Cog (4 page)

“Maybe my father’s lawyer would know something about his living will,” Nicholle said. The idea just came to her. “Why didn’t I think of that before?”

“Yeah, but will he tell you anything?” Tyla said. “Confidentiality and all.”

“He’d better tell me something. And take care of this euthanasia business.” The walls of her self-restraint buckled and swayed. Nicholle tapped open a line and asked for Henroi Jebted, face scan enabled. Momentarily, the visage of a man with salt-and-pepper hair in a dark grey suit appeared. He sat at a desk cluttered with e-pads, poring over one in particular. His image sprang out, sharper than reality. Upgraded diodes.

“Yes, what is it?” He didn’t deign to lift his head.

“Henroi, it’s Nicholle Ryder.”

His head jerked up, facial muscles flickered—
surprise?
—then slid into customary placidness. “Nicholle. I was going to cog you. I’m so sorry about your father.”

“Henroi, did you know about his living will? What the hell? Five days?”

“Your father made his own wills, both his living will and his last will and testament. The living will would only be viewed by his attending physicians. I can, however, research precedents regarding the challenge of a living will. Your father did not have a history of mental illness, so we can’t say that he was mentally incapacitated.”

“I don’t care, Henroi. Do what you have to. I don’t want him euthanized.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Do more than see,” Nicholle practically shouted. “And another thing, Chris Kappert asked me to take over the company since Wills skipped town with fifty billion.”

Henroi’s cheeks darkened, as if he was personally embarrassed over Wills’ behavior.

“Yes, Chris told me you would be heading up the company.” He cleared his throat. “Since Wills’ behavior can be viewed as criminal, you will also be in control of the entire Ryder estate. Minus, of course, the Foundation. Your father and brother still own majority shares in the company, but will not be able to exercise any rights without the Board’s permission. If Wills is exonerated, then control will revert back to him. But I’m drawing up the papers now for transfer to you.”

“I see,” Nicholle mumbled.
Only it’s not supposed to be like this.
Her father and her brother were the responsible ones who took care of the family—well, what was left of it. She was the aimless one, the screw-up.

“Fema,” she said.

“Is there, ah, something wrong?”

No time for introspection.

Henroi’s brows bridged, as if recreating Pangaea. “Has someone told you about Perim Nestor?”

“Who?”

Henroi’s forehead slid back from his face, drawing up his eyebrows.

“Ah,” he said. “Well…” He cleared his throat again. “Your father…” He slid her a furtive look. “…recently discovered he had a child out of wedlock thirty-three years ago, Perim Nestor. Your father hired him and put him on a six-month trial period, after which, if he performed satisfactorily, he would be placed in the line of succession. Third, to be exact.”

Henroi’s words bounced in the timeframe between hearing and comprehending, not quite completing the connection.

“Wait wait wait…what? My father had an illegitimate son, and hired him? When was this? And no one told me?”

Rage crept into her voice. The astounding number of the day’s revelations threatened to send her screaming to Sheppard Pratt, begging to be admitted. The sound of Keala choking on a cracker broke through her conversation. Tyla and Keala looked at her, slack-jawed. Nicholle made a rolling gesture she hoped they interpreted as ‘I’ll tell you later.’

“He found out last week, confirmed yesterday. He told me he didn’t want to bother you with it during your Prado exhibit,” Henroi said.

“Well, who is Perim Nestor? Where does he come from? What’s he like? I mean good heavens…a new brother?” She slapped a palm across her forehead.

The magfield chime rang again and the familiar whir of the butlyr followed.

“What now?” Nicholle said. “Hold on, Henroi.” She paused her call and strode to the living room, half expecting a Quatrocellini purse delivery, but then remembered she hadn’t authorized an entry. The butlyr semi-opaqued the magfield to allow for speech.

“Who is it?” Nicholle said. A shadowy figure hovered just beyond the door.

“Talo Spyre. I’m your bodyguard. Sending up authorization now.”

Nicholle’s periphery blinked red, then green as authorization was accepted. She allowed entry, and a tall man stepped through into the small foyer. He sported the brash confidence of a Mars shuttle commander, surveying the room as if ready to plant Old Glory between the cushions of the chintz sofa. Black hair waved back, stark against pale skin and watery blue eyes—a rugged handsomeness accented by a day’s worth of stubble. His nanon suit iridesced subtly, taking environmental readings—from room temperature to shifts in object proximity—feeding data directly to the cortex. She’d seen the like on Tuma’s personal sentry. Whoever this man was, he was top drawer.

He proffered a hand, closer to his body than social convention dictated, as if drawing her into his space. She took the bait. He shined a perfect smile; goosebumps rose on her flesh.

“Talo Spyre, at your service.”

Tyla and Keala emerged from the kitchen, grinning like kids over a broken piñata. Nicholle introduced Talo and they all retreated to the living room. She messaged Henroi and told him she would call him back.

Tyla and Keala squeezed Nicholle between them on the love seat; Talo sat opposite on the chaise lounge.

“So…how long have you been…bodyguarding?” Nicholle said. She’d never had a bodyguard before and found the idea ludicrous. But she didn’t want to upset protocol. She had enough to worry over.

“Ten years,” Talo said. “Mostly for corporate executives.”

“So…what duties will you be performing?”

He sat on the edge of the lounge, leaning forward, as if relaxing in a chair was a luxury rarely afforded. “I will plan routes, search rooms you’ll be in, check the background of people with whom you’ll have contact, search your vehicle, and escort you on your daily activities.”

“Is all this really necessary? I mean, it’s not like we’ve had issues at AmHo where people have threatened lives. And excuse me, Mr. Spyre, I didn’t offer you anything to drink.”

She fought her way from between Tyla and Keala and headed for the kitchen. “Is ginger ale all right?” she called out behind her. “I also have tea, coffee, water, and juice.” She grabbed a glass from the cabinet and stood at an open refrigerator, waiting for a reply. None came.

Then two lason shots.

Goosebumps. Her mind raced, instincts leaching back from street days. She pulled open the dish-towel drawer, reached at the back, and grabbed a Semi. Footsteps. Blue heat crackled past her head and she fell back, prize in hand. She pointed and fired blindly. She took out part of the wall, but nothing else. A sliding sound, as of someone crawling on carpet, and she lunged right and fired.

A scream.
Got him!
He rolled, groaning, but twisted an arm around. His blast took out the Monet print on the wall, water lillies now a blackened hole. Nicholle fired at his back. His arm thudded softly on the carpet. She stood still
for a moment, taking in the scene of a charred body lying on her dining room floor; she slid down the wall, scarcely believing what transpired…like 2D film noir.
Tyla!

“Tyla!”

She ran to the living room and took in the gruesome scene.

Too late.

Blackened heads lolled at odd angles, bodies slumped to the side. Tears welled and streamed. She slid down the wall until she reached the floor and cried.

When the oppression of three dead bodies nearby became too much, she cogged Chris. His face hovered before her, sporting a bored expression that quickly changed to shock once he took in the scene.

“The hell happened to you?” he said.

Seething fury boiled up. “Your bodyguard tried to kill me! He killed Tyla and Keala. What the fuck, Chris!”

Bewildered look this time. “What are you talking about? Are you okay?”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me if I’m okay when you just tried to have me killed!”

“I didn’t try to kill you. The bodyguard was Perim’s choice. I told him I was getting you one, and he said he’d handle it. What happened?”

“What happened?” she repeated, with a helping of sarcasm. But it was as if her mind refused to relive recent events. Perhaps she was in shock and couldn’t remember if she wanted. She closed her eyes. “I got off the phone with Henroi to answer the door. The bodyguard came in, introduced himself, and we sat down in the living room. I asked him about his duties, then I got up to go to the kitchen to get him something to drink. And that’s when…”

Tears streamed again.

“Stay there. Don’t cog anyone. I’ll be right there.”

b

She sat on her bed, wishing she had a pakz when the bell rang. Nicholle ran to the door, checking authorization on the way. Opened the magfield, pulled Chris inside, and opaqued it.

“Oh, my god,” he said. He surveyed the scene, holding a hand to his mouth. The odor of burnt flesh had dissipated somewhat, but still pervaded the room. Nicholle had never shot anyone before; bad odors were the last thing she had expected.

“The hell do we do? Call the cops?” she said. The idea of calling the police on oneself railed against her sensibilities as an ex-drug dealer. But she would do it to keep from being charged with murder.

Chris still stood, running his hand over chin stubble.

“Chris!”

He jerked. “I don’t know, Nicholle,” he said, irritably. “I’ve never had to handle burnt bodies before.”

“You’re acting like this is my fault.”

“Don’t be—Hold on. Cog from Jamie,” Chris said. He tapped open the line. “Yes?…What? Wait, you can’t be serious. Hold on.” He turned to Nicholle. “Turn on the HV.”

“What? You want to watch holovision,
now?
”

“Jamie said Perim just announced that we stole twenty billion from the company,” he said, motioning for the HV. It clicked on. Hovering before them was a company photo of Chris in a navy suit next to one of Nicholle in an orange gown attending the Fire and Ice Ball.

“In other news,” the newscaster’s voice droned, “American Hologram, known as AmHo, has announced that its Vice President, Chris Kappert, and company heiress, Nicholle Ryder, allegedly embezzled twenty billion dollars from the corporation. Arlington County police are investigating…”

Nicholle’s body slacked and she collapsed on the couch. A
lightheaded consciousness encroached, leaving her disoriented and speechless. Her mind reeled and surreality stole over the scene.

“I don’t believe this,” she whispered. “It can’t be happening.”

“Damnit,” Chris said. “First your father collapses, then your brother skips town with company cash, Perim’s bodyguard kills your friends, and now this. What the hell, Nicholle? We’ve got to go back to AmHo and clear our names.”

When she didn’t respond, Chris stalked over, snatched her up by the shoulders, and shook her.

“Nicholle! We have to call Perim and clear this up.”

When she regained some semblance of coherency
, something tightened in the back of her mind—instincts honed from years past.
From years of covering my ass.

“Are you insane?” she said. “This Perim wants us out of the way. If we return, he’ll just have us arrested. We need to go some place where we can find out more about this guy. Who is he? Where’d he come from? What are his weaknesses? In other words, we need to get the hell out of here.”

Chapter 4

Wills twisted on the satin sheets, inhaling the salt air that wafted in with the morning light. The woman next to him shifted to her side, surprising him. He had forgotten she was there. The ebony of the sheets blended with her hair, but contrasted with her skin’s saffron undertone. The swell of her breasts aroused him, even through his groggy consciousness. He reached over, then a call came through, chiming in his periphery with jarring flashes.
Call from Meloi Ghio
.
He swung out of bed and walked out onto the balcony. Closed the glass partition.

His skin tingled with the warmth of Narara Island. A wide expanse of blue ocean lay beyond. He was far away from everything and everyone, and he had wanted to be as far away as possible when the news hit the media.

He answered the cog. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Meloi held up a glass in a mock toast. He was sitting in an armchair next to a Great Dane. Behind him was a large batik print of a war scene outside the Great Wall.

“Hello to you, too,” he said.

“I thought we were past idle chit-chat,” Wills said.

“Common courtesy never goes out of style. Now, as to your question…Chris asked Nicholle to take over. She agreed.”

Wills turned around, as if Meloi were sitting behind him on the balcony. “What? She hated working there.”

“I know. But apparently Chris convinced her. Told me he used the guilt trip about people losing jobs if there’s no family continuity.”

“Shit. I didn’t want her in the picture,” Wills said.

“Too late. The company also sold some commercial paper and furniture and fixtures to an upstream supplier to keep the ratios up.”

“Predictable. Does she know about Perim?”

Meloi shrugged. “I’m assuming she does by now. He told the whole world that she and Chris embezzeled twenty billion. She’s probably on the run now. I’d say he’s got the company presidency in sight.”

“Shit! I knew I shouldn’t have put anything past that bastard.”

“You want me to off him?”

Wills paused, stroking his goatee. “No, that would bring more police scrutiny. She can take care of herself. She’s been on the street before.”

“Yes, me bwana. How go the clinical trials?” Meloi clawed the air with index and middle fingers when he said, “clinical.”

“I’m meeting with Rob and Douglas today for an update. I’ll let you know.”

“All right. Anything else?”

Wills shook his head. “No. Not right now. I’ll cog later. Sayo.”

Meloi faded to the ocean waves breaking on the shore. The balcony door slid open and the woman whose name Wills hadn’t remembered stood in the doorway. The curtains swirled around her bare form.

“I’ve got an eight thirty conference call,” she said in accented English. She raised one eyebrow in a beckoning gesture and approached him. Her hands feathered his muscled torso and a smile caught her lips.

“Bagus sekali,” she said.

He didn’t know much Indonesian, but he knew that was good. Wills prided himself on keeping in shape. His body was something he could control with absolute certainty, and he paid particular attention to it.

“And I’ve got a meeting, so we’d better make the most of the next hour.” Wills ran his hand down her back, savoring her silky skin. He led her back into the bedroom.

b

Holographic data screens filled the middle of the room, with numbers scrolling from the top to the bottom of gridless squares. Bodies lined three of the four walls, each on a readout bed. Data hovered—recipient name, donor name, vitals, brain maps, and some other graphics Wills couldn’t make out.

He crossed his arms and surveyed the lab with a rare sense of wonder. He silently thanked Thia Wayan. Without the information he’d stolen from her node, none of this would have been possible. And to think he’d just been sniffing around, hoping to find an angle on a foreign client. Instead, he’d stumbled on preliminary studies on consciousness transference.

A few white-coat-clad attendants moved among the patients, adjusting data and dosages.

“Good morning, Mr. Ryder,” said a voice behind him.

He twisted around. “Pam. Have you seen Rob and Doug?”

She jerked her head to her left. “They’re in the conference room. There’s pizza, but you’d better hurry.”

“Thanks.”

Wills angled past odd-looking machinery and through several holo body scans to make his way to the conference room. He walked in to find the two men poring over data screens.

“Gentlemen,” Wills said. “How are things?”

They exchanged a glance, as if each were seeking a confirmation of his own personal assessment.

Rob, the taller of the two, with grey hair and inquisitive eyes, spoke first.

“We’re not seeing full personality transference. There’s leakage from the original.”

“In how many test subjects?” Wills said.

“All of them. Although we get better results in younger subjects,” Doug added. “The brain patterning for them is not as fixed as in older ones. And we don’t get much use at all out of the brain-damaged burnouts.”

Wills had arranged to acquire the bodies of AmHo subscribers who had chosen medinite-assisted suicide—those without concerned friends and family. Instead of the medinites causing death, they put the subject in a coma. He’d greased the palms of a few doctors with questionable qualifications to pronounce death, then leave with the body and ship it to Narara.

“It’s not the new Cog 2 server, is it?” Wills said.

“No, the server is fine,” Rob said, shaking his head.

“What if you…try stopping the heart, waiting a few minutes, uploading the patterning, then restarting the heart?” Wills said.

“A sort of reboot?” Rob said, skeptically.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” Wills said. “At this point, I suggest you try everything possible.”

Rob backed away from the table and leaned against the glass partition. “It would be better if we started off with a relatively blank slate. Like an adult clone.”

Doug looked away. Human cloning was illegal in most countries, although there were tales of rogue labs on floating platforms in international waters that had successfully performed human cloning experiments. Some even said they ‘walked among us.’ Others said, ‘Horseshit.’

“Gentlemen, if clones are what you need, then clones are what you’ll get. However, I put the burden on you. You know the rumors. Track them down and get what information you need. My resources are at your disposal. I’m in this for the long haul, but know that neither my time nor my patience is unlimited. So be as quick about it as you can.”

“But…” Doug began, then lowered his voice as if in conspiracy. “If you want this to be commercially viable, this will have to be legal in First World countries.”

Wills admired the man’s business sense. Rare in a scientist, he thought. “You just leave that to me.”

“We could also use some more techrus,” Rob said. “Some good ones.”

“You’re in luck,” Wills said. “I know just where to get some.”

b

Wills slid on his shades after stepping out into the blaze of white sun that reflected off the sand. He walked to the end of the porch and spied a boat in the distance. Watched it trawl across the horizon, waited for the ripples to reach shore. The lab had once been a yacht club for resort-goers. Now it was a holding place for the sick and dying.

He cogged Senator Joan McKay of Maryland. Got her secretary, Mason. She had a high-bridged nose that sloped down to hooked nostrils.

“Mason, is Joan in?”

“Hold on, hon,” she said.

Mason blanked out. The next image was that of the senator. She wore a pale green suit that complemented her olive skin and highlighted hair.

“Wills, long time,” she said. “Sorry to hear about your father. And what’s this about you and your sister absconding with company money?” She leaned back in her chair, intrigue crossing her features.

“It’s all a big misunderstanding.”

“Mmm hm.”

“Everything will be cleaned up next week. Anyway, I have a proposal.” He paused.

“Go on.”

“This is a long-term proposal. I know this will not happen overnight, but I need you to start research on this legislation.”

“Wills, you’re teasing me like a burlesque stripper. Out with it.”

Wills grinned. “There’s the Joan I love and admire. Ready? Human cloning.”

She leaned forward, brows knit, and propped her head on one hand. “Are you insane?”

“I can assure you I am not. But…let me take you to dinner when I get back in town. I have some…interesting news to share.”

“It had better be fuckin’ dynamite,” Joan said.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll be blown away.”

Joan rolled her eyes. “Interface with my schedule and post a date. Ciao.”

Wills tapped out and strolled a bit down the beach. The sun, sand, and waves made for a pleasant view. But he wasn’t the type to stay long on vacation. He had to be in the middle of things, managing projects, checking financials, running stock numbers, manipulating people and things. That’s how he relaxed. Not sitting idly by while the world kept spinning around him. He supposed one day he’d slow down and be content with life. But he figured he wouldn’t be disposed to such an existence for another thirty to forty years.

He had worked for his father for the past decade, learning, watching…waiting. Remembering what had happened all those years ago. And now all Wills had to do was wait five days. Five days until he could exact revenge. And it would be sweet, he promised himself.

As for Perim, Wills had installed a setup for him, and he was waiting to see if he took the bait.