The God Wave (29 page)

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Fix it? Can you?”

“We have to if the program is going to succeed. And we don't have a lot of time. General Howard says they're planning a first deployment soon. I'm thinking at the beginning of next week because he's asked us to solve the hijacking problem by the end of this one.”

She stared at him. “A deployment? Of . . . never mind. That's not a lot of time.”

“No, it's not. We've got a lot of work to do before then.”

She nodded, then rose and bent over to drop a kiss on his hair. Her hand brushed the lapel of his suit coat and patted his chest lightly. “Back to class,” she said and left the canteen.

He sat, stunned for a moment by the intimate gesture, then realized she'd slipped something into the breast pocket of his blazer. The jammer. Great, because he was going to need it.

Still, it was a bit hard to concentrate on his way back to Forward Kinetics.

God, she smells good . . .

When Chuck returned to FK, he tracked Matt down. His partner looked up from his laptop and grimaced as Chuck wandered through the door of his office.

“We—”

“Need to talk. Yes, Chuck. You should just have those words embroidered on your lab coat. What are you worried about now?”

Chuck hesitated, deliberately unknitting his brow. “No, it's just . . . Look, has anyone from Deep Shield contacted you about the incident in their labs last night?”

Matt's face testified eloquently to his complete surprise. “What incident?”

“The one where the robot wandered off.”

“What?” Matt's fingers froze over his keyboard. “Which robot?”

“One of their training bots. Brian Reynolds's unit, Thorin, went for a stroll, apparently. General Howard said there were several other highly classified bots liberated and some minor damage to lab equipment.”

“Let me get this straight: one of their robots went rogue?”

“No, not rogue. Well, not insofar as they can tell. They . . .” How to put it? “They've been less than forthcoming about the sort of changes they've made in their proprietary units. When they say they can't think of any reason for them to go rogue, I have to take them at their word.”

“Sabotage?”

Chuck shrugged, trying to ignore the flush of heat he felt creeping up the back of his neck.
Stick to the facts
. “The general thinks not. He said a real saboteur would have done more damage. This almost seemed accidental, a by-product of clumsiness. We've got two theories at this point: one of their trainees was manipulating the bot unintentionally, or someone who's not in the program was playing at being a zeta.”

“Is either of those things even possible?”

“That's what I want to talk to you about. They've asked us to come up with some way of keeping the bots from being hijacked. If that's what happened. As I said, we really have no idea what
they've been doing to their mechanicals, what sort of features they're giving them.” He shrugged again.

“You want to know if I have a clue what they've been experimenting with, is that it?”

“I never did have a good poker face,” Chuck said. “Yes, Matt—it would be nice to know, because we might be able to fix it. I'll add that Dice is particularly concerned that they've done something like writing AI code into the interface.”

“I can imagine they might,” said Matt. “After all, what happens if the operator is injured or killed or disabled in some way? You'd want to be able to retrieve the unit, so maybe they wrote some ‘run home to Mama' code for it.”

“If they did, they didn't mention it to us. I just want to understand what we've got to contend with. Especially since they're planning some sort of deployment for next week.” He watched Matt's face carefully for signs of . . . something.

Matt's brow furrowed. “Deployment? Deployment of what exactly?”

“I don't know. The bots they've been building, presumably. Do you know—?”

He was cut off as Matt's cell phone rang, spraying the office with Thomas Dolby's “One of Our Submarines.” The irony was not lost on Chuck.

“Speak of the devil,” Matt said, glancing down at it where it sat beside his laptop. “It's Howard.”

Chuck took a step backward. “Oh. I'll just head back to my office. Come by when you get a minute, okay?”

He beat a hasty retreat then, reflecting that he'd be surprised if Matt bothered to track him down. He was, therefore, surprised when Matt did precisely that roughly forty minutes later, face neutral, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Bad sign. Hands in pockets indicated Matt was restraining
himself in some way. The deeper the hands pressed, the stronger the emotion he was suppressing.

Chuck resigned himself to an unpleasant interview and cast a glance at Lorstad's little jammer to make sure it was still on. Mike had “adjusted” the surveillance cameras around Chuck's office, so there was a long blind spot just outside the door in his private lab. Chuck had developed the art of fading into it and turning on the jammer before returning, invisibly, to his office.

He wondered, as he shifted the device farther out of sight, if the mysterious Lorstad was using it to track him. It had never even occurred to him to ask one of the zetas to check that for him. Once again he was reminded that he was not cut out for espionage. His life's work was about revealing things, not hiding them.

And yet, here I go again . . .

“Earth to Chuck,” Matt said. He sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk.

Chuck willed his face to relax and met his partner's gaze, trying not to look as if he had anything to hide. “I take it the general filled you in on the excitement last night.”

“Yes, he did.” Matt was silent for a moment, his eyes never leaving Chuck's face. “He mentioned that Dice is designing what he called a storage protocol to shut the kinetic interface down manually.”

“Yes, that was something they wanted us to look into.”

Matt's gaze did a circuit of the room, as if he were looking for a hidden message somewhere. “The way Howard described it, it was Dice's suggestion. Did you happen to mention to him that this protocol will only protect his bots from zetas who don't know how to manipulate the mechanics directly?”

Chuck felt heat rise up the back of his neck. “I didn't, figuring that none of his zetas are doing that.”

“Why not?”

“We taught them to use the kinetic interface. Just the way our zetas do—did.”

“You withheld information from a U.S. government agency. That's what you're telling me.”

Chuck licked his suddenly dry lips but decided to turn the conversation. “I'm not certain that's really what they are, Matt.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Any of his composed neutrality was now gone.

“I told you I contacted the Pentagon and the CIA about these guys. I also went to a personal contact in the FBI. My security clearance there goes pretty high because of some work I did for them a couple of years ago. My contact went to his superiors and got back to me. He said he needed to look into it, and I wasn't to discuss it with anyone else.”

“Like me, for instance.”

“Like you.”

“Chuck, you're being paranoid—”

“Of course I am! They're building robot warriors, Matt. Can't you understand that? They're building a robot army. Like—like something out of a Star Wars movie. They're building tech into them that our contract specifically precludes.”

Matt's expression was suddenly guarded. “And you know this how?

“You did it, didn't you? You—” Matt broke off and glanced frantically around the room. “Shit, you realize they've been overhearing every word we've—”

“They don't even know we're in here. Don't ask. Just accept it as fact. My office is a bug-free zone. A dead spot.”

“You did the break-in last night, didn't you? Somehow you got one of their bots to . . . Sabotage, Chuck? For the love of—”

“No. Not sabotage. Just a little reconnaissance. About
our
company and
our
technology. We needed to know, Matt.”

“Building a robot army . . .”

“Yes. There are bots in there with treads, flamethrowers, plasma weapons, EMP generators. Missile launchers! They've got one model that comes with a tank for sarin gas.”

Matt's mouth popped open as if to retort, but nothing came out. He closed it and put on the face that said he was thinking rapidly and frenetically—gaze distracted, brow furrowed, mouth pursed.

Chuck waited a beat, then said, “And they're planning a deployment, Matt.”

Matt looked up at him. “They are part of the U.S. government. Our military. Whatever it is they're doing, they're entitled to do it. Frankly, you're the reason for all that mealy language in the contract about no offensive uses of the tech. If they're building robots in secret labs where we can't see them or know what's going into them, it's your damn fault.”

“
My
fault?”

“I have to tell you, Chuck, General Howard would like nothing better than to get you off the team. He views you as a risk. You're a Pollyanna. Your ideals are unrealistic. You're not a businessman.”

“No, I'm a scientist. I've never pretended otherwise.”

“In a soft, squishy science. You're a true believer. A crusader.”

“And you're an asshole.”

Matt didn't even flinch. “Yes—but one who understands that we're going to be in a lot more trouble breaching their security than they are breaching the contract. You need to stay out of the business side of this and let me deal with it. Right now Howard thinks he needs you to work on this bogus protocol. He doesn't suspect you're the one responsible for last night's intrusion, and I think we should do everything we can to keep it that way.” Matt paused. “How'd you do it, by the way? Who was the bot driver?”

“I'm not going to tell you that.”

“I won't tattle on you, Chuck. Howard doesn't need to know. He'll get his tech and his training, and he'll pay us the money, and the contract will be done. I don't care if he never finds out who penetrated his secret kingdom. It was your girlfriend, wasn't it? That's who you got on the inside.”

Chuck suspected he was blushing. He felt as if he was. “My girlfriend . . .”

“Chen.” Matt sat back in his chair, a grin unexpectedly creasing his face. “Damn. I would really love to know how you did it—and I don't mean landing a beautiful woman like Chen, although I'm sure there's an interesting story there, too.” Matt laughed. “I have to say I didn't think you had it in you. You'd better hope General Howard never suspects you do.”

“I hope so, too. But shouldn't our concern also be that he plans to deploy with all that firepower? With sarin gas?”

“No. What's important to me, besides the funds this is giving us to grow our business, is the vindication of this technology.” The way Matt said it, with a passion that bordered on zealotry, frightened Chuck, especially as Matt continued. “Lucy died for this, Chuck. Lucy's death is what gave me the formula that made the conversion of thought to kinetic energy possible. This tech must succeed. It must see the light of day.”

“And you say
I'm
a crusader? Do you hear yourself? Matt, it would have seen the light of day if we'd pursued the applications we originally talked about—medicine, construction, design, education, emergency services, space exploration. In General Howard's hands, it's only going to be used under cover of darkness. And when he's done with us, I'm not altogether sure we're going to be able to pursue anything related to the work we're doing now. Think for a minute, would you? If we walk out of this Deep Shield business and start pursuing private or public
contracts with the same tech, anyone can reverse-engineer it or adapt it or use it. If that happens, Howard's army loses its tactical advantage much sooner than if they shut us down or shut us up.”

Matt stared at him for a long moment. Finally, he rose and put his hands on his hips. “You're right on the edge, you know that, don't you? You are pretty damn close to going right off the logic cliff. Nothing you've said makes a damn bit of sense. You're reading everything Howard does in the worst possible light.”

“Well, you're being unbelievably thick,” Chuck said, also standing, “for some reason accepting Howard's word and ignoring his actions.”

They stood there, staring at each other.

“Okay, look,” Matt said. “I need you to promise me there will be no more
Spy Kids
shenanigans. You think you're Tony Stark or something, but you're not. This isn't a game, Chuck.”

“Funny, I was about to say the same thing to you. I know it's not a game. You're the one who's in denial. I—”

Matt pointed a finger at Chuck's forehead. “Promise me. No more half-assed espionage. I don't think you have any idea how much trouble we all could be in if you get caught doing this crap. Promise.”

“You'd accept my word? A promise I won't spy on your hard-assed overlord?”

Matt burst into laughter. “My hard-assed overlord? God Almighty, Chuck. You're cracking my mind. I've never seen you like this. I've never heard you like this.” He shook his head. “Yes, I'd accept your word. Because you're such a freaking Boy Scout, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't give it if you meant to break it.”

“Fine. No more
Spy Kids
. No more comic-book shenanigans. We're out of the spy business.”

“Good. Now, about General Howard's storage protocol. We'll go ahead and have Dice design one. It'll
work,
of course, because
you're not going to take any more of the general's bots for a joyride. He'll be happy; we'll be covered.”