Bug Park

by James P. Hogan

  From the positions that Corfe had selected, the two mecs commanded a clear line of sight to both of the secretaries' terminals and keyboards. The result was that by the time Corfe collected the van and left toward the end of the afternoon, he had not only successfully infiltrated the devices needed to commence the operation tomorrow, but he also had on tape the full sequences of codes and passwords for accessing Garsten's system. He also had an audio record of a lot of gossip and personal secrets between Garsten's two secretaries—some of it quite entertaining, but nothing immediately relevant to his purpose.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kevin peered into a deep, crawl-size passage with floor and sides of streaky yellowish metal plastered with globs of oily mud. The ceiling consisted of massive, square-cut slabs of the same metal, set at varying heights along the length of the passage. All but the one nearest to him were wedged with props sawn exactly to length from pieces of paperclip. Reaching in with an arm, he braced one of his steel-jointed hands underneath the last pin of the lock in the old two-drawer file cabinet in Taki's workshop, and moved it upward in its guide, stopping every few inches—at least, what seemed to him to be inches—to work it experimentally to and fro and from side to side. He felt the friction reduce suddenly, and the lateral play increase. The top of the pin was at the shear line, where it would normally be positioned by its particular notch on the key. Unaided human fingers wouldn't have felt the change without years of training and practice. But to somebody mec-size, it felt like a boat lifting onto the water as it was pushed off a beach. Kevin used the scale that he had marked on a steel sliver to measure the height of the gap—one of the advantages of mec-scale physics was being able to hold up with one hand a block of solid metal which from its appearance ought to have crushed him.

  "Six-eight-five," he told Taki.

  "As good as done." At the foot of the cross-treaded wooden slat that Kevin was using as a ladder to reach the lock, Sir Real, an order of magnitude larger than the one Kevin was operating, stooped over the piece of 2x4 pine on the floor that he was using as a bench, and began cutting the last strut.

  Grownups! Kevin thought to himself while he waited. For a whole week nobody had been able to do anything; now, suddenly, it was on for tomorrow, and everything was a panic. No wonder they dreamed up economic systems that were feast one day and famine the next, and went from boom to bust overnight.

  Corfe had e-mailed him a message early that evening finalizing the plan. Eric had gotten involved in something late in the day at the office, and would be leaving for Barrow's Pass sometime between nine and ten in the morning. Corfe would collect Kevin from the house at ten-thirty, drop him off at Neurodyne, and go on into town to meet Michelle. The two of them would then proceed in the van to Garsten's office. The spearhead group of mecs was inside with some basic tools. Corfe had taped the access codes and passwords. How he had managed to talk Michelle into joining them, he hadn't said. He was adamant, however, that Taki wasn't to be involved tomorrow. Kevin had been unable to disagree about that.

  "One length of sixty-eight and a half thousandths coming up." Below, Sir Real turned and moved back to the foot of the makeshift ladder. Kevin's perch shook as the larger mec began climbing. It still took a conscious effort to fight down his alarm reflex, although at his weight he could have fallen from the ceiling without damage.

  The other nice thing about working through mecs was the convenience of remote coupling. While Taki himself was in his barber-chair coupler, there in his basement where the mecs were, Kevin was controlling the smaller mec from his own house several miles away. That was another new development. Whenever they had operated two mecs simultaneously in the past, such as in their forays against the insect world, they had used the multiple-coupler setup at Kevin's house. Coordinating them from different locations was something they had never considered until Doug proposed it for the operation at Garsten's office. It had seemed a good idea to try it out before going live tomorrow.

  A huge steel hand, seemingly the size of a piano, appeared from below, clutching a metal rod as long as Kevin's leg. Kevin took it and wedged it into place like a pit prop below the pin that he'd been holding up. The other mec climbed higher, its head coming into view like a boilermaker's rendering of King Kong filling a window halfway up the Empire State Building. "Will that do it?" Taki's voice asked on the audio circuit.

  "There's only one way to find out, isn't there," Kevin answered.

  Sir Real produced another piece of metal from the accessories attached around its waist—an improvised key-blank, formed from a rectangular-section bar, with a cross-piece to turn it. Kevin guided the bar into the lock, steering it carefully past the struts that were propping up the pins. The struts and the blank, in effect, together formed a composite key. Kevin moved out of the way to one side, giving Taki room to apply force to the crosspiece. The lock's circular faceplate, looking to Kevin like the door of a bank vault, started to turn.

  "I don't believe this!" Kevin exclaimed. "Taki, I think this is actually going to work!"

  "See. Didn't I tell you to trust me?"

  "How come you know so much about this kind of stuff?" Kevin asked.

  "You would too if you had to live with a paranoid sister who locks up everything movable in closets and boxes. You have to learn about things like this, to get things you need."

  "Why does she lock everything up?"

  "I told you, she's paranoid. She thinks I'd take it."

  There was a solid clack as the lock disengaged. "Jackpot!" Kevin said. "Now let's see if we can open it."

  "Huh, what's this 'we'?" Taki said, scooping him off the ladder and transferring him to one of Sir Real's belt hitches. "What's a pipsqueak like you going to do? This is the real man's department."

  "Was that meant to be a pun?" Kevin groaned, clinging on while the larger mec backed down the ladder to the floor.

  "No—but it's not bad, is it?"

  "No, not bad. Just terrible."

  "I knew you'd like it."

  They reached the floor. Sir Real set Kevin down and then shifted the ladder aside. Above them, the front of the file cabinet towered like a windowless gray skyscraper. From the handle of the lower drawer, a length of cord dipped across the floor like the cable of a suspension bridge and ran through a clothesline pulley secured to the leg of the bench standing a few feet away.

  "Okay, then, let's see this great Samson act," Kevin said.

  Sir Real picked up the free end of the line and took in the slack through the pulley. Then it turned to face the pulley, the line running through one hand and around its back to the other. It drew the line taut and leaned against it experimentally. "I need something to push back against," Taki said.

  "There's the edge of the carpet just a short way back."

  Sir Real looked back over a shoulder; then, paying out line as it went, moved backward until it could brace a foot. The mec crouched, took the strain, and then slowly straightened, using its legs and back. Above Kevin, the immense face of painted metal crept outward.

  "You've cracked it! It's moving!" Kevin exclaimed. Taki paused to take in slack and then repeated the maneuver, pulling the drawer out another half inch.

  Kevin wondered how much more they might have been able to achieve if they'd had more than a day to prepare. People were always making a fuss over there never being enough time to do things. Kevin had his own theory about that. Being God, knowing everything and existing forever, had to be a pretty boring way to exist, it seemed to him. It would be like reading a book that you already knew every word of. What made books fun was the uncertainty—wanting to know what happens in the part that you haven't got to yet. God must have gotten pretty tired of being God, Kevin thought. And so He had invented time to make the Universe more interesting.

  Back in Kevin's own house, Eric sat down in the dining room with the plate of roast that Harriet had left for him, and read over his notes for the presentation he would be giving tomorrow. He had been through the routine
many times before, and had no delusions that anything much was likely to change as a result of it. The minds of the orthodoxy were closed on the subject. Nobody questioned basics these days. What passed for science had degenerated into a competition of devising pretexts to attract funding from political bureaucracies. Who cared if an experiment performed a century ago had been accorded the wrong interpretation—particularly if it meant that a huge part of the theoretical work going on today, apart from creating platoons of jobs and helping to keep the paper mills busy, was largely a waste of time?

  Eric was one of the few who cared. He cared because in his view, most of what was going on wasn't science at all. Science meant having an open attitude to what might or might not be, a simple, sincere desire to know what was. When no further examination was permitted of what had been decided was true, and inconvenient facts became non-subjects, then science had given way to fundamentalism. The spectacles featured in the news documentaries and magazines—bigger accelerators, faster computers, fancier satellites—were orgies of technology: maybe more refined and polished than what had gone before, but still essentially more of the same. Nothing was being discovered that was radically new. And whenever official eminences proclaimed this to be because there was little new left to be discovered, as happened periodically through the centuries and had once again become fashionable, it was invariably a sign of science in trouble and due for an overhaul.

  "Ah, yes it is. I thought you were back." Vanessa came through the doorway from the kitchen. "You found your dinner?"

  "Mm. Harriet left it in the microwave."

  "Is it okay?"

  "Just fine."

  "I thought you'd be back earlier."

  "So did I. We ran into a bit of a snag with feedback resonances." Eric indicated the rest of the house with a vague motion of his head. "Is Kevin around, or did he go over to Taki's?"

  "He must have gone to Taki's," Vanessa said. "I'm pretty sure he's not here. How about you? Have you decided whether you'll be staying till tomorrow, or will you be traveling tonight?"

  "Oh, it's getting late now. I'll leave it until morning. Do you still want me to use the Jag?"

  Vanessa nodded. "I would. There are a couple of boxes of things down by the back seat—brushes, paints, and craft things. Do you mind if I leave them there? Thelma left them when she was here the other day. I'll be seeing her again next week."

  Eric shook his head as he ate. "No problem. I'll only be taking one bag. You sure you'll be okay with the Jeep?"

  "I'll use the van if I need to go anywhere far."

  "Um. I think Doug's borrowed it again—doing more work on his house over the weekend, or something."

  "Oh, if I get stuck I can always call Harriet. I'll manage somehow." Vanessa looked around, remaining in the doorway. "Well, there's something I need to finish in the den. I'll leave you to your dinner."

  Eric nodded as Vanessa turned away. Her footsteps receded across the kitchen and out the far side. Eric carried on eating in silence. Just for once, it would have been nice if she'd offered to get herself a coffee, sit down with him, and talk about something, he thought to himself.

  Kitchens, dinners, which car to use, and boxes in the back. Vanessa had hoped this relationship might include some recognition of her worth as a scientist. Instead, she was supposed to become a full-time version of Harriet. Eric had done a smooth job of enticing her away from Microbotics and its realities of the kind he would never be able to deal with. She was expected to become part of this dream world that he had created to escape into, to be an accessory—a complement to his life, but no more. She sat down in the den, picked up the phone, and tapped in Payne's number. Well, Eric had picked the wrong person, she told herself as she heard the ring tone and waited. It was a harsh way to have to learn such basics, maybe. But she hadn't made the rules.

  "Hello?"

  Vanessa answered in a low voice. "Martin?"

  "Hey! Where are you?"

  "I'm at the house, so I'll keep it brief. He'll be leaving in the morning. Expect me at the lab by ten-thirty. Are there any changes of plan?"

  "None. We're all set as agreed." There was a pause. "You, ah, don't have any . . . second thoughts, then?" Payne's voice held a curious note, a hint, almost, of disbelief.

  Vanessa shook her head curtly into the phone. "What is there to think about?" she said, and hung up.

  It was the first time that she had talked to Payne from the house, she mused to herself as she sat looking at the phone. But what of it? By the time the bill came in with its record of the call, it would no longer matter.

  Martin Payne put down the phone, rose, and carried his drink slowly across the drawing room to the window facing out across the lake. The night was starless and murky, with swirls of mist smearing the lights on the far shore into watery blotches of color. The forecast for tomorrow was unsettled. He hoped the weather would hold sufficiently for them not to have to call off the planned cruise following the party.

  So it was on. What had begun as an exchange of "hypothetically speakings" with Vanessa after their decision two months previously to eliminate Jack had in the space of one short, impossible week become reality. There had been times when Payne wondered if they repeated them more to flaunt their bravado at each other than from expectations of being taken seriously. Or at least, he suspected that Vanessa might have merely been playing a game. But it was he who had provided the quality of decisiveness to turn the remotely possible into actual. He trusted that she would take note and be appropriately impressed.

  Of course, Vanessa liked to believe it was she who had provided the inducement and given him nerve—but that was to be expected in someone of her peculiar vanity. He hoped that Vanessa wasn't going to spoil things by turning this into a rivalry once the ugly part was over and the two of them had it all. Having to deal her out after all this would be a shame. But, one hurdle at a time, he told himself, looking over at the clock. He tossed back the last of his drink, went back to the phone, and called Finnion's personal number.

  "Andy?"

  "Yeah, it's me."

  "Martin here. We're go for tomorrow. Double-check with the lab that we're set there. I have to leave right away to meet Victor and some people in town. Could you call Phil too, and let him know we're in business? Call me on my mobile number if there are any problems."

  "Sure thing," Finnion confirmed. "Is everything okay there with the boat?"

  "I talked to Mike ten minutes ago. He'll be moving it across the lake in about another hour."

  "Fine. Have a good night out with the guys."

  In the security manager's office at Microbotics out toward Redmond, Andy Finnion called up a directory screen and paged to the entry giving Garsten's number. Asking Finnion to question a decision from Payne would have been like arguing with a traffic cop over what the speed limit ought to be. If Finnion's years of police work had taught him anything, it was that you didn't dispute the motives of whoever gives the orders. The real world that most of the public never saw was a rough place, and the only art that mattered was staying alive and surviving. The reason why most people never had to worry too much about basic truths like that was that they were insulated from that world by a protective layer of professionals who took the risks for them. Being one of the professionals meant going by the code that professionals understood. The first part of the code was that you hung—or got hung—together.

  Jack Anastole hadn't understood that. If he'd been content to stay East and enjoy a moderately good life, he'd have been left alone. His transgression had not been in being greedy—hell, who was there among them who wasn't there for what he could get? Where he'd overstepped the line was in coming back as an outsider threatening the integrity of the group in its obligation to protect its own, and that was not acceptable. It seemed that now Heber didn't fully understand the system he was part of, either.

  The difference between Jack and Phil Garsten was that Jack had used his legal skills to attack the system, whereas Phil pl
aced his at the disposal of the system. At one time they had been partners with pretty equal stakes. Today, Garsten was comfortably established with all the right friends, while the only case that Jack had was a wooden one. The comparison underlined Finnion's philosophy of life pretty strongly.

  Finnion called Garsten's number but got only the answering machine. He thought for a moment, then said, "Phil, this is Andy. It's about six-thirty, Friday evening. Martin wanted me to let you know that both parties are on tomorrow. It looks like a busy day. Happy holiday."

  * * * G

  Garsten got the message a half hour later, when he arrived home after dining Chinese on his way back from the office.

  The legalities were attended to, and once Vanessa and Payne became joint owners of the DNC patents and Payne's share of Microbotics stock, what Garsten knew would make him permanently indispensable and somebody they'd be anxious to be certain was kept happy in the future. It went without saying that he'd taken precautions for it not to be in their interest for anything to happen to him that might arouse suspicions—just in case the climate ever changed enough to give anyone ideas of staging another Jack or Heber. A businessman like Martin would understand all about insurance. Garsten had made a point of "confiding" the fact to Finnion one night when they'd been out for a few drinks. It was the easiest way of making sure that Payne would know without being direct with the risk of sounding threatening.

  He thought through the plans as they had laid them, and couldn't see any flaw. However, there was one more detail that would round everything off neatly, he decided. Just in case something did go wrong, it would look better if there was something on record to indicate that he, personally, had had every expectation of business resuming as normal after the holiday. It didn't have to be anything especially startling; just enough to be able to point at, shrug, and show clean hands. After pondering for a while, he opened the phone book on his desk and turned to the L section. Then he called Michelle Lang's home number.