Silhouette (23 page)

Min picked up both of us, since we were still stuck together, and threw us across the room effortlessly. We bounced off the hard floor and flew apart, landing in separate places. I was still conscious, but could move only my head, so I turned it toward them, wiping the floor with my face. I watched as Paul's crumpled form straightened out on the floor, then stood up as if he hadn't been injured at all. He stood next to Min, and smiled as the big cyborg activated a disk bomb and slid it across the floor toward me.

It lodged under my lame side, and I waited for it to blow. I could not will myself to move, but I was able to feel the bomb vibrating on and off, as if it was counting down toward detonation.…

*   *   *

I awoke in total darkness, and it took me a few moments to realize that the holo had ended and the glasses in my jacket were buzzing against my side, where the vibrating bomb had been in my dream. I groped for the glasses and slid them on before they stopped. It was the old man, calling from the top floor.

“Michael, are you there?” he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Oh, good. Paul just told me that you have some questions for me, that you'd like to have a talk.”

“Yes,” I said, trying to gather myself. “Is that all right?”

“Yes, of course. Come on up.”

I turned off the holo player, and the darkness disappeared. I was back in my office, and it was just after four. I felt for the boas, to make sure they were there, and as I touched them I felt the simmering anger inside me flare up again. I wet my face again in the washroom, and left the office, hoping that destiny would postpone my inevitable physical collapse, and any tampering with my brain, until I could taste my sweet revenge.

 

21

I rode a horizontal lift, walked a hallway, submitted to a security scan, and stepped inside the private elevator to the penthouse. The elevator was on the outside of the building, facing north, so I stood facing the night cityscape as I began to ascend. Beyond the lights of the surrounding buildings, I saw the big dark blotch of the Bay, punctuated by the Golden Gate Bridges on the left and Alcatraz Island toward the right.

Despite my preoccupations, I was enjoying the view, because I usually couldn't see anything when I rode up to meet with the Mayor. Those meetings were most often in the late afternoon, when the sun filled the view side with an almost unbearable glare. I always had to turn around and face the door on the inside of the elevator …

Suddenly, I lost all interest in the panorama.

I turned around, like I usually did when the sun was assaulting me, and searched the metal around the closed elevator door for a camera casing. There was one, of course—a small protruding square to the left of the door that was unnoticeable unless someone was looking for it.

I punched the button for the nearest floor, which was the twenty-first, and felt the elevator glide to a stop. I did not open the door or activate it by moving toward it, but stood thinking for a minute or more. Then I turned back around and stared at the city, and into the maw of the Bay, hoping this might grant me some clarity. Finally, I concluded that even if these new ideas invading my head were the result of full-blown delirium, or some kind of neurological manipulation, it still couldn't hurt to check them out—as long as it didn't take too long.

I selected a new floor, and the elevator started to descend. I brought my glasses out and slipped them on, auto-dialing a number that I should have taken out of my queue a long time ago.

I was greeted by a virtual version of my old flame, standing in the lobby of her apartment, with link icons hanging in the air all around her. “Hi, you've reached Tara's site,” she said. “You can try to find me at home, at work,” she gestured to the icons as she spoke, “or you can try my glasses.” I moved the tiny mouse on mine until the glasses' icon was highlighted, then selected it.

Thankfully, she answered, on audio-only. “This is Tara.”

“It's Michael,” I said.

She didn't answer right away, but then: “Two times in two days. I'm a very lucky girl.” I was silent, because I was still formulating a plan to escape the reach of the old man's surveillance. If he had seen me stop the elevator, he definitely would be watching me closely. “What do you need?” she asked.

“I need you,” I answered, making up my mind. Now the silence on the other end was tangible. “Where are you right now?”

“At the office,” she answered.

There is a God,
I thought. She was still doing half her work in the early hours of the morning, so that she could leave early.

“Stay right there,” I said, already moving in her direction. I removed the glasses, thinking that she was my special angel—not because I wanted her so much but because she still loved me. And that made her someone I could trust, at least to a good degree.

The Internal Security floor was almost empty, of course, because of the hour. As I approached Tara's office, I pushed out of my mind a few memories of other times like this, and opened the door. She stood in the center of the room, wide-eyed. I closed the door behind me and approached her, slipping my arms around her and pulling her close. I put my mouth right at her ear, where only one human being could hear what I was saying.

“I'm sorry, Tara,” I whispered, and felt her soften in my arms. I then realized that wasn't the best way to start, because she was probably thinking that I regretted leaving her for Lynn.

“This isn't what it seems,” I continued. “But you must, absolutely
must
, act like it is.” Her body tensed again. “Someone may be watching me. They want to kill me, and I need your help. Can you pretend that you're in love with me for a few minutes?”

I gave her a moment to struggle with her emotions, but held her so that she couldn't pull away.

She finally whispered in my ear, “I don't have to pretend.”

I asked her to access the security tapes from the penthouse elevator, find a time when I was riding it in the late afternoon, and bring me a still shot. I told her I would wait for her here, and as I said all this, I moved my head back and forth periodically between her right and left ears, and swayed slightly to make it look like we were sharing a tender moment. When I was done, she pulled away from me reluctantly.

“I have to check something on the equipment,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye, and stepping to the door. “I'll just be a minute. Wait for me, okay?”

“Forever,” I said, overdoing it.

She fought more tears and left the office. I waited, and in just a few minutes she was back, nothing in her hands.

“I've missed you,” she said as she came close again.

“It hasn't been that long,” I said, putting my arms around her again.

“Oh yes it has,” she answered, and began to position us subtly so that her back was to the one camera. She slipped off her shoes and lowered herself, so that the front of her shirt was now hidden from the other camera by my shoulders. Then, from inside the shirt, she slid a small printed image, which she held with her one hand against the brown skin below her neck. I nuzzled her cheek and looked down at the picture.

It was almost identical to the one that had been taken out of D's head, according to Paul. My silhouette, with a bright glow filling the background. I remembered Paul saying that he knew how to work the surveillance system in the penthouse, and I realized that he could easily have captured that still anytime I had ridden the elevator to meet with the old man.

I managed to gently transfer the image from Tara's hand to a pocket inside my jacket, while still enjoying her embrace. I asked her in a whisper if she was able to turn on the top-floor cameras from here, and she told me no. Then I pulled away slightly, though still grasping her hand.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No, thank
you
,” she answered predictably. I turned away, but she held on to my hand until she had to let go.

I thought of Lynn and left the office.

*   *   *

“Uncle Paul! Uncle Paul!” my little Lynette was saying, on her knees at the window in the backseat of Darien's car. She was excited to see my friend there, at the city house, as he walked in through the open gate in front of the car. D himself thought this was unusual, but nonetheless started to lower the passenger-side window to find out why his boss had come to see him. Paul suddenly blurred into action, but before D could react, he and his passengers were meeting their maker in a deafening eruption of fire, metal, and blood.

The scene was playing differently now in my mind as I rode the elevator back up to the penthouse—but I didn't want to believe it. A new swirl of emotions had obscured the focused anger that had been sustaining me, and now I felt more tired and sick than ever. I was almost sure that I would be dying tonight, and wondered if I was ready. The only thing I was sure about was that I wanted to see Lynn again—even more now that I felt the abandoned hope of innocence clawing its way up through the pain inside me. But something else inside was telling me that I was only kidding myself—creating a virtual reality that was not unlike the analgesic media in which the masses forget their crimes.

The elevator came to a halt, and the security scan ignored my boas, as it usually did, so I drew both of them out as I walked through the little room designed to keep the artificial atmosphere stable.

I passed through the second set of doors and found myself in the big central room of the apartment. Unlike in my dream, there were no mists, only a different feel to the air that was hard to identify or describe. It
was
rather dark, however, and sparsely decorated. The old man had not brought over any of the furnishings from the house he had shared with Mrs. Rabin, presumably because he didn't want such reminders of their life together. Instead, the furniture in his new residence was strictly utilitarian, utterly lacking a woman's touch. It occurred to me that my life would be like this, without Lynn.

“Have you come to me with swords and clubs?” a voice said from the shadows to my right. It was the old man's, no doubt quoting some of the ancient literature he was so fond of.

I moved toward the voice and saw that he was leaning on his cane, in front of the transteel wall, which was darkened so that the lights of the city shone only dimly behind him. Nonetheless, there was enough light behind him to make him appear as a mere shadow, until I stepped closer and saw his face. The big scar stood out more in the half-light, and he seemed to be unarmed.

“Where's Paul?” I asked, stopping about six feet away from him, and holding the boas ready.

“In his quarters,” he said, and gestured across the big room to one of its many doors. I saw that a light was on behind the door, and it seemed likely that someone on the other side of it could hear what we were saying, if he wanted to. I moved to my right, so that I could see the door, but kept the same distance from the old man.

“Why are you pointing your guns at me, Michael?”

“Because I'm about to kill you,” I answered, straining my overtaxed mind to guess at the best approach to this mess.

“Forever why?” asked the old man.

I looked in his eyes.
Windows to the soul,
they say.

“Did you put a chip in my head and make me kill people?”

“What?”

“Did you surgically implant cyberware in my brain to control me?”

“What?”

“Is there an echo in here?” I said, glancing around and then down at the boas. “Answer the question.”

“‘Heavens no' is the answer,” he said. “But the
question
you should be asking is, who wants you to think that. Where did you get the idea?”

Not wanting to mention Paul yet, I told him that my investigation had uncovered a black op called Mind Lift, and moved my index fingers to the insides of the trigger guards for the first time as I studied his response.

“Well, my son wanted to do the mind-control thing,” he said sadly, “when my Legacy Project was first being developed. He called it Mind Lift initially, then changed it to Romans something, in an attempt to make it more palatable to me … because of his mother, I suppose.” He sighed. “But Paul was always misusing the Good Book. So when I found out what it was, I pulled it from him, put the previous research under wraps, and kept it pointed in the right direction.”

“So you're claiming that there's nothing in my head?”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that, Michael. You're a very intelligent man, though perhaps a bit naive. But that's typical for someone who started out military, rather than police, and I think you're being cured of that.” He smiled again, seeming much more relaxed than usual, but then turned serious. “No, really. BASS didn't actually
do
any of that, what you're asking about; I stopped it before it left the idea stage.” Now he was looking at me sympathetically. “Besides, I don't think that kind of thing will ever happen.”

“Why's that?” I asked, then realized that his calm manner had caused me to lower the guns slightly. When I brought my arms back up abruptly, I noticed that his hand tensed on the top of his cane, but didn't think any more of it at that point because he quickly relaxed again, and the smile returned.

“Well, two reasons. First, because the technology may not even be feasible without doing catastrophic damage to the brain. I don't understand the science of it very well, but I know some researchers are skeptical, because for decision and bodily action the parts of the brain work in global coordination to the extent that you would have to place integrated wetware all throughout the skull to control someone's choices. Or at least something that can move throughout, like nanotechnology far more advanced than we have so far.”

He looked at me as if to gauge my understanding, then continued when I didn't say anything.