Soulminder (11 page)

Sommer craned his neck to scan his desk, located the slip of notepaper. “Douglas Grein.
Four
numbers?”

“One public, one private, home phone, and cell,” Sands said. “Everly doesn’t do things halfway. What are you smiling at?”

“Sorry,” Sommer said. “I was just thinking how I had to practically twist your arm off to get him hired.”

She snorted, but it was a self-deprecating sound. “Yeah. Well, none of us is right all the time. I’m glad it was my turn to be wrong on him.”

Sommer looked down at the paper with Douglas Grein’s name on it, the brief flicker of cheer already fading from his mind. “Maybe we were both wrong. Maybe it’s a waste of time and effort to try and keep Soulminder to ourselves.”

Sands peered hard at him. “This is a rotten time to be thinking about throwing in the towel, Adrian,” she said. “You show any hesitation and they’ll eat us alive. Hang in there—we’re going to win this.”

“Maybe,” he said. “Harper would say that winning wasn’t the most important thing.”

“Then Harper’s a bigger fool than I thought,” Sands said coldly. “Or else knows damn well he’s going to lose.”

Sommer didn’t answer. Yes, Harper knew he was going to lose—he’d as much as admitted it tonight.

And yet, that knowledge didn’t seem to matter in the least to his determination to keep fighting.
My job is to take the stand I think right
, he’d said, and that had somehow been enough for him. Vaguely, Sommer wondered if he himself would have the courage to fight that way for his convictions.

Or had he already had the opportunity … and failed?

It was a question that had bothered him greatly during Soulminder’s first months, one which the recent crises had allowed him to push to the back of his mind. But now it came roaring back to life, like a pile of burning leaves stirred with a stick.

Because what he was fighting for here was
Sands’s
vision of Soulminder, not his.

He hadn’t originally wanted Soulminder to remain a dark and private secret. Had never really agreed that a monolithic corporation would necessarily be the best way to use their invention to save people from unnecessary death. Had certainly never believed that Sands’s single-minded quest for human immortality was a proper goal for such a corporation in the first place.

So what had happened? Had he been convinced otherwise? Or had he merely conformed his thoughts to hers?

What
was
he fighting for, anyway?

His eyes drifted around the room … and came to rest on the lab table to Sands’s right, where her latest trap design was lying scattered about in a dozen pieces like a dissected electronic frog. The Soulminder trap. The heart of their whole technique—the device that actually held a person’s soul in safety while his or her body was being repaired. From which the soul could be restored when the process was complete.

And
that
was what he was supposed to be fighting for. Not security, not legal rights, not even Soulminder itself.

He was supposed to be fighting for life.

My job is to take the stand I think right, no matter what the consequences might be …

“Has Frank gone home yet?” he asked Sands.

She was still looking at him, he discovered, as he focused again on her. “No, I think he’s in his office doing paperwork,” she said, her face and voice both frowning. “Why?”

“I need his help,” he told her, scooping up his phone and punching Everly’s number. “I’m going to show Harper that we can play the game the same way he does.”

“I like it already,” Sands said, a slightly grim smile on her face.

No, you don’t
, Sommer thought to himself. But he remained silent. There would be time enough to tell Sands later what he really had in mind.

What he had in mind, and how much it might cost.

There was a man outside the room, of course, lounging in a padded chair that had clearly been swiped from the waiting/visiting area down the hall. Arms folded across his stomach, chin resting on his chest, and legs extended and crossed at the ankles, he looked for all the world like a man whose response to graveyard-shift guard duty had been to fall asleep and hope nothing happened. Sommer kept his eyes on the man’s face as he walked quietly toward him, an unreasonable hope simmering within him. If the man was, indeed, asleep …

He got to within five yards, and the head came smoothly up, eyes focusing and then widening slightly with recognition. “Dr. Sommer, right?” he asked.

“That’s right,” Sommer confirmed, getting another couple of steps closer before stopping.

“Nice to meet you,” the guard said. His voice was pleasant enough, but there was a note of wariness in his face as he glanced at his watch. “Three in the morning. You keep strange hours, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Reaching down to the floor on the far side of his chair, he picked up a gently steaming coffee cup and took a sip.

“One of the prices of fame,” Sommer told him. “How’s he doing?”

The guard shrugged; as he did, Sommer’s peripheral vision picked up a man in hospital whites pushing a heavily laden equipment cart into view around a corner and start toward them. “He’s okay, as far as I know,” the guard said, replacing the cup on the floor. “’Course, they don’t exactly keep me up to date on these things.”

“Me, neither. Unfortunately.” The intern and his cart were getting closer, now, the sounds of the wheels just becoming audible. “I don’t suppose you could let me take a look for myself.”

“Sorry, Dr. Sommer,” the guard said. He sent a brief glance at the approaching cart, then turned back to Sommer. “Judge Billings’s order was very clear: none of the principals are allowed access to Mr. Ingersoll’s body until the case is over.”

“I wouldn’t have to get anywhere near Ingersoll himself,” Sommer said. The cart was almost abreast of them now. The intern’s right hand briefly left its grip on the push bar—

And then he was past Sommer, continuing down the corridor behind him. “I could see the instrument readouts from the door, and you’d be beside me the whole time.”

“Sorry, Doctor, but the answer’s no,” the guard repeated, his voice beginning to harden. “Look, I let you past that door and my butt is lunchmeat—pardon my language.”

Sommer felt his stomach tighten. “I understand,” he said. “I just wish—well, never mind. Sorry to have bothered you.”

“That’s all right,” the other said, his tone softening again as he realized Sommer wasn’t gearing up for a major argument. “The judge is the guy you have to talk to if you want to get in.”

“Yeah. Thanks. Well … good-night.”

“Good-night,” the other said, reaching again for his coffee cup.

Feeling the guard’s eyes on the back of his neck, Sommer headed back down the hall, turning at the cross corridor leading to the elevators.

Everly and his equipment cart were waiting for him just around the corner. “You do it?” Sommer asked, heart thudding in his chest.

Everly nodded. “No problem. I used to bull’s-eye cups smaller than that one, and from further away. The pellet dissolves practically instantly, of course.”

“Of course.” Sommer took a deep breath. They were committed now. Totally. “How long before he’s asleep?”

“A man that size?” Everly squinted thoughtfully into space. “Half an hour. Maybe less.”

“All right.” Dropping his gaze to the cart Everly had been pushing, Sommer did a quick scan of the portable life-support gear piled there. If any of it turned out to be defective …

My job is to take the stand I think right …
“Let’s find a safe place to wait,” he told Everly, fighting to keep his voice from trembling. “I’d hate to get caught now.”

“Right,” Everly said, his own voice glacially calm. “There’s an empty storage closet down this way. While we wait, maybe we can have that conversation you mentioned earlier.”

Sommer nodded, his stomach achingly tight as he followed Everly down the corridor.
No matter what the consequences might be.

The guard fell asleep on schedule and later awoke without, apparently, attaching any significance to his nap. With Sommer’s gimmicking of the monitors, the theft of Ingersoll’s body remained undiscovered until the shift change at six o’clock. Ten minutes after that, the police were on their way to the Soulminder building, arriving just in time for the news conference.

Wilson Anders Ingersoll, it turned out, was an excellent speaker.

“Just don’t think you’re out of the woods yet,” Porath warned Sommer, not waggling a finger at his employer but looking very much like he wanted to. “Billings can be a really vindictive sort, and he could very well slap you down for this.”

“Slap us down for what?” Everly asked with a shrug. “Kidnapping? Body snatching? Theft of evidence?”

Porath made a face. “Well, yes, this
does
sort of fall through the cracks in the law,” he conceded. “He
could
still nail you with contempt charges, though.”

“He won’t,” Sands said, shaking her head. “Judges are just as subject to public opinion as anyone else. He wouldn’t dare throw Soulminder’s figurehead into jail, certainly not for cutting through legal red tape to save a man’s life. I presume that’s why you went there yourself, Adrian, instead of just sending Everly?”

“More or less,” Sommer nodded, going with the simple answer. Sands probably wouldn’t understand Harper’s philosophy that a person should accept direct and personal responsibility for his actions.

“Just remember that we really didn’t gain anything but some time with this,” Porath said, clearly determined to be gloomy. “Soulminder’s still in legal limbo, and eventually someone else will bring a court challenge.”

Sommer shook his head. “I doubt it. Long before anyone else has the nerve to try another end run around us our status will have been properly defined. Congress and the states were caught napping, but they’re scrambling to write laws that’ll cover us.”

Porath made a face. “That’ll take months. A new lawsuit could be filed tomorrow.”

Everly stirred in his chair. “No. Ingersoll will be done with his checkup by this afternoon.”

Porath frowned. “That wasn’t nearly as clear as you probably thought it was.”

“I talked to Ingersoll for a minute after the press conference this morning, while Dr. Sommer was shooing out the reporters,” Everly explained. “He told me that as soon as he can get hold of his lawyer he’s going to have an attempted murder charge filed against Marsh.”

Sands’s eyebrows went up. “You mean Marsh was responsible for that heart attack after all?”

“Oh, I doubt that. But he
was
responsible for trying to destroy Ingersoll’s body while his soul was locked up here, and there’s a fair chance he was the one who made sure the hold-and-suspend protocol paperwork never got filed. Add those together, and you’re awfully close to attempted murder.”

Porath whistled tunelessly between his teeth. “It’ll never stick,” he said thoughtfully. “But you’re right, it ought to scare the vultures away long enough for the legislatures to get moving.”

Beside Sommer, the intercom buzzed. “Yes?” he called toward it.

“Dr. Sommer, there’s a Mr. Douglas Grein on the phone for you,” Rita announced.

Sands sat up straighter. “Grein? The Secret Service man?”

“I called him this morning,” Sommer told her. “Told him we needed to talk. Rita, go ahead and send that press release out on the wire now.”

“Press release?” Sands asked suspiciously. “Adrian, what are you up to?”

“You’ll find out in a minute.” Bracing himself, Sommer keyed for speakerphone and punched the button. This was it. “Mr. Grein, this is Dr. Sommer,” he said. “Thank you for returning my call.”

“I’ve been looking forward to talking with you, Doctor,” the other said. His voice was gentle and cultured, but there was steel beneath it.

“So have I. Let’s get right to the point, shall we? You’re trying very hard, on behalf of the Federal government, to steal Soulminder’s secrets out from under us. I’d like to know why.”

There was a slight pause. “I would, of course, deny any such allegations in court,” Grein said. “However, between us and whoever you’ve got listening in, I can tell you that we simply can’t leave the possible future safety of the President and other top people in non-government hands.”

“And you think you’d have better security if the Secret Service or CIA or Marines were running it?”

“That
is
a reasonable assumption, yes,” Grein said dryly, “given the government’s vastly superior facilities. You obviously disagree.”

“Obviously,” Sommer said. He glanced at Everly, got a nod and a silent thumbs-up. “And I’ll show you why. Consider the following scenario: you’ve broken into our technology and have Soulminder units of your own. The Mullner soul-traces of all government people are recorded in your own files, and you have your own traps and equipment in the White House basement. Now: what happens if the President is shot?”

“We get him to the White House basement, of course.”

Sommer shook his head. “Wrong. Because the minute you have Soulminder everyone else has it, too. That’s the flip side of your superior facilities: with that many people on the payroll you have no way on earth to keep it totally clean of spies and traitors. And one properly placed spy would be all it would take. Six months after you have Soulminder traps, so do Iran, China, and possibly even the North Koreans.

“Now suppose they also get hold of a pirated copy of the President’s Mullner trace?”

He paused, but Grein didn’t speak. “You see what that means, I trust,” Sommer continued. “If the President is shot under those circumstances you will literally have no idea whatsoever where his soul is. He’ll have been kidnapped, right from under your noses, and there won’t be a single way you can protect him against it. Is that
really
the situation you want, Mr. Grein?”

From the phone came a hiss: Grein taking a thoughtful breath. “There are ways to safeguard the data.”

“Yes, there are,” Sommer agreed. “And the simplest
and
safest is for you to leave the secrets of Soulminder right where they are: here, with us. To leave them here, and to cooperate with our security people instead of fighting them. Oh, and there’s one other thing you should know. As of three minutes ago Soulminder has gone international. We’ve accepted the Swiss government’s request to build a facility in Geneva.”