The Games (11 page)

“Pea.”

“What is Pea?” Baskov asked.

Evan thought about how to explain, but after a second or two, his mind lost the trail and he forgot what the question had been.

“Where did you go when the screens blacked out?” Baskov asked.

Evan hesitated, trying to judge how much he could hide.

“I’m not a patient man, Evan. We’ve tried to back-trace what happened, but there is no record to follow. You covered your tracks well. There are ways that I can get you to tell me what I want to hear, but the doctors tell me you are very weak. The drugs could kill you. I’m under pressure that you couldn’t begin to understand. If that is what I need to do, I’ll do it.”

More shapes moved around him in the gray. A dozen voices whispered in tones too low for Evan to unscramble. He thought about dying. It would be a relief in many ways, but Pea would think he’d been abandoned. “What do you want to know?”

“Why didn’t the computer answer the Helix queries?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. It interfaced the logs but didn’t reply.”

“That’s not possible. The computer can’t choose what it responds to.”

“It chose not to respond.”

“It doesn’t know how to ignore.”

“It did.”

“I activated the logic areas before the smooth-out. You saw me do that, the levers. It
had
to process.”

“It didn’t,” Baskov said flatly.

“Then I don’t know.”

“Do you expect me to believe you, Evan?”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Tell me.”

“You don’t understand,” Evan said.

“I understand better than you think. I had people checking up on you, Evan. They’ve been looking into you the way I should have before I ever involved you in any of this. They interviewed your old professors, your colleagues, your subordinates. Would you like to know what I keep hearing about you?”

“No.”

“Sure you do, Evan. At the heart of things, insecure bastards like you always want to hear about yourselves. You want to hear that you’re a genius, that you’re gifted, that you’re special. Well, they said those things, Evan, they did; but mostly they said you were an asshole. They might not all have used that word—though some certainly did—but it came through loud and clear every time. You’re a sad-fuck introvert too arrogant and self-absorbed to notice anyone but yourself; consequently, nobody gives a damn about you. That piece of information really helps me. It gives me the keys to your little kingdom. Nobody cares you’re here—nobody is going to come looking, or making calls, or pulling strings. You’re mine for as long as I want you.”

Baskov pulled a chair away from the wall and clattered it across the tile. He sat.

Evan tried to rise, to move away, but he was too weak.

“I’m going to let you in on a secret, Evan. That gift you’re so proud of, that genius …” He moved closer, speaking softly. “It’s maladaptive.”

Baskov nodded seriously. “It’s shit, Evan. Think about what it’s ever done for you. I mean, look at you, for Christ’s sake. Isolated, no wife, no children, without friends. Have you ever even been with a woman?”

Evan stared at him.

“Of course not,” Baskov continued. “What woman would open her legs for you? What woman would let you know her that way?” Baskov jabbed Evan’s gut with a gnarled finger.

Evan turned his head away, wanting to hear nothing more.

Baskov went on. “People think that man will be smarter in the future, that our intelligence is evolving on some upward trajectory as a species, but that’s not really true at all. The bell curve rises to its peak at an IQ just above a hundred for a very good reason. The bell’s under directional selection from
both
sides, isn’t it, Evan? Stray too far from that safe middle bulge and the world becomes unnavigable. Pass a critical threshold on either side of the curve and the world, the real world, unravels in your fingers. You’re testament to that.

“I’m a fan of history, and history has shown it time and time again. Einstein used to forget his children in the park. Newton suffered debilitating depressions. Do you know how Gödel died?” Baskov prodded him with his finger again. “Do you?”

“No.”

“His death certificate listed inanition as cause. The father of incompleteness couldn’t be bothered to eat. He starved himself to death.

“You’re not so special, Evan. You’re a story that history has retold many times. People like you rise from the fringes at regular intervals. Outside the cloisters of your respective fields, you’re helpless—like specialized worker ants born only to provide some benefit to the rest of us before your tragic little lives draw to a close, usually in poverty and madness. Tesla and Turing—do you remember how their stories end?”

Evan kept his face turned away.

“That your kind keeps rising at all shows some flaw in our species’ template. You’re a sport, a type of sacrificial defect, and it’s my burden
to see to it that your sad existence is made use of. I take that burden very seriously, Evan. You believe me, don’t you?”

Evan said nothing; the finger jabbed him again. He tried to speak then, but his voice gave out.

“Oh, you have something to say?” Baskov said. “Speak up. I’m listening.” Baskov leaned closer.

“You,” Evan said, pushing the word out, “are jealous … of us.”

Baskov’s face went white. His hands fisted. Evan waited for the blow, but it didn’t come.

“You wanted to
be
us, didn’t you?” Evan croaked. “As a child, in school. Like Gödel. You studied. But you weren’t smart enough.” Evan smiled.

After several seconds, Baskov hissed, “I’m going to enjoy this, Evan. I’m going to enjoy making you talk.”

“Probably you will,” Evan scraped. “But not so much as you think. Because I know. And now you know.”

There was a strange sound. Then the faraway voices murmured.

“Tell me why the computer didn’t answer the questions.”

Evan saw no reason to lie. “Pea,” he said.

“What the hell is Pea?”

Evan swallowed again, and his throat clicked. “I wanted to talk with the profile core.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I wanted time alone with him.”

“With who?”

“With the profile core. With Pea.”

“What is a profile core?”

“I anthropomorphized a redundancy loop in the logic core. It was the one thing that is connected to everything inside. It touches on everything. I named him Pea.”

“Him?”

“Yes, the boy.”

There was a long silence. Baskov’s voice was lower, turned away
from Evan, toward someone else in the room: “Will the drugs still work if he is insane?”

“Not sure,” another voice answered.

“This is the part I will enjoy, Evan. And the part that comes after.”

A few seconds later, Evan felt a muffled sting as a needle penetrated his arm.

CHAPTER SEVEN

S
ilas sat alone, looking through the thick glass and into the nursery. He took notes on a clipboard as little Felix romped around in the new containment area.

Benjamin was the one who originally came up with the suggestion about the cardboard boxes. It was such a simple thing, but the idea had worked better than they could have hoped, turning the sluggish and docile young organism into the shiny black rush of activity that Silas saw before him now. It had just been bored, apparently. Like any youngster, it wanted to play.

As Silas watched, it busied itself at reducing the boxes to a random scatter of cardboard mulch. It had a talent for disassembly. Its true calling.

Ever the cladistician, Silas unconsciously continued to assess the organism as it played. As much as he tried, the little thing defied classification. Although it was engineered, there should still be something that gave away the roots of its nature, some trait that would reveal itself and imply that, yes, Felix was a feline derivative, or a simian derivative, or an avian derivative. But Silas was left without this closure, and always when he watched it, he felt uneasy because it seemed he was looking at something completely alien.

Putting the clipboard down, Silas walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out a large jug of milk and a square plastic container of
dried prey food. With a heavy wooden spoon, he stirred the milk into the crunchy mix until the consistency was about right.

The biochemists had had a field day with little Felix. After doing a complete metabolic workup, they’d found that the organism could profitably digest an amazingly wide variety of foodstuffs, from grains and cereals to raw meat. Though they guessed that simple dog food would probably have sufficed, they ended up synthesizing their own dietary blend, which, when combined with a hefty pour of whole dairy, seemed to do the job well. The little thing was growing fast and was now cutting a second row of jagged teeth.

Silas opened the outer door of the nursery with his left hand, being careful not to spill the brimming bowl in his right. When he heard the latch click behind him, he opened the inner door and stepped into the nursery chamber. The scent of disinfectant and wet cardboard assailed his nostrils.

The little creature squealed with delight. Silas quickly found it clamoring at his feet for its dinner. Long, thin arms fluttered about his torso, reaching up at the bowl.

“Hold your horses,” he said, trying not to stumble over it as he crossed the room. He placed the bowl on the floor in the center of the chamber and watched with satisfaction as the creature dug in ferociously. He made a mental note to increase the feeding again. The thing ate like an elephant.

He smiled, marveling at its vigor. Thin, stumpy wings positioned high on its wide back bobbed rhythmically with the pleasure of eating. Its large gray eyes maintained a position just above the bowl’s rim, alternately looking down at the food, then up at Silas. Silas liked that. It would be easier to train the gladiator if it associated humans with the arrival of food. Tay Sawyer, the resident animal trainer, had made a point of stressing that.

When the creature finished the bowl, it sat back and licked its chops, snaking a thick tongue around the outside of its short black muzzle. Gray eyes looked into Silas’s brown.

As they stared at each other, Silas wondered what might be going on in its head. What kind of mind worked behind those eyes?

Silas stood and crossed the room. When he stooped to pick up the bowl, the creature made a noise. A strange sound Silas hadn’t heard before. He hesitated. This was new behavior. The creature’s ears flattened to its skull, and its back arched. Not catlike. Nothing like that. Instead, it reared up like some angry black baboon—but like something else, too. Something not at all like a baboon. Something Silas couldn’t place.

The thing moved forward, guarding the bowl.

“Back off,” Silas snapped. “Back!”

He clapped his hands, and the creature slunk backward a few feet.

It was still young, he reminded himself. Despite its size. Barely out of infancy. At this age, animals as predatory as genus
Panthera
were still docile cubs that could be petted and played with.

“Come on, back up!”

But the creature didn’t move, only hunched down lower to the floor. Silas whispered, “What a strange thing you are.”

He slapped his foot on the ground to drive the creature away from the food dish, but it stood its ground, staring up at him.

“I need the bowl,” Silas said, by way of exasperated negotiation.

The creature hissed in response—a sound something between a cat’s hiss and a hyena’s cackle.

“Enough is enough.” Silas bent to pick up the bowl, reaching past the creature.

He wasn’t, at first, sure what happened.

Pain.

Like being kicked in the hand. A jolt.

And the creature spun away, a dark streak.

Silas flinched, blood spattering the floor. First in fat drops like rain, then in a gush.

Silas clutched his other hand to the wound, squeezing down on the pain, an instinctual response.

“What did you do?” Disbelief pouring out of him like all the blood.

He backed up, blood splattering the tile while he reached for the door. He hit the door-open button as the creature eyed him from a
crouch, gray eyes slitted. Its muzzle slid away from its teeth as its face contorted in rage.

Silas took a step back through the opening door, and the creature bolted, crossing the room in springing strides. Silas jerked himself backward, slipping on his own blood, falling through the open doorway. He hit the ground on his shoulder and kicked at the door, trying to shut it. The creature launched itself forward and slammed into the bloody glass a moment after the door clicked shut.

There was a meaty thump, and the gladiator dropped to the ground.

Silas rolled away from the door. Away from the staring, slitted eyes on the other side of the glass.

He pulled himself to his feet, grabbing at the edge of the lab bench to steady himself. Only then did Silas look at the wound.

Only then did he see the missing finger.

On his right hand, his pinkie finger terminated just above the second knuckle.

H
OSPITALS
. S
ILAS
had always hated them.

The surgery took a little more than an hour.

“We need to shorten the bone,” the doctor had said.

To Silas, this seemed counterintuitive, but a series of nurses assured him it was necessary so that skin could be pulled over the wound.

“It’s too bad you couldn’t find the finger,” one of them said.

“Oh, I know where it is.”

A finger. Not a pound of flesh, exactly. But it was something. It felt like payment.

They pumped him full of IV antibiotics. Then tetanus shots. Rabies shots were suggested when it was learned an animal bite was involved.

Silas explained to the new doctor at shift change that the animal in question wasn’t going to be available for brain tissue dissection. “Honestly, it’s worth more than I am. They might want to dissect my brain to make sure I didn’t give
it
something.”

The next morning, the calls started at nine
A.M
. The visits soon after
that. Tay, the trainer, showed up, accompanied by several members of the team. After the condolences, “It’s time to shift gears on this,” he said.