Lanfen closed her eyes. A moment later the picture returned to the screen, and the audience was treated to a high-definition view of the carpet and Lanfen’s red Converse high-tops.
“You’re now seeing what Lanfen is seeing through the robot’s optics. The connection to the robot is managed not by outboard tech but by the operator herself. The only way for the signal from the mechanism to be lost, insofar as we can determine, is if the cameras are physically damaged or the operator is disabled or severely distracted. The ideal operator, obviously, is someone like Ms. Chen, who is trained not only in martial arts but in meditation and who is a master of multitasking. As long as the robot’s servomechanisms are intact, the kinetic agent can operate them.”
Matt allowed the show to continue a few minutes more and ended it with Bilbo cartwheeling down the central aisle of the audience and all the way down the length of the booth to the stairs. There he went to a four-footed stance and galloped up and into the conference room at the top. All the while the onstage display faithfully recorded what Lanfen saw through Bilbo’s optics.
“You can come back to us now, Ms. Chen,” Matt told Lanfen.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment the audience—at least those who were not still staring at the staircase—saw the world as the martial arts expert saw it. Then the screen went black.
The questions were fast and furious. Matt had to defer to Dice and Lanfen for many of them. There were questions about the range of the effect, how it felt to operate the bot in that way, the weight and possible materials of which the robot could be constructed. Conspicuously, none of those questions came from Mr. Howard or his companions. At the conclusion of the show, those gentlemen simply rose from their seats and disappeared, leaving Matt with a lump the size of a softball in the pit of his stomach.
Did we fail? How could that happen to me?
Lanfen and Bilbo had been brilliant. Dice’s work was brilliant. Chuck’s process was sheer genius. The possible applications were legion. Howard would have to be a blind man not to see the potential.
Christ, even a robot could see it.
Matt was so busy sweating Howard’s precipitous departure, he was blindsided by Chuck’s response to his surprise. When he caught up with his partner after the show, he found him deeply engaged in an intense discussion with Chen Lanfen about her experiences with the kinetic technology. When Chuck caught sight of Matt, the conversation had arrived at the one point that gave Matt pause: Lanfen’s so-far unique ability to ride the robot in VR mode even after the physical connection had been severed.
Matt steeled himself for—well, just about anything but what he actually got. Chuck came at him with a face beaming with scientific zeal.
“Matt, this . . . this is amazing. I mean I knew you were working on something after hours—so was I—but this? I’m speechless.”
Matt slid a side glance at Lanfen. “You weren’t speechless a moment ago.”
“I have so many questions.”
“Well, Lanfen is the one to answer them. I’d hang around to watch the fun, but I’ve got to go make a phone call.”
Pleased that he had at least dodged the Chuck bullet, Matt was about to head upstairs to call the number Howard had given him.
“Wait, before you go . . .”
To Matt the sound was like cats clawing a chalkboard. And man, he hated cats. He froze, silently counting to ten to control his temper as Chuck walked over to him.
“I really appreciate the work you put into this. This whole thing. And I have a sort of surprise for you, too—”
“Listen, Chuck, if it involves Mini, I already figured something was up. I’ve seen her coming in—”
“No, not Mini. That’s for tomorrow.” He held out a manila folder and said another name: “Lucy.”
Matt froze for real this time—not just his strides but his insides. His mind went blank. White. Like a glacier.
“I . . . took the liberty. I remembered what you told me—about wishing you could interpret . . . about why you’d thought of finding me in the first place,” Chuck stammered uncomfortably.
Matt didn’t move. He was torn between hugging his partner and breaking into tears. Internally he was doing both.
Externally he took the folder and lightly shook Chuck’s now-empty, outstretched hand. “I . . . Thank you.”
The two men were barely able to meet each other’s eyes. But the brief moment they did said everything they couldn’t.
Matt turned on his heels and headed upstairs, forcing the emotions down. Chuck had just handed him a message from the past. Matt wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
What he needed to do now was make a phone call for his future. He wouldn’t let himself wonder about what was in the folder. He wondered instead about how he was going to tell Howard that the kinetic tech he’d just seen came with a small caveat: he wasn’t sure if just anyone could do all that Chen Lanfen could. For whatever reason, it already seemed as if the government agent had not been as impressed as he should have been.
Matt’s cell phone buzzed just as he started to dial Howard’s number shakily. He did not say the first thing that came to his mind, which was, “I was just going to call you.” He didn’t want to sound overeager. He wanted to sound confident.
“May I assume you enjoyed the show?”
He wasn’t sure he succeeded at confident. But he was happy to have gotten the words out.
“It was most enlightening. However, I need further verification that the technology is what you claim it to be.”
Matt quashed his irritation at Howard’s skepticism and his anxiety over revealing the possible limitations of the tech. “Sure,” he said. “Perfectly understandable. What do you have in mind?”
“I need you to bring your operative and the robot to a location controlled by my agency, so I can verify that you’re not using covert carrier signals or other mechanical means of achieving kinesis.”
“What loca—”
“The show closes at six on Sunday. A car will pick you, Ms. Chen, and the robot up at the rear of the conference center at seven. Is that acceptable?”
“Uh. Yeah. Quite acceptable.”
“Very good. Thank you, Professor Streegman.”
“Oh, and Dice. I’ll need Dice Kobayashi, too. In case there’s a problem with the robot.”
There was a moment of hesitation. “Very well. If there are any specialized tools Dr. Kobayashi needs, he should bring them.”
Matt exhaled gustily, feeling the tension leave his body in a rush. He had hitched his wagon to Howard’s stars and stripes. There would be no looking back.
Chapter 17
GENERALLY SPEAKING
Mini’s demonstration the next day was an anticlimax in many ways, but Chuck, still reeling from Matt’s surprise, was gratified to have a standing-room-only crowd for which Mini could perform. And perform she did. She created computer-generated images as free as her ability to imagine them, rendered them in three dimensions, and animated them, sending them dancing and flying across the screen.
The three-dimensional quality of the images was stunning. Chuck was almost willing to believe that Mini was driving the high-def TV screen to do things it had not been engineered to do. The creatures seemed to break the plane of the screen as if emerging from a still pool. The landscapes seemed alive, seemed to beckon the viewer through a window into a world at once real and super-real. The audience was amazed.
They were more amazed when Lanfen repeated her performance of the day before. Matt had asked that she be allowed to do so; Chuck had conceded without argument and stood in the wings, grinning until his cheeks hurt. Once that particular genie was out of the bottle, attempting to put it back was futile. Then there was the fact that he really wanted to see the demonstration again himself. The other members of the team were somewhat less eager. Mike was losing time with his family. Sara felt cheated at a chance of using the VR. And Tim just plain hated to be upstaged. Still, mixed with the jealousy and resentment
was unmistakable awe.
By the end of the day on Sunday, Chuck was exhausted and vaguely anxious. The audience reaction had been mixed and marked, but they’d had a gratifying number of requests for tours of their facilities from various institutions. The one that most excited him was NASA. He had never considered what full kinetic control might mean in outer space. Now he did. The ramifications were revolutionary. What astronauts had previously done in dangerous and costly EVAs might be possible to do from within a space station or space transport, either via robot or servos or—dare he hope?—by direct control of the vehicle’s mechanisms.
He’d been toying with the idea of direct control a lot, and as the show closed down on Sunday evening, he zeroed in on Chen Lanfen, hoping to engage her further about her experience with the ninja bot. He offered to buy her a chai latte, for which she admitted a particular weakness. The two of them strolled down the red-carpeted aisle between swiftly disintegrating booths to one of the ubiquitous coffee carts.
“So when you’re working with the bot,” he asked as they meandered back to the booth, “are you aware of your interface with it? I mean are you aware of how you’re interfacing with it?”
“Wow,” she said, sipping carefully at her chai. “That’s a question no one’s asked me before.”
He blinked. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That surprises me. I would’ve thought Matt might’ve asked you.”
“He’s only ever asked about the amount of control I have. We had problems with that early on. It was hard for me to . . . to make that final connection. Not sure why. Dice thinks it’s because of my training and my tendency to multitask. His particular theory is that my mind isn’t solidly concentrating on one thing but is flitting around, trying to cover multiple points on a grid.”
“Now that you think of it, though,” Chuck persisted, “do you have a sense of what it is, exactly, that you’re connecting with? I suppose I mean: what’s your sense of the robot?”
She stopped in a red-carpeted intersection. “Well, the closest I can come to describing it is to say I inhabit the robot. I extend myself into it—imagine that its body is my body.” She shrugged artlessly. “It’s hard to articulate.”
“Would you be willing to come into the lab to do some tests? I’d like to take a close look at your brain wave profile while you’re engaged with the robot. I don’t suppose Matt and Dice . . .”
She laughed. “Them? I assure you they were less interested in my brain waves than what I could make Bilbo and his little friends do. They were quite focused on impressing Mr. Howard.”
“Mr. Howard?”
“You saw him. He was front and center at my show yesterday, surrounded by a group of his close associates.”
Frowning, Chuck glanced down the aisle, toward the Forward Kinetics booth, which the take-down crew was efficiently dismantling. “Who is he?”
Unease flashed in the young woman’s dark, almond-shaped eyes. “I’m not sure, to be honest. But I’m pretty sure he’s military or ex-military. I know his interest is in security applications.”
Chuck felt as if the carpet had shrugged beneath his feet. Had Matt lied to him? He’d let him believe they’d had no interest from the military when all along . . .
“How long?” he asked through numb lips. “How long has Howard been involved?”
“Months.” She hesitated, then added, “Like I said, I’m not sure he’s military, but he’s asked for a private audience.”
“A private . . . ?” Chuck looked toward the booth again. Matt had appeared in the aisle. His partner—his possibly treacherous partner—was waving at them to hurry up.
“When?” he asked Lanfen. “Where?”
“Tonight. I don’t know where. He’s sending a car to pick us up in about”—she glanced at her watch—“twenty minutes.”
Chuck turned and strode down the aisle toward Matt, driven by a completely alien surge of anger.
Lanfen murmured a breathy “damn” and hurried along in his wake.
“When were you going to tell me?” Chuck demanded, bearing down on Matt. “When were you going to let me know about this private audience?”
Matt’s eyes widened. Then he nonchalantly shoved his hands into his pockets and smiled wryly. “Well, now, I suppose. Mr. Howard and his associates are vitally interested in what we’re doing, but they need proof absolute that we’re not hoaxing them—using electronics or offstage operators.”
Chuck glanced at Lanfen and back at Matt. “Who is Howard? Is he military?”
Matt opened his mouth, probably to lie, and closed it again. He nodded. “Some government agency. He called it Deep Shield.”
“Deep Shield? Seriously?”
“Yeah, seriously. Very Marvel Comics. I think they’re part of Homeland Security.”
“HOMELAND SECURITY? AND YOU HAVE a meeting with them tonight?”
“Yes,” Matt said, checking his watch. “The car should be here in about fifteen minutes. You can come along if you like. I might be able to get you on the guest list.”
“Who’s on it now?”
“Me, Dice, Lanfen . . . and Bilbo, of course.”
“Yes,” Chuck said tightly. “Yes, I’d like to go along for the ride.”
In the end, though, Howard’s men didn’t let him go along for the ride. The driver—a young corporal rigged out in a uniform Chuck didn’t recognize—had explicit orders about who was going on the junket. Chuck was not on his manifest.
“But I’m the co-owner of Forward Kinetics,” he insisted, a pronouncement that impressed the young soldier not at all.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said firmly. “I can only transport the persons I’m authorized to transport.”
“Then none of them are going.”
“Now hold on,” Matt said, Dice and Lanfen standing uncomfortably behind him.
“Why can’t he just call and have me added to the list?” Chuck said to his partner. “Don’t you see this doesn’t make any sense?”
“What do you think is going to happen? This is our own military.”
“Oh, really? And what branch of the military are you?” Chuck asked the corporal.
“I’m not allowed to speak to that, sir. You’d have to ask General Howard.”
“General Howard?”
The corporal ignored that and started loading the cargo.
“Matt—”
“It’s okay, Chuck. They just want proof of concept. We haven’t signed away anything. And we won’t . . . yet. Not without you. But if you’re so worried, it’s better that we don’t go together.” Without waiting for a response, he helped Lanfen into the truck and followed in after her.
“I’m sorry, Chuck,” Dice said. “I didn’t realize—”
“Go with them,” Chuck said, no anger in his voice. “Just . . . make sure Matt is careful.”
Dice nodded and got in the Humvee. The corporal closed the doors and moved into the driver’s seat.
Chuck watched with a trembling dread taking root in his stomach as the Humvee pulled away from the curb. He went back into the convention center, where he found Eugene and Mini waiting for him in the lobby. Eugene looked particularly hangdog and seemed suddenly to have trouble meeting Chuck’s eyes.
“Please tell me,” Chuck said, “that you weren’t in on this.” He waved a hand at the covered turnaround in front of the center.
“Not in on it, no. Although I did have sort of a heads-up. Dice told me Matt had a surprise planned while we were setting up. I told him we had one, too. We sort of swore each other to secrecy. It didn’t . . . I mean I had no idea it’d be something like this. I knew about the ninja bot and Lanfen and all but not about the scary guys in suits and the evil black stretch Humvee.”
Chuck stared out at the spot where the aforementioned Humvee had been sitting moments before. “Matt says these guys are Homeland Security. But I don’t believe that for a moment. Do you?”
“You’re asking me?” Eugene
said. “I see conspiracies in my breakfast cereal.”
“Is that really the question you want an answer to?”
Both men turned to look at Minerva. She stood with her arms wrapped around herself, as if she were cold, and returned their gazes with a gravity that Chuck found unsettling.
“Don’t you really want to know whether Dr. Streegman believes it?”
“Matt,” Chuck spat out, “only believes in Matt.”
LANFEN HAD ALWAYS TRADED ON her ability to look icy calm on the outside while her insides were doing anything from Snoopy dancing to trembling in abject terror. True control, she had come to appreciate, was like a holographic garment one wore. She could generate it from within but relied on a willing audience to keep it in place.
Right now she was more nervous than she could remember being, even when walking Baltimore’s less safe streets at night. Self-defense against those with clear and evil intent was straightforward. She knew what to expect; they didn’t. Now, though, she was the one who didn’t know what to expect. She wondered if Matt did. He also had mastered the art of cool under pressure, so it was hard to tell.
Dice, on the other hand, was the antithesis of cool. During the ride to wherever they were going, he gave up trying to see out through the deeply tinted windows and stared straight ahead at the equally opaque glass between them and the now-invisible driver. His fists were clenched on his knees; his mouth was set in a grim line.
“Where are they taking us, Matt?” he asked once.
“What makes you think I know?” Matt returned. “I’m as out of my element here as you are.” He smiled. “Kind of exciting in a cloak-and-dagger way, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t,” Dice said and subsided into silence.
Eventually, of course, the vehicle stopped, and the driver came around to open the door. They stepped out into a huge shell of a building, with a ceiling and walls that seemed to be miles away. An aircraft hangar maybe.
The God Wave Page 17