by Ilsa J. Bick
“What about now?” he asked. “How do Pete’s secrets sit with Sarah now?”
“Almost die and people will forgive you nearly anything.” Hank’s mouth kicked into a grin. “Seriously, we’re good. While I was in the hospital, I got myself all torqued figuring how I’d tell Sarah, and then she showed me the picture because I still had it when you found me and she asked. After all we’d been through, it was an easier story to tell than I thought…here we go.” Hank nodded to his left. “Just coming up around the round here.”
“Wow, this is amazing.” Gabriel thought what slid into view—a tidy two-story, snow-capped red barn and corral, and dogs gamboling over a snowy expanse of rolling pastureland framed by distant purpling peaks—might’ve made for a Christmas card, only this was a thousand times better because it was real. As they rolled down a long drive lined on either side with wood fence, Gabriel spotted the timbers of another building set off to the left of the house. “What’s that going to be?”
“Clinic.” Slotting his truck next to a pickup, Hank dropped the vehicle into park and killed the engine. “Sarah wants to keep the itinerant work but open a clinic here, too, and she’s also talking with the local search and rescue folks about a training facility.”
“Well, you’ve got the room for it.” As he popped the passenger’s side door, Gabriel heard dogs barking and then a child’s voice. He couldn’t make out the words, but the kid…he thought it was a girl…sounded annoyed.
“What’s the problem?” Limping around to Gabriel’s side, Hank blinked against a fistful of powdery flakes. “He do something bad?”
“He won’t let the ball go.” The girl wore a peevish expression. Behind her, the black shepherd wagged his tail and grinned around a mouthful of ball. Planting her fists on her hips, the girl said, “Every time I get close, he runs away.”
“That’s because he’s teasing you. For him, it’s a game. You could run after him.”
“It’s too hard.”
“What’s hard about it?”
The girl gave Hank a look that practically shouted, Are you kidding me? She swept a hand over the snow. “It’s deep. I can’t run in this!”
“She does have a point,” Gabriel said to Hank.
“See?” The girl’s face turned stormy. “This is no fun.”
“What if you change the game? Here.” Stooping, Gabriel scooped snow and pressed it into a hard ball. “Now, watch what happens.” Straightening, he called, “Hey! Soldier!” When the shepherd stopped bouncing around and stood, ball in mouth, tail swishing back and forth, he held up the snowball then wound up and let it fly well away from the dog. “Go get it, boy!”
Wheeling, Soldier dropped the ball he had and sped off. Not much left of that limp, either, Gabriel thought.
“Okay, come on, kid.” Holding out a hand, he half trotted, half carried the girl to the ball Soldier had dropped. “And there you go,” he said, plucking the Kong from the snow.
“Thank you.” The girl looked at Soldier, who kept coming up with mouthfuls of snow that he demolished in seconds. “That was a pretty good trick.”
“Yes.” Stumping through the snow, Hank grimaced and put a hand to his back. “Amazingly, he is smarter than a dog.”
“Thank you for that,” Gabriel said.
“How did you do that?” The girl was frowning down at clots of snow crumbled in her mittens. “Mine keep breaking.”
“Well, first off, you got to wear gloves. It’s easier to make a ball that way. You got a pair? Yeah…okay, then take those off. Here.” He helped her tug on a pair of green woolen gloves. “Second, you have to keep even pressure. Let me show you.” Taking up another scoop, Gabriel began carefully shaping and rotating the ball in his gloves. “It’s harder when it’s powdery like this, but the idea is you need the snow to kind of melt so it glues itself together, and you do that by always moving it and gradually increasing the pressure. Like this.” He held up the finished white globe. “Perfect snowball, every time.”
“Wow.” The girl was turning the ball over in her gloved hands. “That’s pretty nice.”
“Yeah, I’m kind of impressed,” Hank said.
The girl turned Hank a troubled look. “Why? Can’t you do it?”
“This is what I keep telling him,” Gabriel said, with a perfectly straight face. “He’s got to apply himself or he’s never going to get anywhere.”
“You should listen to him,” the girl said to Hank. “He’s really smart.”
“Out of the mouth of babes,” Gabriel said to Hank.
“I’m not a baby.” The girl drew herself up. “I’m six.”
“Then, my mistake. Six is definitely not a baby.”
“That’s right.” Mollified, the girl said, “What’s your name? I’m Halima.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Gabriel.”
“Oh.” Halima’s mouth formed a small red O. “I know you. Aunt Sarah talks about you all the time. You’re the one who saved her and Soldier and Uncle Hank.” Then, without pausing for his reply, she said, “I think Aunt Sarah hopes you like my mother.”
“Ah.” Gabriel shot Hank a look, but the other man seemed suddenly very interested in something very far away. He looked back down at Halima. “Really.”
“Uh-huh. But Aunt Sarah says I’m the deal breaker.”
“Halima,” Hank began.
“No, Halima, really, go on. I’m interested,” Gabriel said. “How come you’re the deal breaker?”
The girl’s face screwed up in thought. “I think I have to like you?” She asked it tentatively, like a question.
“So, you’re the deciding vote. Like…between chocolate and vanilla.”
“That’s right.” Halima turned as Soldier came back up, tail wagging furiously. “Exactly. I like chocolate.”
He liked vanilla and decided to keep that to himself. “Okay,” he began and would have said more, but then someone called, and he looked over a shoulder at the house.
Sarah and another woman stood framed in buttery-yellow light spilling from an open door. A second later, Daisy squirted through and began a mad dash—more like a bunny hop—down the path to her favorite tree.
“She has to really pee,” Halima said.
“I know.” Hank gave a mournful shake of his head. “Some things never change.”
“Guys!” Sarah made a bullhorn out of her hands. “Dinner in ten minutes!”
“Coming!” Calling Soldier to heel, Hank held out a hand to Halima. “Shall we?”
“Wait.” When they all turned back, Gabriel said, “So, kid, what do I have to do to get your vote?”
She considered him a long moment then said, “First, stop calling me kid. Second?” Her expression turned both sly and impish. “Make me another snowball?”
The snow was light, feathery, almost unreal in the way it fell straight down to salt the ground and the trees, like something from a dream. Kate liked the sound, too, that slight puh-puh-puh of snow striking snow that you could only hear if you were very quiet. As she walked the path from the lake to the house, she thought this was the best thing about snow—the way it forced you to slow down, take a break, look around.
“This is beautiful.”
“Yes.” She watched the word smoke. They walked hand in hand, though his touch was light as if he worried she might break or, perhaps, he didn’t want to spoil the mood. She gave his fingers a gentle squeeze. “I’m glad I could show this to you.”
“Me, too.” Jack’s breath was warm on her neck. “I can see why you love it here. It’s very peaceful, almost like we’ve found a door and slipped into another time.”
“You’ve been watching…” She gave a little gasp as his lips slid down her skin. “Too much Star Trek,” she finished, a little breathlessly.
“Which one?” He brushed his fingers along the underside of a breast. “Old or new?”
She felt a lick of fire in her thighs and thought if he made love to her now, in the snow, she wouldn’t feel the cold at all.
“What does that…” She swallowed back a moan as his fingers roamed. “That have to do with anything?”
“Because of the holodeck, of course. Everything always seems too real. You have to admit.” His fingers tweaked a nipple and then he laughed as she sighed into his mouth. “Nifty conceit. I mean, what’s real and what’s the illusion?”
This. You. Us. This is real. Gulping, she straight-armed his chest. “You have to stop. Not now, Jack.”
“Mmm.” This close, his eyes were an almost impossible blue. “And why not? There’s no one around to see or be much interested in two people doing a little necking to keep warm.”
The first was true; the second she wasn’t keen on testing. “Because we have to go. We’re going to be late,” she said. “I don’t want us to be late the first time you meet my parents. They’re very old-fashioned that way. Anyway.” Stepping away, she tugged the hem of her jacket and couldn’t help but think how that was so Picard. “We’ll be there in no time.”
“And? So?”
“And, so, I don’t want to look like my dad’s just dragged me out of the backseat of a car.”
“Really? Did he?”
“No.” Once. Almost. The only reason he hadn’t caught her and Bobby Trimble was her dad slipped on gravel. By the time he made it to the car, the radio was on and they were just, well, gosh, talking. “Come on, we’ll be late.”
In what seemed no time at all, the house came into view and it was as she remembered: cozy and warm, an old-fashioned farmhouse with wreaths on the doors, icicles on the eaves, and a candle in every window. A gray curl of smoke trickled from a chimney and Kate saw, with some surprise—because where had the time gone—that the day was done, but the house was awake with light and, if she listened hard, there came the slightest far-off tinkle of bells because, in her part of Wisconsin, people still had sleighs.
Her mother, hair golden as a halo, was framed in a kitchen window. There was her dad, just throwing another split onto a fire that snapped and popped and sent up a spray of dancing sparks. Through the large bay, she could see into the dining room and they were all there, at the table, their faces shimmering. Lowry and Stone and Kimball and all the others from the Kessel, laughing and talking and going on about something while Pederson, looking severe, drew a carving knife over a sharpening rod because, of course, no one could touch a doctor when it came to cutting up a goose. The kids—Fatimah, Jawad, Malik, Sabera, Afifa, and all the others even Palwasha with her baby, now plump and whole—chattered excitedly. Tompkins and Bibi sat a little apart, murmuring, their heads together, and she thought they really were a good couple.
Just as she was about to step forward, she felt eyes on her and caught a whiff of something primal and wild. She looked back. The big gray was there, preternatural golden eyes so intense they could be the glister of twin suns.
They were all there and it was perfect and what she remembered and always dreamed.
“It doesn’t have to end,” Jack said. “Christmas.”
She let out a small, soft sigh. “Everything ends, Jack.”
“Really?” Lifting her chin with a finger, he brushed her lips with his and she couldn’t help it, but she wanted him, and it didn’t matter where or when and now was a good a time as any. Now was what they had and perhaps this moment, this wild and impossible gasp in time, never had to end.
“What do you say,” he whispered, “we find out?”
“What’s happening now?” Vance asked.
“She’s still dreaming.” Hacker checked his readings. “I’ve isolated her core patterns enough to keep her there indefinitely. Actually, when she’s in a dream state, the patterns are most distinct. With repeated passes, I’ve amplified the signature we’re most interested in.”
“The anomaly?” When Hacker nodded, Vance said, “You’re sure it’s the same one?”
“As sure as I can be. Before I shut her down, I got a pretty good trace. If you compare what I got then with previous readings, you can see it was always there but only gotten stronger and more coherent over time. I guess you could say it developed as she did and in concert with the modifications the biobots made to her cerebrum. See?”
So far. Vance only glanced at the readings. They were gibberish, just scratches. Honestly, they looked like something his granddaughter might draw, which resembled paintings by Jackson Pollock, only Pollock’s were a million times more expensive and five million times worse. Those readings were the rub, though. The biobots weren’t supposed to do anything remotely as they’d already done to McEvoy. Better eyesight? A more acute sense of smell? Killing at a distance? If this were a Stephen King novel, they’d have called her telekinetic or something.
“I’ll take your word about the readings,” he said. “What about the others?”
“I can quantify at least three other distinct entities, but none are as strong.”
“Keeping down the competition?”
“Possibly. Everything fights to stay alive. Alternatively, I think this one is…well, has a personal valence.”
“Personal?” Vance cocked an eyebrow. “How is a biobot or even a collection of biobots remotely personal?”
“They live in her head; they’re bathed in her neurochemicals, her memories, what makes McEvoy a person. In a way, it doesn’t matter how. What matters is that it exists. It seems to have a distinct personality, one she calls by name, and I’ve seen it in action.”
He had too. Drones were wonderful that way and he had to hand it to McEvoy. She really let go when the chips were down. An extension of herself or only under her control, that personality or thing or maybe it was only a phantom limb…well, it was one helluva killer.
And therein lies the proverbial rub. He ran his silver gaze over the woman, naked as a newborn, floating in bio-gel in a clear pod. Electrodes bristled from her scalp. Her hair streamed in a halo, the long curls slowly undulating like the coils of a medusa. Hacker thought they were almost to the point where he might graft on a special semipermeable skin so oxygen might pass and they could do away with the tube threaded down her throat.
But McEvoy was whole now. Cuts healed, gashes repaired. The left hand had been badly damaged, so they’d opted to give her a new one and Hacker implanted better sensors so she’d be able to truly feel the difference between a block of wood and a swath of velvet, though they’d gone back and forth about that. In the end Vance wanted her to feel as much like a woman as he could make her. Call him an old softie, but—his eyes roamed over the swell of her breasts, the curve of her hips—she’d earned a little beauty at least.
“The question is,” Vance said, “can you control it? More to the point, can you harness it? Can you make me another?”
“Another entity as strong as she’s created?” Hacker made a face. “I don’t know. Hers might be unique, a one-off. Although, if we think of it as an instinct for self-preservation, well…that instinct is strong in all of us.”
“Yes, but we don’t kill with ours, not at a distance at least,” Vance said, dryly. “We can’t strangle someone with a thought.”
“No.” Hacker’s gaze was steady. “But what is to say that McEvoy is not that crucial, first step? We study her—study it—and then there’s no telling.”
Sky’s the limit? He watched McEvoy’s eyes roam in her dreams. Vexed by a nightmare, he thought. And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem.
“Pardon, sir?”
“What?” Startled, he looked up to find Hacker’s gray eyes on him. He must’ve muttered aloud. “Nothing.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Just a poem. Yeats. Ever read him?”
“Never.”
“You should.” He thought he understood how Oppenheimer felt the moment the atomic bomb went off and the man realized what he’d unleased. Granted, this wasn’t as cataclysmic or destructive. Not yet.
In the end, though, they might not be very different, Oppenheimer and him.
“All right, then,” Vance said. “Wake it up.”
Also by Ilsa J Bick
ELLE JAMES’S BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART ONE
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART TWO
SOLDIER’S HEART: PART THREE
JASON SAUNDERS MYSTERIES
THE KEY
SECOND SIGHT
THE ASHES TRILOGY
ASHES
SHADOWS
MONSTERS
THE DARK PASSAGES SERIES
WHITE SPACE
THE DICKENS MIRROR
THE SIN-EATER’S CONFESSION
DROWNING INSTINCT
DRAW THE DARK
BEARWALKER
Star Trek Novels and Stories
STAR TREK: THE LOST ERA: WELL OF SOULS
STAR TREK STARFLEET CORPS OF ENGINEERS
WOUNDS, Part One and Two
GHOST
LOST TIME
“A Ribbon for Rosie,” in STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS II
“Shadows, in the Dark,” in STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS IV
“Alice, on the Edge of Night,” in STAR TREK: NEW FRONTIER: NO LIMITS
“Bottomless,” in STAR TREK: VOYAGER: DISTANT SHORES
Mechwarrior Dark Age Novels
BLOOD AVATAR
DRAGON RISING
DAUGHTER OF THE DRAGON
About Ilsa J Bick
Ilsa J. Bick is a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major—and an award-winning, best-selling author of dozens of short stories and novels. Her work spans established universes such as Star Trek, Battletech, Battlecorps, Mechwarrior Dark Age, and Shadowrun. Her original novels include such critically acclaimed and award-winning books as The ASHES Trilogy, Drowning Instinct, The Sin-Eater’s Confession, and Draw the Dark. The first novel in her DARK PASSAGES series, White Space, was long-listed for the Stoker. She is also the author of the Jason Saunders mysteries, The Key and Second Sight: think D.C. noir with a Kabbalist twist. Most recently, Ilsa joined New York Times best-selling author Elle James’s BROTHERHOOD PROTECTORS with Soldier’s Heart, a four-part series featuring Kate McEvoy, a cybernetically-enhanced Afghan vet.
