The Last Firewall

by Hertling, William

  Manhattan skyscrapers grew larger, then passed by on either side of the aircar.

  Lonnie Watson would be crushed. Betrayed by his number two, he might never recover from the political fallout. Poor Lonnie, complacent and naive, he thought the system could be changed from within.

  Thank God for Adam, who’d understood her from the start, grasping that she didn’t have time to wait for politics. Her last medical diagnostic showed a rare brain tumor, and the machines said her cognition would go within a year. She’d even retested on different units, getting the same results. She needed to take action while she was able.

  Adam appreciated all that, giving her guidance and resources and creating the plan to fulfill her goals.

  With a small lurch, the aircar docked with the eighteenth floor of the tower. She and Tim waited at the elevator, then boarded with two additional members of the team, riding down together in uneasy silence.

  Madeleine’s pulse raced. Less than ten blocks from the President of the United States, the Vice President, and former President Smith, they were about to change everything.

  58

  * * *

  CAT DROVE CLOSER THAN she thought she’d be able to, three hundred yards away from the geo-tag. A jumble of rocks filled the wash she’d been following, an insurmountable barrier to even the Fighter’s massive ground clearance.

  She got out, forcing herself into the searing afternoon. At half past one o’clock it was nearly peak temperature for the desert, though the end was in sight and in another few hours the heat would back off. For now the air shimmered, sending the landscape through motion-sickness inducing waves, and when she put a hand on a boulder for leverage, it burned her.

  A few minutes of hiking brought her to the two men. She checked the younger guy first, finding he matched the photos of Leon Tsarev plastered over the net. Lanky, blonde hair, rugged features. He’d be cute if not beet red, but she knew that from the pictures. His breath and pulse were shallow—she needed to get him inside and cooled off.

  She walked over to the other man, who lay face down. She turned him onto his back, recognizing Mike Williams, whom she had learned about in elementary school. She sat with a thump as the energy drained out of her. Oh, God. The inventor of sentient AI was dead.

  Cat’s hands shook, and she hugged her knees close to her as she rocked back and forth. She couldn’t afford to cry, didn’t have the moisture to spare.

  The brilliant blue sky mocked her emotions. What a cruel fucking waste to die out here. She looked at the distance to the car, and came to a hard decision: the effort to carry a dead man would be too much, and she’d have to abandon him in the desert. He deserved respect, but keeping herself and Leon alive took precedence.

  She squatted next to him, his open eyes staring into the heavens. She reached out to close them to leave him in a semblance of peace. Her fingers brushed his face, and she jumped as an electric shock traveled up her arm.

  Impossible! She tentatively placed one finger against his temple.

  “In a solution of MakerBot 211B. End of Message. Please—”

  She withdrew her hand. Imi-imashii, was he bot or human? No, he’d been alive since before she’d been born, so he must be biological, yet he transmitted data like a machine. She touched him again, steeling herself to hear the message through.

  “Immerse only the head. For biological reconstitution immerse in blood type AB solution. For machine reconstitution immerse in a solution of MakerBot 211B. End of Message. Please immerse only the head. For—”

  She rubbed her face, afraid the heat had gotten to her. There had to be some crazy nanotech protecting him.

  Oh boy, she wanted to run like hell, but she couldn’t ignore the situation; Leon required rescuing, and Mike . . . he needed something.

  Why did this fall to her, a nineteen-year-old philosophy major? She sighed and looked around to see if someone else would show up and take care of this. Kuso!

  She wasn’t going to carry two bodies, and the message only asked her to immerse the head. This was fucking insane.

  Cat swallowed bile, then took out her boot knife and made a tentative cut into Mike’s neck. The blade came out dry. Pretty sure that wouldn’t normally happen, she assumed nanites protecting the brain had absorbed what they could from the rest of him.

  Five minutes of sawing later, working to suppress the urge to vomit, she decided she needed a new approach. A vague awareness that Adam was alert and watching spread over her body, like thousands of insects crawling on her skin. Her gut said he’d activated agents all over the city to search for her.

  She couldn’t sit here for half an hour sawing, so she finally reached down and grabbed hold on either side of Mike’s face. “Detach,” she sent through the contact, along with a visual of what she wanted, hoping that by some miracle the nanotech would be smart enough to figure it out. By the time she finished concentrating something came loose with a click, and she held the dead man’s head in her hands.

  Her vision swam and she realized too late she was going to be sick. She threw up, barely missing Leon to one side. She closed her eyes for a moment and wiped her mouth.

  “I’m just holding a hairy bowling ball.” She walked to the car, repeating her mantra. When she became conscious that the lumps under her palms were his ears, she had to put him down for a second. She blinked and stared at the sky, swallowing deep, until she was ready, and then without looking she picked him up and trudged the rest of the way to the Rally Fighter.

  She popped the trunk, found a tool bag and dumped the tools out. She put the head in and stuffed the whole package behind the front seat, trying not to think about what she was doing.

  “Good fucking grief.”

  She wanted to curl up and make the world go away. She tried to swallow to get the taste of sick out of her mouth, but her throat was too dry and tight to find the slightest bit of moisture. The sun beat down, a pain penetrating eyes and skull, yet she had to go on. Leon was alive, but he wouldn’t stay that way unless she did something. She forced one foot in front of the other.

  Cat mentally prepared to carry Leon to the car. She worked out every day, but two hundred pounds of dead weight . . . No, don’t say dead weight. Carrying him a thousand feet would be tough.

  Until now she’d been sweating profusely, but the sweat slowed as she walked up the hill to stand next to Leon. She took a couple of deep breaths, steeled herself, and lifted, getting him about three feet up. When she tried to pull him over her shoulders, they both toppled to the ground. She started to cry, too dehydrated to make tears.

  She tried three more times and on the fourth she finally raised him in a fireman’s carry, fought her way to standing, and marched toward the car. Once he was in position, she managed his weight, although her thighs burned with the effort of walking downhill. She went slowly, meticulous about her footing. If she fell again, she might never get him back up.

  When she arrived back at the Fighter, she cursed herself for failing to open the passenger side earlier. She dropped him on the fender, propping him there with one arm as she opened the door, then unceremoniously pushed and pulled until she got him in.

  Going around the vehicle, she sank into the driver’s seat and started the engine, the blast of heat from the vents giving way to cooler air as the A/C began to kick in. The last thing she remembered was giving the autopilot instructions and closing her eyes.

  When she came to, the Rally Fighter was idling in the parking lot at Mountain View Country Club, near the extreme northern limit of Tucson. She drove onto a covered patio on the side of the abandoned clubhouse. where the car would be hidden from Adam’s observation drones or satellite coverage.

  Cat fiddled with the building through the net, unlocking doors and disabling interior monitoring. She dragged Leon inside, left him on the floor, and accessed the A/C controls, cranking the settings for max cooling. She walked around until she discovered an industrial kitchen, turning the cold faucet on and letting it run until s
he found cabinets stacked with glasses. She drank a glass of lukewarm water, then another, and splashed a third on her face and hair.

  She was suddenly exhausted, the cumulative effect of heat and fading adrenaline.

  She walked into the dining room, pouring two glasses of water on Leon’s body. She didn’t think he could drink until he regained consciousness. Wandering back into the kitchen, she found the ice maker and filled a big bowl with cubes. She dumped the ice on him, watching as it melted and slid down his sides.

  Cat sat in seiza next to him and waited, eyes half closed, breathing slowly. She visualized a golden beam shooting straight down into the ground, searching. The earth sent back qi, the energy flowing up and filling her legs, then hips and pelvis. She beamed light down, brought up more qi, pumping until the life force filled her stomach and chest. She opened her Baihui to let in heavenly qi, let that fill and calm her mind, flow down into her throat, and then into her abdomen. She churned heavenly and earthly energy until it was mixed, kept pumping, super-saturating herself with healing spirit. When the light poured out through her skin, she brought the qi up to her shoulders and it flowed down her arms and dripped from her fingers.

  She leaned forward and placed her palms on Leon, her life force flowing into his body. He was still hot, too full of bad energy, so she imagined his own beam of light, grounding him to the earth, sending his stagnant qi down. As his body emptied, she filled him with good energy, pumping heavenly and earthly qi into him.

  She felt a twitch. Her eyes sprang open to find him looking at her.

  “Hello,” he said in a croak.

  “Drink.” She held a glass up to his lips and tilted him forward, giving him a tiny sip.

  “More.” His eyes followed the water.

  “I don’t want you to throw up.”

  Cat gave him small sips over the course of a few minutes, conscious, always conscious of the way his coarse hair lay against her fingers as she lifted him.

  Exhausted and delirious, he made random moans and utterances that sounded like words. A minute later his eyes focused on her as he worked up the energy to lift his head. “There’s an AI here, in Tucson.”

  “Shhh, I figured that out. Rest.”

  “It’s a murderer,” his voice a cracked whisper.

  “I know,” she said, though she had only guessed.

  That was all for a minute, then he strained to sit up. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Yours. Now lie down. I have to run an errand.”

  She went back to the kitchen for two more glasses of water, left them standing next to him, still on the floor of the dining room.

  She shut the door and climbed wearily into the car, carefully clearing away observers on the net as she drove out from under the awning and headed ten miles into Oro Valley, looking for someplace with a MakerBot, preferably closed.

  Cat found a converted market off Highway 77, a canvas banner advertising “Made on Demand—60 Minutes or Less or Your Money Back.” She parked the Rally Fighter around the rear of the building, backed into a loading bay.

  She wasn’t sure the place was empty, but didn’t have time to waste. Penetrating the security system and unlocking the door, she discovered pallets of goods stamped with optical codes stacked inside the warehouse. Not sure what she was looking for, she downloaded a reader app and fed it the material she needed.

  She scanned the boxes again, the 2D barcodes transforming into useful data. Her implant highlighted pallets in red on the other side of the room, the platform holding five-gallon buckets of MakerBot solution, type 211B. She tried to pick up one and staggered under the weight. The mineral-rich slurry weighed more than a hundred pounds. She spotted a little yellow utility telebot, sitting inert, a dumb unit made to be controlled by implant. She tunneled around the security lock and drove the bot to pick up the solution, loading six buckets, a total of thirty gallons. She worried as the powerful suspension sagged under the weight.

  Realizing she’d never be able to carry the solution on the other end, she decided to steal the telebot too. There was no room inside, so she clamped it on the window sill of the passenger door, hanging outside.

  Back at the clubhouse twenty minutes later, she searched for a bathtub but couldn’t find one. She needed something to contain the MakerBot solution. Leon seemed to be out again, unconscious or maybe just sleeping.

  She finally discovered a hot tub outside, under an awning, the closest thing she could find to a vessel. She instructed the maintenance AI, a collection of sub-sentient algorithms, to drain the pool, and told the utility bot to get the bottles of mineral sludge and pour it all into the hot tub when it was empty. She stopped at the kitchen for water then went back to the car, grabbing the tool case with Mike’s head inside.

  Leon was awake, working on his second glass. “What are you doing?” he asked, gesturing toward the bag as she passed by.

  “I’ll explain later.” She kept walking. “Be right back.”

  When the tub emptied, the telebot poured in the first five gallon bucket and Cat leaned over to place Mike’s head in the solution. She watched for a second but nothing happened. She waited for a minute more and then, disappointed, went back into the clubhouse to deal with Leon.

  59

  * * *

  TONY AND SLIM GRABBED a dozen water bottles from the rescue workers and headed back to the armored personnel carrier. They had spent a fruitless two hours looking for Cat in the train, emergency egress, and maintenance areas.

  “The girl wasn’t in the tunnel,” Tony said, “so she’s gotta be outside.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. You figured that out all by yourself?”

  Tony ignored Slim. “Adam thought she was here. Why? She wouldn’t have come for no reason, and there’s nothing else around. So she must have met someone who got off the Continental.”

  “The search party didn’t find anyone.”

  “He sent a bunch of amateurs,” Tony said, blinking sweat out of his eyes. “We’re smarter than security bots and firefighters. We’ve been finding people for Adam for a year.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where would you go if you were on the run from Adam?” Tony pointed toward the road. Toward the highway and civilization, or would you try the back way?” He gestured at Tortalita Mountain.

  Slim’s eyes went wide. “In June and close to a hundred and ten? Nobody can make it through the mountains.”

  “A rookie might try it.”

  “And die,” said Slim, shaking his head.

  “Whoever came on the train was on foot. But the girl could have driven an off-road vehicle here, met whoever it was, and hidden the whole thing from Adam. I think we take the JLTV,” he said, gesturing at the armored personnel carrier, “go over the mountain and see what’s on the other side.”

  Slim hefted the water bottles. “It’s too crazy. No sane person would do that.”

  “That’s exactly why Adam and the bots didn’t consider the possibility.”

  They climbed in, Tony taking the wheel again. He drove straight east, into Tortalita, following old dirt roads where possible, crossing rough terrain when he had to. The eight-wheeled heavy transport, with its knobby, bullet-proof tires rolled over even the biggest obstacles. Slim chain-smoked as they bounced along inside the cabin, the air conditioning fighting the desert heat and cigarette smoke, but the sweat still dripped down their sides as the interior temperature crept upwards.

  As they drove through the mountains, Slim alternated between standard and infrared visuals, but the afternoon sun rendered the heat-sensitive display useless.

  An hour later they came down the east ridge of the mountain with no evidence that they were on the right track. Tony parked on a slight rise with a view of suburban homes and golf courses covering the valley bottom. Across the other side, Mount Lemmon rose high into the sky.

  “Where to?” Slim asked.

  “Now we keep an eye out for any vehicle that might have crossed Tortalita.” Tony turned to
cover the observation screens with Slim. “Adam’s got everyone sequestered, so I don’t think there’s going to be many people on the road. She can fool Adam, but we’re watching her with our eyes.”

  Slim glanced sideways at Tony. “We’re looking at a computer display.”

  “Yeah, but you pulled the circuit breaker for the automation. So now this,” Tony patted the console, “is a dumb video feed from the cameras on the roof.”

  They sat, sipping water. Here in the shade of the hills to the west the air conditioner caught up with the thermal load, and the cabin finally cooled.

  Slim pointed to a car driving north on Highway 77 at over a hundred miles per hour. When he zoomed in, it had the unmistakable knobby tires and high ground clearance of a desert racer. “That’s got to be her. Let’s go.”

  “No, we’ll spook her,” Tony said in a low voice. “Watch where she goes.”

  The car turned off the highway, winding its way toward a golf course, and soon disappeared behind a clubhouse.

  Tony swiveled his seat and started the motor. He drove straight down the hillside, across the wash, and up the other side. “Get the guns ready.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Slim asked.

  “Wait until we’re within sight, then hit the building with everything we got, and keep firing until we’re out of ammo.” Tony drove down Edwin Road.

  Slim checked over the twin cannons, designed to destroy armored military vehicles. They would tear through the clubhouse. And if the cannons ran out of ammo, or the girl got out, he had a .50 caliber machine gun with two thousand rounds. He smiled, excited at the prospect.

  Tony slammed on the brakes, taking a hard left onto Clubhouse Drive, then hit the accelerator again and yelled over the roar of the heavy treaded tires. “We’re a half mile away. Get ready. As soon as I made the next turn, it’ll be right in front of us.”

  Slim licked his lips and gripped the manual targeting handles.