No Going Back (32 page)

“Even the scientists working here?” I said.

“Scientists?” they all said.

“Yes,” I said. “Perhaps you haven’t seen them because you don’t serve their rooms.”

“I beg to differ, sir,” said the first. “We are fully integrated into the master controls for the entire building, as well as for all the outbuildings, and we know for certain that our deliveries are available in every room—”

“—except the bathrooms,” the second said.

“—except the bathrooms,” the first said, “in every building on the estate.”

“I was sure,” I said, “that Hanson had mentioned the scientists giving him treatments, helping him look so young.”

“Perhaps,” the third said, “you mean the young woman who was working with Mr. Schmidt.”

My stomach tightened and for a second I couldn’t think of anything except that maybe Jennie was alive, that Schmidt had kept her here, that she was the key to his rejuvenation, that somehow she had been doing for him some variation of what she’d done for me. That I’d finally found her.

I forced myself to focus. I hadn’t seen Jennie in over a hundred and forty years, but from what I remembered, she had been about Passion’s height, give or take. “The short woman,” I said, “not a whole lot more than a meter and a half tall?”

“That certainly sounds like her, sir,” the third said.

“Though she ate more food than any other person in the house,” the second said.

“Particularly after working with Mr. Schmidt,” the first said. “To stay as thin as she was while eating so very much was quite unusual.”

Jennie had always consumed an enormous amount of food, particularly when she was healing people. She said that her healing involved a kind of energy that came from her, and that replenishing it required a great deal of fuel. The mentally challenged sixteen-year-old me had always found it amazing that as small as she was, she could still out-eat me. From what the food transports said, it might indeed be Jennie.

Oh, no.

“You said, ‘was,’” I said, “and ‘ate’ as you talked about her. Is she no longer here?”

“She is not,” the first said. “After the failed attempt to kidnap her, a triumph in which our security systems played a small but key role and after which we provided a great deal of food to the hungry humans involved in preventing the attempt, Mr. Hanson’s humans immediately took her elsewhere.”

So Omani had hired someone else or told Randar to try to get to Schmidt’s secret. Whoever was involved had failed, and now the prisoner had gone.

Or maybe others knew what Schmidt was doing, and they had gone after the source of his apparent reverse aging just as Omani had wanted me to do.

“This was?” I said.

“Three days ago, sir,” the third said.

“Neither the humans nor the cleaning systems have even bothered to clean her room,” the second said, “though of course I returned to the kitchen all that she left on the tray in my conveyance.”

Three days.

After all this time, I’d come to the place where very possibly my sister had been, and I had missed her by three days.

Or had I? The woman in question could have been a scientist of any sort. The ability to eat a great deal of food is hardly a positive identification, particularly when I couldn’t even be sure that Jennie would be alive. I could imagine her being able to heal herself and fix aging as she might have done for me, but I had no idea how her abilities really worked.

None of that mattered right now. If they’d taken away this woman, then she was a key to whatever Schmidt was doing. That meant locating her was also vital to helping save Omani, as I’d hoped to do. If the woman was Jennie, I simply had even more reasons for finding her. Either way, learning more about this woman and ultimately locating her was my next task.

I wouldn’t get anything out of Schmidt’s security systems, nor would Lobo. He said they were as hardened as the best available technology could make them.

I’d have to gather data any way I could. The best starting place was the room where they’d kept her.

“You’d think they’d clean that closest guest house,” I said, “in case new guests wanted it.”

“I believe you mean the farthest guest cottage, sir,” the first food transport said, “the smallest one, where the young woman had been.”

“Of course,” I said. “Thank you for the correction.”

“It is our pleasure, sir,” the first said again. “We are fully equipped to provide much more than simple conveyance. Warming, cooling—”

I tuned them out.

I didn’t care about the main house any more. The party was no longer a problem for me; now, it was a useful distraction.

I had to return to Lobo and figure out how we were going to break into that cottage. If Jennie had been here, I had to know. Regardless of who the woman had been, I needed to search for clues about who she was, what she might have been doing, and where she was now. The cottage was the only lead I had.

CHAPTER 42

Jon Moore

W
hile Zoe and the rest of the crew worked the rehearsal, I stayed inside Lobo. I told him what I’d learned. We studied what we knew about Schmidt’s security for the cottage. We didn’t have a lot of information about it or any of the outbuildings, but we could safely assume they were all alarmed. From what Lobo’s sensors could detect, no one was guarding them, which was good. That meant, though, that if anything tripped a security sensor, it would have to be an intruder, and the security team would come running. I was lucky that the Schmidts, like most people, never bother to harden the communication of the hundreds of small, focused appliances and computing systems in their houses, but their security systems were topnotch. Lobo did not believe he could get into them, certainly not in the time we had available.

Because of the party, the security team might move slowly in the house so as not to alarm the guests and so might take slightly longer than usual to reach the cottage, but the difference would be tiny. I couldn’t search well even a small space in the very short interval between when the alarm went off and when the security people arrived.

I needed to turn off the security systems, but to do that, I’d need access to the main controls and all the appropriate permissions. I couldn’t get those in such a short time, if at all.

Those systems, though, needed power to operate.

“How does the estate manage its power?” I said.

“Complete data is not available,” Lobo said, “but it appears to collect solar power locally at several key points and store it in hardened centers that include backup cells. It also has connections to external power suppliers as another level of backup.”

“Do the outbuildings collect their own power?”

Lobo brought up images he’d collected as we had flown in. No solar collectors were visible. “Based on what I could see and what construction plans I can find, I do not believe so,” Lobo said. “Certainly, the amphitheater does not.”

“How are we getting power here? Broadcast or cable.”

“Via underground cables that run from the estate’s main power centers to the amphitheater.”

“Do you detect any evidence of power broadcasts to the cottages?”

Lobo overlaid the holo of the outbuildings with a series of wave images of various colors. “No. Data, of course, is moving back and forth on various frequencies, but not power.”

“So they’re also receiving power via underground cables.”

“That is the logical conclusion,” Lobo said.

“Given that the three cottages are in a group together, away from the house, it’s most likely that a single main cable brings power close to them, and then smaller cables split from it to each cottage.”

“That’s how most software would design it, but we cannot be sure.”

“Are the power-management systems hardened?” I said.

“At the estate’s power center and in the main house,” Lobo said, “yes—as I would expect given the level of security here.”

“What about the power management centers for the guest cottages? Those buildings appear newer than the estate and certainly not up to its standards in most ways.”

“Checking,” Lobo said.

After a few seconds, he said, “No, those power-management systems are not hardened. They employ standard home security, which is at a level I can attack reasonably quickly.”

“They would have data on their power cable connections, right?”

“Yes,” Lobo said.

“So, we have a plan: You break into the cottage power-management systems and find out where the main underground cable from the house runs. After the show, while most of the security staff is working the party, I slip out and cut that cable. Power goes down to all the cottages. No power, no security systems.”

“At which point the security team comes running to check the cottages.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but maybe not. Once their security and power-management systems verify that all they’re experiencing is a power outage, given how much they have to do with the party and the fact that the cottages are empty, they may well just leave the problem alone until morning. Worst case, they send a guard or two to stand by each cottage. I can handle that.”

“If you do that, at some check-in point they will notice a guard is missing,” Lobo said. “We’ll then have to leave immediately. No time for farewells.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know: without even a chance to say goodbye to Zoe. Look, I lose her no matter what.”

“Not necessarily,” Lobo said. “As I suggested, we could stay with the show for the rest of the tour, maybe longer.”

I shook my head and stood. I would not come this close to where Jennie might have been and not learn all I could. “No. I’m going in.”

“Then there’s one more problem with the plan,” Lobo said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“You have to sever a cable that’s probably one to three meters underground,” Lobo said, “but you don’t have time to dig a big hole.”

“We have acid in our stores,” I said, “and all the tools I’ll need. You find the location of the cable, and I’ll take care of it.” I couldn’t tell him that I could use my nanomachines to create the opening and eat through the cable.

“I’ve been working on it since the moment you asked about the cottage security systems,” Lobo said, “but it will take a while.”

My comm went off. Zoe.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I have to get back to work.”

* * *

The rehearsal was the longest yet of the tour, partly because we loaded in so quickly that we had over ninety minutes of spare time, and partly because Passion was never satisfied with her performance. No matter what people may claim about themselves, the vast majority of them change their behavior and become more nervous than usual when they are in the presence of serious wealth or power. Tonight’s audience had plenty of both.

Zoe noticed Passion’s jitters, of course, so she had to spend part of the rehearsal calming our star and a lot of time after it reassuring her. While Zoe was doing that, I was in Lobo, checking with him and assembling what I’d need to break into the cottage. He had indeed wormed his way into the power-control systems of the three cottages and, using the information he obtained from them, located the main cable running from the house to the cottages.

When I met Zoe backstage to watch the show, she put her arm around my waist. I put mine around her shoulders. The early evening air had turned brisk, so standing that way was both warm and surprisingly comfortable. Not since my time all those years ago with Omani had I simply stood this way with a woman, enjoying each other’s presence while at the same time focused on something else. I tried to imagine many more days like this, and though the thought was initially pleasant, it turned sour as I also had to picture her reaction to me never growing old as she aged her way toward death.

When the announcer ran onto the stage and introduced Passion, the reaction was polite applause, so very different from what we normally experienced. I wondered if the wealthy were actually that less impressed and excited than most people, or if they felt they had to act that way.

The musicians walked to their instruments, their faces already concerned after that reaction from the crowd.

Zoe let go of me and ran to Passion. She hugged the singer and said, “One song. Less than one song. You’ll see. One song, and they’re yours.” She kissed Passion on the cheek. “Good show.”

Passion nodded, stepped back on her right foot as she always did, and ran onto the stage.

More polite applause.

As lights illuminated Passion from behind and above, all the other lights snapped off. She stared at the stage and began to sing. She was opening with the first song from our first show, one I’d learned she rarely sang. After she finished the first line, the musicians joined in. Passion lifted her head, ever so slowly, as if she’d been stuck but now the music was saving her. Eventually, she faced the audience head-on, both on the stage and on displays on both sides of it and on whatever displays the audience members carried. The music grew louder. Her voice rose, too, always staying both above and with the music. She sang once more of a girl who loved a boy, a boy who had to go, a boy who didn’t return, and of the girl who waited and hoped. This time, I could not help but think of Zoe, standing next to me, holding me, trusting me not to go, and having no way to know that soon I would have to leave her.

I hated myself then. I wouldn’t change my mind—I owed it to Jennie to find her, I owed it to Omani to save her if I could, and staying would never work, because Zoe would have to grow old watching me remain always the same—but still I hated myself.

When Passion finished and the last notes of the song faded into the night, the stage went dark, and lights illuminated the crowd. Just like our first audience, this one was on its feet, the rich and the powerful standing, cheering, and staring into the darkness for a glimpse of the star whose music had just shined inside them.

“Told you,” Zoe said softly.

I hugged her closer.

* * *

When the show ended, Zoe turned to me but held onto my hand. “I have to go to this party, Jon.” She looked into my eyes. “You understand, right?”