by L. L. Fine
Or maybe it really was not anything serious? After all, it happens that people develop disease in mid-life. His cousin recently died of a heart attack - only 55, poor soul. So young. Went quickly. Death came almost immediately, doctors told him. Myocardial ticker.
But a heart attack, Keshny ruminated and told himself, is caused by a recognized disease. He, in fact, needed to get a checkup. Just as a precaution. But this other case was not the same! It was weird! A strange disease! Not clear! And here, it looks like he had some - well, say it clearly - pollutant! Virus! That leaked! From the fucking lab!
Thus, he decided. There was no other reasonable alternative. Things had happened here, and Saul Keshny was dead set to find out about them in the end. He picked up the telephone.
*
Twenty minutes later Lia and Zomy stood, side by side, on the unpleasant side of the chief’s office. Saul Keshny, with predatory eyes and shining bald pate, shelled them with showers of short questions.
Zomy, used to this ping pong, answered them at the same rate they reached him. Automatically. Almost without thinking, like a tennis player with ball machine. Question and Answer, Question and Answer, attack, defense, and even counterattack. Zomy was not interested in developing a dialogue. He just killed every interesting move right from the beginning.
Finally there was a different question.
"Have you had sex?”
Zomy rocked his two eyebrows.
"Excuse me?"
Lia was too surprised to respond. She just gasped, swallowed, and tried not to pale. Or blush. A slight vibration in Keshny's eyes informed her that she failed. And did she see there, at the corner of his mouth, a hint of a smile?
Zomy, in turn, could not smile even if he wanted to. He was not yet used to the thin oxygen tube that connected the tank to his nostrils. It blocked any possibility of reasonable facial expression, any smile was almost painful, and generally made him aware of all the expressions on his face.
This time it was to his benefit. No muscle in his face moved, no vibration passed between his eyes. Perfect poker face, carved in stone. Without special effort, he pushed his attempts to block Keshny's scouting - but he felt, in the heat of his gaze, his face burning. It was like looking in the oven.
And suddenly he needed more oxygen. He reached over, moved the little oxygen tank inches towards his leg, and finally grimaced. It was the tank that bothered him the most. The tank, and the need to keep one eye on the oxygen clock. A diver, he thought. I became a diver in a foreign world to me. And maybe I was always like this?
"Excuse me?" he asked again.
"I asked if you had sex," answered Kesnhy, still looking for a reaction. "Had sex. Had sex. Sex. Shagged. Whether you screwed …"
"OK, OK, I get it!"
Lia blushed hard. And Saul noticed.
He decided to focus on it. And moved her way. Raised an eyebrow.
"No, we didn't have sex," she answered, finally. And raised her eyebrows at him, defiantly. "It’s a cheek of you to ask, I think. None of your business!"
Keshny ignored her comment.
"Both of you are nice, young, beautiful, alone in New York... it's only natural, isn’t it? Guy meets girl. Both from the same village ... and ..." he let it hang.
"We didn't have sex," she repeated. "Why is it important for you to know at all? This is our own business, anyway."
"Just to remind you, nothing about you is absolutely private." His voice, which had been soft and kind, had become cold steel. "This project came along after you came here, you know."
"Still, we didn't have sex."
Keshny scanned them again fast. Zomy did not move. Lia shook her weight from foot to foot.
"Have you kissed?"
"Keshny, what’s got up your ass today?"
Zomy, finally, had lost his temper. As on previous occasions, it was immediate, dramatic, and total. "What's bugging you? What is it with these questions?"
"Why is it hard for you to answer?"
Zomy noticed, suddenly, a flash of movement from Keshny. Only the eyes. Why was he looking at the computer, he asked himself. What’s there, hidden from us?
"Not hard. We haven't kissed, no."
"So can you be sure you didn't get any disease from him?"
Zomy and Lia again struggled to hide their amazement.
"The tests show that I’m completely healthy, Keshny."
Her voice was cool and stable. Cheeks, bright and cold. And her eyes - green ice sparkles. Lia, finally, found the only thing that can mask fear. She began to get angry.
But Saul did not let go.
"Are you sure? Did you work with any new viruses lately? Unrecognized types?"
"I am constantly dealing with new viruses, Keshny. You should know that."
“Yes or no?"
Zomy noticed Saul’s hand flutter towards the computer screen. Was ...?
"Where are you going with this, Keshny?"
"The truth. What about him?" He nodded at Zomy. “Have you taken him, perhaps, around your lab?”
"Zomy? He can’t enter. He has no proper suit."
"Still?"
"He did not visit my lab, not even once," she muttered. This time Saul's eyes lingered longer on the computer screen.
Finally he returned to Lia, his voice quieter.
"And you? Have you removed any viruses from the lab?"
"Are you crazy!?"
*
They left the room after another half hour of tough questions, leaving behind one unsatisfied commander and a computer screen full of ambiguous graphs.
An hour later, Keshny was still staring at the screen. Deviations in a few of the displays were not red - but not conclusive. There were places where he was sure he heard a lie, and the voice polygraph hadn't moved from the green. While other places, completely trivial, the device revealed someone made a significant lie - but Keshny could not understand what and why.
Things happened, things happened.
But what exactly? The lies were too confused, inconsistent. He could not assemble them into a complete picture.
Okay. He began to do what he always did in these situations. Write down the pieces of the puzzle, sleep on it, and hope later a complete picture would become clear. Yes, that was the right thing to do. He opened a text file on the screen, and began to type a few words on it.
Suddenly he stopped, shortly after writing headlines and the main characters in the analysis. The last words he typed, Zomy's name, flashed in front of him, on the computer screen.
Computer.
Zomy, computer.
Zomy. And a computer.
Not a good idea.
Not at all.
And he deleted the document, and ripped several pages from a notepad in front of him on the table. Luckily there are still some things that the computer hasn't reached, he thought.
Now, where the hell did I put my pen?
*
“We are being followed," Zomy shouted as best he could over the rock music emanating from the stage ahead. The Rehovotian bar, painted in nightmarish red paneled wood, was filled to capacity. It was hard to hear him - but, of course, that was the whole idea.
"What?" Lia yelled back at him, leaning towards him. Despite their shared affection for dark spaces, they did not come here for that. Too many teenagers and soldiers on vacation. Too much sweat, too little... London. Zomy could not find a better term.
But it was a pretty good retreat, sometimes. It suited their needs of the moment, when it was necessary to disrupt any listening device that may have been attached to him, or to Lia. A bar and a singer - pretty high quality this time, and certainly easy on the eye - had made this pastime enjoyable.
“WE ARE BE-ING FO-LLOWED" he shouted again, almost directly into her ear.
"Who?" She finished her second Campari and Cola. Lia, usually very restrained, decided to loosen the rope tonight. The Campari, along with large fries, prepared the way for more alcoholic liquids that would come later. Zomy,
in turn, focused on soda.
"The GSS! They received an order about us today. "
Lia raised an eyebrow, but did not ask the obvious out loud. She knew that one of Zomy’s specialties, perhaps the biggest, was producing web spiders. He explained to her what they were: no more than software components, small but very smart, traveling in the cybernetic garden and hunting for information using sophisticated algorithms and mini-artificial intelligence.
The spiders idea was new to her. She’d never heard of them, and in fact, there weren't too many people that knew they existed. Most of those who knew about spiders also made them, and there were no more than five in the world - all mortal enemies. Not surprisingly, each of them knew about the existence of the others - but did not know where they were, or for whom they worked. It was a secret world, seething beneath the surface but making no waves above.
The major headlines were actually made by other bandits. Viruses - trojans, worms - these were the bigger stars of the cyber world wars, and those which got the media’s attention.
It couldn't be more ridiculous for Zomy. Worms were rough and easy-to-create programs, designed to cause damage to the vulnerable, and look good. Anyone could create them, using tools given out free on the Web. Spiders, however, were programming gems… workers of genius, invisible ghosts, their main strength lying in anonymity.
Even the creators of spiders, it seemed, were fated to live in secret. Yet Zomy hoped to himself that there would come a time where the situation would change. The sheer genius of a well-designed commando spider would be revealed to the world – and compared to the contemptuous, simple, cumbersome worm.
And one of those commandos traveled regularly on the walls of the GSS system. His mission? Hunting information. Especially interesting names. And the most interesting name that it was trained to find was the name of Zomy.
"Who gave it?"
"Don’t know! It just appeared there for a moment, someone typed it manually then deleted it fast!"
"Keshny," Lia took the rest of the drink, and raised a hand. Margarita, that's what she wanted now. And some fries. And olives.
"Probably. He used a vocalmeter on us, you know?"
"A what?"
"A vocalmeter! Ah ... polygraph of sound waves."
"So he knows we've lied?"
"Most likely, but not certain. He erased the results as soon as we left the room."
"So he knows we've lied."
"Once again, most likely."
"What do we do?"
"Nothing," Zomy answered almost without hesitation, and slightly increased the flow of oxygen. He was not wearing his mask, only a pair of nozzles which clung to his nostrils and pumped the oxygen. It was more compact, but did not stop the effects of cigarettes smoke in the room.
And this pub was full of smoke. Fogged.
"We can't do anything!" Lia wailed. "What does Keshny want from us?"
"No idea", he said and began to giggle.
Very quickly the giggle deteriorated to a real laugh, and from that to a bout of incessant coughing. Lia patted him lightly on the back, which didn't really help the matter. She knew it, but tapped anyway. Instinct.
Zomy finally calmed down. Lia sat back and looked at him coldly.
"Very funny!" she said, then whispered in his ear. "You have only to count vials to notice three are missing."
"The computer records wouldn’t tell him," Zomy said evenly.
"You just said Keshny doesn’t trust computers where you're concerned. He’ll count manually if necessary."
Zomy puffed his cheeks in frustration. Lia was right, of course. He would count manually. Let him count. There were more than five thousand in stock.
"Tell me, why did he persist in asking about an affair between us?"
"A reasonable explanation for accidental infection! If we had sex or kissed, it could happen."
"But it didn’t happen," Zomy sounded completely convincing. It was not easy.
"Well, obviously. So it’s not clear to him what happened. And he’ll look for a reason. We were both in New York together! That probably raises question marks for him."
"We're friends! Can't we meet in New York?”
Lia just sent him a green look, half contemptuous, half patronizing, but certainly affectionate.
"I think we can," he muttered in a low voice.
The waitress arrived, they ordered another round of drinks and some fries, and hummus and toasted pita bread. Zomy had developed an appetite.
"So what do we do?"
Lia just raised her margarita and looked at him over the glass.
*
Looking for a challenge: LOL ... how romantic!
Stronger than you: Yes, yes. Laugh at me.
Looking for a challenge: Really! I think I could never find a better reason to have sex with a girl.
Stronger than you: You’re married, you don’t need a reason…
Looking for a challenge: So how was it?
Stronger than you: Interesting.
Looking for a challenge: Come on, details…
Stronger than you: Leave it.
Looking for a challenge: You're in love with her, right, eh?
Stronger than you: You know so much, why do you ask anyway?
Looking for a challenge: People know a little about it. But know enough to know you didn't want it to happen this way.
Looking for a challenge: It’s as if you deceived her.
Stronger than you: I didn't cheat anyone. She knew what she was doing
Looking for a challenge: After all the margaritas? Sure she knew…
Stronger than you: She's not like that, I tell you.
*
"Why did you stop?"
They were on Ayalon highway, driving north without any purpose, direction or reason. They drove for several minutes, without exchanging a word. Kibbutz Galuiot, La Guardia, Hashalom, interchange after the interchange. Concrete bridges sailed slowly overhead, carrying cargo thinning in the headlights. A pleasant summer wind came through the half-open windows. Quality speakers bathed them in a pleasant bass warmth, the alcohol in her lathered it gently, and she sat back in the seat, putting a bare foot up on the dash.
She felt safe, protected. The road flowed into an unknown future, and Zomy confidently navigated in silence. Slightly odd, but she trusted him. No questions asked, no answers expected.
Shortly after Ha'halacha interchange, Zomy signaled right and stopped on the side.
"I want to know what will happen," he answered her question.
Five seconds passed. Twenty. A minute. Hundreds of cars rushed past, no one slowed down, no one expressed interest. The evening traffic continued as usual, so why would anyone be interested in one car on the roadside? There was no reason.
"Pink Floyd?" Lia leafed through his disc changer.
"The first band that really touched me. Quite some time ago."
Atomheart Mother, Dark Side of the Moon, Division Bell, The Wall, Delicate Sound of Thunder. Zomy had almost every single one, beautifully arranged. Lia smiled to herself. Unpredictable man. Unexpected. As she entered his car she was surprised to find five powerful speakers, muscular looking, installed front and rear.
"Powerful speakers give better music quality at a low volume," he said without being asked. Indeed, she had never heard Zomy listening to loud music. Quality, yes.
"And vinyl quality sound?" she raised an eyebrow and looked up more disks.
"Roots, roots."
"I thought your roots were in Hassidic music… well, what have we here?" she smiled and waved another disk, showing a smiling Klezmer with a violin in his hands. She turned her head to Zomy, showing him her find with a smile, but he was focused in the rearview mirror, a little worried.
"Did you see a car following us?"
"No ...?"
"I didn't either. Let's wait."
"If you want."
"Even the spare tank is going to get empty. Let’s go back.”
He star
ted the car again, but before he could get it into gear a white Mazda passed by slowly. After a few meters it signaled right, and stopped alongside the road, about fifty yards ahead.
Zomy and Lia exchanged glances.
After about a minute a tall man got out of the Mazda, looked right and left, and opened his hood. After a few more seconds, he disappeared behind the open lid.
Zomy engaged gear, and quickly darted forward into a gap in the traffic. Lia looked to the right, trying to overcome the alcoholic fog that misted her pupils, and it seemed to her, for an instant, the man never looked at the inside of his engine, but was busy talking into a mobile device.
She turned on the seat and looked back. Again, just before the bend in the road obscured the Mazda, she was almost sure that this mysterious man closed the hood and ran quickly into the car. But only almost certain.
*
"You coming up?"
The question still echoing in his ears, even minutes later, they both looked out the window and were surprised to see a white Mazda sailing slowly by, taking an open parking spot, a few feet beyond the building where Lia lived.
The effect of the margaritas passed too quickly. She wanted to feel perfumed, wanted to sink into the warm embrace of alcohol. Wanted to be, if only for a few hours, in the pleasant country in which sounds don’t clash, where shapes and colors swirl with each other to general indifference. Wanted - but had to return to the painful, sharper reality.
"What's their thing, what do they want from us?"
"I don’t think they know exactly," replied Zomy after a few seconds of thought. "They’re just looking, trying to see what we are doing."
"Let them look. They'll never find anything."
Zomy smiled for a split second.
"What were you thinking there, eh? Behind your oxygen tubes?"
"Whatever."
"Say it."
"Forget it, it's just nonsense."
"Speak or I'll shoot!"