The Nicholas Linnear Novels (200 page)

“Had enough?” Dr. Rudolph’s voice echoed hollowly in the room.

“Yes.” Shisei’s voice was hoarse. She thrust the black box from her. “But how convincing can this be? I know next to nothing about missiles and defense systems. The Hive knows everything there is to know.”

“The Hive computer knows as much as the computer at your disposal,” Dr. Rudolph said. “Which, I might add, is an accurate simulacrum of the Kremlin’s supercomputer.”

“But the difference is…astounding,” Shisei said.

“Like pitting modern-day man against a dinosaur in a game of intelligence.” Dr. Rudolph nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.” He rubbed his hands together again. “Was the demonstration a success, Cook?”

Branding was beside himself with delight. He had it all in the palm of his hand now. The Hive computer on which he had staked his career was a reality. Rudolph and his staff of geniuses had taken it out of the realm of theory, taken it further even than the first primordial jury-rigged experiments. Branding had been in on the Hive’s first bleating squalls; encouraging, to be sure, but this was a full-fledged success. It had spoken in sentences, paragraphs, volumes. The Hive brain was here, now, and it was his. “You tell us, Shisei,” Branding said, too overcome to say more.

“I’d…” Shisei seemed a little stunned. “Would it be possible to actually
see
the Hive?”

Dr. Rudolph looked at Branding. “Cook, it’s up to you. She’s your guest.”

“All right.”

The Hive computer itself was housed three floors down, beneath even the old mansion’s sub-basement. Rock had been blasted away to make room for the shielded laboratories. But when Shisei saw it, she could not believe her eyes.

“Why, it’s no larger than my pocketbook,” she said. “This can’t be it.”

“But it is!” Dr. Rudolph was beaming. He pointed to a copperberyllium object that was a three-dimensional octagon. “This is the Hive computer. Your adversary during our simulation of World War Three. You see, the Hive is well named. It’s really a multibrain, a new form of intelligence. It’s not compartmentalized, as we humans like to think of everything being, but rather is made up of many inputs working at once, in concert. We’ve mastered a revolutionary technology to make it so. These resonant tunneling computer chips are constructed not of silicon, not even of the newest hyperfast conductive alloys, indium phosphide and aluminum gallium arsenide. We’re beyond even that technology. The Hive runs on multilaser computer chips. You see, what we’ve accomplished is to find a way to send coded light signals through chips at a rate of ten billion times a second. There they are converted to electronic signals via a monocrystalline diamond layer. The result is a chip that not only processes data at mind-boggling speed, but also insulates the data from the massive heat buildup such high-speed work would otherwise generate. In short, the speed of this Hive brain makes that of even the fastest of the conventional supercomputers seem annoyingly slow.”

“So I had no chance against it,” Shisei said.

“Not even George Patton at the helm would have a chance,” Dr. Rudolph said.

“But if it’s so good, so fast, and can reason, plan strategies and such, why isn’t it being used now?” Shisei asked.

“This demonstration was just that,” Dr. Rudolph said. “It was in a controlled environment over a short space of time. There are still problems, applications we have to work on. And, of course, in some areas the Hive is still incomplete.”

“Aren’t you afraid that someone will tap into the Hive brain?” Shisei asked.

Dr. Rudolph beamed at her. “Ah, no. Besides the security network you yourself have experienced—which, I might add, is only a fraction of the external shell security, as we refer to it—the Hive brain has been programmed with its own
internal
policing system designed to eradicate any form of intrusive or destructive virus program, as well as to deny any attempt at unauthorized usage. I assure you that Cook Branding’s baby is quite safe.”

“The Hive computer is
your
baby,” Branding said to Dr. Rudolph. “I’m only godfather to its birth and development.”

“Thank you, Cook,” Dr. Rudolph said. “Come. I have some coffee brewing in my office. I’d appreciate a moment of your time to go over the revised estimates for next year's budget requirements.”

“Shisei?”

“Coming, Cook.” She was still staring at the amazing computer that thought like a brain. She took a step to follow the two men and her right heel gave way. She stumbled, went down on one knee. “No, no.” She waved away their help. “I’m okay. I’ll just have to go barefoot.”

She slipped off both shoes, turned away from them a moment, and as she did, palmed a tiny cylindrical object she slipped from the center of the broken heel. For just an instant her hand slid beneath the table upon which the Hive computer rested. Her heart beating fast, she felt the coated plastic cylinder adhere to the underside of the table just beneath the octagon of the Hive. Then she was turning back to them, saying, “Oh, coffee. How wonderful. I’m dying for a cup.”

Late in the afternoon Tomi Yazawa returned to police headquarters. She had spent the entire day interviewing Dr. Hanami’s and Dr. Muku’s assistants, lab and X-ray personnel, anyone with frequent contact with either the offices or the doctors themselves. She also went over the appointment books for the previous six weeks. She was searching for some clue to the identity of the man who had murdered Hanami and Muku.

It was clear to her by the manner of the doctors’ deaths that their murderer had been known to them. This was, perhaps, more apparent in the case of Dr. Muku, because he had been killed at close range without a struggle. Tomi could not imagine anyone—even the frightening figure that had attacked her and Nicholas Linnear in Dr. Hanami’s office—breaking into Dr. Muku’s office and shoving a phosphorus cigarette into his face. Phosphorus was what the Medical Examiner’s lab report had found traces of in Dr. Muku’s eye socket. The intense flash of heat had, in the M.E.’s words, “burned through the orb, the external and internal recti, the optic nerve, the lesser wing, the sphenoid.” In other words, it had penetrated all the way into the brain, causing death by flash-searing the organ.

In the assistant M.E.’s estimation—and in Tomi’s as well—one not only had to be very close to the victim in order to inflict death in this bizarre manner, but also to take the victim completely by surprise. Dr. Muku’s clothes were not torn or even wrinkled, his office was in immaculate condition. There was, in sum, no evidence of a struggle. Ergo: Muku knew his murderer. Assumption: Hanami knew him as well.

Tomi spent the remainder of the afternoon in tedious phone work, trying to get a line on Hanami’s friends and associates, trying to match them up with Muku’s to see if there might be an overlap, a common ground from which to proceed. She had also asked for reports on the two men’s families, not that she thought she might find something, but because she was well trained and was meticulous in her investigations.

All she knew so far was that Muku had been a widower and that Hanami was survived by his wife. According to Hanami’s widow, they had been happily married. Neither doctor had progeny.

When Tomi’s call list gave out—she was unable to reach more than a third of the people on it—she went to see Senjin. She needed advice on how to proceed. Besides, records showed that he had consulted Dr. Muku several times concerning suspects since he had been in the homicide division.

It was early evening. Most of the day watch had already gone, and the building was palpably quieter. Senjin, however, was in his office.

“‘Psychopathy is not the face of evil,’ Dr. Muku once told me,” Senjin said in response to her first question. “‘It is, rather, the beam emitted from a long-forgotten lighthouse. Loneliness is the only companion a psychopath is able to tolerate.’” Senjin nodded. “Yes, I remember Muku-san well. It is more than a pity that he is dead, it is a tragedy for the department. Because of his insights into the criminal mind, I was able to identify, isolate, and track down Kuramata, Shigeyuki, and Toshiroh, three of our most wanted terrorists.”

“What was he like?” Tomi asked.

“Muku-san?” Senjin’s forehead creased in concentration. “Well, it is hard to say. He was brilliant, of course, but also, I would say, introspective. He did not actively seek the limelight; he was not, I would judge, a good public speaker. But, of course, he was by nature essentially a thinker.”

“From what I’ve been able to gather, he didn’t seem to have many friends.”

“Frankly, I’d be surprised if he had any,” Senjin said. “Muku-san, though brilliant, was opinionated, often quite stubborn. I doubt very much whether he’d have made an acceptable friend.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me?”

Senjin had come out from behind his desk. “On a related matter, Nicholas Linnear has not returned to Tokyo?”

“Not to my knowledge,” Tomi said. “In a way, I’m relieved. No one knows where he is. Surely he’s safe from whatever attack the Red Army had planned for him.”

“Let us hope so,” Senjin said. “Though I am not as comfortable as you are with him being outside the scope of our watchful eye, and I would think it rather important that you locate him as soon as possible.”

He was standing so close to her, she could feel him against her breasts. Tomi began to burn. She took a shuddering breath, taking his scent into her lungs, enjoying it as if it were nicotine-laden smoke. But she was ashamed, not because of her erotic thoughts, but because she had not immediately stepped away from him; this was not seemly behavior in public. She did not move.

“How are you feeling, Tomi-san? You took quite a beating.”

She felt a little thrill pass down her spine as he used her first name. This, too, was unseemly behavior, impolite in the intimacy it implied. Tomi found that she was not offended.

“I am feeling fit enough,” she said, aware of the slight tremolo in her voice. “Except for some aches here and there.” She was having trouble catching her breath. “I’ve had several nightmares.” Her heart was hammering in her throat. “Nothing hard work won’t cure.”

“I see that I’ve been correctly worried about you.” Senjin put one finger beneath her chin, lifted her head up so that he could stare into her eyes. “You are such a dedicated officer.”

When he touched her, Tomi felt her knees go weak. She prayed that she would not collapse. Had the office gotten abruptly hot? Then she ceased to breathe at all as his head came down and his lips grazed the side of her neck. Tomi’s lips parted and her eyelids fluttered. She heard him whisper her name as if from a great distance.

Then she heard him say, “Come with me.” Automatically, she obeyed, allowing him to steer her out of his office, down the half-deserted corridor and into a utility closet.

He shut the door behind them. Dim aqueous light filtered through a tiny window of translucent glass high up in one wall. Tomi felt shelving behind her back, pressing into her calves. Senjin was tight against her. With the two of them in there, the space was so tiny there was scarcely room to move, and none to turn around.

“Wh-What’s happening?” Tomi asked, though her body knew, just as it had known of this inevitable end from the moment Senjin had come around from behind his desk.

She felt his lips on hers, felt her own mouth opening, almost dying of pleasure when their tongues met, searched, entangled. My God, she thought. It’s happening and, oh, oh, I want it to happen.

Slowly she felt her skirt being lifted, felt his hands upon her thighs. Then he had sunk down on his knees. Tomi was so stunned that she could not utter a sound, not even the sob she felt welling up around her heart as his mouth sought out the spot between her thighs that most yearned to have him.

Tomi felt as if she were slowly slipping into a bath, her skin frictioned by heat, her muscles relaxed by heat, her bones melted by heat. Her mind was awash as if with a drug. Dimly she remembered how often she had dreamed of this moment, never truly believing that it would ever be made real. And those dreams, like images perceived in dusty light, in a mirror cracked and peeling, added an almost insupportable weight and urgency to the moment as reality merged with fantasy. How many nights had she lain sleepless, sightless, touching herself in a sad mockery of how Senjin was touching her now, imagining that he was beside her, above her, in her? Those imaginings were all here with her now, a surrealistic pillow on which to rest her slowly working hips.

She felt a lightness of spirit in the tiny, stifling closet. The smell of sweat—her sweat, the smell of arousal; her arousal, the smell of sex—her sex was like the most delicate of perfumes, a mingling of scents that created a whole she breathed in with each shuddering breath, expelled with each muffled moan, each tiny cry of delight.

Until, her hips working faster and faster, the entire universe seemed to implode inward. She gripped Senjin’s sweat-soaked head, pushing him against her with great force, floating down from the heights slowly, slowly. And when she thought it was over, she was wrong, because he was fully against her, his heat overwhelming, and then he was in her, and the sensation made what had come before as nothing.

Tomi needed more of his flesh. She tore frantically at his tie, unbuttoned his shirt all the way down to his navel. She licked his neck. She felt abraded skin as if from a wound, kissed it tenderly. Sweat ran into her eyes.

She wept into his chest as he thrust into her, thrusting back at him, biting his salty flesh as she encircled his hips with her legs, and in the claustrophobic space there was only the two of them, and then just one, aflame, melting, fused.

When it was over Tomi tasted his blood on her lips. She lay against him, encircled by his arms, encircling him with her legs, content just to listen to their two disparate heartbeats thumping in the darkness and the heat. She could not breathe, but she liked that, too. It was as if the engine they had created had sucked all the oxygen from the environment. She felt a pulse beating madly in the side of her head, and knew that whatever else might happen, a part of him was now hers, an emotion, a sensation, perhaps something altogether more ephemeral than that, who knew? This was not a time for definitions or even for absolutes. It was a time of mystery and an acceptance of the unknown, acknowledging not only its existence, but the idea that it existed wholly without answers.