Susan supposed that was the real reason John had done what he did, but she silently hoped those lazy winter evenings had meant as much to him as they had to her. He had slipped it in, Susan believed, specifically for her.
“Do you want to work on this together?”
“It’s faster if I work alone. My father and I used to race to see who could finish the cryptogram first. I always did, but now I’m wondering if he let me. In any case, the surgical attending on my med-school rotation considered himself a cryptogram pro, too. He rarely beat me.”
Susan sat down, pen in hand. She had barely started when the loud buzz of a Vox sounded. From habit, she glanced around, found her Vox, still connected to the palm-pross, and pulled it free. Realization followed a moment later. My Vox is active.
“Oh no, Susan. No.” Jake’s voice was filled with pain and admonishment. “How long has that been on?”
Abruptly realizing the problem, Susan stabbed off her Vox and reattached it to her wrist. “I…don’t remember turning it on.” Desperately, she thought back, certain she had not done it from unthinking habit.
Lawrence had the answer. “The Vox automatically turns on whenever you plug in a device. Like a port key.”
Jake stood up. His words sounded strained, and he emphasized each one. “How…long?”
No one answered.
“Susan! How long?”
His desperation felt like a lash. Susan’s heart rate quickened, and her throat tightened. My stupidity’s going to get us all killed. “I—I’m not sure.”
“Twenty minutes,” Lawrence estimated. “Twenty-five. Why?”
Jake started looking in all directions, like a cornered rat. He stepped back into the deepest shadows of the corner. “A live Vox is a trackable Vox, and Cadmium has that technology. They know exactly where we are.”
Cued by Jake, Kendall also stood up.
“It’s all right.” Displacing Nate, Lawrence retook his place behind his desk, speaking softly, as if to a hysterical child. “You’re in one of the most secure places in Manhattan. The front locks require simultaneous thumb and retina scanning. A year ago, SFH hit us with a bomb blast that barely burned the edges.”
Susan had been at the scene when the bomb exploded. The schizophrenic who detonated it had stood on a bus a significant distance from the building. She was not so sure it could stand a direct hit. They need me alive. They’re not going to bomb us. Even as the idea soothed, another sent her heart racing even faster. “They know how to disable thumbprint locks.”
The voice of reassurance came from an unexpected place. Jake relaxed a bit. “Retinal scanners are something altogether different. With current technology, it’s impossible to get around them.”
Susan breathed a sigh of relief, struck by another abrupt and terrible thought. She choked off the exhalation midbreath. “Unless you’ve procured an eye that’s tuned to the scanner. A disembodied eye…from a head…no longer attached to its body.”
As if on cue, the office door slammed open to reveal two men in black silk suits, weapons drawn. “Freeze! Federal agents. Anyone moves, they die.”
The room went as still and silent as a tomb, aside from the faint hum of the air-conditioning.
Terror crushed down on Susan. She could not even breathe.
Both of the intruders stood about six feet tall, sinewy and competent, their faces expressionless, but there all similarity ended. The older one had a beefy face with white hair cut functionally short, piercing blue eyes, and a wicked-looking scar that cut his right cheek in the shape of a letter Y. The younger had black hair hanging in an uneven fringe, eyes like chips of coal, and thin lips that seemed to disappear into a permanent sneer.
The older one spoke first. “Pat them down. Start with the redhead.” He gestured at Kendall with a sparse movement of his head that never disrupted the steadiness of his hand. Though some distance separated the occupants of the room, his eyes seemed to focus tightly on each and every one. “I’ll kill the cop.”
Before the words could even register in Susan’s ears, Jake moved, twisting, grabbing for his gun, too late. The roar of the fed’s pistol in the confines of the office seemed to tear Susan’s hearing apart. A hole appeared in the middle of Jake’s forehead, and he collapsed wordlessly. His head smacked the floor with a solid thud, audible even through the agonized ringing in Susan’s ears. He lay still, blood pooling beneath his head, the momentum of his last movement sending his gun flying, spinning, to land at Nate’s feet.
A scream followed. For an instant, Susan thought it came from her own throat, but she found herself incapable of even that much action. Relieved of the gun Jake had given him, now in the younger fed’s pocket, Kendall charged to Jake’s side, heedless of any warnings.
No! Susan wanted to yell, but found herself unable to work her vocal cords. Panic squeezed them desperately closed, and it took strength of will just to suck air in and out of her lungs. She cringed for the second shot, certain Kendall’s instinctive need to heal would be his last action in life.
But the older man only laughed, then commanded, “Robot, pick up the gun and keep it secure.”
Constrained by the Second Law, Nate obeyed, gripping the pistol by its slide, with the barrel pointed at the ground. He looked as shaken as the rest of them. A whimper escaped him, and he looked to Lawrence Robertson for guidance. Standing behind the desk, hands in the air while the second thug frisked him, Lawrence could do nothing to assist anyone.
Susan did not worry for Nate. Cadmium clearly knew what he was, which put him in far less danger than the humans around him.
Kendall seemed to take no notice of anything but Jake. “He’s dead,” he sobbed. “You killed him.” He cradled the bleeding head in his lap, tearing his own shirt and clamping it to the exit wound at the back of the detective’s head. His actions contradicted his proclamation. If Jake was indeed dead, why would Kendall bother to put pressure on the wound, to stem the flow of blood? For an instant, Susan dared to hope against all odds. She could not remember the last time she had seen so much blood at once, and she knew the statistics for gunshot wounds of the head. Ninety to ninety-five percent fatal. It occurred to Susan that Kendall’s treatment of the hopeless wound was probably as mindless as his mad rush to assist a fallen companion, oblivious to the personal danger. Bright red blood and tears smeared Kendall’s hands and face. “You bastards,” he screamed. “You killed him!”
Apparently untouched by the doctor’s display, Scarface aimed his weapon at Lawrence Robertson. “Susan Calvin, you have ten seconds to tell me the code before I blow his head off, too.”
The second agent took three large steps away from Lawrence. The scientist stood with eyes wide, his pupils so dilated they impinged on his irises. His nostrils flared, sucking in vast gulps of air. His lips stretched taut, his eyebrows drew together, and beads of sweat spangled his philtrum.
“Wait!” Lawrence shouted.
The lead agent started counting, “One…Two…”
Susan forced herself to lock down panic. She had exactly eight seconds to think of something. Her hands felt like ice cubes, and a stream of sweat trickled along her spine.
“…Three…”
Susan considered having Nate throw her Jake’s gun, but quickly discarded the idea. By the time she received it, righted it, and figured out how to use it, they would have shot Lawrence, Kendall, and maybe her as well.
“…Four…”
Susan looked at the cryptogram on the desk from the most distant corner of her eye, careful not to cue the gunman to its significance. Could I gain some time talking him into letting me work on it? Again, Susan discarded the idea. Once they saw the simplicity of the substitution code, which she had already started, they would have no reason to keep anyone alive.
“…Five…”
Wetness appeared at the front of Lawrence’s pants. She knew nothing of his medical history, but she worried about the stress of massively elevated blood pressure on the heart of a mid
dle-aged man.
“…Six…”
It’s all up to me. Susan realized this time she had no Remington to drape himself across the bomb, no Jake to cover her with crossfire. She had weathered more than a few code blues. When the call shrilled over Vox and speakers, everyone ran to assist. The calmest, quickest-thinking physician became the leader, the one deciding treatment. More often than not, Susan found the other residents, the nurses and support staff, deferring to her.
“…Seven…”
The numbers came in slow motion as Susan’s mind clicked. The fog gradually lifted from her thoughts. The ringing disappeared from her ears.
“Susan,” Lawrence croaked, his voice sounding as dry as hers felt. “For God’s sake, tell them whatever they want to know.”
“…Eight…”
“All right,” Susan yelled hoarsely. To her surprise, the sound barely emerged.
The counting stopped. “You’ve got two seconds left, Susan Calvin. Start talking.” Pistol steady in his right hand, he used his left to tap buttons on his Vox.
Certain he was now recording anything she said, Susan considered extracting promises about sparing her companions’ lives, but she knew such vows meant nothing to the man who had shot a peace officer in cold blood. He would have no qualms about agreeing to anything, then doing just as he pleased. She licked her lips, seeking a deep reserve of saliva, then forced out words from a throat gone raw. “Give me a chance to think, to find my voice.”
“You have two seconds,” he reminded.
“Okay.” Susan appreciated he had not ticked those off in the time it took her to acquiesce to his demands. She realized he had no means to test the validity of her claim. She glanced at Kendall, still sobbing over Jake’s damaged head. Nate stood stock-still. Lawrence trembled visibly. “This is the code you’re seeking.” Susan rolled her gaze toward the ceiling, as if recalling something deeply inscribed in memory.
The older agent watched her intently, while the younger one kept his weapon trained on Kendall. Neither bothered to guard Nate; they knew they did not need to.
Susan spoke with exaggerated deliberateness, articulating every syllable. “B-X-2…”
Even the hum of the air conditioner disappeared. Every ear locked on Susan’s voice. “8-T-J-6-3-F-F-R-1-0.” At random, she stopped.
Scarface grinned. His weapon never wavered. “That’s the code, is it?”
“It is,” Susan said.
“Repeat it, then. Exactly the same way.”
Susan almost swallowed her tongue. She could not accurately repeat a string of letters and numbers that long on a good day. With her thoughts scattered, she had little chance of coming close. Worse, he had her recorded for accuracy, and she could not even recall the first letter.
“Miss a single character, and someone dies. Then we start all over at a one count.”
Hopelessness descended on Susan. She wished her own heart would just stop beating. Then a new thought came to her. She raised her head, looked Scarface in his brilliant blue eyes. And smiled.
Chapter 22
Susan Calvin knew she had to play this perfectly; there was no room for mistakes, no second chances. The continued existence of every living creature in the room, including Nate, depended on a lethal game of bluff and counter. Cadmium had the advantage when it came to matters of intestinal fortitude and mettle, deadly force, firearms, and tactics. Scarface had a leg up when it came to experience; he knew bluster when he saw it. But Susan came with her own set of abilities. She knew the human mind, even at its sickest and most dangerous, how to express and hide emotion, and how to read people.
The older of the agents fairly growled. “I said, repeat the code, Susan Calvin. Do it. Now!”
The grin remained a fixture on Susan’s features. She continued to meet his gaze with the fanaticism and fearlessness of a predator. “I could do that,” she said. “I’ve known it as long and well as my own name. Dad and I recited it every night before we went to sleep, like clockwork, instead of evening prayers.” The saliva had returned to her mouth. She spoke easily, evenly, banishing terror to the farthest reaches of her subconscious. Never again would she give him the satisfaction of cowing her. One way or the other, this ended now. “I could recite it like others do a family credo, backward or forward, standing on my head.” She deliberately slid her gaze to Nate, who stood behind and to the side of the agent, as if the presence of the pistol no longer interested her, and the man in front of her meant nothing. “But I don’t have to.”
A hint of expression slid across Scarface’s features, not yet readable, but encouraging merely for its presence. He was not discarding her claim out of hand. “What are you babbling about?”
“The instant I spoke that code, I uncoupled Nate from the Three Laws of Robotics. He’s no longer bound by any of them, most especially the one that forbids him from injuring a human being.”
“That’s a lie!” The barrel of his gun moved from Lawrence to Susan. “It’s not how a code works; it has to be programmed!”
A knot formed in Susan’s stomach. She had to force herself not to react, to envision the weapon as a wilted flower. “At this precise moment, Nate’s pointing the gun at your back. If either of you does anything other than drop your weapon harmlessly to the floor, he’s going to shoot to kill. Right, Nate?”
“Exactly right.” Nate played along, as Susan knew he would. “Eye sensors working perfectly. Identify twenty-seven single-shot lethal foci on target one. Thirty on target two.”
“Nate’s an upgrade from John,” Susan lied. “From the autopsy of the body, it took SFH more than twenty shots just to bring him down.” She imagined Cadmium had counted the holes in John Calvin’s head, and it had surely taken far more than one to render the positronic brain inoperable. “Weaponless and with the Three Laws intact.” She kept her tone casual. “How many bullets does your gun hold?”
Susan knew the agent would get the point, that a shootout with Nate was wholly one-sided. A medically trained robot, Nate would know how to disable with a single shot.
Scarface blinked but remained in place, the gun still trained on Susan. “You’re lying. That wasn’t the real code. That thing’s still constrained by the Three Laws.”
Susan ignored him, her grin drawing into a rictus. “And the best part is, you armed him. You have three seconds, Cadmium. If your guns aren’t on the floor before I get to three, Nate shoots one of you. He can choose, but I’m recommending you.” She did not pause any longer than he had before counting. “One…”
His eyes impaled her, reading every microfeature of her face, the set of her brows, the width of her pupils, the flare of each nostril. She felt violated, as if he could see into every corner and crevice of her thoughts.
Susan did not allow herself to break. Contempt, she reminded herself. Not fear. Never fear. Not a hint of uncertainty or doubt. She raised her chin fiercely. One corner of her lips winched downward, leaving the other in a contemptuous sneer. She tried to make her stare at least equally cutting. “Two…”
The younger agent dropped his gun. It clattered to the office floor as he explained, “Mike, the safety’s off. He’s got the laser on your back.”
The moment of truth hinged on Scarface’s nerve, the man his partner had identified as Mike. Susan tried to understand the younger agent’s point. From the directions Jake had given Kendall—just point and shoot—she guessed the safety was housed in the trigger and ganged to the red-dot sight. Clearly, Nate had gone as far as putting his finger on it hard enough to disengage the safety, and he trusted his nerves not to flinch or spasm. Only he and Susan knew for certain he could never actually fire.
Susan gathered breath for the final number. She dared not hesitate or waver, could not allow the slightest emotion or cue to betray her uncertainty. She opened her mouth and said, “Three!”
Even as she spoke, the gun was falling.
Relief flooded Susan. Her limbs felt like water, but she kept her features well schooled,
her manner casual. She did not want him to think, for even a moment, she had considered the possibility of any other outcome. “Now both of you. Keep your hands where I can see them. Carefully”—she overemphasized the word—“kick the guns to me.” She glanced past Mike to Nate.
The robot was struggling to keep his expression as bland as Susan’s, an irony that reached her even through the myriad other thoughts racing through her mind. She had put him in a horrible position. Luckily, only the less experienced of the agents could see his face to read it.
Cadmium did as Susan instructed. One after the other, their guns slid across the floor toward Susan. Her eyes never left Mike as she crouched to scoop one up, making certain to choose his. Since he had already fired a shot, there was no question of a round in the chamber. It was armed and ready to go.
The federal agents kept their hands in front of them, palms up. Mike’s unsettling eyes continued to penetrate Susan. “Now that you’re in charge, tell the truth. Could he really have pulled the trigger?”
Susan knew better than to abandon the lie. She currently had the upper hand, but he had all the experience, all the training. She wondered what he would do if he knew he had been within five minutes of having the real code, the one contained in a simple cryptogram. “I assure you, he still can. And he knows the location of every organ, muscle, bone, and major vessel in your body.” She glowered at him. “Now, you tell me…Mike. Is that really what you want? Ruthless robotic killing machines without a modicum of morality to guide them?”
Despite his position, Mike’s grin was positively evil. “You’ve described the perfect soldier. Isn’t that better than arming frightened boys and sending them into combat?”
The gun had spent enough time in Mike’s hand to feel hot in Susan’s grip. She could almost imagine it burning her fingers. She had never held a firearm before, did not expect it to feel so heavy and solid, nor to mold so easily into her smaller hand. “Lawrence, call 911.”
“Alarm’s already triggered,” Lawrence shot back. “Calling.”
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