The vet had lingered to examine the Mack, patting its side as if it were not lying dead in a vast tomb, but merely ill and the warehouse a kennel of suitable size. Bernie had read of ancient chieftains, whose followers set them at their deaths in their vessels of trade and war, surrounded by weapons, goods, even servants and pets, and then covered all in a barrow of earth and stone. Watching Addering, he had turned his gaze upon the warehouse. There was stone and earth enough in its structure. And there, in the tiers of cartons were goods enough for any ship-grave. The Mack was the trading vessel. All they needed was the chieftain who had directed it.
The vet had not left when the technician arrived to search for fingerprints. That had not disturbed him. But then the meatcutters had come to dismember the Mack. He had vanished as soon as he saw the first of their blades and bonesaws. He had, thought Bernie, known what was coming.
In cooler weather, those workers would be wrapping the meat they removed from the enormous carcass, packaging it as future meals for the police department’s Hawks and other genimals. They would do the same for a dead Sparrow, a Roachster, a Tortoise, whatever came their way. Few owners wanted the meat for themselves, and insurance companies were all too willing to write off the value. It saved the cost of towing and disposal. But part of the deal was that in hot weather, when the meat spoiled overnight, or when the carcass must be examined and delays allowed the meat to rot, the department would handle the disposal.
Bernie tossed the chip in his palm. There was no reason why he should stand the stench a moment longer. Besides, he needed a phone. He wanted to ask Alan Praeger how he had managed to read the Sparrow’s PROM chip.
* * * *
The glass and concrete computer science building had been built many decades before. Most of the buildings on campus were a century older still, their gothic lines and ornamental gargoyles speaking of an age that had vanished more centuries before that. Tradition lay thick beneath the massive trees, though the people who strolled the paths, often with electronic or paper books in their hands, were mostly young.
Bernie Fischer parked the Roachster in a no-parking zone shaded by an American chestnut, a heritage of those early days when gengineers had defeated the blight that had nearly destroyed the species. There had been little money in the cure, he once had read, but students had needed a research project. Students had also been responsible for potsters and the first simple pumpkin houses.
He emerged from the Roachster and patted the vehicle’s side. The chestnut tree seemed a slender sapling beside the ancient oaks that adorned the campus, but its shade was dense and cool and would protect his vehicle from the sun while he was gone.
He walked around the beast, comparing it with the Hawks he vastly preferred. The genimal’s thoracic shell, mottled brown and greenish blue and orange-red, swelled to create a bubble equipped with seats, controls, windows, and doors. The doors were plastic blazoned with the department’s emblem. The Roachster’s head and mouth parts were protected by a steel bumper bolted to the shell. The creature’s legs ran backward atop the wheels to propel them. Its antennae, at rest, curled back over the thorax. The massive claws, missing in the civilian models, projected forward, long arms of the law. They were the features that had first sold police departments on these genimals. General Bodies had given the first ones away, and as soon as a cop had used those claws to tear the wall out of an apartment building and seize a screaming, flailing kidnapper, the market had begun to boom.
In its way, Bernie thought, it was as marvelous a product of the gengineer’s art as a Hawk. But he loved Hawks. Roachsters he could barely stand, though he could drive them when he had to, as he had today for the short trip to the city’s south side and the university.
He entered the computer science building to find air-conditioned coolness and a wall-mounted, glassed-in board that listed names and office numbers. Minutes later, he was in the second-floor office of the man he had come to see, and Henry Narabekian had plugged the Mack’s chip into a circuit board wired into his workstation.
Narabekian wore a thick mustache as if to compensate for the near hairlessness of his scalp, but every hair was black and glossy. He was one of those who go bald when young. He was also very obviously a busy man, for his desk, bookshelves, even the antique Apple computer that adorned the top of his filing cabinet, were smothered in piles of papers and disks that threatened constantly to tip and wash both Narabekian and his visitor out the door. But he was also willing to help.
“There,” he said as lines of program code began to scroll up his screen. “It took me an hour to get into the other one. But this is just the same. Except in the program itself. There …” He froze the screen and pointed. “Activates the territoriality circuitry in the hypothalamus. It saw you as a severe threat.”
Bernie grunted. “But why us?”
Narabekian scanned the program further. “There. That tight block of binary code is a stored image.” He tapped commands into his keyboard, and an inset on the screen blossomed into a face, Emily’s. “Pretty lady. Not both of you then. Just her. Introduce me? She doesn’t look dangerous.”
“She’s married.” He did not mention his own interest in her. Nor the fact that his heart sank at this confirmation of his fear. He had never really suspected that the Sparrow had been aimed at her. But there had been no question about the Assassin bird. And now this. The pattern was indisputable. Someone clearly wanted Emily Gilman dead. But why?
Narabekian shrugged. “If it sees a match, bang. Push the turf button. And go for the throat.”
“I thought it would be something like that.”
“Have they caught whoever buggered the Sparrow?”
Bernie shook his head.
“Same guy then.”
“But …” Bernie shrugged. “We have to find him.”
* * * *
Neither one of them was looking at the other. She was staring at the walls. He was scanning the restaurant’s other patrons. Both were too aware of what they had done two days before. He at least—he couldn’t speak for her—wondered if … “Isn’t that Chowdhury?”
Emily craned her neck to look where he was pointing, two tables to his right and a bit behind her. “It’s lunchtime, Bernie. And our people eat all over this neighborhood.” In other words, there was nothing alarming about seeing him here, in the dining room where they had been unable to eat after the Mack attack and before …
Then why was he watching them so intently from behind those flat, reflective panes? He stared, even while the waiter took his order. He leaned forward. He did not blink, even when Bernie met his gaze, and Bernie thought of a cat watching a bird it intended to have for lunch. All that was lacking were the erect, cocked-forward ears and the twitching tail.
Bernie was the one to look away, returning his eyes to the menu in his hand. When Emily said, “We didn’t pay much attention to the decor before,” he looked up again. The decor lived up to the Bed & Buggy’s name: The ceiling lights were mounted on imitations of old-fashioned, wooden wheels, too narrow-rimmed to be wagon wheels. From each wall projected a relief molding of a four-poster bed. On one wall, the bed contained a Roachster; on another, a Beetle; on the third, a small, rounded antique automobile. On the last wall, the bed’s covers bulged, and a horse’s head, eyes shut, lay upon the pillow; behind the bed was the shadowed outline of wooden wheels and a high, fringed buggy-top. The dessert cart, waiting near the kitchen’s swinging door, was another four-poster, high-canopied and on wheels.
He grunted. Then, as they ordered, he resolved to ignore Chowdhury. Emily had tried to refuse his invitation to lunch, but he had told her he had some information about the Mack and its chip. Finally, he looked at her. Her pupils were wider than the restaurant’s dimness could account for. Was she worried? She should be. Or was she simply nervous about their return to the scene of their own crime?
“I know that,” she said quietly. “The Assassin bird had to be aimed. But yesterday … That was just random, wasn’t it? Like the Sparrow?”
He shook his head. “The Mack was aimed too.” He fished the Mack’s chip from a shirt pocket and laid it on the table in front of her. She picked it up and studied it while he told her of the image Narabekian had found, and of what the Mack had been programmed to do if and when it found a match for the image. “The chip was identical to the one in the Sparrow,” he added.
For her, he didn’t need to spell it out any further. “Then they’re trying harder,” she said. She passed the chip back to him.
“I wish there were more clues.”
Their food came, and they picked at it. “Are there any?” she asked.
“A few,” he said. “Enough to let me suspect a particular person.”
Her face brightened. “Who?”
He shook his head. “But not enough to let me say his name out loud. Or to arrest him. I need more evidence. “
They finished their lunch in silence. Eventually, while they sipped at coffee, Bernie took a paper bag from the seat beside his own. Something in it clanked against a plate when he set it on the table.
“What’s that?”
“The Mack had it around its neck.” He pulled from the bag the model truck. He had washed away the blood to reveal the gleaming chrome. “I thought your boy might like it.”
“Would he ever!” Her grin was as wide and enthusiastic as he might have wished. But at the same time she was staring blankly at the truck. Finally, she stroked it once with her fingertips, slid it back into the bag, and drew the bag to her side of the table.
Bernie stared at her until she finally met his eyes. Then he asked her, “Would you like to lie down for a while?” He realized that he was wearing a grin that an onlooker might take for a fatuous smirk, but he didn’t try to change it.
She looked away from him for a long time before she finally let her head jerk in a single abrupt nod.
Neither noticed that Chowdhury had left, his meal just half eaten.
Chapter Fifteen
Andy was delighted.
Weeks before, his father had set a wading pool up in the backyard. But he had never sat down in it with Andy, never sailed a boat, sunk a submarine, spouted a whale, never splashed.
Now his mother had come home from work, changed into her bathing suit, and climbed into the warm water. She didn’t leave much room for him, but he didn’t seem to mind. He pushed a boat toward her. She pushed it back. He wound up a whale and let it loose to thrash its tail. She bent, took a mouthful of water, and sprayed it into the air so that it showered down on both of them. He splashed her. She splashed him back.
They both hooted with laughter. And when she moved to a towel spread upon the lawn, to sun herself dry in the declining rays of the afternoon sun, he sat down beside her, blissfully ignoring the stickiness where skin met skin.
“What did that Mack truck look like, Mommy? When it was trying to get you?” She hadn’t told him about the incident. When she had come home Monday, he had met her with the news that she had been on the veedo. She hadn’t noticed the reporters and their cameras, although it did not surprise her to learn they had been there.
“All teeth, honey. All teeth.” She made a face at him. He squealed. “It wore a collar,” she added. “Just like a real dog. And on that collar …”
“What?” He bounced on the edge of the towel.
“It’s on the front seat of the Tortoise. Go see.”
He jumped up and ran. In a moment, he was back, in his fist a brown paper bag that sagged under the weight of something heavy. “Is this it?”
She nodded. Slowly, as if he were trying to draw out the special occasion, he spread the top of the bag, peeked in, and exclaimed, “Wow! The collar ornament!”
The door to the kitchen opened, and Nick stood there, staring toward them. She waved, and he said, “The wine’s ready.” He was not smiling.
“You play with that for a while, Andy,” she said. Then, scooping up her towel and the empty bag, she went inside.
* * * *
“What’s wrong, Nick?” She was in tan slacks and plaid blouse now, her wine glass in her hand, watching her husband chop vegetables for a stir-fry. His motions were abrupt, reined-in, tense. His wine was untouched.
When he finally spoke, she could sense the effort it cost him to keep his voice calm and quiet. He lay down the knife, raised his glass, and took a hearty swig. “You don’t give a damn, do you?”
She said nothing. Another swig. “You come home. You say hi. You go off with the kid. You don’t even ask about my day, or say anything about your own. I’m just a fucking cook! And where the hell did you get that truck? It’s off that Mack, right? “
She nodded. “Bernie got it for me. We had lunch …”
She felt herself beginning to turn pink as she thought of what she had done. She wished desperately that her blouse would camouflage her guilty blush and he would fail to notice.
“Bernie!” he exploded. “You’re seeing too damned much of him!”
“The investigation …”
“I don’t give a shit about the investigation!” He stopped, looked at his glass, and realized that it was empty. Shoulders slumped, he went to the fridge, stared at the wine carton, and reached instead for a handful of ice. He found the scotch in the cupboard under the sink and poured as if it were amber wine. She said nothing.
“Yes, I do,” he said more quietly. “I don’t want a Mack to get you.” His control was back. “But this Bernie … He’s drawing you away from me. Isn’t he?”
She shook her head, but still she said nothing. What could she say? Nick was jealous, but not without reason. They had their problems in his joblessness, in the fear of losing his wife to a murderer. And he was right about Bernie. The detective had drawn her from the start, and the Mack had weakened her, allowed her to step over the line. Or was it that their narrow escape had triggered some basic urge to affirm or celebrate or simply reproduce once more her life? She had never believed that such a thing could happen, but … And she had succumbed a second time as well.
She set down her glass and reached for her husband. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to say, in actions if not in words, that she was still his. But he shrugged her off.
Then Andy came inside, looking for his small share of their evening drink. In unspoken agreement, as they had done before, as nearly every couple through all of time had surely done, they suspended their discussion, pretending for the child’s sake that all was well. They knew there were exceptions, people who paraded every shred of anger and dissension before their children, but they had no mind to be among them.
* * * *
The tension was still there Thursday morning. Breakfast was a silent affair, not helped by Andy’s frequent glances toward the bird feeder and his wish, voiced just once, that another Chickadee would show up.
When they were done, when Emily had put her dishes in the sink, when she had picked up her briefcase, Nick said, “Are you going to see Bernie today?”
She shrugged. “We don’t have an appointment, if that’s what you mean.” Or a date, she thought.
“Well.” A hand twitched. His stiffness mounted, as if whatever he was about to say was difficult. “If you do … If you do, tell him thanks for the truck.”
“Yeah!” said Andy. The doorbell rang, and he left his cereal bowl on the run. “There’s a Hawk on the lawn!” he yelled.
She looked down at her still-seated husband, feeling his pain as her own. He had tried, hadn’t he, to apologize for his suspicions? And as soon as he had done so, a Hawk had arrived to slap him in the face. Perhaps worse was the lift she had
felt in her breast at Andy’s words.
But the Hawker at the door was not Bernie. The figure that followed Andy into the kitchen was female, and Emily recognized her. “Detective Skoglund. Connie.”
“I wanted to catch you before you left,” she said. “I need your account of the Mack attack.”
“Of course,” said Emily. She set her briefcase down again.
“Coffee?” When the other woman nodded, she turned on the kettle, saying, “The coffee maker takes too long,” got out cup and spoon and a jar of instant and pointed to the containers of milk and sugar on the table. “I expected to see you Tuesday. At Neoform, like the last time.”
Connie shrugged. “You know how it is. Busy.” She studied first one of them carefully and then the other, and Emily wondered if she could sense the pain that had suffused the room such a short time before. The kettle whistled. Emily poured, and when both women had their coffee, she shooed Andy off to play and pointed at his chair. Connie sat down, turned on her recorder, and began to ask questions. Emily answered them all as best she could, until Connie asked,
“And what did you do afterward?”
“We went on to the restaurant.”
“I’m surprised you had any appetite left.”
Emily hesitated. “I didn’t.” She glanced sidelong at her husband. He was watching Connie intently. “We just had a drink.”
“And then?”
“I went back to the lab. There was work to do.” When Connie stared at her, she felt herself blush. How much did Connie know? How much had Bernie told her? Were they close? Had she interviewed him yet? Did detectives interview each other?
She looked again at Nick. He was watching her now, not Connie, and on his face she thought she saw just a hint of a forlorn puppy that knows it is about to be given to a new owner. He hadn’t missed a thing.
Thomas A. Easton’s GMO Future MEGAPACK® Page 31