by Sean Black
She pointed.
‘Show me.’
I followed her into a back room. We walked past crates of beer and soda and into a small cupboard. I pulled out my Gerber and used it to unscrew the hard drive from its casing.
‘I’m going to lock you in here, okay?’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, someone will find you eventually. Give me the key.’
She fumbled in her slacks, dug out the key to the store cupboard. I took it. ‘Turn round for me.’ She seemed confused by this latest instruction. I placed a hand on her shoulder and guided her round, like a parent spinning a blindfolded child before a game of pin the tail on the donkey.
Five minutes later, I opened the door and walked out. There was no one outside. I started up the Escape and drove away, heading back to the freeway.
FIFTY-FIVE
Julia
Julia’s cell phone lay on Byron’s pillow. Through the day it would ring every few minutes, and every few minutes she would answer it in case it was her husband. It never was, and she had begun to doubt it ever would be. After she had left the hotel, hunted like an animal by a baying mob of reporters all the way back to the apartment, she had been drawn to the television news, which she had always deliberately avoided when she’d thought Byron was out in the field. Finally, the not knowing had become worse than the knowing.
There was nothing to know. That didn’t stop the endless cycling of the news networks. Reports were coming in from all over the country that Byron had been spotted working at a rodeo in Texas, holding up a bank in Missouri or with a young child in a car at a drive-thru fast-food joint in New Hampshire. The authorities were actively seeking three separate vehicles, which blended inexorably into one, as the news channels churned their details with those of the sightings.
Other things started to appear alongside in the bulletins. Old photographs of Byron excavated from who knew where. Byron as a child. A photograph from his high-school yearbook. Pictures from his time in the infantry and then the Rangers. People who had known him appeared on camera. All the while it drove home to Julia how little we knew of anyone and how, while some things appeared constant (his intellect, his physical prowess, his loyalty and courage), others changed (friends who spoke of him as cold, aloof, a ruthlessly efficient soldier). Like everyone, Byron was, and had been, a different person to different people at different times. It seemed that only she had seen the vulnerable side of her husband, the human side. The irony wasn’t lost on her. After all, she had met him after his enrollment in the PSS Program when the implants and other technology had already been seeded. It begged a question. Had she seen the last dying embers of the human being, the hybrid reality, or a soul with machine-like capabilities that could be switched on and off as the situation and his environment demanded?
None of the reports talked about any of that. Even if some were aware of the reality of the program, it would be heavily embargoed with unspeakable penalties for a breach. The briefest of internet searches revealed the parallel world where those dismissed as cranks talked openly about the evidence that was in the public domain: the incident with the cop in Vegas; the trail of dead bodies; the program and the significance of its location near Area 51. Various theories were put forward. Some of the speculation was awkwardly close to the reality. There was talk of the MK Ultra program, of brainwashing, of robotics, of the money that DARPA had poured into neuroscience. If only they knew, she thought. If only the crackpots actually realized that the truth was almost more incredible than some of their wildest fantasies.
The phone rang again. A 212 number. New York. Not likely to be Byron. She answered. A woman’s voice. Another reporter. Young, tentative, a person not used to having to make this kind of call, someone for whom the intrusion into another person’s life at the most heightened of times still seemed the splintering of human decency it was.
She began with an apology, ‘Mrs Tibor, I am so sorry to bother you like this.’
At first Julia didn’t say anything. She had taken to hanging up but this time she didn’t. She didn’t answer either. The voice filled the void.
‘My name’s Meredith Harris. I’m a researcher for …’ She named a popular syndicated talk show, the kind that Julia would watch as a guilty pleasure if she was sick. ‘Mrs Tibor, are you there?’
Something about Meredith’s tone allowed Julia to answer, ‘Yes, I’m listening.’
‘Oh, God, I was kind of hoping you’d just hang up or, I dunno, shout at me. My boss told me that if I don’t at least speak to you then I’m fired, and I really need this job, and I’ve only been here like two weeks, and if I get fired I’ll won’t get another chance, and I have loans to pay. Sorry, none of this is your problem, and I’m really sorry about your husband, and for what it’s worth I believe he’s a good man.’
If this was some elaborate manipulation, she was more accomplished than anyone else who had called.
‘You realize this call is being monitored, don’t you?’ Julia said.
Silence. ‘Oh, yes, I guess that with your husband …’ Meredith trailed off.
It was late, or early, depending on how you looked at it. Julia wasn’t asleep, and wouldn’t be able to sleep. She gave Meredith the name of a twenty-four-hour deli and told her to meet her there in a half-hour.
FIFTY-SIX
Eldon
Eldon took the cell from her and killed the call as rain splattered the awning of the bodega on East 24th Street.
‘It worked,’ she said. ‘How’d you know it would?’ She brushed a strand of long blond hair from her face.
‘I didn’t. I played the percentages. You were pretty good.’
‘Who was it you said you worked for again?’ she asked.
‘CNBC,’ said Eldon.
‘Okay, I guess that makes sense with the whole guilt-trip deal.’
He dug into his pocket for the money, handed it to ‘Meredith’, and watched as she disappeared into the glistening Manhattan night. He looked down at his cell: she had keyed in the address of the diner that Julia Tibor had suggested. It was always better when the location was the other person’s idea. It lowered their guard.
The young woman who had played the part of the TV researcher had been a chance encounter. When she had mentioned to him that she was an actress, Eldon had done a little improvisation of his own. He had seen her crossing the street, dodging traffic. She was back in her own little bubble, happy to have cleared four hundred bucks for a few minutes’ work.
He turned up his collar, and stepped out from under the awning. As she turned the corner onto Seventh Avenue, he followed her. He needed her to keep her mouth shut, and he needed that money back for other things. All he needed now, though, was an alleyway. The only snag was that Eldon didn’t want some random chick as his two-hundredth kill. It would ruin the moment. It was a milestone, a carefully crafted temple of death. It deserved someone worthy at the apex. There lay the crux of it too. The person worthy of the honor would have to carry a threat to Eldon. Most of the people whose lives Eldon had taken hadn’t even seen it coming, never mind had the chance to harm him. This would be different. But between now and that moment lay some work.
He was small enough that even on a deserted New York side-street he could slip along unseen. ‘Meredith’s’ heels clacked along. She didn’t hear him until he was directly behind her, his hand slipping over her mouth, his leg sweeping away hers as he dragged her kicking and trying to scream into the gap between two buildings.
He choked her out, her eyes rolling back in her head, her face set fierce with horror. He set to work, getting off on it in a way that he never could by pulling a trigger. The intimacy of the work let his spirit soar through the canyon of buildings that pressed in on them. He pulled her to her feet, supporting her as they danced, his fingers and thumbs busy working the pressure points, taking her close to death but stopping just short.
There was a moment when his fingers brushed one of her nipples and he felt his dick harden. He stopped what he was doing, tr
oubled by his own reaction. Then he realized that the sexual charge had not been from his flesh on hers but from his flesh against the silky fabric of her bra. Reassured, he went back to work.
Ten minutes later, the money he had given her back in his possession, along with her underwear, he emerged back onto the street. He had a date with Mrs Julia Tibor, and it wouldn’t do to be late.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Byron
The Ford’s headlights carved through the darkness, the highway switching back on itself. I lowered the windows and savored the sea-salt freshness of the Pacific, slowing as I approached the turn for Big Sur National Park. It was little more than a fire road, the ground broken and rutted. I killed the headlights. My retinal implants took over as the trees closed in on either side, and the road narrowed.
I estimated that the cabin I was looking for lay about two miles north-east. I found a gap in the trees, pulled the Ford off the road and drove into the forest. I switched off the engine, and got out. I walked back to the road, staying just inside the tree line.
As I walked I tuned into the sounds of the forest, separating out the sounds of birds and animals, adjusting my steps to minimize the noise I made as I moved. Every fifty yards or so, I would stop, allowing my senses to gather data. Between the transcranial implant and the other enhancements, I could build a three-dimensional picture of the territory.
In the distance the ocean pulsed. A breeze picked up and shook its way through the redwoods. The cabin couldn’t be too far. If I had the location right, it was well screened by the trees. Grass grew in the middle of the track leading up to it. I stepped from the edge of the forest, and took a closer look at the track, searching for fresh tire marks. If someone was up ahead waiting for me, there would be more than one set – I doubted they would have approached on foot. The track was clear. It was in light use, maybe a vehicle or two traveling up or down it every few days.
Now I could see a single light ahead. A dog barked. Then another. The one thing I had forgotten: their senses were as finely tuned as mine. Judging by the timbre of the barking, one was a large animal, the other small.
I took the barking as a good sign. Any ambush party would have cleared them out or placed them in vehicles, wary that they would act as an alarm.
Staying within the tree line, I moved forwards. The trees thinned to reveal a clearing, and a single-story cabin constructed from the same redwoods that hemmed it in. The two dogs raced from the porch to me, both mutts. The larger one’s eyes indicated some wolf; the other was more terrier.
I stood my ground, and avoided eye contact, allowing them to bark and draw closer. They sniffed the air. The larger dog growled. The cabin door opened. Whoever was inside had already killed the lights to avoid being silhouetted in the doorway and easier for an intruder watching from the darkness to pick out. I could see her clearly.
She was in her fifties. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a thick ropy braid. She was slim with strong, angular features and brown eyes to go with her coffee-colored skin. For some reason, my inherent sexism perhaps, I had assumed Shakti was a man.
When Muir had scrawled the name for me, I had recognized it: the people I had met at the facility had mentioned her. Shakti, as far as I could recall, was regarded as a pioneer in the area of neural implants, sensory substitution and human augmentation. Like many top research scientists she was Indian, and had been attracted to the United States after early pioneering work had drawn the attention of the academic-military-industrial complex whose members trawled the world’s universities. But she had turned her back on the work, citing ethical objections. Muir and the others had taken on what she had achieved, driving through practical applications of her work. Then, at some point, she had disappeared off the radar.
Barefoot and dressed in loose, bright clothing, she stepped forward. She was looking straight at me, and I had a feeling that her picking me out in the darkness wasn’t just down to the dogs. She called them to her. They responded instantly, darting back and sitting in front of her, quivering canine sentinels.
I stepped out from the tree line, hands loose at my sides. She watched me all the way, apparently more curious than fearful. It was a strange reaction from a lone woman to a man of my size stepping from the woods around her house after dark.
‘Muir sent me,’ I said.
‘I take it you’re the man everyone’s looking for,’ she said. Her accent held that curiously clipped British tone, a remnant of old empire that I had noticed before in Indians of a certain class.
‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘Don’t mind the dogs. It’s nothing personal. Any kind of machine sets them off.’
I was a machine to her? At least I knew where I stood. I walked up to the porch. The larger dog growled at me but stayed put. I was relieved. I wouldn’t harm an animal, regardless of what else the implant allowed me to do without my conscience troubling me.
Inside, a narrow hallway opened up into a large open-plan living room and kitchen. Off to one side a door seemed to lead into a bedroom. In one corner of the living room there was a shrine to a Hindu goddess. She was riding a lion, her many arms holding a plethora of weapons.
‘Durga?’ I said, with a nod to the shrine.
‘Not many people would know who it was.’
‘I’ve traveled a lot.’
‘So I’ve heard. Please, take a seat,’ Shakti said, ushering me to sit on one of a half-dozen large cushions that lay on the floor. There was no television, no couch, only the kitchen counter and units and a solitary wooden table with four seats.
I sat cross-legged. Shakti sat opposite, the dogs arranging themselves either side of her, their eyes never leaving me.
‘So they killed Muir?’ she asked.
‘Everyone thinks I did it,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you?’
She smiled, completely serene. I wondered if it was connected to the spirituality evidenced by the shrine, or whether it came from living here. Big Sur had been a magnet for those seeking enlightenment since before the hippie trail of the sixties. For those interested in how the human mind functioned it wasn’t an altogether unnatural place to gravitate to. Julia would like it, I thought.
‘Muir was Scottish,’ she said. ‘They have an expression about what happens to you if you drink with the devil. Muir drank with the devil.’
‘And you wouldn’t?’ I asked.
‘What they’ve been saying on the radio and television about the program isn’t without a grain of truth. Originally we were looking for a way of dealing with PTSD and combat fatigue, especially for the most extreme cases. That was what the work on the neural implants was about. Then, of course, the Pentagon, the CIA and the others started to take an interest.’
‘Because you could use the technology for something else?’ I asked.
‘Yes and no,’ said Shakti. ‘If you can control the amygdala and how it interacts with the rest of the brain then you can cure someone of PTSD but you can also dampen their response to real-time situations. You know how powerful that is more than almost anyone, Byron.’
‘And the other stuff? It’s not just that I’m calmer in the middle of a firefight, I’m more of everything. All my senses, my strength, my physical abilities.’
‘A lot of that was old technology. Cochlear and retinal implants have been around for a while. All we did was some superfine-tuning. The big breakthrough was the transcranial work, putting it all together. I was gone by then because I saw what they were going to use it for but Muir took it on, and made it a spectacular success.’
It was my turn to smile. ‘This is what you call a success?’
‘You must be hungry,’ she said. ‘Tired? I can offer you food, shelter, somewhere to sleep. It’s late. We can talk more in the morning.’
She must have noticed me staring at her because the next thing she said me was ‘Having your own portable fMRI scanner must come in pretty handy. Doesn’t it complicate your personal life?’
‘I don’t use it wi
th my wife.’
Shakti leaned forward, intellectual curiosity getting the better of her. ‘You can switch it on and off?’
I had never been sure how to explain it. The ability to lift a car, or see in the dark, or pick out a conversation across a crowded room or, for that matter, be able to see the blood and neural function in someone’s mind by looking at them: none was a constant. It wasn’t something I was conscious of, any more than anyone is conscious of what they can do. If you can pull out a chair for someone or lift a baby, you don’t think about it: the capability is just there when you need it. I did my best to articulate it to Shakti.
She listened patiently. When I had finished, she said, ‘Thank you. I’ve waited a long time to have this talk with someone. That’s the only thing I really missed when I left, being able to talk to someone like you about how it felt to be as you are.’
‘Maybe you should have called Muir.’
I didn’t have to gauge her neural response to what I’d said. Her facial expression told me that she was shocked. ‘Muir?’
‘After they shot him, and I was trying to see if he was still alive.’ I waved my fingers in the air. ‘I picked up what I think is an implant in his brain. That was part of the reason I wanted to find you. So you could take a look.’
‘You have him with you?’ she said.
‘In my vehicle,’ I told her.
She sprang to her feet, crossed to the kitchen and plucked a knife from a block on the counter. ‘Show me,’ she said.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Julia
Julia Tibor sat in a corner booth facing the door, a habit she had acquired from her husband. Always have a clear view of the main entrance and know where all the exits are. At first his fussiness about seating on planes and in restaurants had driven her slightly mad. Then one day he had told her a few stories. Even though there was little risk of a terrorist attack on the Upper West Side, Byron had explained that it was simply a matter of good habits becoming engrained.