Velocity

by B. V. Larson

  The jungle plants slashed at the ATV as they passed, lashing inward and depositing shreds of cool leaves through the hole in the back window.

  After a moment Sato laughed too. Behind them, if she reached out with her mind, she could sense the giant, running after them down the jungle lane. His arms and legs pumped in rhythm with his huge galloping heart. They were rapidly outdistancing him, but he didn’t slow, he wasn’t giving up. She watched the pistons churn and flare with heat under the ATV’s hood. The two of them didn’t talk much on the way back to the city.

  The next day they sat together in Sato’s office at the university. Around them were the usual accouterments of the college science professor, including an antique desk, lost beneath a blizzard of flimsy plastic scrolls. Resting atop the scrolls was a dusty Mars-rock, gathered on a summer school expedition fifteen years back. The ubiquitous bio-processor sat in the midst of it all, hooked to a venerable old Steinbach CPU that sat in its chest under the desk with a tangle of optical-gel tubing poking out of the top.

  “You’ll have to leave the island, Tamara,” Sato told her, raising a hand to her expected denials. “Please don’t argue. You don’t have any choice now, you can’t handle things like this monster they have trailing you. I pulled a few strings and Tyro Labs has chipped in some cash and a ticket to Berlin. From there you can easily start a new life.”

  Tamara shook her head, wearily. “It would not be enough to just leave Cuba. I’ve gained the vengeful attention of international lords. I’ve thwarted people who are accustomed to bribing or crushing all opposition. There can’t be any stopping now.”

  “A person can always hide, Tamara. You will have to be careful, lay low, take precautions. You must act like a normal blind person for awhile.”

  “No,” she smiled, shaking her head sadly. “They know you helped me. They will come after you now as well.”

  This last struck through to Sato. Tamara felt the fear blossom in him anew, a black flower planted over a shallow grave. She felt a bit sick, he was acting so brave, pretending not to be afraid. He must have known that she could read him, that he could never hide a strong emotion from her. Still though, he went on pretending, playing the brave fatherly role. She pretended too, she pretended that he could give her useful advice, that he could really help her, but he couldn’t. She was in a game beyond his experience now.

  “You don’t know these people, but I do.”

  “You aren’t one of them.”

  “I’ve touched their minds, poppa,” she said, slipping a bit.

  “You haven’t called me poppa since you were a little girl,” said Sato. For a moment he smiled.

  “Listen, poppa. They don’t think like we do, they don’t feel the pain of others. They kill men the off-handed way that farmboys kill gophers.”

  For once, Sato had nothing to say. Tamara reached out and closed her soft fingers over the rough skin of his hand. “They will try to kill you now, too. I know it.”

  Sato was silent for a long time. Tamara, sharing his feelings intensely now that they were in physical contact, felt like weeping for him. She felt his sense of loss, of failure to her. She followed his thoughts for a time while he remembered her as his daughter. Had he not programmed much of her genetic structure? Had he not raised her, taught her his values? To not be able to help and protect her, much less himself, was difficult for him to accept. He felt old and useless.

  “So, what do we do?” he asked her.

  “I’m through running,” she said. Anger had begun to burn in her again, the way it had when she had felt the children in pain. Their bodies had burned on drugs, hearts beating unnaturally fast, breath hitching from their lungs. Nervous uncontrollable energy, flushed cheeks, small bright eyes surrounded by gray skin. She remembered the children.

  “I will protect you, father. I can use my mind in the horrible ways that I did before. I will reach inside them and twist,” Tamara said, thinking of the things she had done to the first pushers, the ones that gladly sold blur crystals and other synthetic drugs to her second-graders. Used just the right way, her thoughts had snapped their minds like dry twigs, the way an arm or finger could be snapped by a professional.

  “Before the assassins come again, I must go after them.”

  Like Saint Bernard dogs that are over-bred and turn mean, the giants were genetic extremes. They had been developed for size, strength and speed only, with no regard to their mental tendencies. Quick reflexes and stamina had been lifted to their maximums, while reasoning and emotional elements had been left up to the idle whim of chance. As a result, most of them were mentally unbalanced to some degree, and nearly all of them had the capacity for a killer rage buried down deep in their genes somewhere.

  When Tamara finally found the giant that had stalked her relentlessly the night before, evening had fallen once again. She found him in a nightclub downtown, a club where men and women with carefully trimmed pubic hair pranced in G-strings on a dirty stage. The glaring words LIVE SEX SHOW blinked and spun in holographic splendor over the street outside the place, switching from English to Spanish, then back again. A bum in a torn sweater and ancient blue jeans sat near the entrance, begging patrons for money or a drink. He alternately received gifts, showers of alcoholic saliva and swift kicks to the legs and chest. Whichever, he muttered gracias to everyone, even those who ignored him completely.

  Inside, she found the giant at the bar, covering two stools with one leg thrown out in a leisurely fashion. Although the place was packed, he also had the immediate stools to either side free, as people tended to give giants plenty of space, even more than they needed. He hunched over a two-liter mug of draft beer, favoring his drink over the slightly overweight hooker who was doing her best to attract his attentions.

  Drawing in a breath and swallowing her fear like a sharp object, Tamara walked up to the giant and touched the back of his massive hand. He turned to look down at her, and she watched with her perceptions in fascination. It was as if a statue had come to life at her touch. He looked down at her and recognition flickered across his mind. She was counting on surprise and hesitation here, and also on his supreme self-confidence. With his quick reflexes and incredible strength, he could have crushed her instantly, killing her on the spot and then fleeing the scene. But she had known a few giants, and knew that many of them were convinced of their own invulnerability.

  So, when he faced her, she maintained physical contacted and mentally she gave him a shove. A very hard shove, which ran a hot bolt of pain through her head. Instead of turning into a zombie as she had expected however, she felt that his mind had merely become more suggestible, as if she had just given him a very persuasive argument when he was in a receptive mood. For a flash she almost panicked. She had given him her best shot, figuring that the difficulty she had experienced with his mind earlier had been due to the drug blur, but apparently it also had to do with his mental abilities as a giant. She had planned to simply order him outside like a robot, but instead she had to come up with something more clever. And quickly, before the effect wore off.

  She did the only thing she could think of. She made him think that she was someone else. Not Tamara at all, not the girl he had been paid to kill. She dredged up the image of another girl, one she had picked up from the minds of the eighth grade boys she had taught algebra to. It was the face of a popular anchorwoman on television. Suddenly, she had blue eyes that opened, blonde hair and soft red lips.

  “Would you like some company?” she heard herself ask.

  His reaction for a moment convinced her that her mental shove had failed utterly. He opened her coat, brushing her breasts with fingers thick as flashlights. She shrank back reflexively while he frankly examined her body beneath. She wore a cotton jumper that did nothing to accentuate her charms, but neither did it hide the fact that she had an attractive figure.

  “Sure,” he said, closing her coat again with a gentleness that belied his size. He pulled his leg off the stool to his right
and ordered her a drink. Tamara climbed up on the stool, wondering what to do next. She barely noticed the hooker who thumbed her large nose at her back. After a few more drinks, Tamara suggested that they leave together, and the giant, whose name was James Billings, agreed.

  They walked out into the cooling, but still humid, night air. James had to stoop down and turn sideways to get out of the door. No one had questioned his picking up a blind girl. No one had dared.

  Outside it had rained. The streets were black and reflected the city lights like wavery mirrors. Storm drains gurgled and beads of water reflected like thousands of eyes off the windshields of the cars they passed. Tamara saw this through James’ eyes, she was holding his hand and understood how to move through the giant’s mind better now.

  Somehow, Tamara started feeling sorry for James. He had been a victim of the same experiments that had left her sightless and—different. She felt the loneliness and alienation in him, a man but not a man. Alternately feared, hated and idolized, he was an outcast in the midst of human society. She knew that these feelings were partly due to her natural empathy with anyone she was around. She always started seeing things their way, understanding their point of view. Despite that, she still sensed that he was like her, a monster that no one really knew what to do with. Tolerated, but with poor grace.

  When they reached his hotel room, she knew that she had to gain some control over him. His elemental force of personality matched his physical prowess, and he was by no means subtle. He was also becoming increasingly drunk.

  “You know, Sarah,” he said, pouring her yet another drink which she would have to pour away into the bathroom sink or the planter.

  “There is something different about you, something familiar.”

  She knew he had seen her on the holo-net channels. She had picked a poor disguise. He thumped over to her and handed her the drink. Then he leered down at her, his warm alcoholic breath washing over her. Something in his manner, something that his mind was hiding brought her a sudden jolt of fear.

  “You look just like the witch-girl I was supposed to kill last night.”

  Tamara spilled her drink. Bourbon soaked quickly into her pants, spreading coolness over her thighs. He smiled at her, and took her tiny hand in his.

  “You’re tricks don’t work on me, Tammy. I damned near caught you last night, but this way was much easier.”

  “How...?” she gasped, fear choking her words.

  “Here,” he said, grabbing her small hand up in his.

  “I know all about you. Come on and read me.”

  Tamara knew it was a challenge. James liked challenges, he had an ego as big as his hat-size and wanted to pit himself against her. Besides, he was half-drunk, and for a giant that meant he was close to the berserker state. Then he opened his mind to her, and she knew everything.

  She knew that the giant got a thrill out of the idea of “doing her” before he killed her. He was intrigued by the idea that she might want it that way, that she would like it that way. He also had had special government training to resist empaths. In his official career he had killed nearly a hundred men, and now that he was free-lancing he would go on killing.

  She did something then that she had never done in the presence of any man except for Sato. She opened her eyes. She opened her eyelids, that is, but behind them there weren’t any eyes. Instead James Billings found himself looking directly at her exposed brain cells, protected only by a milky membrane. Beyond the membrane floated living pink tissue, blood pumping through the thin squiggly lines that were arteries and veins.

  James Billings opened his mouth, perhaps to laugh or perhaps to scream, but what he also did was lose his concentration. It was all the opportunity that Tamara had and she took it. She shoved as she had never shoved before. She had learned her way through his mind a bit by now, he was drunk and he was off-guard. Up close like this, she could even perceive his brain inside his thick skull. She could feel the workings of his neural network, the chemical stimuli and responses.

  First, she turned him on his bosses. She sparked a tiny flame of hate, then built it up, blaming all the tragedies of James Billings’ life on them. She dredged up memories of a scared father, beating a screaming two hundred pound eight-year-old son with a shovel. She conjured his first experience with a girl, her screams, his hands squeezing the life from her afterward. Finally, she made him relive the first time he got wired on blur, the fanatical rage, the fury of the berserker. When she had turned his heart into a pounding steam-press, when his nostrils were flaring wider than a dying bull’s, she let go of him and closed her eyes. He ignored her. He pulled the closet door off the wall, reached inside and brought out a heavy combat rifle. Normal men would have to mount it on a tripod to use it, but he carried it easily in one hand. He walked through the door into the hotel hallway, not bothering to open it first. He headed for the elevators, for the penthouses fifty stories up, where the bosses were.

  Lying in the wreckage behind him, Tamara wept a few tears for James Billings. Although she had no eyes, her tear ducts were in place. After a time she got up and slipped out of the hotel, before the riot police and the Special Forces teams could arrive.

  TA 96

  SAMUEL GIDDEON’S TRANSCRIPT, as interpreted by the ATLAS system’s network server:

  ... hope so, I’m not used to this transcriber thing in my head. It should be transmitting everything that I sub vocalize, but of course, I have no way of knowing.

  I’m approaching the guardhouse now. I have forgotten how cold it gets here in the Rockies. I’ve only been outside a few times in my life. New Mexico, despite its name, seems to be nothing but pines, rocks and ice in the winter. Even the electric fence that runs between the two higher fences of barbed wire and chain links can barely put out enough heat to drive off the drifts of snow.

  I’m having a bit of trouble with the bomb just now; it keeps riding up on my ribs. I think the gels might be contracting a bit due to the cold. I hope no one notices that my paunch is lifting itself and puffing up like a cobra’s hood.

  #

  Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, Physicist, Technical Area 21.

  Dr. Gideon showed up two hours earlier than expected. He explained that he had taken an earlier flight and had gotten into Albuquerque the night before instead of this morning. Gideon was the new software expert that we had been waiting for to help us with the ATLAS system. He was older than I had expected. A lot older. I had been told that he was in his late twenties, a hot new recruit from MIT. Instead I found him to be a large, slow-moving man in his late thirties or early forties. By large, I mean fat.

  He passed security easily; we skipped no procedures. We signed in, went through the metal detectors and Geiger counters and unstrapped our personal computers to put them through the x-ray machine. I was assigned as his primary escort for the day, as he was an uncleared visitor.

  I must state for the record that I was taken completely by surprise by subsequent events, as I believe everyone was at TA 96.

  #

  Gideon’s Transcript:

  What strikes me most is just how healthy they all are. Their color is so good, their cheeks so pink and rosy. Few of us at the compound look so hale and full of vigor. I feel like I’m watching another speed-learning video.

  Bob Kieffer seems like a friendly man. He reminds me of the older man, Reno, who services my cell back home. While we slide our security badges into the small brass dish that is the only access underneath the two inch-thick bullet-proof glass, I see the photos in his wallet. He seems to have a wife and a little girl. The little girl is holding a red figure—a Star Viking doll! I’ve seen them during culture-orientation days on television. I always like the commercials best; they seem to say the most about people.

  Bob has a keen mind, I can see that already. His movements, like his mind, are very quick, almost bird-like. I sincerely hope that he makes it through today.

  The guards are grim-faced. They merely stare at us through the t
hick, slightly greenish glass. It seems to be taking forever for our security badges to be accepted by the barcode reader. Clipboards are signed, IDs are passed back and forth, the procedures are endless. Other fully-cleared personnel are backing up at the front of the guardhouse now, looking annoyed. The security men ignore them and move at the same methodical pace.

  I notice the interior of the guardhouse. Squinting through the glass into the gloom, I see a rack of guns on the wall. Two automatic rifles top the rack. Below this is a shotgun with a string of shells velcroed to the stock. At the bottom is a large, ugly, black thing with a tripod. An M60? I can only hazard a guess. All the weapons have a worn look to them, and I wonder if they have killed anyone in the past.

  Finally, the guards let us pass. As though a cork has been fired from a champagne bottle, people are streaming by on both sides of us while we reorganize our security papers. My breath is blowing cold and white. I notice my fingers are quivering a bit of their own accord.

  “Quite good security you have here, Bob,” I comment, relieved that I have made it into the compound without incident. Nothing in the bomb or the ignition system contains more than the amount of metal found in a single of house key. None of the detectors picked it up.

  “Yes, but you get used to it.”

  “An army of terrorists couldn’t bust into here.”

  He looks up at me, and my blood turns cold. I shouldn’t be talking about such things. I feel a rush of paranoia. Can he hear my thoughts? Is he transcribing them somewhere the way that the computer is supposed to be doing?

  He smiles, and so I smile. “No, they couldn’t. But those guns in the guardhouse and the towers are just as keen on keeping us inside in case of a disaster as they are in keeping out invaders. Plutonium dust is worked here, as you know. It’s still the most deadly substance we’ve yet to find, and it can’t be allowed out of the compound.”