Soulminder (22 page)

For a long moment he and Everly stared at each other. It was Everly who finally nodded. “You’ll want a surgical operation, then,” he said. “Something that’ll affect the junta’s use or control of Soulminder and nothing else.”

Sommer nodded grimly. “
Surgical
is exactly the right word, as a matter of fact. Come on—let’s get back inside. I need to find out from Van Proyen if what I’ve got in mind is feasible.”

The last notes of the song ended, and for a moment the echoes reverberated through the cathedral. Sommer took his seat again, feeling his heart pounding in his chest. Archbishop Manzano would be speaking next.

“I trust you realize,” General Diaz murmured at his ear, “that the Archbishop almost certainly won’t be giving one of those fiery and impassioned speeches against the government which the international media so dearly loves. That type is usually reserved for when there are cameras focused on him.”

“I understand,” Sommer said between dry lips. “You’re welcome to leave if you think it’ll be boring.”

He looked over to find Diaz glaring suspiciously at him. “Just what is it you expect to learn here?” he demanded in a harsh whisper. “That the Archbishop is unsatisfied with the progress of our reforms? You know that already.”

Sommer forced himself to meet the other’s gaze. “Perhaps,” he said, allowing his voice to carry just a bit, “I’ll find out what it was he wanted to tell me a few days ago. When he called me at Soulminder and your people substituted an electronic mimic for his voice.”

A few heads turned their way, and Diaz actually winced. “This is neither the time nor the place—”

“Shh!” Sommer cut him off. Archbishop Manzano had risen to speak.

Sommer’s grasp of Spanish was far too limited to allow him to follow what the Archbishop was saying. But from the very beginning it was clear that Diaz had been wrong on both counts. The Archbishop’s homily was as impassioned as any Sommer had seen on the evening news back in Washington, and its target was most definitely the government.

Beside him, Sommer felt Diaz squirm uncomfortably in his seat. “The shoe fit too closely, General?” he murmured, not bothering to turn.

He could almost feel the heat of the other’s glare. “Manzano’s views are biased and distorted,” the general all but spat. “All the truly thinking people in Chile know that.”

Sommer opened his mouth to disagree—

And, without warning, the Archbishop collapsed to the floor.

For a half dozen heartbeats the cathedral was frozen into utter silence. Then someone screamed, and the sound broke everyone from their stunned paralysis. The crowd surged to its feet, a dozen men and women rushing up to the Archbishop’s assistance as the rest milled about in fear and uncertainty.

An uncertainty that was rapidly giving way to anger.

“Come on, Doctor,” Diaz snapped, grabbing Sommer’s arm in an iron grip and all but bodily yanking him out into the aisle and toward the nearest exit. The two soldiers Diaz had brought along were already ahead of them, forcing a path through the crowd, and with his free hand Diaz pulled out a small radio and began speaking rapid-fire Spanish into it. What Sommer could see of his face was an ashen gray.

One final press of the crowd and they were outside, and in the distance Sommer could hear the sound of approaching sirens. “This way,” Diaz said, dragging Sommer toward the waiting limo.

“Wait a minute,” Sommer objected, giving a totally useless tug against the general’s grip. “We can’t just run off and leave the Archbishop.”

“The ambulance is on its way,” Diaz bit out. “The paramedics will handle it.”

“And if he dies?” Sommer demanded.

Diaz threw a razor-edged glare at Sommer. But behind the anger Sommer could see a steadily growing tension. “Then you had better hope,” he said, his voice quietly harsh, “that your Soulminder can restore him to life.”

The ambulance crew had called ahead, and Sommer and Diaz arrived at Soulminder to find the Number One transfer room primed and ready. The general glanced around, strode over to where the head physician was checking the equipment and his instrument tray. “Well, Doctor?” he demanded. His tone, to Sommer, sounded less like a question than a challenge.

From the expression on the doctor’s face it seemed he thought so, too. He gave Diaz a brief nod and then turned to continue his examination of the transfer equipment. “They seem ready to me,” Sommer murmured.

“They had better be,” Diaz said darkly. “Archbishop Manzano died before the paramedics even reached him.”

Sommer felt his stomach tighten. “Did they get the neuropreservatives into him in time?”

Diaz put the question to the doctor, who responded with a shrug and an answer Sommer again didn’t catch. “The paramedics claim they did,” Diaz growled. “He says we won’t know until the body is brought in. If you’ll excuse me?” Without waiting for a reply, he moved away, circling the transfer table to make his own inspection of the setup. Sommer drifted back toward the door.

He was standing right next to it when there was a flurry of activity out in the corridor and Manzano’s body was wheeled in.

Followed immediately by a dozen reporters and cameras. Diaz shouted something across the room and soldiers leaped in from the corridor, cutting through the crowd and forming a human barricade between the media and the transfer table. Diaz shouted something else and the soldiers began pushing the reporters back toward the door.

In the noise and confusion, no one noticed Sommer slip out.

Threading the Core’s security gauntlet took three minutes. By the time Sommer dropped into the chair beside Van Proyen, it was clear from the TV monitor that they were almost ready to begin. “Status?” Sommer asked, giving the duplicate readouts a quick scan.

“All the preliminary stuff’s out of the way,” Van Proyen told him, his voice tight. “They’ve got the glucose IV going, the curare’s been neutralized and eliminated, and the process of flushing the neuropreservatives out of his system has been started. Another”—he glanced at the clock—“two and a half minutes and they’ll be ready to try the transfer.”

Sommer nodded, his eyes on the monitor. The transfer team, waiting for the neuropreservative flushing to be completed, stood silently around the body on the table. In contrast, Diaz, just visible at the edge of the screen, was a study in barely controlled nervous energy. “Anything from the media yet?” he asked over his shoulder.

Seated at another desk, flipping between channels on a muted television and holding a radio to his ear, Alverez shrugged. “They know the Archbishop took a curare dart,” he said, his voice as tight as Van Proyen’s. “
And
they know he was raking the government over the coals when he was shot. Nothing else but rumors, but the outside monitors show that we’ve got quite a crowd gathering around the building.”

“Waiting for the Archbishop to come out,” Van Proyen suggested grimly. “You know, Doctor, this could get very nasty very quickly.”

Sommer thought about the crowd back at the cathedral. About the anger he’d felt beginning to rise up within them. “How nasty it gets,” he said, “is basically up to Diaz.”

“I suppose.” Van Proyen leaned forward, his eyes on the monitor. “Looks like they’re ready.

Sommer leaned forward, too, mentally crossing his fingers. On the screen the doctor touched the master transfer switch. Beside the monitor the duplicate readouts went from red to amber, and all eyes in the room turned to the body on the table.

Nothing.

For a long moment the doctor just stood there, staring with disbelief at the unmoving body. Then, abruptly, he and the rest of the team jumped back into action.

“My, my,” Van Proyen murmured. “The soul didn’t remeld.”

“Shh!” Sommer said as Diaz took a step forward and snarled something vicious sounding. “What’d he say?”

“He’s demanding to know why it isn’t working,” Van Proyen translated. The doctor snapped something back— “‘I don’t know,’” Van Proyen added without being asked. “‘Be quiet and let us work.’”

Sommer felt his hands gripping the arms of his chair, and for a few minutes they watched in silence as the transfer team worked furiously to try and get the Archbishop’s soul to remeld with his body. But it was futile, and abruptly the duplicate readouts went from amber back to red. “They’ve given up,” Van Proyen said as, simultaneously, the indicators for the life-support machines switched from standby back to full on.

Dimly, Sommer noticed that his teeth were clenched together. “They have to,” he said, his mouth dry. “If they keep at it they’ll only put unnecessary stress on the brain chemistry.”

Reaching over, Van Proyen tapped out a command on a terminal keyboard. “The soul’s back in the trap,” he confirmed.

Sommer got to his feet. “I’ll be in your office,” he told Van Proyen. He gave the monitor a last look, his eyes settling on Diaz. “Let me know when the general’s ready to talk.”

It took less than an hour.

“General Diaz wants to talk to you, Dr. Sommer,” Van Proyen reported, his voice on the intercom sounding more than a little strained. “Are you ready?”

Sommer took a deep breath.
As ready as I’m going to be
. “Ask him to wait in the conference room near the Core entrance,” he said aloud. “Has Frank Everly returned?”

“Yes, sir, just a few minutes ago. He’s up on the office floor, keeping an eye on that mob outside.”

“Have him join us,” Sommer instructed him. “Tell him to hurry—I don’t want to be alone with Diaz.”

He needn’t have worried. Everly was waiting by the conference room door when Sommer arrived. “Doctor,” Everly said, his eyes tight. “You seen the crowd out there?”

Sommer nodded. “There’s one forming around the Presidential Palace, too.”

“And we’re getting some rumblings of uncertainty from the military.” Everly glanced back down the hall. “It’s starting to look a lot like being in the middle of a revolution.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” Sommer agreed grimly. “Everything’s ready. Shall we go see if the general’s had enough?”

Diaz was standing at the head of the table as they entered, his back unnaturally stiff. “Dr. Sommer,” he nodded as Everly closed the door behind them. The general’s voice was quiet, almost gentle, and it sent a chill up Sommer’s back. “Tell me, what have you done to the Soulminder equipment?”

“Your own experts are out there, General,” Sommer said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. This was it, the point on which Soulminder’s entire future was wobbling. “Did you ask
them
what was wrong?”

Diaz’s eyes bored into his. “You’ve sabotaged the Soulminder,” he said. “Done something to it from in there.” He nodded in the direction of the Core, the movement almost savage.

“Is that what you’re telling the people outside?” Everly asked. “That your failure to bring Manzano back is
our
fault?”

Diaz’s gaze moved slowly over to rest on Everly. “It was you, wasn’t it?” he said, almost conversationally. “You who shot Manzano and made it look like the government was at fault.”

Everly raised his eyebrows slightly. “The government? I thought it was terrorists who murdered people with curare darts.”

Diaz raised his hand. “Not them alone.”

Sommer felt his stomach tighten. “And what exactly do you intend to do with that?” he asked, raising his eyes with an effort from the tiny airgun in Diaz’s hand.

“You will restore the Archbishop’s soul to his body,” Diaz ordered. “Now.”

“Or else what?” Everly asked calmly. “You’ll shoot us? With both our Mullner traces on file with Soulminder?”

“Your souls may live on inside a box in Washington,” Diaz snarled. “But your bodies would be here. Under
our
control.”

“Wouldn’t help you any,” Everly shrugged. “Or haven’t you heard of Arizona’s Professional Witness program? Killing people doesn’t guarantee you’ve shut them up anymore.”

“Talk all you want,” Diaz spat. “We
will
weather this crisis—the riots and Army trouble will be put down. And all nations suffering in the Soulminder stranglehold will thank us for what we’ve done.”

Sommer shook his head. “No one will thank you,” he said wearily. “All you’ll accomplish will be to drive Chile into revolution. Your experiment in indentured servitude can’t possibly be worth that price.”

“And stopping it is worth the price of your death?” Diaz countered.

For a long moment Sommer eyed him in silence. Then, taking a careful step toward the gun, he pulled a chair out from the table. “Do you know why I created Soulminder, General?” he asked, sitting down. “My motivation, I mean?”

“Is this some effort to stall—?”

“Twenty years ago,” Sommer continued, “my son David, who was five years old, died in a car accident. I was the one driving. The weight of that guilt stayed with me for eleven years, until Jessica Sands and I finally created Soulminder.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Diaz said, without any trace of sympathy in his face or voice. “Forgive me if I’m not overcome by sentiment.”

“I was the second person to go through Soulminder, General,” Sommer told him. “I’ve been in the tunnel. I’ve seen the Light that waits at the end of it.”

“Religious superstition,” Diaz sneered. “For the weak and the gullible.”

“Perhaps,” Sommer said. “Perhaps not. The fact remains that I’m not afraid to die.

“But
you
are.”

The knuckles of Diaz’s gun hand whitened noticeably, and his eyes flicked to Everly. “What about you, CIA man?” he spat. “Are you ready to die, too?”

“Curare’s a fast way to go,” Everly said evenly. “Much faster than being torn apart by the mob outside.”

Diaz smiled at him. “The mob can do what they like with this body. There are hundreds to choose from.” He looked back at Sommer. “Or hadn’t
that
potential of your Professional Witness program occurred to you?”

“It’s occurred to us, yes,” Sommer told him evenly. “But it won’t work for you.”

Diaz snorted. “Why? Because of the so-called biochemical instabilities involved in transferring a soul to a different body?”

“No,” Sommer said. “Because your Mullner trace is no longer on file with Soulminder. I erased it half an hour ago.”