Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief (3 page)

The entire setup mixed sophisticated with crude. A lube gun lay on the floor, with two rubber gloves on top of it. If Hesketh had to be lubed up like this, how would it ever have managed to move around alien planets? Back when Hess Tech was strutting its stuff, looking for venture capital, someone had probably been in charge of making sure Hesketh got greased before any serious VC demo. Keeping the undercarriage from squeaking and then seizing up while exploring some kind of jungle planet would have been a cost-plus improvement. Bernal knew how these things worked.

The leg pads were covered with mud. The trail had come up the back slope, through the unlocked door, and across the floor to here. Where had Hesketh come from, and why had there been no one here to receive it?

And where was its main processing unit? The bodies— the carapaces, wheels, legs, manipulators—were just the externals. Somewhere in here was the genuinely interesting thing, the intelligent processor that could direct the exploration of another world. That was the actual thing Muriel had been funding.

This carapace looked mostly hollow. It was either just a simple mechanical device, mostly motors and legs, or disassembly had proceeded for quite a while before Bernal had shown up. Was this sorry-looking thing really some kind of intelligent being?

Beyond the maintenance area was the loading dock, with a large garage door. Trash was piled up in the pull-in area: empty paint cans, the large cylinder of what looked like an automatic transmission, a big canister of oil. It didn’t look like the dock got much use, but simply served as an additional storage area.

Just off the loading dock was a small office, with a desk on casters and an equipment cart made of red metal tubes and with large rubber wheels. It was loaded with gear: a couple of PCs, a large LCD screen that showed a scene of some lake in the North Woods, a laser printer, a power supply with glowing indicator lights, a rack of pressurized gas cylinders, a keyboard, and the joystick controller from a game console. One end of the cart was a crane. A shiny cylinder, about as wide as it was long, dangled from a cable at its end, with gas and power lines running into it. A cable ran from the cart to a locked high-amp plug in the wall.

Bernal pushed the cylinder. It was massive. His first poke barely moved it.

He looked at the gear on the cart and put his hand on the joystick. With a hum of a motor, the massive cylinder lowered. The other way, and it went up again.

The thing looked like a superconducting quantum interference device, a SQUID: a device for measuring incredibly small magnetic fields, consisting of two cryogenically cooled superconductors separated by an insulating layer. Electrons snuck through the gap via quantum effects, and their alibis revealed the details of subtle magnetic fields. They were used to read the internal states of computers and processors, among other things. These things had lots of uses in intelligence work, and much of their early development had been during the Cold War.

You didn’t go through the trouble of maintaining a SQUID unless you had a good use for it. The gadget was touchy and the constant cooling expensive. It helped explain the size of the utility bills for Ungaro’s lab. But why would Ungaro need to use quantum interference to analyze the outputs of a device she herself had put together? Why didn’t Hesketh just have a USB port on its side, or something?

And the thing had a huge amount of cooling, with racks of nitrogen tanks. Even as he sat there, a massive compressor hummed up, cooling the nitrogen further. The maze of piping seemed to have access ports on it for more. It looked like enough cooling to run two or three of the big devices, but Bernal saw no sign of any other SQUID cylinders. There was nothing else in the lab that would have required any liquid nitrogen to operate, much less the huge quantities this thing could produce.

A counterweight lowered in the loading dock and the door rumbled up, letting in a flood of morning sunlight.

When Bernal stepped out, a Hummer stood backed into the loading area, its rear hatch open. It was shrinkwrapped with a forest scene. A doe drank from a clear stream while a bald eagle stared nobly off at the whip antenna. The wrap had wrinkled, and was starting to peel.

There was no one in the vehicle, but the double doors to the lab were still swinging. Bernal pushed through.

A large woman in a puffy red parka and jeans leaned over Hesketh’s hanging carcass, peering into the open interior. She shook her head at something.

He waited to see what she would do next, but the swinging door must have made a sound behind him, because she turned and stepped back from him, so the space between them opened up. She looked him up and down quickly before speaking.

“Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was here.”

“Who are you?”

“Charis. Charis Fen.” She had a wide face and a huge tangle of dark hair. Her eyes were pale brown, almost yellow, nearly the same shade as her skin. She had a gift for stillness, and stood and stared at him, feet spread wide. She wore a bulky sweater under the parka.

“What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“You didn’t.”

Charis paused. “Right. I didn’t. Where the hell is Muriel?”

“Muriel?” Bernal was startled. “She send you here?” 

“You got it. You too? Whatever your name is. I guess I didn’t ask that first either.”

“My name is Bernal. I work for Muriel.”

“That girl has employees? Who knew? What’s that like?”

“It’s fine. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Well, if Muriel didn’t inform you, I’m not sure it’s my job to do it.” Charis patted the leg she had been examining. “Were you here when this thing came home?”

“I haven’t been here long at all.” He had to regain control of the situation. “How did you get in here?”

“Key card.”

“Did Madeline Ungaro give it to you?”

“Nah. Muriel. She’s got some 
issues
 with this Ungaro gal, I’m guessing. You know anything about any problems Muriel might be having with her?”

“No.”

“How long you been working for my friend Muriel, anyway?”

“Couple of years. Now what did she want you to—”

Charis stepped up to him and examined his face. “You know, it looks like you got smacked pretty good there.”

Bernal put his hand up to where the doorstop had hit him. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing? A subdural hematoma’s nothing to screw around with.” She pushed her fingers into his skull. She wasn’t taller than him, but she seemed larger in every dimension that mattered.

“Ow!”

She wore a springlike scent. Strong. Lilac didn’t suit her. “I’m no doctor, but it don’t look too bad. More cosmetic. You got lucky.”

Bernal pulled himself away from her. “Does Muriel know you’re in here?”

“Just remember that every superball-headed PI in those old detective books ended up as a drooling vegetable in some Home for Old Flatfoots. A brain’s not a basketball.”

She was evading his questions, but that in itself was a kind of answer.

“You’re here for some reason,” Bernal said. “If you don’t want to tell me what it is, I guess I can’t force you. But I can ask you to leave.”

“Really.” Charis seemed amused. “You have control over Madeline Ungaro’s lab? Does she know that?”

“I represent Madeline Ungaro’s funding agency. We hold the lease. In her absence, I am in control of this space. I was about to seal it up. You’re trespassing. Could you please leave?”

“Funding agency, my ass! Muriel funds this. You’re just her gopher.”

“If you don’t leave, I’ll have to call the police.”

“You call that a solution?” She sounded outraged. “Interpersonal problem starts to get a bit hairy, you decide you don’t need to bother yourself with conflict resolution, you call the cops? We . . . they can’t be solving everything. Not and do their job, which is to guarantee your personal physical safety. Not your emotional wellbeing, for crissakes.”

“You were a cop?” He thought about that for a second. “But you’re not anymore.”

“Don’t you worry about my career path. That’s my misfortune.”

“That’s too bad. For a second there I thought you were going to actually answer a question. Are you going?”

Charis took a long look around at all the rover parts. “I’m going. You have yourself a good time with this stuff.”

“Oh, and one more thing. . .”

“What?”

“I’ll want your key card.”

“You . . .” Charis thought about that one. “Why don’t you recode the entry if you don’t want me coming in?”

“I just want your card. You shouldn’t have one.”

She was back to being amused. “Because you don’t have a clue as to where Madeline Ungaro is, and she doesn’t even know you’re in here. You have no idea of how to rekey the entry. And Muriel hasn’t clued you in. You should bring that up with her at your next performance review. No way to get productivity out of yourl employees, keeping them in the dark like that.” She handed him the card. “Good luck figuring out what the hell is going on here.”

_______

The Hummer’s engine
 roared up. There was a loud clunk as something engaged. It lurched forward a few feet and then died. Charis ran the starter several times, but the vehicle refused to respond any further.

“Damn it!” She got out and stalked around it, looking as if she wanted to kick it. “Bought this thing from Greenpeace. Jesus! Thing’s falling apart. Those whale-chasing nimrods didn’t do even the most basic maintenance, but they sure enough took me for a ride. They’re all about publicity, not mundane crap like changing the oil.”

“It just stopped?” Bernal didn’t believe her.

“Yes! What, you think I crapped out my engine on purpose?”

“I interrupted you, didn’t I? Maybe you want to stick around. But I’m not letting you go back into'Ungaro’s lab.”

“I have no interest in going back in, and I got nothing to accomplish. Muriel and her stupid-ass schemes.... Can’t make up her mind, that girl. ‘She’s good, stay away, she’s bad, get right over here.’ Like I got nothing better to do than save her from her own messes. Like I don’t have me a legitimate mission of my own.”

“What is your mission?”

“Right now, my mission is to get the hell out of here. You think I’m faking it? Tell you what. You get the damn thing started for me. You think you could do that?”

Bernal was about to refuse. Then he realized something; a quick look around the front of her vehicle might tell him something about her, since she wasn’t going to give up anything on her own.

The inside of the Hummer was decorated with decals of cute animals: baby seals, koala bears, even a crocodile with what looked like an ingratiating grin. There were some signs that Charis had tried to scrape them off, but they had resisted her efforts. There were a lot of papers, maps, and magazines piled on the passenger seat. The cup holder held a new-looking stainless steel travel mug with a logo made out of an intersecting S and P. A photograph of a skinny man with glasses standing in front of an open door and gesturing into it with a grin was attached above the gear shift. He looked South Asian.

“Well?” Charis said outside.

He made as much noise with the keys as he could, rattled the gearshift. “No, you’re right, nothing.”

The top map on the passenger seat showed a couple of twisting roads crossed by three parallel lines made up of straight segments that changed direction every time they were interrupted by a row of Xs. Wind directions? The plan for some game? Her big leather purse was on the floor. And there was probably a mess of stuff in the glove compartment.

“Yes.” She was on her phone. “Shepard Road, toward Dana. Thanks.” She put her head in the window. “No luck, right?”

“No.”

“Good thing I paid my Triple-A bill this year.”

Bernal refused to say anything that would make it seem like a normal conversation. He just got out of the car.

“Let me give you a piece of advice, friend.” Charis sat down on the front steps, leaned back, and spread her legs. Her thighs were thick in her jeans. Drying mud flaked off her leather boots. She looked completely relaxed. “I’ve known Muriel Inglis for a while. Smart gal. But not what you’d call trustworthy. Am I right? Oh, you trust her fine, because you need to, she’s your bread and butter, but I’m an independent. So, when she asks me to take a look-see into Madeline Ungaro, and I find Ungaro gone, and you wandering around, I got to wonder what she’s up to. Maybe you shouldn’t trust her quite so much. What did she tell you about Ms. Ungaro, anyway?”

“Like I said, we’re her funding source.”

“Yeah, yeah. Muriel keeps you on a short chain, does she? You look at what she puts in front of your nose, and nowhere else, am I right?”

Bernal felt himself flush. He prided himself on his wide-ranging curiosity, so he felt like defending himself.

“I don’t remember seeing any disbursements to you, though,” he said instead.

“Oh, I’m a volunteer. A noble fighter for lost causes. Working pro bono. Muriel knew she could rely on that. That’s what pisses me off. Taking advantage of my dedication. I’d closed the file, and then—wow, that was quick.”

A tow truck had pulled into the parking lot. It was a big one, used for heavy vehicles, and said it was from IGNACIO’S DEVICES & DESIRES.

The driver’s door opened. She was a small woman, not much over five feet, and skinny into the bargain, but looked taut in her blue coverall. She slipped as she stepped out, and almost fell.

Bernal was close enough to jump forward and steady her.

She sucked in a startled breath, as if he was a statue that had suddenly revealed itself to be alive. Under her shoe-polish-black hair, her small nose, fine mouth, and pale eyes seemed to be notes scribbled to indicate future feature placement rather than features themselves. More prominent features were a scar on her forehead and what seemed like a depression in her skull.

“What.. .” She looked around vaguely.

“Are you okay?” Bernal now noticed the bruises that stood out on her pale skin, one on her cheek, another on the side of her neck. A fresh gash sliced across her jaw, held together with butterfly adhesive bandages intended lor some other type of cut. She looked like she had had a much rougher night than he had. The name PATRICIA was embroidered over her right breast.