"You make it sound almost insignificant," Michelle chided.
"Not really," Eric said. "It's simply a boundary. What we know is inside; what we don't is outside. Just because it's thin doesn't make it unimportant. Some of the most interesting things happen at boundaries. Take surfaces of planets. Wars, politics. . . ." He made a nonchalant, throwing-away motion. "What else is sex but a meeting of epidermises?"
Michelle smiled and shook her head. They sat back as the waiter arrived and set their plates. "Is there anything else I can get you?" he asked.
Eric shook his head. "No, I don't think so, thank you."
"Enjoy your meal." The waiter left.
"Anyway," Eric went on, "charming and delightful as all this is, I don't think you came here to exchange philosophies. So is it my body that you're really after? Or was there something else?"
Michelle admitted to herself that she had been putting the subject off. The fact was, she did enjoy talking with him. The bizarre tangents that his mind was apt to fly off on, always provocative, never in an expected direction, were fascinating—a refreshing relief from the dreary, predictable ego-centered or defensive monologues she was so used to hearing. For a moment she found herself questioning if it was really that vital to have the conversation today that she had told herself she had come here for, or had that been an excuse? . . .
Definitely not, she ruled. She was too much the professional for that. Her sole motive was business.
"You pretty much brought it up yourself on the way here in the car," she said. "The business that's going on concerning DNC. It isn't an accident. You've said as much in effect yourself now."
Eric didn't pretend to be totally surprised. "So are you saying there's something we can do about it—apart from simply sticking to the facts? Lies always come unraveled in the end, you know."
"Yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're ineffective. They can still do a lot of damage while you're waiting for the loose ends to show. . . ." She was stalling, she knew. Eric chewed, watching her and waiting. She set down her fork to appeal with both hands. "My job is to be suspicious about everybody. In this instance, that means anybody in a position to be able to threaten Ohira's interests. With the situation we've got, the first questions in any cop's mind would be about people with previous connections with Microbotics." She paused, then, to emphasize her point, added, "Connections to things that matter. I'm not talking about any former janitor who worked there."
Eric's eyes widened in astonishment, his fork poised in midair. "My God! Surely you don't mean me?"
"I guess what I'm trying to say is that I can't exclude anybody. But I'd certainly hope not you—it wouldn't make any sense."
Eric frowned, then looked puzzled. "Well, Patti Jukes was there—but only for a short while, as a low-level technician. That only leaves Doug . . ." He snorted and smiled at the absurdity of the thought. "And Vanessa."
Michelle kept a sober expression. "I can't exclude anybody," she repeated.
"Don't tell me you're serious?"
"I just want to make the suggestion, and have you accept it, that we can't afford to ignore any possibility."
There. It had come out somewhat lamer than she had intended, but to someone of Eric's perspicacity it would make the point.
And as she watched, the shutters slammed down. He shook his head curtly, managing only with an effort to stop short of overt anger. "No, that's not possible. Please, I don't want to discuss this. Let this one ride."
The data didn't fit the theory. So what was Michelle to do now? Was this really the time to go wading in with a two-by-four and tell him she had a tape; that his son had been spying on his wife, who was not only betraying his business but had a lover too—and oh yes, by the way, they were planning to murder him? If he was this blocked to the small test that she'd tried, what would pushing it further achieve, other than produce an emotional standoff that would push any chance of their resuming on a constructive note only farther into the future? Better to let it rest for now. Leave the thought to soak in; give the spinal-cord reaction time to die away. Wasn't that, after all, as much as she'd told herself she had set out to accomplish?
She backed off with a sigh and enough of a smile to be conciliatory. "Of course, I understand how you feel," she replied. "But you have to understand me too, Eric. I just wanted you to be aware that from where I see things, nothing is impossible."
Eric nodded, made a face, and raised a hand to show that he concurred. There was still some visible ruffling of the feathers . . . but the situation was defused.
They had the time, Michelle reminded herself. There was no indication of anything drastic about to happen soon.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Doug Corfe sat in his second-floor office in the Neurodyne building and stared at the far wall, as he seemed to have been doing for half the afternoon. And that wasn't good enough. There was work to be done. But he couldn't get the situation with Vanessa off his mind. Eric and Kevin were too close, too much like family for him not to feel responsible. And even if that had not been the case, it wasn't something that a person of his makeup could sit by and let happen without at least trying to do something.
But do what? His mind seemed to oscillate between extremes like a beach ball rolling from end to end on a teeter-totter. Part of the time he felt that Michelle was being too cautious—weren't they talking about somebody's life being at stake here, for heaven's sake? He would go to the police himself if she wouldn't—and who cared whether or not there was enough evidence to make a case, who could prove what, or about all the other lawyer's technicalities? Several times he had been on the verge of calling them right there, from his office. . . .
And then, like a view of a wire cube, his perspective would shift, and the whole line of thought would appear as no more than a sop to his own conscience—fooling himself that it would mean anything to passively pass over to others what he had already been told would do no good. At that point he wanted to throw aside all caution completely, and would find himself seriously entertaining fantasies about arranging an accident himself—and then shake himself out of it.
Maybe something not quite as drastic, then. Weren't there supposed to be professionals who specialized in making sure that messages got received clearly—messages like, "Too bad, what happened to Martin's nice boat; guess what might be next if anything happens to Eric."? . . . But no, it was just another fantasy. He wouldn't even know where to start, even if he were serious. The result of it all was that he was still sitting there more than halfway though the afternoon, with nothing done that was worth speaking of, when Kevin called.
"Hi, Doug. Sorry to interrupt you at work, but I think it's important."
"I wasn't doing anything that you could call interruptible. Anyhow, if it's about what I think it's probably about, it's important. What's up?"
"Well, er, I don't think it would be a good idea to go into it now. But could we get together maybe this evening and talk about it?"
"Sure," Corfe said. "Did you have anywhere in particular in mind?"
"Probably best not at the house. I was thinking, maybe over at Hiroyuki's. Could you pick me up later?"
Corfe frowned into the phone. "Hiroyuki's? Why there? Wouldn't that be almost as bad?"
"It has to do with an idea that Taki had last night—you know, to solve our problem. Well, I don't know about solve it, so much, but do something that might help, anyway. We tried it out over there, and—"
"Wait a minute, Kevin. An idea that Taki had? You're not saying he knows about this situation?"
"He's okay, honest. It won't go any further. . . ."
"Oh, Jesus Christ!" Corfe groaned and covered his brow with a hand.
"I know him better than I know anyone, really. He's the only person I can talk to who's on the same wavelength. I had to talk to somebody. It's bad enough for you, Doug, from what you were telling me, and we're not talking about your dad. Just try being in my position for a day and see how it feels."
"Okay, okay." Corfe couldn't find it in him to argue. He'd known Kevin long enough to believe it wasn't something he would have rushed into lightly. And besides, it was done now. The worst thing they could do would be to start falling out among themselves with accusations and recriminations. "Give me a chance to get clear here." Corfe snorted to himself. Get clear from what? He'd said it through pure force of habit. "I'll stop by the house at around . . . say, between five and six."
"Sounds good to me."
After hanging up, Corfe remembered that Michelle had been at the firm earlier in the day. If what Kevin had to say concerned the case in general, then perhaps it would be an idea if Corfe took her along too.
It didn't make any difference, as things turned out. When he called Beverley, Eric's secretary, she told him that Michelle had departed back for Seattle a couple of hours previously.
While Corfe was driving to Kevin's a little over an hour later, he recalled a story that one of Ohira's friends had told him of an incident that had taken place some years before. One of Hiroyuki's female cousins—a widow in her fifties—became involved with a cult that practiced self-discovery and inner development. Their chosen path toward enlightenment and a higher mode of living involved groups getting together, usually at weekends, sometimes for a full week, at varying venues, and to feel that she was getting into the spirit and contributing her share, the cousin commissioned an architect to design a substantial extension to her house. The architect also offered his services as a consultant to choose a suitable contractor for the work, supervise the quality and performance, and generally act on her behalf to make sure she got value for the substantial amount of money involved.
All did not go well. Extras that were supposed to be optional suddenly became essential; time frames escalated; one estimate after another was exceeded. Ohira became suspicious and hired a consultant of his own to do a little checking on the side. It turned out that the architect's whole operation was a scam. He himself was the real contractor, paying himself under the table, while at the same time gouging on prices and cutting costs through substandard materials and shoddy work. At the same time, he had committed so little to writing, and the widow had kept so few records, that Hiroyuki's lawyer was dubious that much could be made to stick in court.
That was the point at which the architect received a visitation from some polite Oriental Gentlemen in business suits. They read their list of grievances, suggested a figure that they thought would constitute reasonable compensation, and gave an assurance that if it were met, they would consider the matter closed. The architect told them, in more verbose terms, to go to hell. The deputation expressed regret at their failure to communicate their position clearly, and withdrew.
In the course of the next two months, the architect had two cars burned out by vandals; his front lawn was moonscaped by an agricultural weedkiller; his garage was demolished by an earth mover that mysteriously moved itself from a nearby construction site. Haunted, perhaps, by the ghost of Christmas Future, he underwent a Scrooge-like change of heart and settled with the widow for a more-than-generous figure, upon which his run of bad luck ceased as promptly as it had begun.
Maybe, Corfe thought as he drove south on I-5, God did indeed work in strange ways, and was guiding him to the right people. In this new light, what Kevin had said about figuring something out with Taki that he couldn't go into over the phone suddenly began to sound as if it could take on a whole new meaning. Had they taken it upon themselves to involve Ohira? Surely it wasn't possible, Corfe told himself. Kevin couldn't be that far ahead of him already.
Working with mecs, Kevin had pretty much come to accept extraordinary experiences as a routine part of his life. Even so, this was one of the oddest sensations that he had ever known. Physically, i.e. in terms of motor control and tactile feedback, he was "in" one mec, while simultaneously monitoring himself through the visual system of another. It was like watching himself in one of the "out-of-body" experiences that the grownups' comics at supermarket checkouts talked about.
Taki's idea had been to use the mecs as a way of checking out Garsten's computer files. If the system wasn't as accessible externally via the phone lines as was always the case—conveniently—in movies, then the only other way was to go in. Doing so in person, however, would be messy and risky, and was very frowned upon. Also, it required some means of effecting person-size access, which was a good way to break things and leave all kinds of other traces. But from drains and ducts to packages and briefcases, there had to be a score of ways to get the little guys into a building. Once inside, how would they go about exploring the contents of a computer? Well, just as with any other kind of operator, it would involve pressing keys and looking at a screen to see what happened.
Smaller mecs couldn't provide the force necessary for pressing keys. That required one of the older, can-size, "telebot" models, which was why they were using Sir Real. The same mec could also observe the screen, but Kevin and Taki's trial runs to try out the idea had shown the process to be irritatingly cumbersome and slow—like running back and forth playing a theater orchestra single-handed while trying to watch what was happening up on stage at the same time. So Kevin had suggested using two mecs: the telebot to operate the keys, while another captured an integrated view of its movements and the results on the screen, and combining the two inputs into the sensory channels of one coupler.
It was like watching a puppet from a few feet behind, and having invisible wires attached to its limbs. And it was an improvement on using the telebot alone. However, although the view from the rearward-positioned mec did cover the whole keyboard, the portion immediately in front of Sir Real was obscured, which resulted in fumbling and awkward body-movements to clear the line of sight.
Kevin experimented with a few more lines, then selected the Control menu and exited. "It's better, but not as easy as you think," he told Taki and Corfe, who were with him in Taki's workshop. "The trouble is that I got used to touch-typing too long ago. I can't visualize where the characters are. It's my fingers that remember."
"I know what you mean," Corfe said. "Sometimes you get the same thing with a phone number. You can't remember it to say it, but you can still punch it in."
"Yes, exactly like that," Kevin agreed.
Corfe had arrived at Kevin's earlier, all fired up with the strange idea that practically the whole of Hiroyuki's family was involved. He hadn't said what had given him such a notion, and had seemed a little let down for some reason when Kevin told him that he'd meant what he said on the phone, and Taki was the only person he had breathed a word to. This had puzzled Kevin, for Corfe had sounded aghast earlier at even that much—but Kevin hadn't quizzed him on it. Corfe had livened up again since they arrived at Hiroyuki's, and seemed enthusiastic about Kevin and Taki's scheme. As far as it went technically, anyway; he still hadn't committed himself one way or another with regard to actually implementing it.
"Maybe we could reposition the visual to look vertically down on the keyboard," Taki suggested. He picked up the monitor mec from the bench where it had been standing and looked around for something to provide a mounting.
"Why not just sit it on the edge of the monitor and invert the visual field?" Kevin suggested.
"Of course," Taki muttered. Then he frowned. "But then how will you see the screen?"
"Hm. A point," Kevin agreed.
Taki put the video mec down again. "Maybe we need two mecs for vision. Superimpose their outputs somehow."
"I've got a better idea," Kevin said. "I wonder if it would be possible to couple Sir Real's arm-control signals direct into the neural circuits for fingers. Then, maybe, you could drive it via your touch typing reflexes, and that way you wouldn't need a visual of the keyboard at all."
"Hey, that would be neat," Taki said. He sat back in his seat to think it over.
"In fact . . ." Kevin went on, taking it further, "the only visual you'd need would be the screen, and Sir Real already gets you that . . ." H
e nodded to himself. "So you can do it with one mec. That's all you'd need."
"Neat," Taki said again. "Decidedly niftful."
Kevin removed the head harness and collar and looked at Corfe. "Although . . . if we're talking about changing the DNC coupling tables, it would probably mean involving Eric. Could that be a problem?"
"Why should it?" Taki asked. "We can just tell him it's a project we got curious about. He doesn't need to know what we want it for."
Kevin shrugged and looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. It's just the thought of getting him involved in something like this, that's not very legal. . . . It doesn't feel right."
Taki looked as if he still couldn't really see why, but nodded anyway.
"Maybe you don't have to," Corfe said. "I've got a better way still."
"What's that?" Kevin asked curiously.
"We've got a new mec in the lab back at the firm that does just what you want. It's called Keyboard Emulator. We developed it to give operators in couplers general-system access through regular terminals. It plugs a cord into a regular terminal keyboard socket. The other end goes to a connector mounted on the top of its head like a hat. So there's no need to fool around hitting keys at all."
It sounded ideal. How it operated was still unclear, however. Were you supposed to "think" characters at it, somehow? Kevin wondered. No, that couldn't be right. DNC operated on definable motor outputs from the nervous system, not abstract concepts lurking in as-yet unmapped and impenetrable regions of the brain.
"So what do you do?" he asked.
"Pull down a virtual keyboard with two highlights that give you hunt-and-peck," Corfe said. He thought for a moment. "Although . . . I like what you're talking about better—direct linking to touch-type reflexes. Maybe that's something we ought to think about."
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