Jim had broadcast the conversation so that Rafael could follow. The older man said, “I don’t want this thing on me at all. I was better off in prison without it. Do whatever you have to do. I want to see my daughter and my grandson.”
“Okay,” Jim said. “Let’s do it. I have a feeling that Eva’s expecting me.”
“Dad, I’m going to send you a file,” Dana said. “Once you get it, activate the file then transmit it to the security collar. Let’s hope that works.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” Jim said.
“Why?”
“Never mind. Just send me the file.” Jim’s sleeve emitted a quiet chime. He had Dana’s transmission. He subvocalized and then pointed his sleeve at the collar. Another chime announced that the file was accepted.
“Well, Rafael seems to be all right,” Jim reported. “Sir,” he said to his father-in-law, “I’m going to find Eva. Please stay here unless it’s an emergency. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the collar.”
He looked Rafael over one more time and then said to Dana, “This is it. I’m going to find her. When I, uh, resolve things, I’ll link back. Now I’m going to link to your mom and then I have to go to work. See you soon.”
Jim linked to his wife. “Querida, I’m going after Eva.”
“Be careful.” Her voice caught. “Te quiero.” I love you.
Jim broke the connection.
He left Rafael in the small bedroom and reengaged his skinsuit. Approaching the stairway, he took a deep breath and climbed, flush with determination and dread. Sixteen steps to the fourth floor. He heard Eva pacing. He inched his way towards the sound.
This floor was different. The construction was new. The walls were paneled with a lighter wood, a reddish hue that gave a more expansive feel. Still, Jim felt hemmed in, despite the light and airy character of the timber.
The hallway led to a large, open work area. Sunlight streamed in through full-length windows. Unlike the windows in the rest of the house, these were modern nanoglass. The floors were ebony and teak. The woods were fashioned into a black and dark brown sunburst, centered in the middle of the room.
Jim heard her before he saw her. Her breathing was uneven and there was an odd crinkling sound as she moved, something like cellophane. It reminded him of wrapping paper on Christmas presents in his childhood. He remembered the barren feeling of the holidays, wondering what might anger his father.
He had not thought much about his parents for years. He’d sent a databurst link to them after he and Marta married. His father replied with an old-fashioned card, something that appeared to have been purchased from the stationary aisle at a grocery store. The card was white, with a silver pair of wedding bells embossed on the cover. The stilted poem inside the card appeared to have been composed by a journeyman writer. The prefabricated message started with the words, “We wish you years of happiness on your wedding day...” Jim wondered how he could enjoy years of happiness on a single day. The card was signed, “Your father and mother.” Not, “Dad and Mom” or, “With love...” or even, “Best wishes...”
His father’s scrawled signature was tiny, the writing faint. Jim could see places where he’d stopped and started. Marta said that the unsteady hand and uneven pressure suggested his health was failing.
“He couldn’t have written, ‘With love’? Or something personal?”
“Shhh...Querido. Let it be. His signature looks like that of someone with some neurological degeneration and loss of muscle control. Maybe Parkinson’s. At least he sent you a card.”
“Yeah, but he’s still playing cock of the walk. He didn’t even let Mom sign it.” And then he never heard from them again, not once, until his mother was dying.
She died six years earlier. Six? Seven? I don’t remember. An attendant at the hospital where she spent her last days had linked to him, to let him know he should come immediately. Her kidneys were failing and she’d refused dialysis. “She just wants to go,” the attendant explained.
Jim flew to Pasadena in an NMech jet to make his peace with her. She was wan and drawn. She greeted him warmly at first, but within minutes, mother and son were arguing. It was as if no time had elapsed in the past quarter century. I guess deathbed scenes work better in vids than in real life, he thought.
The crinkling sound was louder and it pulled Jim’s thoughts back to the present. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. Across the open studio Eva stood, feet close together. She seemed to sway. Her eyes were opened wider than normal and had a feral look. There was a rigid tension in her posture. He touched his datasleeve and allowed himself to be visible.
She spoke. “You come to me. You have to. You’re more like me than Marta.”
“No, Eva. This has nothing to do with Marta, or with you and me.”
“You owe me. I helped you. I helped her. Stay here.”
It was like hearing the petulant demands of a toddler. He tried to reason with her as he might with a child. “Eva, you’re a great woman. You are good to your friends. I admire you. But what you did is hurting people, killing them. Tens of thousands of people, maybe more.”
“Disregard that.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if Jim had announced the weather.
“Eva, do you know what is going on around the world? The good things you created are falling apart. We can work together to rebuild it all. Eva, I am your friend and will always be your friend. Let’s fix your good works before more people die.”
He started to edge towards her.
“Don’t come near me. I’ll hurt you.”
“I thought you wanted me to stay.”
“Maybe you’re not really my friend.”
“Eva, please. Let me help you.” Jim kept moving, an inch or two at a time. He averted his gaze, tucked his head down and hunched his shoulders slightly. Subtle transformations in body posture made him look smaller, non-threatening.
Eva took a step. There was that crinkling sound again. He looked carefully at his lifelong friend, now changed into...what? Her garments were covered with a network of black cables, each no wider than a blade of grass. They ran down her arms and legs and around her torso. Jim looked puzzled, then surprised. She was wearing an exoskeleton, electro-active polymer fibers that magnified her strength and allowed her to lift several-hundred-pound objects or strike with superhuman force. She began to walk forward. Jim held his arms out, palms up, as if to say, “I’m no threat.”
Eva advanced. A look of rage had replaced her usual expressionless demeanor. There was no mistaking her intent.
Marta and Dana searched Eva’s office again. There were few papers. Dana helped his mother to jack the datapillar. It was another dead end.
“Do you suppose that she wiped the pillar of any traces?” Marta asked her son.
“There would be something there to find, I think. I’d bet she used a different pillar to wash out the public health programs. Maybe from a pillar at her home.”
“Let’s go help your father,” Marta said.
“No,” said Dana, “We’ll be in his way. He’s better off solo. And her pillar is probably protected. I want to look for something here that will help disable the pillar. So, let’s wait till he links to us.”
Jim stood fast and spoke soothingly. “Eva, you have so much power. You can help. People are rioting in the Caribbean because there’s no more water. Diabetics are going into shock. Kidney patients are dying. They’re innocent. You have the power to save them. Then you and I can sort things out.”
“You can’t stop me,” Eva said in a jittery voice and continued to move towards him. She picked up a chair. Jim started to react even before her hand touched the chair’s straight back. He almost wasn’t fast enough. She threw it at him with no more effort than swatting a fly. The chair hit the wall behind him and shattered.
“Eva. You don’t have to do this. Let me help you.”
She said nothing and closed in on him, a blur of motion. She lashed out with her right hand, a palm
strike to the solar plexus with enough force to stop his heart. His skinsuit kept him alive although he felt the impact all over his body. Everything hurt. He flew backwards and crashed to the floor.
Eva came closer and then kicked him just above his knee. The force of the blow stunned him and he winced, but his leg stayed intact.
“Armor won’t help,” said Eva. She touched her datasleeve as Jim staggered to his feet. She aimed a punch. It was too fast to see, but he had started pivoting as soon as he saw her tense to strike. Not soon enough. Her fist hit his shoulder. He was thrown aside but unharmed. He might as well have been an empty container, tossed into the trash.
Jim started to his feet when he felt a wave of fatigue sweep him. He felt weary to his bones. What’s the use? I should have stayed out of her life. I should have stayed a dog trainer.
His mind wandered again and he thought of Ringer. He missed her. The move to Boston had taken years from her life, and he had mourned every day since her death. Naively, he had thought that she would be happy anywhere she could have a walk and a toy. But the northern winters stung Ringer’s eyes and matted her coat. It sliced her delicate foot pads with shards of ice and then burned the wounds when she walked on the rock-salted streets. Just going outside was uncomfortable. She’d pee on the back porch, where the snow had been removed, rather than walk down a short set of stairs and search for a snowless spot where she didn’t risk frostbite on the business end of elimination. Eventually, he learned to shovel the apartment’s tiny back yard for her, an exercise that provided a good deal of amusement to the neighbors.
Eva stared as he lumbered slowly to his feet. She looked puzzled, confused that his armor still worked. Jim touched his sleeve and activated the light-shifting properties of the skinsuit. He was invisible to her once again.
“Nice trick. Won’t help. You can’t touch me,” she said and then started to whirl around like a top, arms extended. Jim knew that if she connected he’d probably be killed.
He had one option. Touching the small disc on his jaw, he linked to Marta and Dana and subvocalized, “Querida, I love you. Dana, I love you. Take care of your mother.” Then Jim crouched and exploded forward, catching Eva at the knees, below her whirling arms. She was small and he lifted her off her feet. The momentum of his charge hurled both of them towards the windows on the other side of the workspace.
The collision rocked them both, but the window’s nanoglass held. A second later she started to beat him about his back. His skinsuit kept him alive, but barely conscious. Although each blow was cushioned, he could feel himself weaken. With a scream, Eva drew all of her strength and reached back to strike a killing blow. Her fist hit the window behind them with a strength that was amplified by her madness and the exoskeleton. It was enough to crack the glass.
But the window held.
“What’s he doing?” Marta asked in a quavering voice. “Did that sound like a goodbye to you?”
“Mom. You’ve got to trust Dad. He’ll be okay. We have to find Eva’s key.”
Dana paused and peered intently at his mother. “Mom? Maybe you should sit down. You look pale and your eyes are red. Is it MAS? Mom?”
“I’ll be okay. I’m just going to sit a moment.”
She felt tears starting to stream down her face. She wiped her cheeks. The tears were bright pink. She said, “You’re right. Let’s keep looking.”
“Mom...if you’re having an attack, you need to rest. Mom? Mom?”
Eva’s face was placid. This is it, Jim thought. I’d hoped we’d go through the glass. He’d pinned her to the window but knew he couldn’t hold out for long. She began to beat him. Steady, methodical blows rained down on his back. The pain was excruciating, and his skinsuit armor transferred the impact to cover every inch of his body. With a last effort, he reached out to grab her arms but her amplified strength overwhelmed him. He was looking down at Eva’s teak wood floor and watched with detached interest as his field of vision began to narrow.
Eva had won.
Dana scanned Eva’s office. Her aerie was barren. A desk and chair. Pillar. Carpets. The standard wall decorations: diplomas, photographs of Eva, and the scarab brooch.
Dana stared at the framed bauble. “This thing bothers me, but I can’t figure out why,” he said. He took the brooch down from the wall and out of its frame as he had several times in the past hour.
“Mom. I have an idea. I need a nanoscale microscope, something with a resolution down to say, five or ten nanometers. Is there one in your workspace?”
Marta didn’t seem to hear. Her face was ashen, with streaks of blood-stained tears.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
Her mouth moved but no sound emerged. Her breath hitched.
“Mom, what’s wrong?”
Pain shot through Jim’s body. Eva struck with machine-like regularity. His vision was reduced to a tiny patch of the floor below him. He noticed the fine grain of the wood and tried to conjure up an image of Marta and Dana. He didn’t want his last thoughts to be of building materials.
For a moment, Eva stopped. She bent her head down and in an low voice, nearly a whisper, she cackled. Her speech was rough and accented, as if she’d still been in Sofia. “It was simple, Jimmy boy. I knew Rockford to fail. I examine and I see. Design was not good enough. But that is not my problem. Then they blame me? I just say, ‘I quit.’ All I had to do. You should have believed.”
She stopped for a moment and cradled his head in her arms. “You were my friend, Jim. Then you treat me like a freak. You don’t talk to me. You look the other way.”
“Now I hold you last time. I wish I could see you now. Turn off skinsuit.”
The effort even to subvocalize was now beyond Jim. He stayed invisible.
“No? You stay hidden? I love you anyway. But you hurt me. You hurt me much.”
She raised her fist for a killing blow.
Then a shout erupted from the door to Eva’s workspace, a cry of animal pain and rage. Struggling to keep conscious, and with a slow, agonized effort, Jim turned his head. For just a moment, his vision returned. There was Rafael. He was out of captivity, still wearing the security collar. He was alive, enraged, and in agony. With a roar the man hurled himself at Eva, arms outstretched as if to embrace her.
Rafael wore neither exoskeleton nor armor. His strength was fueled only by his anger. It was enough. On impact, the weakened window disintegrated, sending shards of glass and three bodies hurtling through the fourth-floor window. They seemed suspended for a moment and then plummeted to the street below.
The window from which they were propelled by Rafael’s charge was typical of nineteenth-century construction. Each floor featured 14-foot ceilings. The window was 56 feet above the pavement. Eva struck headfirst with a force that exceeded the limits of her exo-skeleton’s strength. She was dead even as the other bodies hit the ground.
Jim’s skinsuit was enough to stop a fist, but the combined weight of three falling bodies transmitted too much energy to his punished body. The weakened silicon armor was useless. His heart and lungs were battered and his brain bounced within his cranium, the force far greater than the cushioning effect of the cerebral fluid surrounding it. He was already unconscious as he struck the pavement and then he joined Eva in death’s embrace.
Rafael landed on top, capstone on a pyramid of bodies. He might have survived the fall but for the security collar. Although its output was diminished, the combination of its relentless release of microwaves, coupled with the shock of impact, stopped his heart.
Less than a mile away, the executive office of the Boylston Street headquarters of NMech echoed with twin horrified cries. Marta and Dana heard Jim’s parting words, a collision, a roar and then the sound of shattering glass. Before they could comprehend the sequence, they heard the whoomp of flesh striking pavement. Then silence.
Marta slumped to the floor. Her breath came in short gasps. “Oh no. No, no, no, no...” Dana came to his mother’s side and held her. He opene
d his mouth and clenched his eyes shut, and uttered a wail of grief as he pulled his mother even tighter. She turned and held the child to her breast. Their anguish was heart-wrenching. NMech employees rushed into Eva’s office and found mother and child locked in an agonized embrace.
“What is it? What happened?” one of them cried. “What?”
“Jim.. Jim.. Jim...” Her words tapered off into inchoate cries of despair.
“What happened?”
Their only response was convulsive sobs.
30
___________________________________________
RECOVERY
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
MARCH 4, 2045
Marta clung to Dana like a shipwreaked sailor might cling to a a rock. She turned to him and brushed a lock of hair out of his face and wiped tears from his cheek. She kissed his forehead, sobbed again, and then caught hold of herself. She struggled to regain her composure.
“We have to figure out how Eva started this,” she said.
“But there’s nothing here. What are we missing?” Dana asked.
Marta’s self-control cracked. “You mean besides everything that Eva destroyed? Besides that your father is dead? And probably mine? Other than that?” Now her voice was near hysteria. “If there’s some way to stop this disaster, she hid it too well.”
Dana’s head snapped up in sudden realization. “Hidden? Mom, I think I can find the key to Eva’s programming. Something she told me a long time ago about hiding things in plain sight. Come on, we’ve got to do this and then we can, well, whatever. Where is there a nanoscale microscope?”
Marta lumbered to her feet. She teetered and fell back. She grabbed for the edge of the desk but missed. She collapsed.
“Mom? Mom? Mom!” Dana reached down and touched the side of her neck. Her pulse was thready, her skin cold and clammy, her breathing shallow. Dana cradled her head in his lap and called out, “Somebody help! We need help! Link to Emergency Services. Please.”
Little Deadly Things Page 29