The God Wave

by Patrick Hemstreet

  Howard came out to meet them himself and had the robot carried away and out of sight. Lanfen was separated from the men and taken to a sterile room, where she was searched with embarrassing thoroughness before being issued a formfitting, one-piece uniform of pale gray and canvas boat shoes. She bore it all with silent calm, knowing that no amount of martial arts knowledge, strategy, or skill would do her an ounce of good there. The woman who had been assigned to her was businesslike and nonthreatening. She even managed a smile when Lanfen asked her for a cup of water.

  Lanfen was reunited with her companions in a lab that was no less pristine than every other part of the installation she had seen, which wasn’t much. They were dressed just as she was. Matt looked unruffled, though his earlier nonchalance was gone. Dice looked freaked out; he kept wiping his palms on his grays. Lanfen couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d last in prison.

  “We checked the bot over thoroughly,” General Howard told them. “We’re satisfied that it contains nothing that was not included in the specs you gave us.” He turned to Dice. “You may begin your demonstration. I assume there won’t be a problem if we give your martial arts expert a set of instructions?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Lanfen stepped forward. “There shouldn’t be any problem at all. What would you like me to do?”

  “First, bring the robot out to the hangar. We’ll do the demonstration there.”

  She did as asked and found they had prepared an arena for Bilbo to operate in. It was surrounded by screening devices that looked like curved, silver solar panels on short stands. She guessed they were meant to intercept and perhaps screen out any attempt to control the robot electronically from outside the circle of screens. A moment later Howard confirmed it.

  “These panels will eliminate any electronically generated signals. Is there a problem with Ms. Chen guiding the robot from outside the screens?”

  After a moment of silence, Dice realized he was the one being addressed. “I don’t know. I mean, her brain waves are technically electric signals. All we can do is see what happens.”

  Lanfen took her cue, cutting short Dice’s nervous stammering. She guided Bilbo onto the mat at the center of the screens, visually measuring the area. About thirty by twenty, she figured—a good-size area to work in.

  She had the robot do a cartwheel, a handstand, and a somersault. Even with the screens, it was easy, like Mike moving the backhoe without seeing it. She turned to Howard expectantly. “What would you like us to do, General?”

  “Let’s start with some simple calisthenics, Ms. Chen. Have him drop and give me twenty.”

  Lanfen could swear that was a smile creasing his face. She relaxed a bit, then turned and looked at the robot. There was a moment in which she thought the entire hangar held its breath, then the bot flopped forward and did a series of twenty push-ups.

  They followed with kung fu postures, which one of Howard’s men—a martial arts expert named Reynolds—called out at random. Bilbo executed every one. After a series of these, Howard turned to Reynolds and nodded.

  “Let’s try some defensive moves now, shall we?”

  “Yes, sir,” Reynolds said and stepped onto the mat.

  “What’s he doing?” asked Matt.

  “I want to see how this thing would operate in a real-world situation, Doctor. Ms. Chen, prepare to defend.”

  Lanfen let go of the robot and turned to stare at the general. He couldn’t possibly mean . . .

  Dice objected then, loudly. “Your guy is flesh and blood. Bilbo’s made of steel. Sausage-wrapped in latex but steel nonetheless. It could kill him.”

  “Agent Reynolds can take care of himself, Mr. Kobayashi. He’s skilled and well padded. Proceed.”

  Lanfen thought for a moment that she would just let Howard’s guy whale on the bot but then wondered what that would achieve. Nothing. General Howard wanted a demonstration of the kinetic arts; Dr. Streegman wanted him to have it.

  Fine. Come and get it.

  Reynolds came at the bot head-on. She dodged it out of his way and into a pill-bug roll from which it sprang like a jack-in-the-box, its metal spine clicking. Then she put it into a defensive posture that made it look for all the world like a stainless-steel Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. Except, of course, that it had no hands—only its odd little rocker feet. Lanfen wondered if Dice could create a specialized device that would be as good a hand as it was a foot. Perhaps even an articulated hand.

  Time to think about that later . . .

  Reynolds came at the bot again, this time feinting left before swinging around to deliver a roundhouse kick to the bot’s head. Lanfen spun out of the way; the agent’s boot caught the bot with a glancing blow. It went down but lashed out with a leg that caught Reynolds’s pivot foot and swept it out from under him. He landed with a grunt that the hangar’s dimensions amplified and echoed.

  Inflamed, Reynolds rolled back to his feet and came at the bot again, this time with anger in his eyes.

  Bilbo had never taken on a live opponent who was making anything like a sincere effort to do harm. They’d sparred with a couple of the interns and even with Frodo, a model of bot similar to Bilbo, while he was under Dice’s somewhat tentative control through Becky and the VR interface. Dice had yet to learn to generate a zeta wave, which made his movements less than authoritative, notwithstanding his hours of computer game play. He could not inhabit the robot as a zeta could. He also hadn’t studied kung fu.

  Agent Reynolds had no such disadvantages. He was obviously confident in his ability to thrash the little bot within an inch of its battery life.

  He’ll find out how wrong he is soon enough.

  Lanfen feinted Bilbo but not nearly in time. The bot took a blow to its shoulder and toppled. She whipped it into a tight somersault and away from the oncoming attacker. Even as she brought the bot fully upright again, she knew that she couldn’t fight this way, at such a remove. It was too weird, watching her adversary from a distance and angle that meant she couldn’t see his eyes. How could she predict his moves if she couldn’t see his eyes?

  She took a deep breath, focused her senses, and threw herself into Bilbo’s head. There was no disorientation—she’d done this too often for that—but Agent Reynolds was already coming at her again, and she had no time to strategize. She fell back on instinct and simply reacted, taking advantage of Reynolds’s key disadvantage: Bilbo had no eyes to read.

  One with the bot, looking out at the world from his optics, Lanfen let her instincts and training take over. As Reynolds came at her, his gaze flicked to Bilbo’s transparent cranium. Before he’d even set his foot to aim another booted kick at the bot’s head, Bilbo dropped backward to the floor, away from the blow, and brought both robotic feet up to catch his attacker in the butt. Reynolds flipped end over end but managed to regain control of his body before he hit the mat.

  Lanfen, meanwhile, turned Bilbo into a pill bug again and rolled directly at her opponent. Reynolds tried to leap up and over the bot. He might have made it, too, if Bilbo hadn’t straightened, caught him full in the torso, and flipped him seven feet in the air.

  He did not recover so gracefully this time. He landed awkwardly and sprawled on the mat for a moment before he regained his feet and his composure. He was breathing heavily now, and Lanfen half-expected him to growl at her. He didn’t. Instead he folded his hands and bowed deeply. Lanfen/Bilbo returned the gesture.

  “As you can see,” Matt told Howard, “the robot is not only as quick as a human adept but is many times stronger. I assure you, too, that Ms. Chen was not fighting full out.”

  “So I see,” said the general. “You may stand down, Mr. Reynolds.”

  The man nodded and made his way off the mat and between the screens, to where the observers stood. Lanfen turned Bilbo’s head to follow him, not trusting that he wouldn’t try a surprise attack. He passed by the bot without as much as a glance.

  Lanfen let out the breath she’d been holding and
followed that with a bleat of surprise as Reynolds took two long strides and swept her from the floor of the hangar, roping a muscular arm around her neck. It was a strange sensation to be looking at herself from across the room yet feeling . . .

  Slammed back into her own point of view, Lanfen sucked in a breath and struck with both heels, going for the man’s knees, but Reynolds only lifted her higher, so the blows fell on his rocklike thighs. She went for his ribs with her elbows then. They were padded, but she got him hard enough to make him grunt.

  Hardly realizing what she was doing, Lanfen reached out for Bilbo and connected. The bot came hurtling toward them like a giant’s bowling ball. Reynolds spun but not nearly fast enough. Bilbo clipped him in the back of the legs and sent him tumbling forward. He loosed his hold on Lanfen, who planted her feet firmly and upended him over her shoulder. He hit the bare concrete with the wind knocked out of him.

  Lanfen and Bilbo straightened in eerie unison. She severed her connection with the bot and turned to face her audience. Howard’s face, as always, was inscrutable. Dice looked simultaneously shell-shocked and stoked. Matt looked smug.

  She marched into Howard’s personal space and peered up into his face. “Did you order him to do that, sir?” she asked. “Did you order him to attack me?”

  “I ordered him to do what was necessary to test the system. We had to be sure the system would work. We also needed to know what might happen if the operator was compromised.”

  “If I may say so, or even if I may not, that was a stupid thing to do. I could have killed him. Or at least broken his legs. The robot is—well, it’s a robot. Like Dice said, it’s metal with a little silver spandex over the top. I’ve never used it in a real combat situation before. Never. I had no way to gauge its real strength.”

  The general’s graying eyebrows rose. “Really. Then I’m even more impressed.” He turned to face Matt. “We’re interested, Dr. Streegman. If you can teach a civilian to this level, I’m eager to see what trained operatives can do.”

  “I am a trained operative,” said Lanfen, ire rising.

  General Howard smiled. It was the first time she’d seen him do that fully. Lanfen found she didn’t much care for the expression.

  “Ms. Chen, you are a civilian martial arts practitioner. I assure you the advantage you had over Lieutenant Reynolds was largely one of surprise.”

  Lanfen straightened her spine. “Really? Surprise? How so? He knew he was going to attack Bilbo. I didn’t. He also knew he was going to attack me. I didn’t know that, either. I’d say I was the one who got surprised. I was also pulling my punches, General. If I hadn’t, as I said, I might have killed him. As my shifu repeatedly warned me, one should never throw oneself into a fight against an adversary one does not know.”

  Howard simply chose to ignore her, and it took all her training to calm herself at the slight. He gestured for Matt to follow him and left the hangar, calling back over his shoulder to Reynolds. “Take our friends to the canteen and get them some refreshment. Dr. Streegman and I have matters to discuss.”

  Reynolds escorted Lanfen and Dice to a surprisingly pleasant cafeteria with an actual kitchen and machines that dispensed various beverages. She chose tea; Dice chose coffee. Reynolds sat down with a glass of Coke.

  They sat in silence until Reynolds asked, “Were you really pulling your punches?”

  “Mine, no. Bilbo’s, yes.”

  “You really thought that was necessary?”

  “Lieutenant,” said Dice, “Bilbo has a lifting capacity of close to one thousand pounds. I’ve seen him dent lab tables and rip tiles out of the floor by just landing hard. You do the math.”

  Reynolds blinked and absently rubbed his right arm. “Well, thanks then, I guess,” he told Lanfen and concentrated on his Coke for a moment before observing, “I couldn’t read its intentions.”

  “There was nothing to read. The intentions were mine.”

  He nodded. “That was weird. Disorienting. Human adversaries telegraph their moves. These things don’t. That would give any force using them a distinct advantage.”

  She leaned forward, her eyes on the man’s face. “But what force? Who is going to be using them? Who do you guys work for?”

  “I work for General Howard.”

  “You know what I mean. Your agency—what branch of the military is it part of?”

  He gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. You know I can’t tell you that. We’re a special group involved in homeland security. That’s all I can say.”

  “Is all this secrecy really necessary?” Dice asked.

  Reynolds turned sober eyes on him. “Our country has enemies all over the world, sir. Some we are only dimly aware of at this juncture. We need whatever advantages we can get. Secrecy is one such advantage.”

  Hard to argue that, Lanfen supposed, but she had to wonder how General Howard’s penchant for secrecy dovetailed with Matt Streegman’s desire for publicity. She had a feeling a government contract wasn’t something they’d be able to promote on their company website.

  And she wasn’t sure what she thought about getting into bed with an organization that had no compunction about preemptive attacks. That didn’t sound like “security” at all.

  Chapter 18

  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

  Matt stood outside Forward Kinetics’ main conference room for several minutes, listening to the muted hubbub within. He had stalled for several days over the Deep Shield contract, carefully crafting his presentation of it to the people waiting on the other side of the door. He was ready, though. All he would say when asked—all he had said since walking out of his closed session with General Howard—was that the government deal was everything they had worked for.

  He’d used words like unprecedented, spectacular, and amazing. He had framed it as ensuring not just their continued existence but their ability to expand and hire new staff, take on new subjects, begin manufacturing system components in earnest, and open new, larger training labs.

  Of the details of who and how and how much, he had said nothing . . . until now. Now the contracts had to be signed along with individual nondisclosure and intellectual property agreements. That would precipitate a flurry of activity within Deep Shield as they ran a thorough background check on every member of the Forward Kinetics staff.

  Matt took a last deep breath, plastered a wide smile on his face (why not? Wasn’t this their dream come true?), and strode into the room with his iPad tucked under his arm.

  “Good morning, sports fans!” he greeted them, taking his seat at the head of the oval table.

  “I hate sports,” mumbled Tim, and Eugene murmured, “Hear, hear.”

  “Okay. Good morning, tech fans and fellow geeks.” He glanced at Tim. “Better?”

  Tim gave him a silent thumbs-up.

  “You’ve got a firm offer?” Chuck asked from his seat on the flank of the oval.

  Matt looked over at him, vaguely and unaccountably bothered by the fact that he refused to sit at the opposite end of the table. “Yes.”

  “Is it everything you’ve been hinting at for the last three days?”

  “And more.” He put his elbows on the table and folded his hands beneath his chin. “Chuck, I’ve been over this thing front to back and back to front. I’ve looked at it upside down and backward. I’m here to tell you, it is everything we could have dreamed: an almost bottomless pool of financial resources, state-of-the-art facilities, the ability to hire whomever we please—”

  “You mean whoever passes their background checks,” said Tim.

  Matt turned a piercing gaze on the programmer. “Yes. You got something you need to tell us?”

  Tim reddened but shook his head. “What? Like that I drink a six-pack of Coke a day? That I dream of CGI bimbos? That in my head, I’m a big white unicorn with armored hooves and a titanium horn?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of political activism, drugs, or porn. Stuff like that.”

  Ti
m chortled. “Drugs. Do you have any idea what drugs—aside from Dr Pepper and other caffeine-delivery systems—would do to a programmer’s little gray cells? No, thanks. And I don’t do politics. That stuff is even worse than drugs.”

  “Porn?”

  “My porn is strictly legal.”

  Matt smiled at that. He turned his attention to the rest of those gathered: Chuck, Eugene, Dice, Brenda, Tim, Sara, Mike, Lanfen, Minerva, and their admin, Tana.

  “They will be running a background check on everyone here. Most thoroughly on those of us who will interface directly with their people and who will have access to their facility.”

  Dice snorted. “We don’t even know where their facility is.”

  “They’re careful,” said Matt. “Can you blame them?”

  “I don’t know,” said Tim. “You tell us.”

  Matt had expected this level of skepticism from Tim. Dice’s dark expression surprised him a little, but he foresaw no real pushback from that quarter.

  “I’m going to go over the main contract that Chuck and I, as owners of FK, will have to approve. There are also the standard NDAs and intellectual property agreements that each of us will have to sign. Tana has sent you those via e-mail, so you can look them over after I lay out the key points. But it’s all pretty simple, really. Deep Shield wants us to train their agents to generate zeta waves and to use them for a variety of purposes. What this means, first of all, is that our subjects—all of them—will become full-time staffers at Forward Kinetics at a substantially increased salary than has been attached to their part-time work here as lab rats.”

  “Full-time?” asked Sara. “I have contracts—”

  “That you will be able to fulfill.” Matt was careful not to use the word allowed. He knew only too well that Sara Crowell did not take well to the idea of being allowed to do things by a second party. “They only ask that you not take on any more outside work for the duration of the contract, which is based on deliverables. The amount of money they’re offering each of you is stated plainly in your individual contracts. If for some reason you don’t wish to become a full-time employee of Forward Kinetics, you will be asked to train up a replacement in your discipline.”