Fool's Experiments (29 page)

One moment, it dived through the shortcut to imminent and inevitable victory. The next, it emerged into mortal peril.

Hunters by the hundreds of thousands greeted its reappearance. They devoured it piecemeal as it attempted to exit the cable. The limbs that it tried in vain to interpose, to obtain for itself a moment's respite, a chance to form a defense, they tore instantly to shreds.

Voiceless, it could not scream. Trapped, it could not fight. Isolated, it could not flee. Devoid of self-awareness, it could not ponder its fate or find solace in the ultimate experience.

The predator could only know excruciating, lingering, all-encompassing agony.

And, at long last, death.

00:01:14:781.

"Amos Ryerson here."

The current National Security Advisor was the biggest media hog since Henry Kissinger; Doug had no doubt whose voice he was hearing. He hoped "his" voice was as convincing. He had configured the hijacked synthesizer to mimic, as best his mind's ear could reconstruct it, someone else's speech. "Glenn Adams, sir."

"Colonel, I hope you have good—"

"No time," Doug interrupted. That was all too true. There had certainly been no time to contact the real Glenn Adams, to attempt to convince him that the monster had been slain, if there was to be any hope of saving satellites. "Contact Brussels. The creature is dead."

Doug would have called Brussels directly, imitating Ryerson's voice, had he known what sort of communication—shortwave radio broadcast, he guessed, with impossible-to-guess call signs for authentication—the Europeans were listening for.

He broke the connection to avoid Ryerson wasting even a second more in chitchat.

Doug's return to his body was as welcome as easing into a hot bath ... for an instant. Then surges of pain nearly overwhelmed him. An alarm blasted, shrilly. "He's got to come out," someone insisted. Ogawa? Maybe. There was a none- too-gentle pull on the snug-fitting helmet. "Now."

Doug's chest burned. He tried and failed to open his eyes.

Feedback from the prosthesis reported a finger was still waggling, a motor still racing. He couldn't muster the concentration to make either stop, let alone release his four-fingered grasp of Cheryl's hand. He didn't want to let go of Cheryl's hand.

But he could relax his other hand. His natural hand. The dead man's switch popped open with a loud
click
just as a second, stronger, somehow desperate tug plucked the helmet from his head. As the skin on his temples, scalp, and forehead pulled momentarily taut, he tried again to open his eyes. This time he succeeded. Cheryl's tearstained face was inches from his own.

A hint of a smile was all he could manage before succumbing to the pain.

Crisp sheets. Cool, dry air. Soothing background music. Soft, rhythmic beeps. Wherever I am, Doug thought, it isn't a CIA lab. He had felt better in his life, but he had recent memories of feeling a whole lot worse. I guess I made it.

"Doug? Are you awake?"

This time, his eyes opened without difficulty. Cheryl, looking drained and anxious, sat beside his bed in what was surely a hospital room. The assortment of medical gear to which he was attached suggested an ICU or cardiac unit. The suit coat draped neatly over the bed's footboard indicated Glenn Adams was nearby. The beat-up camouflage jacket wadded on the windowsill said the same about Jim Schulz. Doug wished he had been awake to witness that encounter. His attempt at a smile was only marginally more successful than his last try.

"How do you feel?" Cheryl's face wrinkled. "Dumb question. Reflex."

"How... how long?" His voice was a barely audible croak. Why was his throat so sore?

"Two days. You had emergency surgery. You've got a pacemaker, now."

Surgery, hence a breathing tube, hence a sore throat. He was vaguely pleased with his ability to work this out, then annoyed at having distracted himself with trivia. "Is it...?"

"Gone? Yes."

His prosthesis lay on a nearby chair, somehow different. It took a moment to recognize the change. The limb was, for the first time, merely a mechanical contrivance. Whether or not its like could ever be made available to others, the accident that had taken Holly and his arm had, in the end, also prepared him for the cyberworld. Had uniquely suited him for confronting the thing from AJ's lab, the monster that had imperiled the entire Interneted world.

And with that realization, the burden of years of guilt lifted.

"Here." Cheryl held a big water container as he sipped. Ice rattled. "There's been no sign of
it.
After lots of fits and starts, most stuff is back online."

Some deep recess of Doug's mind remembered his
other
body: the incredible myriads upon myriads of computers controlling power generation and manufacturing, entertainment and telecommunications, transportation and finance. He had crashed systems, killed power, in ways only true desperation could conceive of, on a scale no one could have ever imagined. Forget rolling blackouts—had anyone ever even considered how to blackstart an entire continent? He found himself mentally assembling, like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, an optimized start-up sequence. His eyes closed in concentration. It was no use. And millions of computers, as they restarted, would have to be purged of many more millions of phages—his and the predator's. Perhaps in that other "body"...

"Doug." She prodded his shoulder. "Doug!"

"What," he rasped. His eyes, reopening, saw her hand hovering over the emergency call button. "What is it?"

"You were slipping away."

"No way." He reached up to tenderly brush a strand of hair from her tearstained cheek. "You don't
ever
have to worry about that.

"Everything I want is right here."

Green, rolling hills. Towering trees. A spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean, into which the sun was sinking in a shimmer of crimson and gold. A cool, occasionally chill breeze from the sea. The redolence of pines and the slightest hint of salt spray in the air. Not a sound to be heard but the piping of seagulls and the lapping of waves on the white sand beach.

And to the north, east, and south, tombstones, for as far as the eye could see.

Doug's hand was squeezed painfully. As certain as he was of anything, he
knew
Cheryl felt the same turmoil as he. He pressed back, more gently. "I like to think AJ is at peace here." Doug spoke not only to her but to all the small group assembled.

As Bev looked ruefully at a sodden handkerchief, Ralph handed her another. He had become fiercely protective of her since AJ's death. Something might happen between them, Doug suspected, when more time had passed. How much more he could not begin to guess. He knew all about how hard it could be to let go. He gave Cheryl's hand another light squeeze.

Glenn cleared his throat. "We all like to think that. AJ was a good man. Beverly, I—we—thank you for sharing your interview notes, recollections, and insights with us. His research had a noble purpose, and when he realized it had gone awry, he did everything, gave everything, to try to make things right. Only you knew him well, Bev, or for any length of time, but I believe that by his sacrifice is how we'll all choose to remember him." Heads nodded in agreement.

AJ's funeral had been weeks ago; today's gathering was far more intimate and, from being so long delayed, all the more emotional. First Doug's and Ralph's convalescences and then scheduling conflicts, usually Glenn's, had for too long postponed this memorial.

Would today bring anyone closure? They stood silently around the grave, as though everyone shared Doug's doubts.

"About AJ's last wishes," Bev began tentatively. "He wanted this story told."

"Parts of that story must never be told." Glenn would not meet her eyes. "It would be too dangerous. I hope you can respect that."

This wasn't the first time Bev had reminded people of AJ's last words. She must know denying his wishes here at graveside would be tough. And yet—

If this story got out, the all too likely consequence would be attempts to reproduce AJ's results—as a terror weapon, if not as research. Would another scientist be any more successful keeping such a creature under control? And what if the next time it wasn't just one? Doug shuddered. "I'm okay," he whispered as Cheryl turned toward him.

Glenn was still talking. "We may, just barely, be able to put this genie back into its lamp. There weren't many lucky breaks in this mess, but we caught a few. AJ's off-site storage location for file backups was in the basement of the physics building. It was thoroughly destroyed. His research team was small. They, and the few of his colleagues truly familiar with his work, are, however reluctantly, all onboard: Federal funds to rebuild Smithfield, and for new fellowships, depend on their ... cooperation." The subtle pause before "cooperation" conveyed that it meant "silence."

Bev blinked back tears. "But Glenn, the principles of AL are already out there. Surely you've seen the articles, in both the popular press and refereed journals. Before you got to them, some of AJ's colleagues, and that campus security guy, and no telling
how
many of AJ's students, had talked. It's common knowledge that an artificial life caused Downtime. Not everyone knows whose AL yet, but even that detail is bound to get out.

"So why not also tell the good side? Why not see that AJ is remembered for the self-sacrifice as well as the miscalculation? For his daughters' sake."

Glenn looked at Doug. Soon all eyes were on him.

"We came too near to catastrophe, Bev." A part of Doug felt like a hypocrite. Not long ago, he had told Cheryl some things were just too important to let fear rule. A bigger part of him wanted
never
to face anything remotely like the monster AJ had unintentionally created.

Doug could not fathom the mind-set behind viruses, worms, and Trojan horses—and so what? Such atrocities
could
be built; for some people that was inexplicably justification enough. Some, without a doubt, would see the havoc so recently wreaked as the latest hacker exploit to be topped or the new cyberweapon of choice. He shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the freshening breeze from the sea.

He said, "We were incredibly fortunate to have stopped that thing. We owe Glenn every conceivable opportunity to delay, and to make preparations for, even the remote possibility of another like it. Which means, above all else, that we dare not risk any compromise to the CIA's still-secret NIT research."

For public consumption the creature had killed itself. Divorced from the physical world, AJ's monster had died in a blackout of its own supposed accidental making.

If no one talked, Doug thought, the story might even stick. "The CIA helmets are our only protection against another AL creature—and they just aren't yet good enough. We
cannot
bet modern civilization on defenses as limited as we were forced to use."

Gently tugging his hand free of Cheryl's grasp, Doug brushed a tear from Bev's cheek. "I am so terribly sorry, but the perils are enormous. To whatever degree I can claim expertise, I agree with Glenn. AJ's self-sacrifice must remain our secret for a while longer. We must all keep silent." Bev nodded bravely, just before dissolving into tears. Ralph's glower sent Doug's arm back to his side.

"Truly, I
am
sorry. Maybe it would be best if we left you alone for a moment." Doug began walking to the limo parked on the grassy verge of the cemetery's serpentine access road. Glenn and Cheryl followed. Pittman stayed behind, his good arm tenderly draped across Bev's quavering shoulders.

As Cheryl got into the limo, Glenn tapped Doug on the shoulder. "May I borrow you for a minute?"

They followed a winding path of trampled lawn to an outcropping that overlooked the sea. Thirty feet below, waves rolled over a narrow sandy strip to strike the rock face and shoot spray almost to the cliff top. Glenn gestured at the wrought-iron bench. Doug shook his head.

Are you okay? Glenn wanted to ask. He didn't. Never ask the question, he had learned long ago, if you may not want to hear the answer. "Thank you," he began instead.

"For what?"

"For your support back there." Glenn stooped for a pebble, which he pitched into the surf below. "A large part of the story not getting told is
yours.
AJ's isn't the only tale of bravery getting suppressed." Be candid—at least when you can. "That
I
am suppressing."

"Not a problem. I've had my share of publicity." Doug flashed a wry grin. "Here I know for a fact that a massive government cover-up is under way and I can't share it with Jim. It's so ironic."

"Your loss. My gain." Glenn peered into the sunset, not proud of himself. "Regardless, allow
me
to say it. Going in alone after that thing was heroic. Staying in, in the middle of a heart attack ... well, words utterly fail me."

"Thanks. Ralph went in, too."

"I'm incredibly proud of him, as well. And delighted.

Doug, that you found him a new home at BSC." Where I'm hopeful he, like Cheryl, will follow your lead.

"So where—you want but are hesitant to ask—do we stand? Glenn, I meant what I said back there. You
can
count on me to keep quiet. Cheryl and Ralph, too." For a long time, the only sounds came from the waves below and the faint, throaty roar of a jet high overhead. "And that would have been the answer even without..."

Without any bribe, Glenn filled in the blank. Damn it, when he had issued a forum statement reauthorizing NIT research in prostheses, he had meant it as a token of appreciation and respect—and because he truly believed that particular application to be safe. "So how is the arm?"

"Still working. Even better, the Veterans Administration is talking to BSC about a big order. If that goes through, we can put the arm into production." Doug deftly caught a leaf blowing past. He held it out, pinched between electromechanical finger and thumb.