Silhouette

by Dave Swavely

  With a burst of renewed energy, I locked my left arm around the shield at Paul’s neck, which I was able to do since it followed the basic contours of the human body. I jerked both legs down so that their weight pulled his head and upper body backward, which distracted him while my right hand searched for the opening to the controller pocket.

  Paul started to thrash around in an attempt to shrug me off, but I held on long enough to get my hand inside the small hole in the shield. He must have felt me groping at the device attached to his belt, because his body suddenly froze when he looked down and saw my hand on it. Perhaps it took him a few moments to figure out what was going on, or maybe he was afraid of triggering the controls himself if he grabbed for my hand, so he didn’t move at all except to swing his head sideways until our faces were separated only by the antigravity field of the transparent armor. Our eyes locked, mine narrowing and his growing wider as we both knew that whatever button my fingers found would either turn off the shield or increase its intensity. I hoped it would do the latter, because I had no fight left in me, and I was not disappointed.

  Paul’s dying scream lasted about a second, his larynx and every other bodily organ crushed from all sides concurrently. Since my eyes remained on his, I caught a brief glimpse of his head imploding before I was suddenly thrown more than five feet into the air, like I had bounced off a trampoline. I looked down at the top of my flight and was sure that I would come down on the other side of the barrier, beyond the edge of the roof, and fall to my death thirty stories below. But it turned out to be a sensory illusion, and I landed hard on the roof, next to Paul’s barely recognizable body.

  The man who would be king was now one ugly mess, to say the least. His skin that wasn’t red from blood escaping was turning blue from blood being trapped inside, and his face looked like someone had painted it those colors and shrink-wrapped it by a process intended for something half its size.

  But I wasn’t much better off. As I lay still for a few moments, taking inventory of my injuries, I realized that at least one pool of blood was gathering slowly under my midsection, and the arm of my jacket was dripping red on the ground near it. Not to mention an assortment of broken bones. To my amazement, however, I could actually push myself up and stand. And I must have reached some kind of pain threshold, because it wasn’t unbearable. Or maybe the pleasure I felt in my soul was canceling some of the agony in my body.

  What had Kim called it in the bookstore? Being justified? Yeah, that was it. Just-as-if-I’d never done wrong, and just-as-if-I’d done everything right. And I thought of Saul—he had been vindicated, too. Perhaps this almost mythical cipher, whom I had desperately wanted to admire as the man of the century, really was after all—even with his faults. How unfair had I been to him, as so many others had, when in reality he carried more weight on his shoulders than most men would even have dared to bear?

  I looked again at Paul’s body in the dawning light on the roof, and I soon realized how bad this would all look when someone made his way up here—which probably wouldn’t take long. Min himself would be returning soon, to find his master murdered by the guns I carried, and his son also dead at my hand. With no record of what had happened, and no witnesses to clear me, I would be pinned with the worst murder rap in history—if I even lived long enough to be arrested.

  I could tell that I was dying; there was no question about it. And I wasn’t even sure I would make it if I called security right now and turned myself in for medical attention. So there was only one thing to do: I had to find Lynn. I had to tell her that I was innocent. I had to tell her that I hadn’t killed our daughter. I wanted to die in her arms.

  I dug the glasses out, to find that by some miracle they were still working. I dialed our home number, and prayed that she would be there, and that she would answer.

  She did. And when I said her name, she hung up on me. But at least I knew where she was.

  I reached into the pocket of Paul’s shield again and lowered the intensity, trying to ignore the wet, gurgling sounds his body made as it decompressed. I searched through the bloody pockets until I found the key card for his aero, which I slipped into its door, hoping that my dead ex-friend had not activated all the security systems. He hadn’t, and in no time I was in the sky over the bay, headed to the Napa Valley. The autopilot took me there, as I endeavored to plug my holes and stay alive a little longer by sheer force of will. I also prayed a few more times, since it had seemed to work before.

  23

  By the time our house was in view, I had leaked all over the interior of the aero. I was thinking it was good that the car wasn’t mine, but then remembered that it didn’t matter anyway, because I was just about gone. I kept telling myself, Hold on, hold on—but not verbally, because when I tried to speak, it felt like I was under water.

  The car dropped and came to rest on the front driveway, close to the entrance because I didn’t know how far I could make it. Lynn must have heard me land, because she opened the door before I could stagger to it.

  “Oh my God!” she gasped, recoiling with horror at the sight of my blood-drenched and broken body, but then she rushed to me as I slumped to the sculpted stones that covered the ground. She knelt and hoisted my head and shoulders onto her lap, saying my name repeatedly when she saw that my eyes were closed.

  I wasn’t dead yet, though. I was merely attempting to gather enough strength to tell her what I needed to tell her.

  I’m innocent, Lynn. I didn’t kill our daughter. You were right—Paul lied to me. I’ll be gone in a minute, but you must not remember me as a murderer, even though they’ll say I was. I didn’t kill Saul, either. Don’t believe them when they tell you I did. Tell everyone that I was innocent. Stand by me. They might believe you …

  But there was no way to say all this. The blood was even now trickling into my throat; soon it would rise and render me utterly mute. And that wasn’t what I really needed to say, after all. There was something much more important, and more appropriate, which didn’t require as much breath.

  “Forghhh…” I choked on the fluid, and coughed up some of it. Then, with my throat clear for a couple of seconds, I got it out: “Forgive me.”

  Lynn wiped my lip and chin tenderly with her fingers, then seemed lost in thought for a moment.

  “I don’t know if I can, or even what that means,” she finally said. She thought some more, then nodded her head.

  “But I love you,” she added.

  I smiled, hoping to go out with one on my face, but then my clouding eyes mysteriously began to focus again, as if they were recognizing something before my mind had been informed. And after a few seconds of scanning the morning sky beyond Lynn’s lovely head, they came to rest on a dark spot that seemed to be coming closer.

  “What do you want me to do?” Lynn was saying. “Call a medical team?” I shook my head no, then tried to focus on the dark spot again. It was now much bigger, so I could see that it was the oversized BASS aero that had been designed especially for Min.

  I wondered why the estate’s security system had not alerted us to his approach, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. If the augmented man was coming to avenge Saul, he might also kill Lynn, as a part of the price I had to pay. Or perhaps Min had really been working for Paul all along. Either way, I didn’t want to take any chances with my wife’s life, so I nodded my head toward the advancing car and moved my hand like I was squeezing a trigger.

  Lynn saw the aero and got the idea. She gently placed my head back down on the stones and ran into the house. By the time she came back out, carrying a big two-barreled Python revolver and an armored jacket, I had managed to roll onto my side, coughing up more blood as a result. She put the silver gun and jacket down next to us and situated my body so that I was sitting up, with her behind me. Then she spread the jacket across my torso to protect us, and handed me the gun. I held it with two hands and rested it on my lap, not wanting to spend the energy lifting it until I had to.

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nbsp; In silence we watched the aero float down toward us and land on the other side of the stones, about thirty feet away. It was pointed the other way, and the bald brown giant stepped out of it immediately and stood facing us. He was apparently unconcerned about my weapon, and I soon found out why.

  I jerked the Python up and fired at him. The open door of his aero, in front of which he had been standing, exploded in a shower of metal and glass. But Min had disappeared. Lynn extended her arm from behind me, pointing to the fountain in the middle of the driveway, which was on our right and closer to our position.

  The big man crouched there, his one hand resting on the side of the little pool surrounding the fountain.

  I fired again, and this time chunks of cement and water flew everywhere. But again Min had moved before the shells arrived. He flashed around Paul’s aero to a spot behind us and, before I could even react, took the gun away from me. And then he stood in front of us, examining it with his huge hands as if it were a children’s toy.

  “We wouldn’t want you to hurt someone,” he said with a playful grin on his face. I had never before seen him speak or smile, and that was the last thing I saw.

  The last thing I felt was Lynn’s warm body against my cold back, her arms tight around my shoulders and chest, and her tears soft on my neck.

  24

  The memorial service was sad but beautiful, as the best of them are. It was at the grave site on a hill between the two higher ones that held the Ares house and Darien’s. BASS had planned and publicized another service at the same time in the city, so that the press wouldn’t find out about this one. They were probably already wondering, however, why nobody important was showing up in the city.

  They were all here, of course. Most of the world leaders from the summit, and a few more who had not attended that night. A few close friends, from over the years, of the men who had died. And the mourning women—Liria Rabin, with her three children; the one who had mothered Darien’s son, with another child who had been living with her; and Lynn, who had lost more than anyone. They all stood in a circle around the five simple yet elegant graves, their clothes and hair flapping in the midday mountain breezes.

  A BASS chaplain, who had been cleared at the highest level of security, stepped from marker to marker, reading the epitaphs engraved on each. He started with Darien’s, then his son’s, then proceeded to Paul’s, which was vague in the extreme. Saul Rabin’s was lifted from William Blake:

  In what distant deeps or skies

  Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

  On what wings dare he aspire?

  What the hand dare seize the fire?

  When the stars threw down their spears,

  And watered heaven with their tears,

  Did He smile His work to see?

  Did He who made the lamb make thee?

  And then it was time to remember Lynette, as the chaplain reached her marker. Lynn had wanted to leave it blank, so the eulogy consisted of a time of silence that stretched on and on, partly because the chaplain and all the guests wanted to show sympathy for Lynn.

  Even more than that, however, they were rendering homage to the new chief executive officer of BASS, king of the Bay Area, and heir to the world.

  I was sitting next to my wife, still healing from my wounds, in a wheelchair with no wheels. It floated several feet off the ground, powered by a small Sabon engine humming softly at its bottom. I imagined the bulky black seat to be a throne, as I surveyed the kind of men who were now bowing their heads before me. I glanced behind me at Min, who winked knowingly at his new boss, reminding me of the story he and Lynn had told me when I woke up.

  My dear wife, who had thought Min had come to kill me, had been pleasantly surprised to find that he actually had come to save me. When she asked how he planned to treat a man whose heart was stopping, miles from a hospital, his reply was to pick me up and carry me into our garage, Lynn following close behind. The giant uncovered a hidden control box in one of the garage walls, and before the lady of the house could protest or question, the entire garage floor dropped down twenty feet, revealing a shiny new bank of underground elevators.

  “Now that you know about this facility, we can rearrange the modes of access,” Min had told her as they entered one of the elevators. “If you or Michael prefer something else.”

  All she could do was nod like a zombie, with her mouth hanging open, and say, “Okay.”

  A few seconds and four descending floors later, Min laid me down in a state-of-the-art operating room and went to work putting me back together, with an uncanny expertise in surgery and the best equipment BASS money could buy. The medical center, along with the rest of the underground base, was utterly deserted, but brand new and ready for use.

  Saul Rabin had ordered it to be constructed in secret five years earlier, when his crews were ostensibly working only on my house and the one they built for Darien on a neighboring crest. The old man knew that the company would one day need to move its executive command somewhere other than the highly visible and potentially vulnerable castle in the city, and these deserted hills were ideal, for several reasons. It’s amusing, in retrospect, because I’d always wondered why he secured the estates of the Napa Valley with such a tight air-defense system. The mansions and vineyards were certainly beautiful and valuable, but why would anyone want to attack them with jets or missiles?

  Saul had also hoped that Darien and I would pass his rigorous tests and become the ones to inherit his kingdom, so he’d planned for us to live atop this impenetrable fortress, from which we could rule the Bay Area (and the world, if necessary). It filled the mountain underneath our house, stretched to the one underneath D’s, and was replete with concealed hillside aero bays, communication and intelligence capabilities surpassing even those in the castle, and enough lab room to house all our classified research.

  Of course, this was why the old man had not wanted us to visit the property while the house was being built.

  “A man came up with this idea, right?” was all Lynn had said, concerned about how living on top of all this might affect the family that we planned to start anew. Min assured her, on behalf of Saul himself, that her life needed to be no different, and that she and hers would actually be safer here than anywhere else.

  The big bodyguard could speak on behalf of Saul Rabin because Saul Rabin was inside him. Prior to the old man’s death, much of his memories, knowledge, and experience had been transferred to the cyborg’s neural capacitors (the wireless wetware in his brain). This was the end goal and result of Saul’s Legacy Project, after he had rescued it from Paul’s deviant designs and continued its development in secret. The old man had wanted his legendary leadership skills and irreplaceable life experience to be available for his successors, to assist us in the formidable challenges we would face. In this way he would live on beyond death, proving useful to generations yet unborn. According to Min, he could even talk to us by way of an artificial-intelligence construct—a rather morbid option that I wasn’t yet ready to use.

  I did, however, learn much from the memories Min now carried in his head.

  I don’t know if I’ll ever understand all the old man’s thinking and purposes, but here’s what I could piece together: Saul had learned about Paul’s Machiavellian schemes shortly after D’s murder, and had let them run their course. He wanted to see if guilt and regret from committing such a horrible crime might possibly bring his son back to his senses, and he wanted to see if I was truly a capable replacement for both of them. So he tested me, first by allowing me to be victimized by Paul’s lies, then by subjecting me to the pressure of the summit meeting, and finally by inviting me to the showdown with Paul in the penthouse. He could have skipped or stopped any of this, but he hadn’t, because he’d been looking at the big picture of the future of his empire.

  If Paul’s lie had caused me to lose my composure completely, and I had killed myself or Saul, I would have proven that I was unsuited to be his heir. If I hadn’t bee
n able to overcome the obstacles placed before me that night, then Saul would have known that I didn’t have what it takes to become one of the most influential and powerful men in the world.

  On the other hand, if I triumphed against all odds, the old man would consider me a worthy successor. I had, and so he had. He had been pulling my strings and putting me through some unpleasant paces, but my feelings toward him were mixed because of the way it all turned out. In fact, now that I understood at least some of his plan, a degree of my former admiration for him had returned, plus a personal indebtedness for where he had taken me. At least I had to admit that Saul Rabin seemed to embody one of his favorite maxims, that the greatest men are the ones who make the most difficult choices. Or, as someone else once said, “Risk and destiny are synonyms.”

  One thing Min was not able (or willing?) to tell me, and which I looked forward to asking Saul’s “ghost” when I felt ready to talk to it, was why he had chosen to groom me as an heir to his empire. I was far from the most intelligent or experienced candidate, so I sensed that there was something more to this than I was aware of at this point, something hinted at by his cryptic comment about my being the “true peacer.”

  But regardless of the reasons for the destiny that had been scripted for me, I was ready to embrace it, and really seemed to have no choice but to do so, in light of the epic resolution the old fox had engineered on my behalf. He had turned on the cameras in the penthouse and on the roof prior to our final confrontation with Paul, and everything they had recorded was routed to the cache in Min’s head for safekeeping. So earlier today, Lynn and all the world leaders who came for the service were able to see, with their own eyes, Paul’s confession and my subsequent heroics. Most important, they watched as every ounce of favor and respect that Saul Rabin had ever earned was transferred to me, when he willingly gave up his life to save mine.