Paradigm (23 page)

Sam had been warming to Rob, but there was something about the dismissive way he spoke about the thetas that really rubbed him the wrong way. He wanted to sock him where he stood, but he managed a smile.

“Yeah,” he said. “Weird.”

“Is that what you want to find out about?” asked Rob. “The Sams?”

“You may have noticed a slight similarity in our names.”

“Well, yeah…but you’re not like them.”

“My parents were HI scientists. They left when I was about five. It was something to do with...there was…” His voice trailed away.

Rob was staring at him intently.

“I just…need to know,” muttered Sam. “Okay?”

Rob nodded.

“Yeah. I guess.”

Sam shivered. The sun was getting lower in the sky and the icy fog was moving back into the bay.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “I’m going to get some rest before tonight.”

He went back inside and up to the bedroom. Mary was waiting with a couple of mugs of the hooch.

“I thought you might like some,” she said quietly.

“No thanks. I need to keep a clear head.”

Sam sat on the edge of the bed. Mary knocked back the contents of one of the mugs and joined him.

“I heard what you said,” she whispered. “About HIR. I don’t think you should go. It’s too dangerous.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, smiling.

Mary shook her head miserably.

“This always happens,” she said. “I meet someone I like and then they’re gone.”

“You’ve only known me for a day,” said Sam, putting his arm around her. “I’ll be fine. I know what I’m doing.”

“No you don’t.”

“No, you’re right, I don’t.”

She looked up at him earnestly.

There was a fleeting moment when Sam knew that he should leave it at that, but her eyes were so sad and she felt so warm against his body and her lips were ever so slightly open. So he kissed her.

Which was nice.

Very nice, in fact.

Right up to the second he opened his eyes and saw Alma standing in the doorway.

She didn’t say anything, of course. She just smiled that slight sideways smile and left Sam holding Mary and wishing he was anywhere else. After a few moments Mary sat back and looked at him, her face a picture of resignation.

“Well, go on, then,” she said.

“What? Go where?”

“Wherever she’s gone. The roof’d be my guess.”

“There’s nothing—”

“Oh, give me a break! Are guys really that dumb?” She peered into his face. “Yeah, I guess you are. No wonder we’re an endangered species.”

Sam looked at her, then stood up.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.

Mary shrugged, drank the second mug of hooch and lay back on the bed.

Sam walked out of the room and into the hall. There was a small ladder leading up to the attic and then presumably out onto the roof. He put a foot on the lowest rung, then stopped.

This wasn’t what he ought to be doing. He ought to be focusing on the job at hand. A job which, truth be told, was probably not going to turn out well. He took his foot off the ladder, turned, and walked straight into Alma.

“I’m not up there,” she said, smiling.

“Jeeze! Will you stop doing that!”

“We need to talk.”

“I know, but I don’t think this is—”

“About breaking into HIR.”

“Oh.”

“What did you think I was going to say?”

“Nothing. Um…are you going to try to talk me out of it?”

“Would it work?”

“No.”

Alma nodded and glanced up and down the hall.

“Let’s go outside,” she said. “Too many ears around here.”

She led the way back downstairs, past the noisy celebrations in the kitchen, and out onto the back porch.

“Okay,” said Sam, closing the back door. “What’s up?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s not necessary. Rob knows where the file room is, we’ll be in and out.”

“Right. I don’t think I made myself clear. I’m coming with you.”

“The more people are involved, the more likely we’ll be caught.”

“If the only two going are you and Rob, you will definitely get caught.” Her expression was almost sympathetic, as if she were talking to a child. “I mean, honestly, Sam, what are you going to do if it all goes pear-shaped?”

“Run.”

“Oh, great. Nice to see you have a plan.”

Look,” said Sam. “I know you can maim and kill just about anything, but my idea is to just go in, read some files and get out.”

“What files?”

Sam hesitated. This was the moment where he’d either tell her or push her away. Revealing the truth hadn’t worked well with Nathan. Was Alma different? He really wanted her to be different.

“When I was there…” he began, then stopped. He wanted to see her eyes. He shifted position so the light from the kitchen fell on her face.

“In the clinic?”

“It wasn’t a clinic. It was…that is…”

Okay
, he thought.
Deep breath. Here goes
.

“There was a corridor that had what Bethany called the ‘Sam rooms.’”

“Sam rooms?”

“I went there. One night. They thought I couldn’t walk. The doctors, that is. Anyway, I went there and there were boys in every room. A couple looked older than me, but most were the same age or younger. They were all completely out of it, sick and drooling and staring.”

He glanced at Alma.

“And they all…they all looked kind of like me.”

“Sam, you were sick, it was probably just your imagination.”

“No. You don’t understand. They had my eyes. All of them. One blue, one green. And…and I could hear them. In my head. They were saying ‘Sam,’ over and over. Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam.”

“You could
hear
them?”

Sam nodded. She sounded surprised, but interested, and there was nothing in her voice that suggested she thought he was mad. Sam took another deep breath and dived in. He told her everything—from his parents leaving San Francisco and raising him in the Wilds right through to opening Bast’s safe, turning the pulse on the Rovers and escaping from Hermes Industries Research. When he was finished, Alma didn’t say anything, she just looked at him, her dark eyes revealing nothing. Sam felt as if the world had stopped turning, like the axis of everything was right there, in the narrow piece of porch that separated them.

“How many people have you told?” she said, finally.

“Just you and Nathan. I didn’t tell him everything, though. Oh, and a bit to Rob, but he already knows about the Sams. That they’re there, I mean.”

“Well, don’t tell anyone else.”

She stepped down off the porch and walked across the yard to the pump. Sam watched, waiting. After a few moments she returned.

“You’re right,” she said. “It sounds like some sort of experiment.”

“Yeah, but why? What was the point of it? And why don’t they have any Mutha access at all?”

“Beats me. But it’ll make our job easier. No Mutha means no cameras. Still…”

“What?”

“Well, you could still go with plan ‘A’ and just go somewhere they’ll never find you.”

“I’m not sure there is such a place. Those guys that jumped us back at the campsite outside Hillford were being guided by someone. Someone who knew exactly where I was. I don’t think it was Bast or HI, but I’m on the radar of too many people now and my only way of figuring out how to get off it is to find out the truth.”

“And you think the truth will be in the Hermes Research files?”

“It’s my best bet. I just assumed they’d be electronic or destroyed, but when I saw what you all snagged at the raid I remembered what my mom and dad told me about scientists.”

“Which was?”

“They record everything. They write things down. They share. No one is an expert on everything. My dad said that scientific discovery wasn’t about some lone brain in a lab, but lots of minds working on different elements of a puzzle.”

“So you think there’ll be a file on you?”

“Or on the Sams. I mean, anything would be an advance wouldn’t it? I don’t know a single thing. And…what if the doctors are right? What if I am dangerous? Maybe they’re right and the best thing to do is…fix me.”

“Okay, firstly, they aren’t doctors. You said it yourself—they’re at least three generations away from any kind of formal education, which would make them more like witch doctors than actual medics. And secondly, carving a chunk of someone’s brain out is not ‘fixing’ them.”

She sounded genuinely pissed off, which was the best outcome Sam could have hoped for.

“So you still want to come?” he asked.

“Damn right, I do, porangi. You need a minder.”

Chapter 22

I
t was about one in the morning
when Sam joined Rob and Alma in front of the house. Alma looked him up and down and shook her head.

“You can get rid of that coat for starters,” she said.

“Why? It’s freezing!”

“Because it’s bulky and conspicuous.”

“Is that your way of saying ‘cool’?”

“It’s my way of saying bulky and conspicuous. Now ditch it.”

“Someone might steal it.”

“I’ll stash it in my bike, okay?”

“They could still—”

“Right,” said Rob. “Like anyone’s going to try to steal from Alma. Give her the coat and let’s get going!”

Sam sighed, took off his coat and shivered as Alma shoved it into one of the saddlebags on her bike.

“Come on,” she said. “The walk should warm you up.”

They set off down the dark, deserted streets, with Sam trailing behind and trying to decide which was colder—the night in the desert ravine or the city by the bay. The smell from the narrow alleys was even worse at night, and the tangle of shadows cast by buildings, junk and abandoned vehicles made the going slow.

Sam was silently vowing never to go anywhere again without his coat, when he suddenly realized that the streets weren’t quite as deserted as they appeared. Something had moved in the shadows. He stopped and peered into the darkness.

“Don’t stop,” said Rob. “That’s what they want.”

“Great,” muttered Sam, wondering what “they” were and deciding it was probably best not to know.

They picked up the pace, and Sam was relieved when they reached the old tenement, and clattered down the stairs to the tunnel entrance.

“Right,” said Alma. “No talking from this point, right?”

“Right,” said Rob.

“Does that mean you’re going to be doing those hand signals again?” asked Sam. “Because I have no idea what they mean.”

Alma rolled her eyes and pushed him into the tunnel.

“How on earth did you survive this long?” she whispered.

“Charm,” said Sam, grinning.

As is usual with return journeys, the shaft seemed shorter this time and it wasn’t long before they emerged into the dark stairwell of Hermes Industries Research. Rob led the way up to the clinic door and opened it with a key that he kept on a string around his neck, then he and Alma walked quickly down the corridor to the elevator. Sam hung back. This was the place where Bethany slept, but there was no sign of her. He felt around with his hands in case he’d missed the small bundle that she became when she curled up in her blanket. He hadn’t. There was nothing but dust and a few scraps of paper.

“Hurry!” hissed Alma.

“Bethany’s not here,” whispered Sam.

“They’ve probably moved her,” said Rob. “Keys!”

Sam glowered at Rob. He couldn’t understand how he could be so blasé about her. Sam had only known her for a few days, but that was all it had taken for him to recognize the gentle vulnerability of the girl and to want to make her safe.

“Sam!” said Alma. “Keys!”

He fished Dr. Robinson’s keys out of his pocket and tried them in the elevator lock until he found the one that opened the doors.

“Could you be any slower?” muttered Rob, stepping inside.

Alma shoved Sam into the elevator and pushed the button for the tenth floor. There was a moment’s hesitation before the old machine thunked to life and started its slow, grinding progression upwards.

“Turn right out of the elevator when we get there,” said Rob. “Then left along the first corridor.”

“I’ll check it’s clear first,” said Alma, unsheathing a wicked-looking knife as the elevator reached its destination and juddered to a halt.

Once she’d given the all-clear, Rob led the way along a wide white corridor, past a huge glass-walled conference room that Sam thought looked like the kind of place where underperforming executives could reasonably expect to find trapdoors opening into shark-infested tanks, then left again past several imposing doors that were presumably the offices of the senior doctors.

“How far is it?” whispered Sam, as they crept past a massive double-doored portico that he was sure must be Matheson’s lair.

“Here,” whispered Rob, pointing at a small, unmarked door.

“Are you sure?” asked Sam. “It looks like a broom closet.”

“Will you two shut up!” hissed Alma. “Open the door, Sam.”

Sam took out the keys again, holding them tightly to try to prevent them rattling. This time he found the correct key quickly and the door swung slowly inwards. They darted inside and closed it softly behind them.

The room was pitch dark and it seemed to take Rob forever to find the light switch, but when he did their mouths dropped open.

It wasn’t a broom closet.

As each of the fluorescent lights flickered and glowed, more and more of the massive warehouse was revealed. The front half of the room was packed with old fashioned metal filing cabinets, but most of it was floor to ceiling shelves crammed with cardboard file boxes and ranks of black binders.

“Oh, crap,” said Sam.

“Jackpot!” crowed Rob.

“I’ll keep a lookout here,” said Alma, sheathing the knife. “You two see what you can find.”

Rob slapped Sam on his back and ran down the nearest aisle. Sam looked around—he needed a more measured approach if he was to stand any chance of finding the information he was looking for.

“There has to be a catalog,” he muttered. “There’s no way they’d store this much stuff without knowing how to retrieve it.”

He examined the area near the door and found a small bookcase blocked by a four drawer lateral file cabinet.

“Help me move this.”

Alma grabbed one side and they heaved the cabinet out, revealing three shelves of large binders. Sam pulled one out at random.

“Okay,” he muttered, scanning the contents. “They’re organized by year, then project.”

“What year were you born?” asked Alma.

“It had to have started before that,” said Sam. “Research usually begins with a hypothesis, then years of experimentation before they get to human subjects.”

He picked a date ten years before he was born and scanned the projects. Nothing. He pulled out another binder. Nothing.

“Let me help,” said Alma, grabbing a binder. “What are you looking for?”

“I’m not sure. Something with the words ‘Sam’ or ‘locule,’       I guess.”

“How d’you spell that?”

“L-O-C-U-L-E.”

Alma nodded and turned to the index as Sam selected another binder. Most of the early projects seemed to have something to do with hyperspatial mechanics, as if they had been searching for a way to make adjustments to Mutha, but the direction seemed to gradually change toward genetics and population.

They were still poring over the catalog when a distant thrumming began to shake the building. Rob emerged from one of the aisles of shelves, holding a stack of files and looking worried.

“What’s that?”

“Chopper,” said Alma. “Sounds like it’s landing on the roof.”

“Here! I found it!” Sam snapped the binder shut and ran down the furthest aisle, scanning the boxes.

It didn’t take long to find the right one and pull it out and onto the floor. He sat down, removed the lid, pulled out the first thick folder…and hesitated. Did he really want to know? What if it turned out that Matheson and the doctors were right?

Sam stared at the folder. Beige, worn and slightly grubby. It had clearly been handled a great deal, the sweat of decades worth of fingers rubbed into its ragged edges. There were notes, hastily scrawled by one hand, then scribbled through and more notes written by another, only for those in their turn to be impatiently crossed out.

He took a deep breath, opened it and saw his father’s name.

It was an email, so they’d still been connected to the plex when it was written. His father’s name was one of about fifteen people who had been cc’d. There were some familiar names: Matheson, Wilson, and Chen, among others. The actual content was difficult to understand, but as he read through more emails, memos, letters and transcripts it slowly became clear what they had been trying to do.

“Have you found anything?” Alma’s voice sounded tense. “I don’t think we’ve got much more time.”

“What is it?” he asked.

“People. In the corridor outside.”

Sam nodded and started flicking through the pages more quickly. What did any of this have to do with him? There began to be reports of human experiments, all of which ended in failure and death. As the body count mounted, Sam became increasingly disgusted. How could his parents have been involved in this? They’d made such a point of teaching him the importance of human life and of empathy toward the less fortunate. It was as if…

And then he saw it.

“Samuel.”

Not a name, but an acronym. What was it with scientists and acronyms?

Series Alpha Molecular Human Encasement Locule.

He turned the pages slowly, his need to know being slowly overwhelmed by his disappointment, revulsion and fear.

“Sam? Sam!” Alma had her hand on his shoulder. How long had she been saying his name?

“What?”

“Are you alright?”

“I’m…yes…I’m fine.”

“We have to go. Bast is here.”

“Bast?”

“I recognized some of her men. They’re in the corridor. We have to get out of here. Take what you need, I’ll find Rob.”

Sam grabbed some of the later documents that he hadn’t had time to read, rolled them up and returned the file box to the shelf.

“There isn’t any other way out,” whispered Rob, running up from the far end of the aisle. “I’ve been right through the place. That door’s the only way in.”

“Maybe we can just lie low until—”

Alma was interrupted by the unmistakable click of a door handle being turned.

“Is this supposed to be unlocked?” said an unfamiliar voice.

“Shit!” whispered Rob.

Sam stood up as Alma looked around, her dark eyes taking in every detail of the place.

“Right,” she said. “Follow me.”

She moved quickly and silently down the aisle toward the back of the room, then climbed up the shelves to the ceiling like a spider moving through its web, before easing a heating grid out of place and swinging up into the vent.

“Impressive, isn’t she?” said Rob.

“Get a move on!” she hissed, leaning out.

Sam shoved the rolled up papers into his shirt and clambered up the shelves after her. It was much more difficult than she’d made it look and by the time he hauled himself into the vent he was gasping for breath.

A few moments later, Rob hoisted himself in and Sam was relieved to see that he hadn’t found it any too easy either. Alma shook her head in disgust at their lack of acrobatic skills and quickly replaced the grate, just as the sound of booted feet echoed through the aisles.

“Anything?” said a gruff voice near the entrance.

“Negative!”

“Yeah, negative down here too!”

“Okay. I guess some dumbass just forgot to lock the door.”

Sam listened as the guards, or whoever they were, stomped out of the room and the door closed.

“Now what?” he whispered.

“We have to find another way out,” said Alma. “There’s too many people around out there.”

Sam and Rob nodded.

“Right,” she whispered. “We’re going to move through the vents as quietly as we can. No talking, no whispering, no breathing. Got it?”

They nodded again, and she turned and began crawling through the metal vent as silent as a shadow. Sam did his best to do the same, but was painfully aware of every creak and groan of the old shaft as he inched his way along.

“Sam.”

“What?” said Sam.

“Quiet!” hissed Alma. “I said no talking!”

For a moment Sam was confused. Was it Rob that had said his name?

“Hey, Sammy, where are you?”

Sam stopped.

It wasn’t Rob. It was inside his head.

“Keep moving!” whispered Alma.

Sam started forward again, but the buzzing was back and with it a headache that grew more intense the further along the vent they went.

“
I know you’re there
,” wheedled the voice.
“I can feel you.”

Sam shut his eyes and tried to concentrate on just keeping going. He tried to think of something else and began silently reciting the only poem he knew by heart:

‘Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe

All mimsy were the borogroves

And the mome-rath outgrabe

Beware the—

“Oh, I know this one!”
crowed the voice.
“‘Beware the Jabberwock, my boy; The jaws that bite—”

Someone tapped him on the shoulder. He opened his eyes. Alma was looking at him and pointing down.

They were over another grate, which was set into the ceiling of an absolutely palatial office. There was a huge oval desk on one side, behind which sat Dr. Matheson, his hands clasped on the blotter in front of him and his posture exuding irritation. Opposite him, reclining in a large leather chair, was Carolyn Bast, and standing next to her a stocky man that Sam didn’t recognize.