The Last Protector (42 page)

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"Sixty-one million.” Jape rubbed his aching head with one hand, clutched his coffee cup with the other, and tried to balance the softscroll in his lap as he read. “Sixty million direct disappearances, plus another million who died when bridges and buildings disappeared around them."

Scrornuck fetched the coffee-pot. Jape was going to need it. “What about your family?"

"They're fine, thank heaven. But sixty-one million...” After a moment of silent mourning, he drained his cup and allowed Scrornuck to refill it. “Well, it could have been worse. My world's banged up, but it's still there, so we still have work to do. Let's check the other messages.” He tapped some more buttons. “Aha, what's this—records of an extremely confidential UniFlag board meeting including one Brian Paul McGinn.
Matches history, time stream creation, worship of corporate trademarks. Caution: contents of this record may be unsettling.
What the hell does
that
mean? Well, let's find out. Mister Saughblade, would you set up the show?"

Scrornuck took the softscroll. At the touch of a button it became a rigid, flat screen, which he leaned against a log. “We need some popcorn,” he said, sitting down next to Nalia.

"Scroll, play,"
Jape commanded, and a caption appeared on a black background:
EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE ROOM A, JANUARY 14, 2125 C.E.
The scene shifted to a large, sunlit room dominated by a long, polished oak table. Only four of the many high-backed leather chairs around the table were occupied. A middle-aged, slightly balding man sat across from a somewhat nervous-looking woman holding a sheaf of papers. Labels on the screen identified them as
B. PAUL McGINN, GRAND TAUPEAQUAAH PROJECT ARCHITECT
and
GEORGETTE CLINTON, DIVISION 451 SOFTWARE LEAD.

Jape leaned forward slightly. “So we finally get to see what the mysterious Mister McGinn looked like."

"Not much,” Nalia said dismissively.

"Don't judge him by his looks. These corporate guys are sharks."

"Who's the old guy?” Scrornuck pointed to a frail-looking black man seated at the head of the table.

As if answering his question, another label appeared:
CORNELL JACKSON III, UNIFLAG CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER.
“Must be a really important meeting,” Jape said. A final label appeared under the fourth participant, a short-haired man wearing a goatee and a snappy business suit:
FRANZ J. NIEDEMEYER, LEGAL AND ETHICS DIVISION.
“The legal advisor? This gets more and more interesting..."

"Looks like they pulled an all-nighter,” Scrornuck said. The CEO needed a shave, the woman's hair was snarled as though she'd spent the night winding her fingers through it, and McGinn's suit was rumpled, his tie loose. Only the lawyer looked like someone who hadn't spent the night wrestling with major problems.

"Let's get down to business,” Jackson began abruptly. “What the hell happened yesterday?"

After an awkward silence, McGinn spoke in a weary voice. “We had a technical problem with the groundbreaking."

"A
technical problem?"
The CEO's voice was surprisingly strong for such a frail-looking man. “That's what you call this?” The scene abruptly shifted to a surveillance-camera view of a small village, a cluster of conical tents around a fire. People of various ages, dressed in beaded and fringed leather, went about their business. A digital timer counted down in one corner of the picture. When it reached zero, the image froze and returned to the conference room. “This is when you pushed the button, correct?"

McGinn nodded nervously. “Ten in the morning, exactly. I issued a command to the pyroviruses, to activate at ten a.m. plus fifteen seconds.” He looked pointedly at Georgette, who seemed to be melting into her chair. “They were supposed to activate synchronously at that time."

"Let's see what actually happened,” Jackson said. The scene returned to the village, and the timer now counted up—five seconds, ten seconds, thirty seconds, a minute. Nothing visible happened.

Pyrovirus? Scrornuck puzzled over the strange word. Pyro—fire. And virus—"Oh, shit!"

When the timer read two minutes, one of the villagers screamed. His left arm smoked, then his sleeve burst into flames, seemingly heated from within—the man's own body appeared to be on fire. As he rolled on the ground, struggling to extinguish the blaze, another villager shrieked and collapsed, his legs blistering and smoking as though something burned inside them. Nalia's jaw dropped. Her mouth moved, unable to form words, as she watched her recurring nightmare come to hideous life.

"Softscroll, halt!"
Jape shouted. The scroll went black. Trembling, sweating, he turned to face Nalia. She stared into his eyes, a cold, unblinking, angry stare. Her eyes seemed to glow with a purplish-white light. Jape's hands shook uncontrollably. He dropped his coffee-cup. It landed with a dull
thud.
“Help me,” he croaked.

Scrornuck put a hand on Nalia's shoulder and shook her, hard. She ignored him. “Let him go, Nalia,” he said. She ignored this, too. Against his will, instinct guided his hand to Ol’ Red. Let him go, Nalia, he thought. Please, let him go! The sword's blade leaped out, short and deadly. “Let him go!” he shouted, and still Nalia kept her eyes unblinkingly fixed on Jape's. The edge of the sword's blade squirmed as it touched Nalia's throat, and a tiny trickle of blood appeared. “Nalia, let him go,” he screamed, knowing what must happen next.
"Please!"

She blinked, and the spell shattered. Jape collapsed. Nalia looked up at Scrornuck, her brown eyes wide with terror. His sword fell to the dirt with a soft
thunk,
and he wrapped his arms around Jape, trying to control the Ranger's shivering. Nalia slowly backed away, turned and ran.

Scrornuck draped his plaid over Jape's shoulders and poured a fresh cup of coffee. Jape took it greedily, spilling much as he attempted to drink with trembling hands. By the time he'd emptied the cup, he could speak again. “I think you just saved my life. She's stronger—she could have ripped my mind apart.” He turned his hand over and looked at his rings. The blue one now glowed steadily. “She's the one,” he said, his voice ragged. “You've got to bring her back."

"After what she almost did?” Scrornuck refilled the cup.

Jape promptly drained it. “We have to take that risk."

"I'm here.” Nalia stood ten feet away—just out of Ol’ Red's range, Scrornuck realized. Tears streaked her face, and there was a dribble of drying blood on her throat. “I didn't have anywhere else to go."

"You heard what I said about you?” Jape asked.

She nodded and spoke in a dull voice. “I have a great power, and I can't control it. I didn't want to hurt you, but when you stopped the scroll, I had to know...” She paused, her lips trembling. “I wasn't dreaming, was I?"

"I think your dreams are a memory, passed down from your ancestors."

She sat on the log and stared at the blank scroll. “Why did those people burn up?"

"McGinn used the word ‘pyrovirus,'” Scrornuck said. “I think it's a made-up word for an infection that makes a lot of heat."

Jape took a deep breath. “And it appears Mister McGinn deliberately infected these people.” He looked at Nalia's nervous eyes. “We have to watch the rest of this. Do you think you can?"

"I need to know."

"Then let's do it.
Scroll, resume!"

The gruesome scene continued for another seven minutes, the villagers falling to the ground, screaming in pain as parts of their bodies steamed, smoked, and burned. The few survivors, all children, wandered around in shock, staring at the charred lumps that had been their parents and siblings.

The view returned to the conference room. Jackson's icy stare seemed to nail McGinn to his seat. “You said this would be quick, clean, painless. What the hell went wrong?"

"Georgette,” McGinn said softly, “could you explain the nature of the problem?"

During the gruesome show, the software manager had slid down in her seat until she nearly disappeared behind her stack of papers. She straightened up slightly as she spoke. “It was, uh, a timing glitch. The pyrovirus software was designed to activate in perfect synchronization. To prevent loss of synch due to transmission delays over a thousand-mile range, the activation process was a forward-referenced command rather than an instantaneous order—the viruses were commanded to activate at a specific time, and their internal clocks were synchronized to the picosecond.” She seemed to draw confidence from the jargon. “To meet Mister McGinn's needs, we made changes to the underlying platform software—
here."

An elaborate chart filled the screen, lines and nodes linked in an impossibly complex pattern. Most were white, a few blood-red. “The changes introduced a memory-leak problem; after about seventy-six hours of waiting for an activation command, the software would experience a buffer overrun,
here."
A red circle appeared around a knot in the graph. “This was a new error-handling leg, and it failed to reclaim all the lost memory. As a result, the buffer overrun recurred after another six hours, then one hour, then seventeen minutes, and so on.” Another chart appeared, a line with spikes that grew increasingly close together. “By the end, some viruses encountered buffer overruns every four minutes. Each overrun introduced several seconds of delay into clock-servicing.” Yet another chart appeared, this one showing a red wedge labeled
SYNC ERROR
that steadily widened from left to right. “As a result, viruses that had been deployed for five days had up to nine minutes of clock error, randomly distributed."

McGinn's face replaced the chart. “Take away the buzzwords and it boils down to this,” he said. “Instead of firing at the same instant as they were supposed to, the pyroviruses ignited over a nine-minute period."

Jackson focused his cold gaze on Georgette. “Why wasn't this found in testing?"

She shifted uneasily in her chair and inspected her papers. “The plan called for activation within forty-eight hours of deployment. Therefore, our standard test runs were seventy-two hours—a fifty percent margin. In practice, some of the viruses were deployed five full days before they were activated."

"And why was that?"

It was McGinn's turn to squirm. “Weather problems—we were releasing the viruses from low-flying aircraft, and a persistent front kept raising severe storms."

Georgette jumped on the chance to drop the blame on somebody else. “Five days instead of two—you went far beyond the shelf-life you'd asked us to guarantee..."

"I didn't expect your software to forget what time it was!"

"We told you that your requirements meant platform changes, and we asked for a six-week slip. You insisted on using the pre-release version to hold to your schedule—"

"Enough!” Jackson silenced the two. “We're not here to assign blame—in the end it's my responsibility, anyway.” He paused in thought. “Perhaps this is a sign. I am half-inclined to abandon the Grand Taupeaquaah project, have this world sealed up and let it be forgotten..."

McGinn bristled at the suggestion. “That's not an option. Shareholders would demand to know why we abandoned a major development immediately after the groundbreaking, especially given the amount invested in the supply world."

"Yes, yes, you're right. There would be an investigation. And it would be a public relations nightmare if these recordings got out."

For the first time, the lawyer spoke. “It could be far worse than that. Depending on one's interpretation of the law, this company may be guilty of murder."

McGinn and Georgette stiffened. Jackson simply sighed. “I was concerned about that possibility when we first approved the mass-termination groundbreaking plan."

Niedemeyer shook his head emphatically. “Mister McGinn's plan was legally and ethically sound. It is well established that terminations involved in a grandfather paradox are not legally or ethically murders, as the ancestor being terminated continues to live in the past of our time stream and never exists in the newly created one. As I explained at our previous meeting, as long as the terminations are simultaneous and instantaneous, a mass termination is legally and ethically equivalent to a single termination. Further, the plan eliminated the ethically questionable need for UniFlag to forcibly relocate the aboriginal population.

"The problem is strictly in the timing—the two million terminations occurred across a period of nine minutes. We believe that the actual groundbreaking took place around the two-minute mark, when the first of Mister McGinn's direct ancestors died. At that point, at least a million aboriginals came into existence in the new stream, only to die—rather unpleasantly, I fear—over the next five minutes.” He folded his hands neatly. “There is a good chance that a jury would find this to be murder."

Jackson let his face drop into his hands. “We're not just murderers. We're mass murderers, on a scale the world hasn't seen in centuries.” After a moment, he straightened up, again all business. “Understand this, everybody—we are dealing with the survival of the company, and very possibly our own freedom. We must keep this incident quiet. Paul, how many employees witnessed the groundbreaking?"

"Fewer than fifty."

"That's manageable. Turn their names over to Security, and keep them incommunicado until it has been made clear to them that they are to keep quiet."

"Done."

"Miss Clinton, I want an immediate end to all pyrovirus work. Destroy all records, particularly those involving this incident."

"I've already had them triple-encrypted..."

"I want them
destroyed.
This development never happened, do I make myself clear? Give Security the names of those who participated. I know how people get when projects are cancelled by executive order, and I don't want any pyrovirus developer reunions."

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Miss Clinton, you may go.” Relieved, she scooped up her papers and quickly left the room. “As for you, Paul, get back to the site, get things cleaned up, dispose of the evidence.” He looked at the ceiling, seemingly trying to see the sky beyond. “We have the blood of a million people on our hands."