The Messiah Choice (1985) (8 page)

"You've seen the scan tapes. You know damned well there's only one blip from the meadow to the beach. The tripwire cameras, which are stills, didn't show much, either. One had some of Sir Robert's leg, the other, the beach scan, shows nothing even though it should have shown anything on that beach at just the right moment. There's nothing on the audio, not even birds and ocean, but nothing tests out as erased. I'm good at what I do, but somebody was better and beat the system."

"Well, I'm good at what I do, too, Ross. I've got motive and opportunity. When I get method, I'm going to nail the bastards. After that you can start covering up for them, like a good little boy, but I don't have to be concerned with that. I stand on my original comment, Ross. Either you know or your machinery was so nicely tampered with under your very nose that you should be assigned to guard copper mines in Montana. And, for your information, I wouldn't turn down a billion, but that thought had not even entered my head. Now go find a fireplug and have a good pee, eh?" And, with that, he walked on, leaving the security man fuming and staring at his back as if trying to kill him with willpower alone.

Angelique nodded and smiled and made small talk but it was clear that she was pretty unhappy.

Most of the guests put it down to the trauma of the burial and were sympathetic, not knowing, or wanting to think, that it was the guests and not the funeral that was the trouble. It was impossible to explain to these people what was going on in her mind, and so this was simply an ordeal that had to be weathered.

How could she explain to them without seeming cruel and inhuman, she wondered, that she felt virtually nothing at the service today or even at the graveside? Sir Robert had been a kindly and wonderful friend as a sort of honorary rich uncle, but now that she knew who he really was she could feel only bitterness. He had from the start placed her off in a corner, away from the modern world, a distant second in his own life's priorities. How do you love a father who treated you as a minor corporate property, who scheduled meetings when it was convenient for him and paid the bills but who was unwilling even to tell you the truth? Even now she wasn't a person, let alone a daughter; she was a corporate weapon, a bit of nasty black humor exercised by a man beyond the grave. He had left her everything, but prepared her for nothing.

The accident had ended her formal education while still in the eighth grade, and she had never really taken up offers of tutoring. Beyond the religious studies and the fascination with automation and medicine from her years at the Center, she'd mostly gotten what she knew from reading books or watching television, and even there her main interests had been romances and soap operas. Perhaps that was why she hadn't been able to get
him
out of her mind.

She knew it was silly, juvenile, and totally irrational, yet she could not deny it. He was older, yes, but handsome, rugged, intelligent, confident, and kind. She was aware of what sort of a risk he had taken with her yesterday and how much these people probably hated him for it, but that had only cemented her first, admittedly emotional, impressions. She had fantasized about him the previous night, imagining things that she never knew she was capable of imagining before. She wished he were here now, but understood why he was not. Particularly after yesterday, Greg MacDonald would not be welcome or at ease in this crowd.

Byrne acted as host, with his wife, Carla, serving as hostess. She was far younger than Byrne, an Italian who might be quite attractive if she wasn't dressing and acting as the corporate executive's wife. Clearly she enjoyed ruling the social roost and used her husband's authority as her own.

The rest of them seemed to come from many nations and all seemed to be called Doctor something or other. There was the medical doctor, a Dane, and a number of men and women, ranging in age from the thirties to the sixties, from places as diverse as India and Kuwait. West Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Britain, and Brazil. All seemed pleasant, many seemed preoccupied, and, thankfully, none of them seemed anxious to discuss what their work was here.

She was having quite enough trouble without displaying her total ignorance.

Sister Maria, dressed for the day in the old-fashioned black habit, seemed to enjoy herself, and had a long and animated conversation with one of the scientists, a tiny and attractive woman who looked young enough that at first Angelique had thought her one of the wives. Still, overall, Maria kept close to her charge and made certain that Angelique was neither trapped nor left alone.

The most interesting of the batch was Sir Reginald Truscott-Smythe, who was everything Greg had warned. Middle aged and ruddy-complected, with a small moustache and neatly trimmed hair—and buck teeth—he was
very, very
British, y'know. He was so stereotypical he reminded her of a comedian putting on the British upper classes, but "Reggie," as he insisted he be called, was exactly what he seemed to be, at least in looks and manner. He was also the one man willing to discuss his own work that she wanted to hear from, and this delighted him no end.

"You are the man who really runs the whole business, I think," she said to him.

"Oh, dear me, no! What I am, you see, is the world's highest priced mechanic, and SAINT is mostly self-diagnosing and self-repairing, so it's not much of a job, really. Oh, I shouldn't say that to you—you're the boss now, after all!"

She laughed. "No, no. it's all right. From what I understand, you are worth every cent."

He seemed more than pleased by that. "It allows me time to try and see what SAINT can really do. We've barely scratched the surface."

"This computer—it can really think?"

"Oh, my, yes! Don't think of it as one of those things you see in all the cinema versions of computers with their anachronistic whirring tape drives."

"But it is
enorme,
no?"

"Oh, no, not really. It's quite small, actually, as the popular vision of these things go. The basic device is probably no more than four by four meters by about six high, and not a moving part in the whole sand pile. The old computers used to perform a few thousand calculations on a small chip; we increased that to tens of millions and then stacked the chips, each not much larger than a tea coaster, into massive interlinked sandwiches. It is capable of thousands of millions of calculations per second, and is to the old business mainframe computer, the one that took a room, what that computer was to the abacus."

"But if it is so powerful, then why all the space below I am told it needs?"

"Well, some of it is because we are dealing in silicon here—plain old fused and formed sand.

Put those tens of thousands of tiny transistors together, pack them tight, and run them constantly at full throttle, and the bugger gets tremendously hot. It requires a massive power supply and extreme cooling—it must live permanently in a sort of giant meat locker, as it were, constantly chilled to keep its temperature down. And everything is triplicated, at least, so that if any tiny unit fails there are three to seven other paths to get to the same thing. That way we make certain that if one part goes down nothing is noticed in the system except that we're given a notice of what and where and what to do to fix it. The rest of the space is for memory storage, cooling machinery, the telecommunications network, that sort of thing— the stuff SAINT runs and the raw material it uses."

"But—it thinks?"

"Indeed yes. It talks, too. Holds conversations in a decent voice that sounds deceptively human.

I like the voice, but most people prefer the usual terminals with text readouts. Still, you can give instructions to it vocally and it will then do what you wish, including put up information on a screen. That might be very convenient for someone like yourself to whom keyboards are a roadblock, if you'll pardon me making the point."

"Please—I have long since gone beyond the stage where I take any offense at others noting my limitations. I, in fact, have less patience with someone who tries very hard not to notice. This robotic chair is what gives me a life. That is why I am so fascinated with your SAINT."

"Indeed yes. We are close to the day when the marriage of human and machine will be direct.

Even now many paralyzed folk are walking using their own muscles with the nerves connected to microprocessors. The day is not far off when we can fabricate a human-looking body carrying its own internal power supply and microprocessors of the type and density used in SAINT.

Connected to the nervous system above the point of injury, it might well be that those bodies will move at the thought-command of the wearer. Eventually, it might be merely something put on, bridging the gap caused by the injury and thereby restoring the natural body. You'll walk yet, my dear."

She smiled. "Thank you for the thought. I hardly have the background and skills to take charge of the company even if my father's will goes through, but I do intend to have some input, to insist on investment of time and money and resources into that very sort of thing."

"Quite so. Well, listen—when you're ready and able, let me know and I'll introduce you to SAINT and show you how to use him."

"Him? It is now a person?"

Sir Reginald looked a bit sheepish. "The voice is masculine, and I hold so many conversations with him, well, it just seems like a person to me, you see."

"Um—I apologize for the question, but aren't you sometimes concerned about it?"

"Huh? In what way?"

"I mean, it has more information than a hundred libraries, thinks millions of times faster than we do, and it actually does think and talk. What if it gets—ideas—of its own?"

Sir Reginald chuckled. "My dear, you must forget those hoary old sci fi horror cliches the telly always belches out. First of all, it only does what we tell it to do. It's not off in a silicon corner hatching plots. SAINT serves and amplifies our own abilities, solves
our
questions, just like all the machines of the past once did. And if it still gets uppity, we can always pull its plug. Cut its power or simply cut off its air conditioning and watch it fry. I'd hate that—like doing it to one's child, don't you know—but it's
frightfully
vulnerable."

Finally the ordeal was over, and just about everyone drifted out. Still there, however, was Father Dobbs, who hadn't said much more than condolences to this point, and Harold McGraw, her father's attorney. Both now seemed interested in talking more and neither seemed to realize until then that the other was of similar mind.

"Father, why don't we go back to my rooms and talk?" she suggested. "Monsieur McGraw, please make yourself comfortable and when we are done I will send for you. Fair enough?"

McGraw nodded and excused himself, and she and the priest went back to the suite. The tall, lean, balding clergyman looked and sounded more like an undertaker than a priest, and seemed to have a dour expression at all times as well. She bade him take a seat on the couch near the windows and waited.

"I hardly know where to begin," Dobbs said uncertainly. "This has been a real shock to me, you know. I've known your father for more than thirty years."

"Oui.
Go on."

"I—ah—I'm well aware as well that your feelings towards him are, at least, ambivalent."

"No, I can not say that. I am most definite about my feelings at this point," she told him coldly.

He got the message. "Miss McKenzie, the fact is that your father was a great man, a genius, and he did a lot of good. A saint, however, he wasn't, and would never be. He treated you most shabbily, he knew it, he felt guilty about it, but he never changed that. That is one of the great many things in his life that can not be excused save by the mercy of God."

"You came here, then, to ask me to forgive him? That I can do only in the Christian sense, I fear. As you say, forgiveness of his sins is in God's hands. I am one of these sins and I am still here. He can not buy with his money what he did not earn with his deeds, yet I will pray for his soul in Purgatory. And my name is Montagne,
s'il vous plait.
If my father did not wish me to have his name in life I see no reason to change it now. I can pray for understanding on my part and salvation on his, but more than that—no."

The priest nodded. "That is all that I can ask."

"But you did not take me aside to talk solely of this."

"No, that's true. Miss Me—Montagne, pardon me. Would it shock you to know that your father believed that he might be killed?"

"I have no reason to know one way or the other, but this interests me. Go on."

"He came to me not long ago—a few weeks at best—and at that time he said that he felt he might be done away with. He didn't know by who as yet, but he was becoming convinced of it.

He felt that he was being followed and monitored by those outside his employ, that they were stalking him."

"Who is 'they,' if I may ask?"

"I wish I knew. But while your father never spoke much of theology, it was all he could talk about that time. I put it down to depression or perhaps an illness unknown to me, or even job stress, but he pressed and pressed. He was particularly concerned with interpretations of the Book of Revelations—the
Apocalypse
—and on things having to do with Satanism and paganism. I only knew so much and referred him to an expert in the field who's in England, Bishop Whitely. I don't know, though, if he ever saw the Bishop, who's rumored in poor health and had to retire somewhat prematurely, but he told me that if anything violent or mysterious happened to him I was to convey this to you."

She stared at him. "Do you know why?"

"I'm afraid not, nor do I know why this should be of any importance to you. I merely convey the message as I promised him."

"This Bishop Whitely—who is he?"

"A noted academic and scholar in the church and quite a conservative theologian for an increasingly liberal denomination. He was formerly Bishop of Durham at Yorkminster, although briefly—that gave him a lordship, and he is about the fourth highest ranking cleric in the Church of England. I don't really know him at all beyond that. He's not really connected to the Canadian church. He is, however, an academician—most Bishops of Durham have been—and a former Oxford professor who still does some academic research work. He is also a theological conservative and a mystic, probably more conservative than the average Roman Catholic bishop by some measure. They got into some trouble with that Bishopric the last few times around, with one of them questioning publicly the virgin birth and the divinity of Christ."