Killing Time (11 page)

As I've mentioned, Malcolm and
Larissa's father, Stephen Tressalian, was one of the first and most powerful
leaders of the information revolution. A celebrated prodigy as a child, the
elder Tressalian went on in early adulthood to design the hardware and software
for an Internet routing system that became standard international equipment and
the cornerstone of his empire. The achievement brought him fame, wealth, and a
wife, a beautiful film actress possessed of that polished but no less
pedestrian form of mental facility that so often passes for intelligence in
Hollywood; and further dramatic innovations in the field of information
delivery added even more stature to what had already become a household name.

From the beginning Stephen
Tressalian was portrayed in the media as somehow nobler than the average
information baron. He spoke about the social and political advances that
information technology was supposedly bringing to the world often, publicly,
and well—well enough to have legions of admirers among not only international
business and political leaders but rank-and-file Internet users, as well. There
was much tabloid interest, therefore, when the technocrat and his bride
announced the birth of their first child, a boy, in 1991. As a toddler Malcolm
displayed a precocious brilliance that equaled his sire's; yet that ambitious
man was not to be satisfied with a son who could merely match his own
achievements. Unlike most fathers, Stephen Tressalian longed for an heir who
could outstrip him, believing that such would only add luster to his own
legacy. And so he began to cast about for ways to artificially augment
Malcolm's nascent genius.

By sinister coincidence, during
the mid-1990s scientists at various universities and institutes were tampering
with the genetic structure of intelligence in mice and other small animals by
altering the biochemical mechanisms that controlled learning and memory.
Responsible researchers shielded both their work and its as-yet-inconclusive
findings from the general public, reminding the curious of the eternal
biological verity that mice are not men. But rumors about the studies began to
circulate, and before long there was irresponsible speculation about the
possibility of genetically treating human children—whether in the womb or after
birth—to enhance their ability to comprehend and store information.

For the right price, then as
always, scientists could be found who were eager for a chance to experiment,
even if illegally; and thus it was that Malcolm, at the age of only three,
found himself entering a small private hospital in his family's home city of
Seattle. The official explanation, formulated with almost incredible cunning by
Stephen Tressalian and the gene therapist he had selected, was an attack of the
new strain of antibiotic-resistant bacterial encephalitis that had been popping
up in various parts of the world. In well-rehearsed, utterly convincing
statements that prompted widespread public sympathy, Tressalian and his equally
ambitious wife tearfully announced that Malcolm's case was so severe that he
might emerge from his hospital stay with permanent neurological damage: an
actual and distinct possibility, of course, given the experiments that were
about to be performed on his mind.

I still shudder to think what
those weeks must have been like. At first the treatments seemed to go well, and
Malcolm exhibited a radically expanded mental capacity: a disorienting enough
experience for a three-year-old. But then, midway into the course of the
injections, his body seemed to rebel. Primitive functions—breathing, digestion,
balance—became impaired, and there were unexplained bouts of terrible systemic
pain and headache. The gene therapist had his own theory as to why—the human
brain was not possessed of infinite resources, he told Stephen Tressalian, and
with so much neuronal activity going to higher functions, there was the
distinct possibility that the autonomic systems were being starved. But he was
no physician, and Tressalian was too committed to his plan (as well as too
afraid of being found out) to bring in any specialized medical help. Then too,
despite all the terrible side effects, the boy's intellectual powers did continue
to grow at an exponential rate, producing results that eventually satisfied
even his father. After three months Stephen Tressalian called the project off,
telling himself, his wife, and anyone else who knew about the work that it had
been a gift for his son as well for genetic research and the future of
mankind. .

Small matter that when Malcolm
emerged from the hospital—his arms gripping a pair of pathetic little crutches
that had to do the work of his suddenly disobedient legs, and his hair
mysteriously turned almost silver—he was faced by a crowd of reporters whose expressions
of horror he was now entirely wise enough to comprehend. What was important was
that the boy would be brilliant—no,
was
brilliant—and that the next time
Stephen Tressalian engaged in such an experiment he would be armed with enough
data to do a far better job.

For there
would
be a next
time. Soon after Malcolm's release his mother became pregnant again, and this
time it was she who entered the private hospital, as Stephen Tressalian's gene
expert had determined that Malcolm's comparatively advanced stage of physical
development had had something to do with his adverse reaction to the therapy.
The fetus that would become Larissa received a refined course of injections
in
utero,
and the change seemed to do the trick: when she was born her body
exhibited none of her brother's physical disabilities, while the power of her
mind was quickly revealed to be astounding. In addition, her beauty from the
first looked to exceed even her mother's. In every way, Larissa seemed the
living vindication of all the risks her parents had taken.

Of course, there was the strange
matter of that silver hair, with which Larissa too had been born; but Stephen
Tressalian refused to see this as anything other than a coincidence and
emphasized the differences between his two children rather than their
similarities.

"He never even
suspected
the
most important thing that Malcolm and I had in common," Larissa said, as
we lay on my bed together.

Yes, together: for her story had
quickly transformed my uneasiness about her work as an assassin into an emotion
that ran much deeper than the infatuation I'd felt to that point.

"Which was?" I
murmured, touching her silvery locks and looking deep into her ebony eyes.

She looked at the ceiling rather
blithely. "We were both a little mad. At least, I can't think of any other
way to describe it."

It didn't seem an entirely
serious statement. "I'm sure you were," I said in a tone to match
hers. "And your parents never suspected?"

"Oh, Mother did,"
Larissa answered. "The entire time we were poisoning her she kept
screaming to Father that she knew we were killing her and that we were both
insane."

I propped myself up on my elbows
and dropped the bit of her hair I'd been toying with. " 'Poisoning'?"

But Larissa didn't seem to hear
me. "Father never would believe it, though," she went on. "That
is, not until we pushed him out of the airplane. Then—just
then
—I think
he realized that there might have been something to it..."

I sat up on the bed. "How
old were you?" was all I could think to say.

Larissa's face screwed up in a
childlike fashion. "I was eleven when we took care of Mother. The business
with Father happened about a year later."

Utterly at a loss, I found myself
reverting to the role of psychiatrist. "And did they—was
it—premeditated?"

She glanced at me a bit
dubiously. "Gideon,
everything
Malcolm and I do is premeditated.
It's what we were bred for. But if what you're really asking is whether or not
there was provocation, then the answer is yes, there was." She looked at
the ceiling again. "Rather a lot, actually."

I kept watching her, retreating
further into professional objectivity yet somehow angry with myself for the
reaction. "Such as what?" I asked.

She suddenly gave me a small,
genuinely happy smile and pulled me back down against her warm body. "I
like sleeping with you," she said. "I wasn't sure I would."

I returned the smile as best I
could. "A gift for flattery was not, apparently, the primary goal of your
genetic engineering."

"I'm sorry," she
laughed. "It's just that—"

"Larissa," I said,
touching her mouth. "If you don't want to tell me about it, you don't have
to."

She took my hand. "No, I
will," she said simply. "It's really not very complicated." She
turned to the ceiling again. "Father'd bred me to be smarter and prettier
than Mother—so I suppose it shouldn't have been much of a surprise when he decided
that he'd rather have sex with me than with her." I winced in shock, but
Larissa proceeded with a detachment not uncommon to victims of such trauma.
"She thought it was my fault—he'd have sex with me, and then she'd beat me
for it. Malcolm always tried to stop both of them. But he's never had any real
physical strength." Her eyes glistened with profound love and admiration.
"You should have seen him, though—swinging those crutches at them, calling
them every evil name imaginable."

"Which they deserved,"
I said. "You know that, don't you?"

She nodded. "Cognitively, as
they say. Emotionally—it's a bit trickier. So—eventually we decided we'd just
have to get rid of them. Mother first, because she was not only vicious but
completely useless. Father—well, we had to wait, to let him finish building the
satellites."

"You went on enduring
that,"
I said, once again stunned, "because you wanted him to finish the
four-gigabyte
satellite system?"

"Well, I knew how much it
would be worth to Malcolm and me once he was dead," Larissa replied.
"The reinvention of the Internet? Yes, I could endure his touch a few more
times if it meant that my brother and I would get those profits. Then, once the
system was in place and working smoothly, Father was called in on the '07 economic
summit. So we waited until after that. Right after. We went to Washington with
him—even got to meet the president. On the jet back to Seattle it was just the
three of us. He was very pleased with himself—why shouldn't he have been? He
and his friends had just become the most powerful people in the country. He got
drunk. Fell against the emergency hatch and released it during descent. Apparently."
Letting out a brief sigh, Larissa held up one finger. "Fortunately, his
loving children were smart enough to be wearing their seat belts and to keep
their heads while the copilot got things back under control." She shook
her head. "I never will forget the look on his face ..."

As she said all this, the
objective detachment I'd been feeling began, without my quite realizing it, to
deteriorate, overcome by a set of powerful empathetic reactions that were
remnants of my own troubled past. And so, at that crucial moment, I simply put
my hand to her face and said, "I suppose it made the assassinations easier—
having already done, well,
that."

She shrugged. "I suppose it
must have. But more than making it easier, I think it inspired me. It was quite
a feeling, destroying people who so thoroughly deserved it. I got to have
quite a taste for the experience. I remember that when I shot Rajiv
Karamchand—"

"
You
shot him?"
Karamchand, of course, was the Indian president who had authorized the use of
the first atomic weapons in the Kashmir war. Despite the best efforts of many
intelligence agencies, his murder had remained a mystery.

Larissa smiled and nodded.
"And when I did it, I felt just the way that I had watching Father fall
out of that plane. A man who takes responsibility for the lives and well-being
of others and then betrays that trust so completely—I really can't think of
anything quite as vile. Plus"—she turned over onto her stomach, her words
coming faster—"think about this: Why has there always been such a taboo
against assassination? It's ludicrous. A political leader can order people to
their deaths or to kill others, and corporate executives can commit any kind of
crime in the name of trade—yet they're all considered untouchable. Why? Why
should Karamchand have felt any safer when he went to bed at night than one of
his own soldiers or than the Pakistanis he slaughtered? Why should an executive
who profits from slave labor be immune to the terror his workers feel? The odd
assassination is the only way to make people like that start to think a little
more seriously about what they do. As for making the
rest
of the world
think a little harder about whose orders they decide to follow and what they
choose to believe—well, that's the whole point of what we're doing now, isn't
it?"

I weighed the statement.
"Yes, I can see that," I answered slowly. "Though I still don't
get what part
I'm
supposed to play in it all."

Larissa threw her arms around my
neck, again looking very pleased. "Keeping me happy—isn't that
enough?" Seeing the continued look of inquiry in my face, she feigned a
frown. "No? All right—the truth is, Malcolm wanted a psychological
profiler. We made up a list, and your background in history put you at the top
of it. Then"—she moved in to kiss me—"when I saw that picture of you
..."

As she pulled her lips away
again, I asked, "But why a profiler?"

"Our various
opponents," she whispered. "They've been responding in fairly
inscrutable ways. The Americans, for instance, with that ridiculous raid on
Afghanistan. They had suspicions that the Khaldun footage was doctored. We even
gave them hints. But they went ahead anyway. Malcolm wants you to try to
predict things like that. And, of course, perform the odd little job like the
one in the tunnel back there—"