The Boost
Page 30
“It looks…”
His Houyi crosses the Mall and approaches the Tidal Basin on the right.
Vallinger sits back in his seat and addresses Ralf. “Alvare. You tuned in at just the right time. It looks like you might get to see through my eyes as your mother gets blown to smithereens. You might take a moment to tell her good-bye.”
Simon, fearing that Vallinger has somehow rigged Stella to explode, hugs his mother fiercely. He runs his hand up and down her back, searching for wires. But Ralf, who has a clearer idea of what’s happening, makes a calming gesture with his hands and points to the screen.
“Okay. We have clearance now. It’s a Houyi, sir. A big black one.”
“What?” Vallinger says. Than he starts to yell, “No, no!” But his communication is cut short when a missile strikes his car, pulverizing the Houyi, the lobbyist inside it, and a chip, no bigger than a bee’s wing, that operated for twenty-nine years inside Stella Kellogg’s head.
The image on the left side of the screen goes black.
Suzy screams, as if responding to the missile strike that obliterated John Vallinger. Ralf expands her vision to fill the screen. She can now see through a gap in the taped blindfold, enough to show a bit of her arm. It’s covered with blood.
“Four minutes left,” Simon says.
“Suzy,” Ralf tells her. “Tell him that John Vallinger is dead. I ordered him killed. I have replaced Vallinger. His employees now report to me.”
Suzy, whimpering, says, “What?”
“Tell him John Vallinger is dead. If he opens his boost to me, I can show him the video.”
“Vallinger’s dead,” Suzy says to Dahl. He’s standing above her with the scissors in his right hand. One of the blades is covered with blood.
“Huh?”
“He’s dead,” Suzy says. “My friend Ralf had him killed.”
“Fat chance.”
“Want to see the video?”
Two minutes later, an apologetic Tyler Dahl is unbinding Suzy Claiborne, and pressing a warm towel on her wounded elbow. “I feel terrible about this, but it feels so great to be doing the right thing now,” he says.
Suzy startles him by reaching up with her powerful arms and grabbing him at the level of his ribs. She hoists him above her. Shaking him angrily, she says, “I’m so tired of hearing about your stupid feelings.” Then she rolls sideways, drops Tyler Dahl on the floor, and climbs to her feet.
The time on the machine in El Paso runs out. Its screen goes dark and Ralf’s boost pops out.
Epilogue
3/16/72 12:13 p.m. Juárez Standard Time
When Stella, Simon, and Ralf finally make it through the Santa Teresa tunnel and back to headquarters, a celebration erupts. Francisco pops open a magnum of French champagne and rushes through the crowded playa, filling glasses for Smedley and Espinoza, Ellen and his two sons. Stella, covered with dirt from her tunnel crawl, cannot find a champagne glass and holds out a beer mug instead. “Fill it about halfway,” she says to Francisco, giving him a hint of a smile.
Reporters rush in from the newsroom with paper coffee cups. Francisco dispenses a few drops into each, but tells them that they have huge stories to report and write. What’s more, now that they’re writing for the boost, they no longer have a full day to develop their articles. “I want them out there by this afternoon,” he tells them in Spanish. Groans fill the newsroom.
The champagne quickly runs dry, and the party moves down the street to the Kentucky Club. A few of the reporters insist on tagging along. They’ll need to call Chui on the phone there, they say, to get the latest from the boost-sphere. Francisco is in no mood to say no.
Upon arriving at the Kentucky Club, Francisco promptly declares an open bar. Within minutes, much of the crowd on Avenida Juárez—the wild Swedes and Africans and Mexican candy vendors—has moved inside, hoisting beers and margaritas.
Oscar Espinoza, holding a Bohemia beer in each hand, sidles up to Francisco and tells him he wants to relocate to Juárez. “Is there a job for someone like me at the newspaper?” he asks.
Francisco asks if he has any writing or editing experience.
Espinoza says his strengths would be more in the security arena, or perhaps distribution—“assuming I could get my KIFF over here.”
Ellen and Ralf make their way past the bar and into one of the leather-upholstered booths near the dart board. After they sit down, Ralf reaches across the table and holds Ellen’s hand. “I missed you,” he says.
Ellen smiles. “You didn’t miss me for a minute while you were working at that machine, with your boost running.”
“True,” he admits, “but that was only forty-seven minutes of the time. I missed you crawling through the tunnel, and riding down I-10 in our Sheng-li, which by the way is filthier than you can imagine.”
He pauses for a moment to deliver his prepared remarks. “Do you know how wonderful you were last night at dinner, speaking up to my father the way you did?” He looks directly into her eyes, which doesn’t come naturally to him. “The beauty isn’t just your face. It’s inside of you,” he says. “That’s where you’re the most beautiful.”
Tears well in Ellen’s eyes, but before she can say anything, George Smedley slides onto the bench next to her and places a sloshing pitcher of margaritas on the table. “I’m telling Don Paquito over there,” he says, pointing with a wavering hand in the direction of the bar, “how he needs to shift this whole operation from subscriptions to advertising.” Smedley adds that he has offered to run the digital side of the business from New York or Washington. “But he wants me to move down here.”
“Three hundred and ten sunny days a year,” Ellen says. “You’d probably have to team up with Simon,” she adds with a mischievous smile.
“Well, as I say,” Smedley says, “I might be able to do it from New York or Washington.”
Francisco, fresh from a talk with one his reporters, approaches the table. He squeezes in next to Ralf and delivers the latest news. Some fifteen minutes after Vallinger’s car blew up, Vienna police descended on the interrogation center. Like millions of others, they’d read the new virtual edition of The Tribune. Its lead story—that Vallinger’s people were holding a woman captive and threatening to euthanize her—led them to the black cube at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Suzy refused to press charges,” he says with a puzzled shrug. He reaches for Smedley’s pitcher and fills everyone’s glasses, including his own. “Now that pendejo who was cutting and punching her is going to be running Varagon.”
“Tyler Dahl?” Smedley asks.
“The board voted on it a half hour after the explosion. Virtual meeting, I guess. They also asked the government to postpone the chip update for a month. I imagine they’re going to have hearings about it in Congress.”
“We’ll need to send a reporter there, Don Paquito,” Smedley says, sounding already like one of the team. “Has to be someone with a boost. You can’t cover Washington without one.”
Francisco nods. “If we’re going to work together,” he says to Smedley, “you’re going to have to figure out something else to call me.” He tells them that he’s planning to run a big series of articles on the real Ciudad Juárez. “We’re going to strip the myths from the place, and that is going to put an end to this Don Paquito business.”
Ralf excuses himself and moves toward the bar, where he sees Stella and Simon. Stella has the phone pressed up to one ear and is plugging the other with a finger. She’s shouting to be heard above the din. “TELL HER THE KEY’S UNDER THE USUAL ROCK,” she yells. “HE CAN PLAY HIS DRUM IN THE BEDROOM, BUT NO COOKING UP THERE. I DON’T WANT THE HOUSE TO BURN DOWN BEFORE I SELL IT.” She hangs up, smiling, and says that Suzy and Bao-Zhi will be moving into the Montclair house. She tells them that she’s thinking of moving, either to Washington or El Paso. “Silly to be alone,” she says.
As Ellen joins the family huddle, Ralf brings up the ethical conundrum he’s facing. He has video evidence in his boost tha
t Tyler Dahl tortured Suzy Claiborne. “Do I show it to the police?”
Ellen and Stella both nod eagerly.
Simon, rubbing his chin with one hand, shakes his head. “I’m not so sure,” he says. “Suzy herself has the very same evidence in her boost, but she decided not to press charges. So why should you?”
“Because the man’s a torturer,” Ellen says.
“That’s the ethical dilemma I’m talking about,” Ralf says. He explains that Tyler Dahl, the new president of Varagon, will have a crucial voice on future updates of the boost. He’s also one of the few people in the country, perhaps the only one, to carry the new Respect function in his chip. “If I’ve established myself as an authority in his world, and he gets an addictive high from following my commands, don’t you think he could be useful to us?”
“Just for the record,” Stella says, “it is not okay in my book to take advantage of someone who’s been given the miserable software that the rest of us are so eager to avoid.”
“Not even if the orders we’re giving him benefit 430 million people?” Ralf asks.
“What’s the benefit?” Ellen asks. “Just avoiding the update?”
“No,” Ralf says. “I want to develop a new app for the boost.” He explains that people should have “all the great stuff” in the boost, but also the freedom to disconnect from the grid “and go wild. If the president of Varagon supports it, I bet I can make the change.”
“What are you thinking of?” says Simon. “Some sort of boost-ejector button?”
“No,” Ralf says. “Just a simple on-off switch. It could change the way things work. If Tyler Dahl had one,” he adds as an example, “he could turn it off and deal rationally with at least two authority figures in his life.”
“You and who else?” Stella asks.
“Judging from the manhandling she gave him when he untied her, I’d say Suzy,” Ralf says. “And if Tyler Dahl’s her puppet, he’ll be a lot more useful to her running Varagon than sitting in jail.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephen Baker was born in the Philadelphia area, graduated from the University of Wisconsin, and earned a master’s in science from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. For ten years, Baker was a senior technology writer at BusinessWeek, based in Paris and New York. Before that, he was a correspondent in Pittsburgh, Mexico City, El Paso, Caracas, Madrid, and elsewhere. He has also written for The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. He is the author of two nonfiction books, The Numerati and Final Jeopardy—Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything. He and his family live in Montclair, New Jersey.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BOOST
Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Baker
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Drive Communications, New York
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3437-4 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-1068-6 (e-book)
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
e-ISBN 9781466810686
First Edition: May 2014
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