Analog SFF, March 2012 (20 page)

"Maybe when this is all over, you'll write a book about it,” Susan offered.

Rachel seemed to consider this. “Maybe I will, at that. It's . . . it's fascinating.” And then, after a moment, almost to herself, it seemed, she added,
"He's
fascinating."

"Okay,” said Susan. “Thank you for your cooperation, Miss Cohen. We're still keeping people here at the hospital for a while, but please give me your cell number, so I can find you easily again if I need you."

Rachel dictated it then left Singh's office. Just as she did so, Susan's earpiece buzzed. “Hudkins to Dawson."

"Go ahead, Darryl,” Susan said.

"We've located nineteen of the twenty people,” said the voice in her ear. “But one seems to have gotten out of the building before you initiated the lockdown."

"Shit,” said Susan. “Who?"

"Bessie Stilwell, a woman who was visiting her son. And
I'm
the one reading her—which is strange, I gotta say. She's visiting from Pascagoula, Mississippi—at least, that's what I recall."

"Do you know who she's linked to?"

"No. And I'm not sure where she's gone; I'm trying to recall it, but it hasn't come to me yet. I just went so see her son, Michael Stilwell, but he's pretty much out of it, I have to say; he had a major heart attack. He's got no idea where she might have gone today."

"If you're linked to her, why can't you just recall it?"

"I asked Singh about that. His guess is that it's because she's elderly—she's eighty-seven, her son said. Bessie has trouble recalling things herself; she's not senile, or anything, just
old.
Singh thinks it may clear up for me; he suspects I might re-index her memories as time goes on, using my younger brain. But at the moment, well, let's say I now know how my grandma feels when she's struggling to recall something. It's frustrating."

"What hotel is she staying at?"

"She isn't. She's staying at her son's place. I've got the address, and will get the DC police to stake it out."

Susan didn't want to become paranoid—and she'd known Darryl for four years now—but it
was
suspicious that he was both claiming
not
to be linked to Jerrison
and
was having trouble corroborating that he was linked to someone else. Still: “Copy,” Susan said. “But find her. Oh, and Rachel Cohen is linked to Orrin Gillett—can you tell Singh to add that to his chart? And I guess I better speak to Gillett now; might as well do this in some kind of order. Can you get him and bring him to 312? I've got him locked up in 424."

"Copy,” said Darryl.

Rachel Cohen was fascinated by Orrin Gillett, the man she was linked to. A lawyer—and a rich one, at that. Certainly, a good start! And he was handsome, too, if his own memories of his driver's license and passport photos were anything to go by. Not that he thought of himself as handsome—but the photos showed a man who
was:
lots of light brown hair, a great face, and beautiful brown eyes behind round rimless glasses. Still, Rachel wanted to see for herself, and—

And another memory of his came to her, one of a black Secret Service agent with a shaved head coming to get him, and—yes, yes—and bring him down here, and—

And the memory must be of only a minute or two ago, because here they came, coming down this corridor, and—

And Orrin Gillett was
hot.
She found herself saying an ebullient “Hi!” to him, like she was greeting an old friend—and, in a way, she supposed she was.

He looked at her, startled, but then smiled a terrific open-mouth smile at her. “Hello,” he said. “Nice day.” She had a strange feeling that his voice didn't sound quite right—which, she suddenly realized, was the same feeling she had when she heard recordings of her own voice; he remembered his voice as he himself heard it, resonating in his sinus cavities. “Do I know you?” he added.

"No,” said Rachel. “But I know you."

His tone was affable but baffled. “I don't understand."

Rachel nodded toward the door of the office Agent Dawson was using. “You will."

Rachel knew she should get back to her desk, but work here had slowed to a crawl because most of the staff was still shell-shocked by the assassination attempt and the destruction of the White House; people were just sitting at their desks staring into space, or softly crying, or endlessly chatting to others, trying to make sense of it all.

Rather than heading down the corridor, Rachel instead took a seat in a little waiting alcove just past the room Agent Dawson was using. If her own experience was anything to judge by, Orrin Gillett would be coming out again in twenty minutes or so.

Whenever Rachel was considering doing business with a new company, she ran a simple test. She put the company name and the word “sucks” into Google. Every giant corporation had its detractors: “Microsoft sucks” yielded 285,000 hits, “FedEx sucks” produced 568,000, and “Disney sucks” served up a whopping two million pages. But for local businesses or obscure web companies, she'd found it a useful barometer.

Likewise, whenever she was interested in dating someone, she'd do a quick search on his name and the word “asshole": “Devan Hooley asshole” had helped her dodge a major bullet!

But now, in this particular case, she had something even better than Google. There was no doubt that Orrin Gillett was attractive. And he seemed like a nice guy: he had a warm, friendly smile, and teeth that either hadn't seen a lot of coffee, cola, or tobacco, or had been whitened, and—

And, yes, whitened. The Zoom! process, to be precise. Cost him six hundred bucks.

But he hadn't been a smoker since high school, he didn't like carbonated beverages, and his coffee intake was pretty average. But he
had
been treated with tetracycline as a kid, and it had left his teeth a pale tan, and he'd been self-conscious about it for years. And so he'd had the problem corrected.

Rachel thought about
my girlfriend,
but no memory came to her. And then—well, he
was
pretty buff, and impeccably dressed to boot!—she thought about
my boyfriend.
But the only memories that came were of her own exes, the most recent of which had left her life—or, at least, her bed—ten months ago.

And speaking of exes—ah.

Melinda.

And Valerie.

And Jennifer.

And Franca.

And Ann-Marie.

And that bitch Naomi.

She thought about them, but—

No, that wouldn't work. She couldn't think about them collectively; she had to pick one, and think about just her. Say, Valerie.

Ah. Blonde. Brown-eyed. Big-breasted. Rachel glanced down at her own chest: well, two out of three ain't bad. And—oh, my! Our Val liked it a little rough, didn't she? But . . .

But Orrin actually
didn't.
He played it up that way, because Val asked him to, but—

Ah, in fact that was one of the reasons they'd broken up.

She tried another one. Jennifer.

Hmmm.
Long straight hair, blue eyes, and . . . a very strong chin—

Oh my God!
It was Jennifer Aniston! Orrin had dated Jennifer Aniston!

But no. That was crazy. Aniston lived in Los Angeles and she dated movie stars and—

Of course. Thinking about Jennifer now, her last name was Sinclair, not Aniston. But Rachel was conjuring up the only long-haired, blue-eyed Jennifer she herself knew, or knew of—and, of course, the character Jennifer Aniston was most famous for playing had also been named Rachel.

Jennifer and Orrin had dated for only a couple of months. And, at least as Orrin remembered it, they had parted on good terms—although he'd not heard from Ms. Sinclair since.

Rachel picked up a magazine—the cover story, like so many magazines of late, was related to the spate of terrorist attacks; the cover photo was of the smoldering remains of the Willis Tower, the building Rachel had always called the Sears Tower until the day it fell. But she didn't put on her glasses, even though she thought her new pair with the mauve frames looked great on her. Instead, she stared at the pages of fuzzy type, concentrating not on them but on Orrin's past.

Prostitutes.

The memories were of streetwalkers seen in bad neighborhoods—but no direct interaction with them. Although those memories did slide into strippers, and he'd seen a bunch of them over the years, mostly while entertaining clients. The best place in DC, in his opinion, was the Stadium Club.

She turned the page; there was an ad for some pharmaceutical or other, and—

Rape.

Nothing.

I know she said she didn't want it, but you could tell . . .

Nothing.

And, finally, just to be sure . . .

I can be a real asshole when it comes to . . .

She took a deep breath, and lifted her gaze now, looking at the featureless pale green wall in front of her.

. . . those damn telephone solicitors who call during dinner.

Rachel smiled, put down the magazine, folded her hands, and waited.

Chapter 16

"Thanks, Darryl,” Susan said to Agent Hudkins, as he deposited Orrin Gillett in the office she was using.

Darryl nodded and left, closing the door behind him. Susan turned to the lawyer. “Mr. Gillett, you were in quite a hurry to leave earlier.” She was still sitting in the roller chair behind the kidney-shaped desk; Gillett had taken the seat opposite her.

"Yes, as I said, I had a meeting to get to.” He looked her in the eye and added, defiantly, “An
important
meeting."

"I do apologize,” Susan said, in a tone that she hoped conveyed that she didn't really; she was still pissed at this clown. “Still, let me ask you a few questions. Can you tell me what you were doing here at the hospital?"

"I was visiting a friend, a partner in my law firm. He was in a car accident yesterday."

"And where were you when the lights went out?"

"In the corridor. I'd just left my friend's room."

"And tell me, Mr. Gillett, have you had any unusual experiences since 11:06 a.m. this morning?"

"Yes,” he said flatly. “I had a Secret Service agent pull a gun on me."

Susan had to admire the man's moxie. She allowed herself a half-smile. “Beside that, I mean."

"No."

"No unusual thoughts?"

Gillett narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean?"

"Just that: any unexpected visions, or memories, or . . . ?"

"That's a very strange question,” Gillett said.

"Yes, it is,” replied Susan. “Do you have a very strange answer?"

Gillett spread his arms. “What would you have me say?"

"Well, President Jerrison is in the building, and—"

"Yes, I know."

Susan was about to let that pass; after all, there were lots of TVs in the hospital, and hundreds of smartphones that could have been used to look at news reports, not to mention doctors and nurses buzzing about what was going on. But something in the way Gillett had said “I know” struck her. “How?” she asked. “How do you know?"

He looked like he was at war with himself, trying to decide how much to share. She asked again: “How exactly do you know?"

Finally, Gillett nodded. “All right, okay. You mentioned visions. Well, I was—it was like I was in the corridor, as the president was rushed into surgery. I was—I had a gun, but I swear to you, Miss Dawson, I had nothing to do with what happened to the president. There were these two people on gurneys, an older man and a younger woman, and there was a nurse—a, um, forgive me, but a stacked nurse—and . . . “

Susan thought for a moment. There'd been a security guard with the two people in the corridor; she'd since learned the two people had been scheduled for a kidney-transplant operation, and she guessed the guard had been summoned in case they got unruly at being bumped to make room for Prospector. She consulted her notes for the security guard's name. “Ivan Tarasov—does that name mean anything to you?"

"Yes,” said Gillett. Then, more enthusiastically, “Yes! I don't know how, but I know all about him. He's been a guard here for four years, and he's got a wife named Sally and a three-year-old daughter named Tanya."

Susan asked him a few more questions, just to be sure he really was linked to Tarasov. When she was done, Gillett said, “So, can I leave the hospital now?"

"No,” said Susan. “I'm sorry, but you're going to have to stay a while longer."

"Look, unless you're going to charge me with something—"

"Mister
Gillett,” Susan said sharply. “I don't have to charge you with
anything.
This is a national-security matter. You're going to do what I say."

Eric Redekop walked along a hallway at LT, wanting nothing more in the world than to go home. He was exhausted, and . . .

And, damn it all, he kept accessing Janis Falconi's memories. He didn't want them. He didn't want them at all. Yes, it was flattering—and surprising!—to know that she found him attractive. But he felt like a stalker, like he was invading her life, like a total fucking
creep.
That they both worked at LT just made matters worse: so many things here triggered him to recall
her
memories. That painting on the corridor wall: he'd never really noticed it before, but she'd stopped and looked at it repeatedly. Of course: she was an artist in her own right, he knew. And that orderly, there, walking toward him, whose name he'd never known before, was Scott Edwards, who had hit on Jan repeatedly.

He didn't need to know that. He didn't need to know any of it. But he knew it
all;
for any question he wondered about the answer instantly came to him. How much she made, when and where she'd lost her virginity, and—Christ—what her menstrual cramps felt like. He hadn't wondered about that—what man would?—but seeing the wall calendar, there, had brought to mind that her period had just ended, and
that
had led to the recollection of the pains.

He tried not to think about anything intrusive, but that was impossible. Telling himself
not
to wonder about her sex life had the same effect
as
wondering about her sex life: it immediately brought memories to mind of her and her husband Tony, and—