The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (41 page)

“I assume you spent some time with Autumn,” Zed says, abruptly. “She was right, you know.”

“About what?”

“We have a beginning, a middle, and an end.”

“After all the money and research, you didn’t know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” Zed stops rowing, arms slack against the oars. “I saw only the promise of life everlasting. It has a powerful pull to it.” He smiles knowingly at Lane. “And don’t tell me it doesn’t.”

Lane doesn’t answer, so Zed goes back to rowing. After a few strokes, he speaks without looking up. “Every time I bend to dip the oars, I come at you with my arms extended. On one of these strokes, I’m going to drop the oars, keep moving forward, grab your weapon, and kill you. Your reflexes won’t be fast enough to save you. I’ve got twenty years on you. Think about it.”

Zed starts rowing again.

Lane does not deliberate. It’s all the prompting he needs. He fires.

Lane beaches the little skiff on the shore beside the waterfront parking lot in Quamish. He climbs some wooden stairs to where he can see across to the tavern. Its front door is open, the music silent, the party people gone and Johnny with them.

He walks a short distance across the pavement to where a narrow pier juts out and terminates in a floating dock. He walks out to the end, which gives him a clear view of the mouth of the bay. Zed’s lifeless form floats just above the water level as it drifts out into the open sound. When the body is eventually discovered, Lane is sure that there will be no record of its origin. Zed will be as anonymous and remote in death as he was in life.

Lane peers down into the greenish depths at his feet. He reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the Exacube that Johnny gave him. He idly rolls the device in his fingers. A quadrillion bytes in the palm of his hand. He holds it out over the water. After it sinks, the current, the sand, and the muck will conspire to bury it forever.

He looks over to the western shoreline of Fuller Bay, where the happy babble of children at play skips lightly over the water to him. Big houses perch on neat rectangles of trimmed lawn that descend to the narrow beach. They look out serenely on the bay and the big waters beyond, as if immune to the ravages of time.

Amid all this proud and posturing symmetry sits the old lot with the fallen cabin, where an overgrown glut of alders spills down to the rotting remnants of the dock.

Lane puts the cube in his pocket and turns back toward the car.

P
SIERRE
O
UELLETTE
entered the creative realm at age thirteen as lead guitarist for numerous bands in the Pacific Northwest, including the nationally known Paul Revere and the Raiders. He went on to play with such jazz luminaries as saxophonist Jim Pepper and bassist David Friesen, all the while composing soundtracks for short films and videos. To support his music habit, he became a freelance writer and eventually co-founded KVO, an advertising agency specializing in high technology, serving as its creative director. During this period, he wrote two novels that were eventually published in seven languages, with both optioned for film. He has also directed and produced
The Losers Club
, a documentary about struggling musicians, which was broadcast on public television and exhibited at numerous film festivals. Pierre resides in Portland, Oregon, where he devotes himself exclusively to writing fiction and playing jazz guitar now and then in a little bar just down the street.

Every great mystery needs an Alibi

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