The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (22 page)

He and the little lady went off the
grid.

Once he had his robot lady friend all
tied up with clothesline wire, it was a simple matter to duct-tape
her head to the table, switch her off with some kind of universal
infrared keying device, and then cut in. The lab boys and girls
would have the chance to study all of Khan’s work, but Mr. Boyd was
really more into the soft sciences, a nice way of saying he was a
people person.

Every once in a while, you had to lean
on somebody, and he was at least properly trained.

Somebody had to write that kiddie-fuck
program as well. Mister Khan had all the essential
qualifications. 

Having broken swiftly, Mister Khan was
insistent that no one else knew about what he was doing and that he
hadn’t had any help at all. Keeping a secret was his best
defense—he said that more than once. Mister Khan had done any
number of things in the unit’s programming, including the stoppage
of payments, moving to another jurisdiction, and somehow evading
detection, all the while still maintaining the usefulness of the
device. All of this was troubling to upper management, and Boyd
could see their point. It might even relate to the Betty Blue
disappearance, the original rationale for Plan Nine’s invocation.
Mr. Khan was extremely talented—and he didn’t work for the company.
This alone was troubling.

Their unit, another 9100-series model,
was now secured. Testing and forensic analysis were
underway.

Honestly, a few red flags should have
been raised when Khan ordered such a youthful model, and his
store-front down-town wasn’t much of a blind when an
actual person took a look at it. The business was a
hole-in-the-wall, in a location that at least sounded
prestigious.

What they had discovered, was that
their programming was less than secure when faced by a
sophisticated programmer such as Khan. It was the sort of thing
that could not go into a written report, and hence his role as
facilitator here today.

He nodded at the others and they set to
filling up another bucket of ice-cold water.

Mister Khan sobbed and moaned,
thrashing wildly against the restraints.

“
Goodbye, Mister
Khan.”

“
No! No!
Please…”

“
Fucking
hackers.”

The door thudded firmly into place
behind Mister Boyd.

The poor man didn’t even have the
breath to scream.

Should have thought of that first,
eh.

You should have stayed home.

As he walked from the ravine lodge, set
well off from the main campus, the sky overhead was a brilliant
oxygen-blue and the air crisp and clean after their recent spate of
early June rain-showers.

There was a spring in his
step.

Birds sang, one or two robotic bees
buzzed in the decorative border plants along the walkway and it was
all very well to be alive.

***

Boyd had an office, a big corner one
down low on the north-east side of the main administrative
building. The smoking area lay down below and all he could see were
treetops.

He could rarely be found there, and it
was a barren space with little more than a French grey carpet, a
brown desk, and the usual modern amenities, plug-ins, screens, and
access ports. With no real need for secretarial help these days,
the only other entities who ever came in the office were the
cleaning robots. Purposely of low IQ and equipped with only the
simplest of attachments, they couldn’t turn on his machine or get
into his drawer even if they wanted to—which they were incapable of
even imagining.

Mister Boyd sat in the leather
executive chair and glanced at an icon on his primary
screen.

Missus Bennett was in her office. The
thumbnail status showed her alone but on the computer.

He beeped her and the form looked up, a
hand reached, and then she was with fully him. It was a nice
little feature of the firm’s in-house network to be able to see if
someone was busy or if they had someone with them.

“
Yes, Mister
Boyd?”

“
I just wanted to tell you
that while negotiations are ongoing, the Indian contract should be
resolved shortly.”

“
This is a secure line,
Mister Boyd.” Her eyes glistened and there were some signs of
stress in her posture.

I know, I know.

The trouble is, I don’t trust
anybody.

Especially not you, nor anyone else
involved with this company. Most companies, in fact…

“
I won’t keep you long,
Letitia. But that previous matter has borne some
results.”

“
Okay, I’ve got a
minute.”

“
The product was
compromised, but it was outside interference. The only real
liabilities to us are perceptual.”

“
It’s our machine, after
all.” And if the story hit the news feeds, the company might look
bad for a day, unless one of the nine-day media wonders went on a
witch-hunt.

“
Yes. But it was
definitely hacked. The lab people are looking it over now, but it
is clearly not the result of a malfunction.”

“
Ah. I get it.”

“
Yes.”

“
And what are our Indian
friends saying about that?”

“
Pretty much the same
story. We have to analyze the systems a little more thoroughly—our
Indian friends are definitely a little more talented than we
thought.”

“
Meaning?”

“
He, ah, wreaked havoc in
there.” It was the first time he had ever used the expression. “Yet
my feeling is that there never was a problem with the machine
itself.”

“
Okay. Thank you, Mister
Boyd.”

He nodded.

“
Letitia. How are our
students doing?”

“
They’re following car
thefts and looking for anomalous, one-time, one-card-one-purchases,
burner phones, purchases that are small but leave no fore and after
trail.”

Boyd nodded again.

She gave him a wry look.

“
Any suggestions as to how
we could narrow it down a little?”

"Sooner or later they have to go
through one of our bottle-necks."

Boyd wasn’t a tech guy. He was a
soldier and thought in purely tactical and strategic
terms.

He might even be good at it.

“
Let assume the worst case
scenario. Betty Blue had a major malfunction—and we don’t know what
it is. Her movements appear supremely logical, and yet there
must be some underlying motivation behind it.”

“
So what are you saying?”
She knew exactly what Boyd was saying.

“
For want of a better
term, what if Betty goes postal?”

She stared at her screen and hence into
his bland and ingenuous mien.

“
I’m sorry. What do you
mean?”

“
What if Betty is not
simply reacting to some stimulus, internal or external, but is
behaving proactively, according to some plan?”

Letitia looked away from
him.

“
She wants something,
Letitia. If only we knew what that was.”

Letitia Bennett’s eyebrows rose, her
eyes fell to her keypad and the security chief was suddenly one
troubled individual. Boyd broke off and stood up to get his
briefcase and an untraceable weapon.

He had another raid this evening,
hopefully leading to another subject to interrogate.
Water-boarding, because it didn’t leave any physical marks or
verifiable evidence, was strictly legal and that was always
handy.

But the odds were this was just another
hacker and other than some unique and peculiar skills, as often as
not they didn’t know a thing otherwise. He still hadn't broached
his biggest concern. How was it possible for the runaways not to
have been spotted, with all eyes on the lookout, and almost
universal coverage?

That one was his idea as
well.

Boyd hated wasting everybody’s time
like that.

Chapter Fifteen

Scott was drunk.

The booze wasn’t helping. It was like
his skin just wanted to crawl off of him and run away and hide
somewhere. He knew the sensation.

Here it was again—and that thought
alone was enough to rekindle the turmoil. Because he knew exactly
what it could do to him.

It was just fear, and fear alone won’t
kill you—or at least it shouldn’t. Simply knowing that didn’t seem
to be of much help right then.

There was nowhere to run because they
were already running.

There was nowhere to go because there
was nowhere to go.

What was shocking was that Betty must
have known that.

The realization was too much for
him.

Scott hadn’t had a serious anxiety
attack in twelve or thirteen years. The thing was not to let it
revolve around in your head.

But he was awfully close to having one
now.

He felt sick to his stomach all of a
sudden. His heart and respiration surged.

“
Oh, God. Oh, Baby. How in
the fucking hell are we ever going to get out of this?”

“
I don’t know,
Scott.”

In spite of all odds, they were still
at large. Betty had the feeling the noose was closing tighter, and
yet she would be hard-pressed to explain why. Scott expected a hard
hand to clamp onto his neck at any second, and yet he would be
hard-pressed to explain why too.

It was just a feeling they had. They’d
been too lucky so far.

They had simply stolen car after car
and driven clear across Middle America with nary a
hitch.

It could not be that easy. It just
couldn’t.

“
We really ought to do
this more often.” Even the joke sounded sick.

She smiled absently and went over to
the window. They were on the nineteenth floor of a major
hotel-casino in Las Vegas.

Scott sat in an upholstered chair,
listening to the TV news. It was the usual litany of house fires,
traffic incidents and unarmed peaceniks going postal, becoming
unruly, or losing control of their demeanor and having to be shot
at their workplace, or in a school, sometimes a mall or a theatre
somewhere. It’s a good thing the Volunteers and their fanatical
counterparts, the Vigilantes, were everywhere.

“
They always say the same
thing.” Her voice was pensive, far away.

“
Huh. Yeah. He was polite,
kept to himself and never gave anybody any trouble.” Scott laughed.
“Until now!”

“
No. I meant Mars. This is
a giant leap for humankind…” She understood Scott’s point well
enough. “But really just a lot of hoopla about a money-pit that
will never bring any benefits to the poor, tired, huddled
masses.”

But the fact was; that it was always a
similar kind of profile. If he wasn’t blind, Scott might have fit
that profile a little too well himself, and so he never really
joined into the conversation.

What was he supposed to do?

Condemning them seemed superfluous,
and if they really were mentally ill, why was it so hard to spot
the syndrome? Some guy goes into the departmental office, spends
half his weekly income on the penalties for not buying guns, you
know what? Somebody somewhere should be asking a few
questions.

In his experience it was just too easy
to slip through or be hammered through the cracks in the
system.

A forgotten man himself, he had to be
careful not to extend too much sympathy, at least in conversation
with other people. Besides, all that had changed now.

His life meant something now that he
had taken the outlaw trail.

Something real.

The news was all about the landing on
Mars, which always seemed breathlessly imminent judging by the
commentators, but still hadn’t happened. It was the longest segment
so far, he noticed, but then it was all hot and positive news, a
bit of a rarity these days in spite of persistent spin and creative
editing.

At one time, Scott would have been
enthralled. Right now he had bigger fish to fry.

“
Baby.”

“
Yes, Scott?”

“
Will you marry
me?”

Her laugh tinkled out and cut through
his gloomy mood in a way that only she had.

It was something special that they
shared.

Scott flushed. A tired smile crept
over his face.

“
Well?”

“
I’m sorry, dear. It’s
just that you caught me by surprise—of course I’ll marry you.” She
heaved a sigh and came over and sat on the arm of his chair. “But
we need some kind of resolution here. We need to get out of this
bloody predicament, the good old U.S. of A.”

“
When?” He didn’t want to
say that would be never. “Let’s do it now—while we’re right
here.”