Analog SFF, March 2012

by Dell Magazine Authors

  They continued to struggle, but Miss Peters must have heard the sound of the breaking glass because she opened the office door and stood there, mouth agape—and behind her, just entering the outer office, was Professor Singh.

  Singh surged forward. “Let him go.”

  “He attacked me,” David said. “Went nuts. Tried to kill me.”

  The syllable “no"—mostly just raw breath rather than a word—came from Griffin.

  “I said, let him go!” Singh demanded.

  David looked at the guy: he was fifty if he was a day and slight of build; David was sure he could take him, too, if he had to. “Back off,” he said.

  Singh exploded into movement, rushing forward then pivoting on his left foot while he brought his right foot up into a powerful karate kick, catching David in the side. Griffin seized the chance and managed to twist himself free from David's grip. Singh pivoted again and kicked with his other leg, catching David in the solar plexus, and as David doubled over, Singh delivered a sharp karate punch to the back of David's neck. David slumped face first to the floor. He was still conscious, but, try as he might, he couldn't get back up. He lolled his head to the side to watch.

  Griffin was struggling to get his breath and was still doubled over. He held onto the edge of the counter for support.

  “Do you need a doctor?” Singh asked.

  Griffin huffed and puffed a few more times then shook his head. “No. I'll be okay.” He straightened up partway, and nodded again. “Good thing you know karate, Professor Singh.”

  David looked up at Singh, his head still spinning. Singh said, “I don't.”

  “Well, or whatever martial art that was,” said Griffin.

  “I don't know any martial arts,” Singh said, his voice full of wonder. “But I guess Lucius Jono—the man I'm linked to—does."

  Griffin got out, “Well, thank God for that.”

  Singh was excited. “Indeed. This is fascinating. I wouldn't have anticipated skills being accessible like that.”

  Griffin straightened and made it over to his desk. He asked Miss Peters to have a security guard and an ER doctor come up here. Then he loomed in to make sure that David wasn't mortally wounded.

  “There are two kinds of human memory,” Singh went on, huffing a bit from exertion. “One is declarative or explicit memory, which is all that I'd thought had been linked between any of us here. Declarative memory consists of those things that can be consciously recalled and easily put into words—memories of facts or events.” He looked down in apparent astonishment at what he'd done to David. “The other kind is what you just saw me access. It's called non-declarative or procedural memory; lay people sometimes call it muscle memory. Non-declarative memories are the ones that you obviously have but are not conscious of: how to ride a bicycle, how to tie a shoe, how to play tennis—which is something I happen to do well—or how to perform martial arts. Declarative memory is associated with the hippocampus, whereas the dorsolateral striatum is associated with non-declarative memory.”

  Griffin rubbed his throat. “So?”

  The door opened and a security guard entered along with a doctor. The doctor immediately went down on one knee to examine David.

  “So,” said Singh, “the linkages are much more thorough than perhaps they first appeared to be.”

  “Or maybe they're growing stronger over time,” Griffin said.

  Singh said, “Maybe they are at that. Who knows where it will all end?”

  * * * *

  Chapter 22

  The interviews with the affected people continued; several more “Can Read” and “Is Read By” squares had been filled in on Singh's grid. Susan was back in Singh's office, this time interviewing a woman named Maria Ramirez. She was twenty-seven with black hair tumbling down her back, and she was wearing a loose-fitting top.

  “By this point, I imagine you've heard some of the gossip that's going around,” Susan said to Maria, who was seated on the convex side of the kidney-shaped desk. “All that stuff about memories being shared. Are you sharing anyone's memories, do you think?”

  “I don't want to get in trouble,” said Maria.

  Susan's heart skipped a beat. “You won't get in trouble,” Susan replied. “I promise you. We simply want to identify who's linked to who, that's all. It's not your fault this happened.”

  Maria seemed to consider this. “What if I say I'm not linked to anyone?”

  “You'd be the first person inside the sphere who wasn't,” Susan said. She let Maria digest this. Better that she decide on her own not to lie than that Susan accuse her of being a liar; that would just make her more defensive.

  “I didn't ask for this,” Maria said.

  Susan nodded. “None of us did.”

  “You're affected, too?” Maria asked, but then she answered her own question. "Si. You are. You can read the memories of someone here. A scientist named Singh.”

  Susan sat up straighter. Only Prospector and a few others should have known that. “Maria, who are you linked to?”

  “I know I know things I shouldn't. Secret things; secure things. National-security things. I swear to you that I haven't shared them with anyone.”

  Bingo! “That's fine,” Susan said, encouragingly. “I'm sure the president is very grateful for that.”

  “Poor Señor Jerrison,” Maria said. “All that blood spilling everywhere.” She shook her head. “It was awful.”

  “Yes, it was,” said Susan. “Maria, thank you for being honest about this. Of course, others will be interested in what you know. I'll assign you protection; we won't let anything happen to you.”

  "Gracias," said Maria, sounding distracted. She was looking not at Susan, but past her. Susan didn't have to turn around to know that there was nothing but a bookcase behind her; she had Singh's vivid memories of this place. Maria's voice was full of wonder. “Watching that man squeeze the president's heart . . . “

  Susan nodded, recalling it herself from her vantage point in the observation gallery. “That was amazing, wasn't it?” But then her eyebrows shot up. “You remember that?”

  “Well, he remembers it.”

  Susan was amazed. She knew Jerrison had had a near-death experience, and those did sometimes involve seeing oneself from outside the body, usually from up above. But those were hallucinations, she'd always thought: a mind that knew it was dying imagining what was happening to the body that contained it. And yet she'd been with Griffin when he'd briefed Prospector about his brush with death—and Griffin hadn't mentioned the manual stimulation of the heart. Could it be that Jerrison really had, somehow, departed his body and seen Eric Redekop at work?

  “If you are going to assign protection to me,” Maria said, “it might as well be him.”

  “Who?” said Susan, baffled. “The president?”

  “What?” replied Maria. “No, no. Him. Darryl Hudkins.”

  Oh, Christ. “Is that who you're reading?”

  "Si, of course. I know he knows all sorts of secret things—I guess that's why they call it the Secret Service. But, like I said, I promise you I haven't told any of them to anyone.”

  Susan was disappointed—but then her heart started beating quickly again. “Maria, I want you to understand something. I'm the Secret Service agent-in-charge here. I'm Darryl's superior, okay?”

  “If you say so.”

  “No, think about it. Ask yourself if that's true.”

  She narrowed her brown eyes for a moment, then: “Yes, okay, it's true.” She smiled ever so slightly. “He thinks you're a good boss.”

  “Good, fine,” said Susan. “Now, I'm going to ask you another question, and I want you to think very, very carefully about it. Your answer is extremely important.”

  Maria nodded.

  “Okay. Here's the question. Did Agent Hudkins have anything at all to do with the attempt on President Jerrison's life?”

  Maria narrowed her eyes again then shook her head. “No.”

  “Are you sure? Are
you positive?”

  "Si. He had nothing to do with it, but—oh!”

  “Yes? Yes?”

  “It was an inside job, wasn't it? Another agent—Gordo Danbury—he did it, si?"

  “I can't confirm or deny anything at this point. These are national-security matters.”

  “Darryl can't believe Gordo did it. And—oh! He's been wondering if you're involved.”

  “Me?” Susan was momentarily shocked, but she supposed his suspicion was as natural as her own. “No, I'm not. And you're totally sure Darryl isn't either, right?”

  “I'm sure,” said Maria.

  Susan nodded; she could use an ally—someone she could trust—and Darryl was now the only other agent she could be sure of. “Okay, thank you,” Susan said.

  “Can I go home now?” Maria asked.

  “I'm afraid not. But soon, I hope.”

  “Good. Because I can't wait to tell my husband the news.”

  “About the president being shot?” asked Susan, surprised. “Or about the White House?” Surely everyone outside the hospital knew about those things by now.

  “No, no. My news. Our news.”

  “Which is?”

  Maria smiled broadly. “That it's a girl.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Our baby. I was here for an ultrasound today.”

  “You're pregnant?” asked Susan.

  “Four months.”

  Susan surged to her feet and ran down the corridor to Singh's lab.

  * * * *

  “All right,” said Ranjip Singh, writing on the whiteboard in his lab. “Mark Griffin, the hospital CEO, can read Maria Ramirez. Of course, Griffin's been running around all day—hasn't had much time to probe her memories; he didn't even know she was pregnant until I just asked him about it.”

  Singh continued. “Maria herself can read Agent Darryl Hudkins.” He filled in the appropriate squares.

  “I spent hours modeling the linkages,” Singh added, “looking for a pattern to them—and I kept rejecting one my computer kept spitting out, because it seemed to have two nodes in one. But now that I know about the unborn baby, it makes sense. The linkage pattern of who is linked to whom is an artifact of the sequence of laser firings I'd programmed into my equipment: the paths of the beams traced out the pattern of connections. Not every pulse resulted in a link, and we're not exactly sure of where everyone was deployed within the building when the linkages occurred. Still, here's what I propose.” He erased the X in the name field of the twenty-first column and wrote in Baby Girl Ramirez. “Based on the beam paths, Maria's unborn baby is linked to Rachel Cohen, although what, if anything, a fetus could make of Ms. Cohen's memories, I have no idea. The baby girl probably lacks the referents to confabulate the cues Ms. Cohen is providing into anything meaningful . . . which I suspect is all to the good. Our Ms. Cohen is rather wanton; she formed a liaison with that lawyer, Orrin Gillett, with unseemly haste.”

  “'Wanton?'” said Susan, smiling at the choice of word. “Horny as all get-out, I'd say. But, yeah.”

  “And now, as for the rest,” said Singh. “I spoke to Josh Latimer, the intended kidney recipient. He kept insisting he wasn't detecting any foreign memories. He could be lying; he could be the one linked to President Jerrison. But my guess is that he's telling the truth about this, as he sees it. The beam paths suggest he's not linked to Jerrison, but rather to the unborn baby, whose memories are simply not remarkable enough for him to have noticed.” He wrote in those connections. “Which means it's down to three possibilities.” He pointed at the names above the three remaining blank squares in the Can Read row. “This person, this person, or this person—one of them is reading the president.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 23

  The DC police had been given copies of the security-camera photos of Bessie Stilwell, but so far they'd failed to turn her up. And Darryl Hudkins kept trying to recall her activities today, to figure out where she'd gone, and—

  And memories came to him, of Richard Nixon, of all people. Although Nixon had resigned the presidency before Darryl had been born, he'd seen film of him declaring, “I am not a crook,” and him flashing a pair of V-for-victory finger signs at the crowd as he left the White House for the last time, but . . .

  But he'd never felt sympathy for Nixon; Darryl's dad, whenever he spoke of him, referred to him as “Tricky Dick.” And in all Darryl's years working at the White House, he practically never heard Nixon's name; in an almost Soviet-style rewriting of history, the thirty-seventh president had seemingly been expunged from memory.

  But suddenly, he was thinking about Nixon, recalling things he'd never known about him—like him speaking to the first astronauts on the moon . . . Buzz something, and that other guy. Back when we'd been proud of him. And him going to China, and meeting Mao. Such a smart move!

  But then it had all come tumbling down. First his vice president—Agnew, the name came to Darryl, although he didn't think he'd known it before—had had to resign although over unrelated matters, and then Nixon himself had stepped down.

  Unrelated matters.

  That was the thought that had popped into Darryl's head, and as he considered it, more details came to him: the “unrelated matters” were charges of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy either when Agnew had been Governor of Maryland or Baltimore County Executive.

  And those were unrelated to . . .

  To Watergate, and—

  And—

  Yes, yes, yes! That's where she was staying! Not at her son Mike's place, but at the Watergate Hotel, which had recently reopened after major renovations. It came to Darryl now: she'd told Mike she was staying in his apartment, and indeed had gone by it once now, but she preferred a hotel, where housekeeping would find her no later than the next morning if she slipped and fell. She hadn't told Mike that, though; she didn't want him to be worrying about her running up expenses.

  The Watergate was a great choice for someone who was visiting Luther Terry; it was only three blocks away, straight down New Hampshire Avenue, the diagonal street that constrained the LT building into a triangular shape. The Watergate complex was on the shore of the Potomac, opposite Theodore Roosevelt Island and just north of the Kennedy Center.

  And—yes!—Bessie was looking around the grounds, as much as she could look at anything with her dim vision, and thinking this is where it all began, and—

  And her thoughts were interrupted by a siren, and Darryl had heard a siren himself not five minutes ago. Normally, he'd expect to hear ambulance sirens in the vicinity of a hospital but LT was under lockdown, and so Darryl had looked out the window and he'd seen a fire truck barreling north, and—

  And Bessie had seen—or at least heard!—the same fire truck; this was a very recent memory.

  Darryl spoke into his sleeve even as he broke into a run. “Hudkins to Dawson. I know were Bessie Stilwell is; I'm leaving the building to retrieve her.”

  “Copy,” said Susan's voice in his ear. “I'll make sure hospital security knows; go out the ambulance bay, not through the lobby.”

  Darryl could have commandeered a car to drive to the Watergate, but it was less than a thousand yards away. He made it down to the first floor and found himself retracing the path by which they'd brought in the president this morning, going past the staff sleep room, past Trauma, turning right, and heading out through the sliding doors that led to the ambulance driveway. A uniformed hospital security guard was indeed there. He checked Darryl's ID, then unlocked the door for him; Darryl nodded thanks at the man and ran out into the chilly evening.

  He hadn't bothered to get his coat—that would have cost him a couple of minutes. He ran past the news crews, and one camera guy tried to follow him, shouting questions—Darryl was, after all, the first person to emerge from the building in hours—but the man, carrying a large camera, wasn't able to keep up with Darryl as he ran along the building's longest side, heading toward Eye Street, then—his heart pounding a bit—
H Street, and then—sweating now—under the Potomac River Freeway, emerging at the Watergate Complex. The hotel, he knew, was off to his right along Virginia Avenue, and he continued to run until he got there, making his way into the swanky lobby.

  The aristocratic white man behind the front desk looked askance at Darryl, who was breathing hard, but Darryl whipped out his ID and said, his voice ragged, “Secret Service. What room is Bessie Stilwell in?,” but then it came to him before the man answered: room 534. “Give me a pass key.”

  The desk clerk hesitated for a second, but then programmed a keycard and handed it to Darryl, saying, “She just got back, actually.”

  Darryl took the plastic card and dashed to the bank of elevators. He stabbed the up button and caught his breath as he waited. Then he rode up to the fifth floor, and—

  —and that must be her, down near the end of the corridor, moving slowly away from him; there was no one else in the carpeted hallway.

  “Wait!” he called.

  She slowly turned around, and Darryl came bounding down the corridor, and she was fumbling to open her purse, and—

  —and suddenly he realized how it must look to her: late in the evening, all alone in a long corridor, a large, sweaty black man, huffing and puffing, running right at her.

  She soon had a tiny pistol in her hand. Darryl stopped dead in his tracks; he could have easily drawn his own gun and blown her away—he had no doubt his reflexes and aim were better than hers—but instead he raised his hands a little.

  “Mrs. Stilwell,” he said, hoping the fact that he knew her name would calm her a bit. She peered at him; there were maybe twenty feet between them. Darryl noted the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door next to him. “I'm a Secret Service agent. Maybe you saw me today at the hospital?”

  And saying that triggered him to recall her seeing him for the first time. She had indeed noticed him at the hospital, and—

  What's that—

  Darryl was stunned as the rest of the thought tumbled into his consciousness: What's that nigger doing over there?

  And: Up to no good, I suppose.

  And: My God, is that blood on his sleeve? Well, there you have it! Been in a knife fight or something. Probably over drugs . . .