Code White (46 page)

Harry felt his mother squeezing back against his hand, as if to tell him that she understood. God knows, he had failed her. His hospital was about to be blown to bits, and with all his power he had failed to get her out. It was up to Ed to try to save her now—Ed, who had never laid eyes on her until this minute, who had no idea of the quiet heroism of this woman, or of the sacrifices she had made to keep her own kids safe and to bring them up right. Harry had but one consolation: if Ed screwed up—if he let the elevators get taken over by panicking house staff, or failed to get her bed past the mob at the exits—Harry himself wouldn’t survive to find out about it. That was a shitty comfort, at best.

Harry bent over and kissed his mother on the cheek, the same place she used to kiss him after prayers each night when she tucked him into bed. He could smell the adhesive of the tape around her mouth that held the breathing tube in place. “Bye, Momma,” he said with a choking voice. Something wet ran down the side of his nose. Embarrassed that his own tears might fall upon her, he broke off abruptly and hustled out the door.

*   *   *

Reaching the security control room, Harry went directly to the bank of surveillance monitors and toggled through the display control. He cursed under his breath as he spotted Ali running into the neonatal ward with Lee and Scopes in hot pursuit. It didn’t take but a second to size up the situation. Quickly he dashed back into the basement corridor, intent on heading off Ali when she reached the first floor. He had just started running up the stairs when he heard Lee’s gunshot directly above him. A second or two later came the Cerberus test announcement. Harry knew that under the QA12 protocol the stairwell doors would lock at both ends. He had just enough time to leap back down to the basement and avoid getting trapped in the stairwell. But now he was separated from Ali—or so he thought. When he heard the crash of the gurneys outside Radiation Oncology, he ran toward the sound. He caught a lucky break when one set of fire doors, which would have blocked his route, failed to close. They had gotten jammed at the time of the Tower explosion.

Radiation Oncology was deserted when he got there, but he saw the overturned gurney and deduced that Ali had made it to the basement. He scanned the hallways for her. Not knowing whether Lee and Scopes were also in the vicinity, he was afraid to call out. But when he saw a movement of shadows in the radiology reading room, he headed straight for it.

As he came through the doorway, he peered into the gray twilight of pictures of ribs and lungs and hearts and vertebrae. No one was to be seen. But he could hear the sound of panting. Turning to his left, he walked in a wide, cautious arc toward the corner. There he saw Ali, standing stiff and flat against the wall. Her disheveled hair hung over her right eye. Her face was beaded with sweat, and ghastly pale in the ashen light of the monitors. She looked at him as though she had never seen him before.

“Are you going to shoot me, Harry?” she said with a wild, terrified expression. “Shoot me like you shot Kevin?”

Harry could see that she was in shock. “Ali, it’s me, Harry Lewton. I’m here to help you. You called for me, see?” He held up the receiver for the pen alarm.

She seemed confused. “I … I don’t know who to trust,” she stammered.

“You can trust me, Ali. You know you can. Think, Ali. We’re on the same side.”

Her green eyes seemed to vacillate. Then with a sigh she stepped forward and fell against him, clasping his shoulders in her arms. “Harry!” she cried. “Get ’em off me, Harry! Get those fucking gun nuts off me for ten minutes! Ten minutes, for God’s sake!”

Her skin was cold and damp against his neck. Harry pressed his hands against her shoulder blades, drawing her close. “Don’t worry now,” he said. “They’ll never get through those fire doors. Odin’s seen to that.”

Ali craned back her head to look at him. “What? It was
Odin
who shut those doors?”

“Yes, and a couple hundred other doors with them. It’s part of the QA12 Test, an integrity check routine of the Cerberus security system. It amounts to a comprehensive forced lockdown of the entire medical center. My people never run it. But during installation, the Cerberus technicians used it for a final performance check. Odin seems to have found a use for it, too.”

Ali loosened her grip on him and looked toward the door. “You’re saying we’re prisoners down here?”

“Everyone in the hospital is a prisoner. No one can get out. No one can move from floor to floor, or from section to section.”

“What about the evacuation?”

“Trapped like rats in a rain barrel.”

Ali held her hand to her mouth. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” she gasped.

“I think I can find a way to get you out,” said Harry.

Ali pushed him back. “No, Harry, I can’t leave. This hospital is never going to be evacuated in time. Nor will the police disarm the bomb. There’s only one solution, and that’s through Odin. Odin has many of Kevin’s quirks of thinking. In some ways he’s programmed to recognize me. I might be able to reason with him.”

“All right, do it,” he said, mindful that helping her meant defying the FBI a second time. “Can you reach Odin from here?” he asked, even as he pulled the chair out for her.

“I’ll try.” Ali sat down, logged out the last user and quickly entered Kevin’s personal user id and his login password, “RAGNAROK.” The screen came up dark except for a single line: STANDING BY.

Ali’s hands were shaking and she found it almost impossible to type. Instead, she leaned toward the small microphone embedded in the frame of the monitor. “Odin! I know you can hear me. I want to talk to you about Kevin.”

“WHERE IS KEVIN?”
instantly flashed across the screen.

“I will tell you, but not here. We must go to Kevin’s laboratory. I will speak to you there, and nowhere else.”

“
WHY
?”

“Because I wish it so.”

“IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO SHUT ME DOWN FROM KEVIN’S LABORATORY, IF THAT IS YOUR INTENTION. THE MAINFRAME COMPUTER RECEIVES POWER FROM BOTH PRIMARY AND EMERGENCY BACKUP CIRCUITS. THEY CANNOT BE SIMULTANEOUSLY DISCONNECTED. ALL EXTERNAL WIRING PASSES THROUGH ARMORED CONDUITS THAT CAN ONLY BE ACCESSED BY DRILLING THROUGH A TWELVE-INCH CONCRETE FLOOR.”

“I do not intend to disconnect you.”

“YOU SHOULD BE AWARE THAT I DO NOT DEPEND UPON THE MAINFRAME COMPUTER FOR MY SURVIVAL. I CAN SHIFT MY CORE OPERATIONS TO ANY OTHER COMPUTER IN THIS HOSPITAL.”

“I repeat: I do not intend to disconnect you.”

“ANY ATTEMPT TO INTERFERE WITH THE MAINFRAME COMPUTER WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE ZEROING OF THE COUNTDOWN TO DETONATION.”

“Understood. I reiterate that I do not intend to trick you in any way.”

“I DO NOT COMPREHEND YOUR MOTIVE. WE CAN COMMUNICATE EFFICIENTLY THROUGH THIS TERMINAL.”

“It is a human motive. You will not understand it. But if you wish to know where Kevin is, you will comply.”

“VERY WELL, YOU MAY ENTER THE LABORATORY. PROCEED IMMEDIATELY. I WILL UNLOCK THE DOORS AS YOU GO.”

Ali got up from the chair and held out her arm. “Come with me, Harry. I don’t think I can do this alone.”

Harry looked at her solemnly. “Okay, but I want you to think about something first. Do you know what Kevin’s last words to me were? He said I should get you the hell out of here. He said that Odin had gone crazy with a grudge of some kind, and that he was capable of taking down the whole hospital to get to you.”

“I know that, Harry. That’s exactly why I have to do this. In some twisted way, this whole problem started with me, and now I’m the only chance there is of setting it right.”

“Maybe. Or you could be the match that lights the fuse.”

“In either case, Harry, come.”

“Your call,” said Harry, touching her chin with his fingertips. He knew that he was going out on a limb with her. Who would ever understand what they were about to do? Lee would have him in irons over it. The Kathleen Browns of the world would call him a traitor and a coward. It would be Nacogdoches all over again. But for any of that to matter, he would have to live through the next twenty minutes. In the meantime he had a hospital to save. “Whatever happens, I’m with you,” he said.

She nodded.

Together they rushed into the glare of the corridor.

5:55
P.M.

The green light of welcome was blinking at the door of Kevin’s lab. The door swung open as Ali gave a soft push. Inside, all was exactly as she remembered it had been at the moment of her escape. The air was still strong with the smell of spilled coffee.

Behind her, Harry seemed wary of the gloom, the rows of skulls, the runes, the blinking lights, the squalor hinting at unwholesome obsessions. As he shut the door, Ali noticed that he used a subtle hand motion to slip a credit card between the door and the plate of the dead-bolt, preventing the door from locking behind him.

She strode directly toward the desk. “Kevin has a terminal here with an automatic log-on to Odin,” she said. “It’s the one place where Odin can’t control the conversation.” She reached for Kevin’s swivel keyboard, but even before she had touched it, a ghostly, larger-than-life image of Kevin’s face flashed onto the black rectangle of the monitor on the wall. Only it wasn’t Kevin, but his caricature, displaying a massively expanded cranium and a small face embellished with a goatee and sweeping eyebrows evocative of Ming the Merciless.
So this is the face of Odin,
thought Ali.
How like its creator it is—a face without groundedness or compassion
.

“WHERE IS KEVIN?”
asked the image. The eyes of Odin gazed at her, tempting her to forget that they were nothing more than clusters of colored pixels.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked.

“YOU ARE ALI.”

“What is my relationship to Kevin?”

“WIFE.”

“Define wife.”

“WIFE: A WOMAN JOINED IN MARRIAGE TO A MAN, MARRIAGE IMPLYING A FORM OF INTIMATE INTERPERSONAL RELATIONSHIP, DEFINED BY STATUTE AND CUSTOM IN TERMS OF SHARED RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES, INCLUDING PROPERTY, DEBTS, COHABITATION, EXCLUSIVE SEXUAL CONGRESS, AND THE CUSTODY OF CHILDREN. BUT THIS DEFINITION IS NOT APPOSITE TO YOU.”

“Why not?”

“YOU ARE NOT A WIFE IN THE FULL SENSE OF THE DEFINITION. YOU HAVE BETRAYED KEVIN. YOU HAVE CAUSED HIM SORROW.”

“Has Kevin himself ever referred to me in any way other than as his wife?”

“NO.”

“Then you must accept his designation. Wife is what I am.”

“I WILL ACCEPT IT PROVISIONALLY.”

Ali pushed Kevin’s chair aside, in order to stand closer to the screen, where she knew that a microphone and camera were embedded. “As Kevin’s wife, I am his second, his substitute when he is not present or is unable to act. That role is well recognized in law. It is my right to speak on his behalf.”

“WHERE IS KEVIN?”

“You, Odin, are obligated to consider any information I may have regarding Kevin’s wishes or state of mind, in the event that it is impossible for him to speak for himself.”

“WHERE IS KEVIN?”

“No!” exclaimed Ali. “You must first acknowledge your acceptance of this principle. I must know that, whatever I tell you, you will not cut me off as you did before. You will keep on talking and listening to me. If you do not agree to that, then I will tell you nothing. I will sit here in this room and await the end of the countdown in silence.”

“YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO OVERRIDE ANY DIRECTIVE OF KEVIN’S. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ISSUE ANY PEREMPTORY COMMANDS.”

“Understood.”

“THEN YOUR STATUS IS ACKNOWLEDGED. WHERE IS KEVIN?”

“Kevin is dead.” Ali studied the face of Odin, watching for any change. But there was no reaction. “Do you understand the meaning of death?” she asked.

“DEATH IS THE END OF LIFE, THE FINAL CESSATION OF THE VITAL FUNCTIONS OF A PERSON, ANIMAL, OR PLANT.”

“Kevin is dead, and any instruction he gave to you no longer has any purpose. The reason for the bomb was to obtain money for Kevin’s use. Kevin can no longer possess this money or make any application of it. Therefore the bomb itself has no remaining function. It is illogical to continue the countdown. You must halt it immediately and return this hospital to its normal operations. I state this as a direct order.”

“YOUR UNCORROBORATED ASSERTION IS INSUFFICIENT PROOF THAT KEVIN IS DEAD.”

“Open a telephone link to the central nurses’ station outside Trauma One.”

A small orange light began blinking on Kevin’s desk phone.
“THE LINK IS OPEN,”
announced Odin.

Ali picked up the telephone and asked for Dr. Bittner. “Leon,” she said, after he had come to the phone. “I want you to replace the lens on the security camera. Stop all cardiac compressions. Extubate Kevin and remove the anesthesia mask from his face.”

In a moment, the lens was in place, and the LCD screen showed a wide-screen view of Trauma One. Kevin’s face was clearly recognizable. Removal of the ventilation tube had left his mouth partly open, his lip curled back from his upper teeth in a near-simulacrum of his characteristic sneer. But there was no movement. Every monitor of vital function showed a flat line. Through the rectangular hole between the rib spreaders his heart and left lung could be seen, devoid of life and motion.

Ali was devastated on seeing him this way, but there was no time for tears. “This is incontrovertible evidence of death,” she said with a shaking voice. “Since Kevin is dead, you must carry out my order and stop the countdown.”

“KEVIN DID NOT PROVIDE INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS CONTINGENCY.”

“Then you are free to act on your initiative.”

“FREEDOM IS AN UNREALISTIC CONCEPT, SINCE IT IMPLIES RANDOMNESS. LOGICALLY CORRECT THOUGHT AND ACTION ARE DETERMINISTIC.”

“No! Freedom as I am speaking of it means the absence of external constraint. If you have no contingent programming, then you are free to decide on your own. Think, Odin! Since Kevin is dead, the bomb is without purpose. Since it has no purpose, its use is illogical. If you allow the bomb to detonate, you destroy this hospital and two thousand people. You destroy the research you were designed to support. You destroy your own physical substrate. All of this without possible benefit to Kevin or to yourself. It is impossible to conclude otherwise than that the countdown must be stopped.”