone and punched the button. This was it. “Mr. Grein, this is Dr. Sommer,” he said. “Thank you for returning my call.”

  “I’ve been looking forward to talking with you, Doctor,” the other said. His voice was gentle and cultured, but there was steel beneath it.

  “So have I. Let’s get right to the point, shall we? You’re trying very hard, on behalf of the Federal government, to steal Soulminder’s secrets out from under us. I’d like to know why.”

  There was a slight pause. “I would, of course, deny any such allegations in court,” Grein said. “However, between us and whoever you’ve got listening in, I can tell you that we simply can’t leave the possible future safety of the President and other top people in non-government hands.”

  “And you think you’d have better security if the Secret Service or CIA or Marines were running it?”

  “That is a reasonable assumption, yes,” Grein said dryly, “given the government’s vastly superior facilities. You obviously disagree.”

  “Obviously,” Sommer said. He glanced at Everly, got a nod and a silent thumbs-up. “And I’ll show you why. Consider the following scenario: you’ve broken into our technology and have Soulminder units of your own. The Mullner soul-traces of all government people are recorded in your own files, and you have your own traps and equipment in the White House basement. Now: what happens if the President is shot?”

  “We get him to the White House basement, of course.”

  Sommer shook his head. “Wrong. Because the minute you have Soulminder everyone else has it, too. That’s the flip side of your superior facilities: with that many people on the payroll you have no way on earth to keep it totally clean of spies and traitors. And one properly placed spy would be all it would take. Six months after you have Soulminder traps, so do Iran, China, and possibly even the North Koreans.

  “Now suppose they also get hold of a pirated copy of the President’s Mullner trace?”

  He paused, but Grein didn’t speak. “You see what that means, I trust,” Sommer continued. “If the President is shot under those circumstances you will literally have no idea whatsoever where his soul is. He’ll have been kidnapped, right from under your noses, and there won’t be a single way you can protect him against it. Is that really the situation you want, Mr. Grein?”

  From the phone came a hiss: Grein taking a thoughtful breath. “There are ways to safeguard the data.”

  “Yes, there are,” Sommer agreed. “And the simplest and safest is for you to leave the secrets of Soulminder right where they are: here, with us. To leave them here, and to cooperate with our security people instead of fighting them. Oh, and there’s one other thing you should know. As of three minutes ago Soulminder has gone international. We’ve accepted the Swiss government’s request to build a facility in Geneva.”

  Across the room, Sands’s mouth fell open. “We’ve what?” she breathed.

  “That means any attempt by the U.S. government to take us over will become an international incident,” Sommer continued, ignoring her.

  “It also means ample opportunity for someone else to steal your precious technology,” Grein retorted.

  “Not if you work with our people in creating security for the new building,” Sommer reminded him.

  There was a long pause. “Even if you were right about all that,” Grein said at last, his voice stiff but cautious, “we still couldn’t allow you to handle the soul-tracings and transfers of the President and other sensitive people.”

  Quietly, Sommer let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. “You won’t have to,” he told the other. “We can designate one wing of our new facility for private government use. You can staff it with military doctors and Secret Service personnel and anyone else you want.”

  “An interesting proposal,” Grein said after another short pause. “I’d need to discuss it with certain other parties, of course.”

  “I understand,” Sommer agreed. “Just be sure and impress on them that anything but the current status quo will cost you considerable time and energy … and in the end will leave you far less secure than you are right now.”

  “Good-bye, Dr. Sommer,” Grein said politely. With a click, the line went dead.

  “He doesn’t like it,” Porath commented as Sommer also hung up. “Not a bit.”

  “But he’ll go along with it,” Everly said quietly. “The thought of foreign access to Mullner-trace files should ensure that. For now, anyway.”

  “Geneva, huh?” Sands said, turning arched eyebrows to Sommer.

  “You disapprove?” he asked mildly.

  She snorted. “Not really. It would have been nice if you’d told me, that’s all.”

  “Especially since major judgment calls aren’t a proper part of a figurehead’s role?” he suggested.

  She had the grace to blush. “I didn’t mean it that way, Adrian,” she said. “I just meant that you were the public image of Soulminder, that’s all.”

  “I understand,” Sommer said. But she had caught the message, all right. He could see that in her eyes. No longer would he be content to sit back and smile for the cameras and let her single-handedly run the whole show.

  Which was as it should be. And should have been from the very beginning.

  CHAPTER 3

  Justice Machine

  For a long time—longer than he thought he had any business being there—he floated in the middle of the long tunnel. Around him all was gray. Behind him, the gray turned to black; ahead of him, far down the tunnel, was the Light.

  He tried not to look at the Light. It bothered him, the way the Light seemed to see right through him, right down to the middle of his mind. It bothered him a hell of a lot worse the way the damn thing made him start thinking about the way he’d lived his life.

  But that was okay. He’d spent that life fighting everything that got in his way, or whoever didn’t like the way he
did things. Eighty-four years’ worth of fights, everything and everyone from street hoods right up to big-shot Federal prosecutors. One friggin’ hell of a lot of fights, and he’d won every damn one of them.

  Every one that mattered, anyway. And he’d damn friggin’ well win this one, too.

  Besides, fighting back against the damn Light and the damn friggin’ way it was trying to make him feel about himself was something to do. Something besides wondering if he’d been double-crossed.

  And finally, he started to move again. Not toward the Light, but back along the tunnel away from it. So Digger hadn’t double-crossed him, after all, and the damn Light was out of luck. Maybe forever. He sent the Light one last nasty smile—

  And gasped as sensation suddenly flooded back in on him.

  “Digger!” he managed to get out. The room was spinning around, everything blurry. He squeezed his eyes shut, shivering as his whole body felt like it was burning up with a cold fire—

  “Right here, Mr. Cavanaugh,” the familiar voice came. Familiar, but like his eyesight, there was something friggin’ strange about it. “Hang on—the doc’s gonna give you something.”

  He felt the stab of a needle somewhere on his arm. Clenching his teeth together, he waited.

  A minute later the room seemed to settle down. Carefully, he opened his eyes again. Things were still blurry, but the double images were starting to disappear. He could see now that Digger was standing over him, the lined face pretty worried. Turning his head, he searched out the doctor on the other side of the table. “Well, Emerson?” he demanded.

  The doctor shrugged. “Naturally, I can’t be one hundred percent sure—I warned you about that going in, if you’ll remember—”

  “Forget the goddamn friggin’ warnings.” The words felt funny in his mouth, almost like it was the first time he’d ever sworn. “Cut the crap. Is this gonna take, or isn’t it?”

  “I can’t tell for sure, Mr. Cavanaugh,” Emerson repeated. “Try to remember that you’re pushing Soulminder’s known limits—”

  “The boss asked you a question,” Digger cut him off.

  The doctor grimaced theatrically. “If all the side effects are gone within twelve hours,” he said, “and they stay away for at least a week, I’d say it worked. Of course”—he nodded his head back behind him—“even if something goes wrong, you’re not in any danger. Your Mullner trace is still on file, and I’ve set the readouts to alert me if you come back in.”

  Come back in, he said. Die, he meant. If Cavanaugh died and went back into Soulminder … where the Light would be waiting. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” With an effort, he swung his legs over the edge of the table, feeling Digger grab his arm as he did so. His whole body still felt funny, but not as bad as it’d been a minute ago. He pulled himself up into a sitting position … and found himself staring at his hand.

  His hand. A real, flesh-and-blood hand. After being a loose spirit rattling around Soulminder, he couldn’t believe how good it was to be alive again.

  Alive for now. Maybe alive forever.

  The steady drizzle that had ruined most of the weekend had finally gotten a grip on itself and become a full-fledged rainstorm, hammering at the triple-glazed, security-wired windows with drops that sounded like small hailstones. Glowering out at the soaked Washington scenery and the uniformly gray sky beyond it, Adrian Sommer tried to remember the last time he’d seen the sun. “I hate living in Washington,” he growled.

  “You don’t live in Washington,” Jessica Sands corrected absently from her desk across the room. “You work in Washington. You live out in Chevy Chase. There’s a big difference.”

  “To whom?” he retorted.

  “To everyone else in Chevy Chase, I presume.” She shrugged. “You finished looking over the New Orleans progress report?”

  “As finished as I intend to be,” Sommer told her. “Looks like the office will be ready to go just about the time the annual August steam bath rolls in. Naturally, you’re going to want me to go down there for the christening?”

  She looked up at him, a patient look on her face. “Do we have to go through this every time a new Soulminder facility opens up? As long as you’re the one the TV cameras are crazy to focus on, we haven’t got any choice in the matter. Steady profits or not, Soulminder is still dependent on favorable publicity—and I, for one, would hate to have come this far and then lose everything we’ve built.”

  Or everything you’ve built, he corrected her silently. Co-creator of the Soulminder miracle and—on paper, anyway—the director of the entire corporation, Sommer had long since noticed that, once again, more and more of his time was being taken up by public relations froth instead of real policy work.

  Not that his policy opinions had ever much mattered. It was Sands, not him, who had the shining-bright vision of what it was she wanted from Soulminder; Sands, not him, who had proven to have the skill and the drive to bend the corporation in the direction she wanted it to go.

  Sands, not him, who desperately wanted to live forever.

  “You make it sound like the opening of a new Soulminder facility is front-page news these days,” he grumbled.

  “It is to the city involved.” She peered across the room at him. “What are you so surly about today, anyway? Just because Barnswell wants to use us for target practice again?”

  He snorted. “What’s this us, paleface? I’m the one who has to sit at these stupid hearings and act polite.”

  Her face softened a little. “I know, Adrian, and I’m sorry. Just remember that every time he acts like the bigoted idiot he is, he alienates his colleagues just that much more. And with every single one of them on file here … ” She shrugged.

  “They’re starting to take attacks on Soulminder personally,” Sommer said. “Yes, I know. I’m not sure I like that trend, either. Unanimous praise for anything makes me nervous.”

  “I’m sure Barnswell’s crowd will do their best to keep the praises from being sung too loudly,” she said dryly.

  “I’m sure they will.”

  For a moment the room was silent, as Sands went back to whatever she was working on and Sommer skimmed through the comprehensive schedule for the day’s work—not just his own list of activities, but every meeting, test, or upgrade that anyone in Soulminder had planned.

  He was only about halfway through when the intercom buzzed. “Dr. Sommer, the Capitol just called,” Rita reported from the outer office. “The limo will be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you,” Sommer said. An item on the schedule caught his eye; punching keys, he called up the full file. The list of names … “I’ll be waiting at the security entrance,” he added to Rita. Flipping the intercom off, he got to his feet and scooped up his briefcase. “If you need me I’ll be down in the parameter test lab,” he told Sands as he headed for the door.

  “Now?” she called after him. “Adrian—”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t keep the Congressmen waiting,” he called over his shoulder.

  Even after a solid four years in operation, there was still a great deal no one knew about Soulminder.

  Its ultimate range, for one thing: how far a dying person could stray from the computer/trap arrangement that held his Mullner soul-trace on file and still be safely captured. Or what was rather vaguely called the timeline question: how often a person needed to update his Mullner trace to ensure that the trap could successfully recognize and lock onto his soul.

  There were theoretical models that could hint at the answers. Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure was to experiment … and since by necessity such experiments would eventually lead to death, it followed that those being experimented on needed to be expendable.

  The pool was, unfortunately, a large one.

  Six of them were waiting quietly in a row of chairs along the wall just inside the lab complex, their handcuffs
glinting in the bright lights. The one on the end— “Hello, Willie.”

  “Well, hi, Dr. Sommer,” the thin young man said, a touch of surprise in his face and voice. “How you doin’?”

  “I’m fine,” Sommer told him. “What are you doing here?”

  Willie blinked. “I’m helpin’ out, ’course. Like always.”

  “Yes, but—” Sommer broke off as a familiar face came around a corner. “Tom, come over here a minute, will you?”

  “Dr. Sommer,” Dr. Thomas Dumata nodded, looking as surprised to see Sommer as Willie had. “I thought I saw you listed for a stint on Capitol Hill today.”

  “What’s this man doing here?” Sommer demanded, pointing at Willie.

  Dumata glanced at Willie. “He’s part of a mid-range timeline experiment,” he said guardedly.

  “And how many times has he been run through Soulminder?”

  “Ah … I’d have to look that up—”

  “I’ll save you the trouble: the answer is five. He’s died and been transferred back five times. So I’ll ask you again: what’s he doing here?”

  “Dr. Sommer—?”

  “Quiet, Willie. Well?”

  “Dr. Sands gave the timeline studies an exemption from the standard policy,” Dumata said reluctantly. “It seemed to make more sense to keep going with the same individuals than to start new batches all the time and have to fiddle with the intervals we’re using.”

  With an effort, Sommer held onto his temper. “And are you aware that the ACLU is running a major court challenge against these tests at the moment?”

  “They’re all volunteers—”

  “Who signed up for five tests each. Five. Not ten or twenty or thirty.”

  “I understand, Dr. Sommer. But—”

  “But nothing. Come on, Tom, we barely got this protocol through by the skin of our teeth as it was. All we need is for people to find out you’ve got prisoners signing blank checks as to how we use their bodies and souls.”