Soulminder

by Timothy Zahn

  “I expect you have.” Settling into a chair across from a coffee table patterned with stone mosaic, Harper gave Sommer a measuring look. “So. On the phone you said something about a truce. I don’t know what you could possibly have in mind, but I’m willing to listen.”

  “I appreciate that, sir,” Sommer said. “I suppose truce is really the wrong word, but I couldn’t come up with the right one. I presume you’ve been following the Ingersoll flap?”

  Harper’s lip twisted. “Oh, yes. A man trapped helplessly in your machine. A pity it couldn’t have happened a day earlier—I could have used that at the debate. The perfect example of just what’s wrong with the whole Soulminder concept.”

  “It’s not our fault Ingersoll’s soul hasn’t been restored to his body,” Sommer said, fighting down a rush of anger. “It’s Tyler Marsh and his card-house of legal technicalities that’s got him stuck, not us.”

  Harper sighed, and some of the tension faded from his face. “I know that, Doctor.” For a moment he studied Sommer’s face. “In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that I believe you, personally, are a decent person. That you really believe Soulminder can be made into a force for good. But don’t you see? This is exactly the sort of twisting of good intentions that always comes about when you set up shop in a fallen world.”

  “So we shouldn’t ever try to make anything new?” Sommer countered. “Never even try to create something good in the midst of all the ugliness?”

  “Of course we should,” Harper said. “And sometimes we succeed, despite ourselves. But a machine like Soulminder raises the stakes too high. We’re not dealing with the potential for abuse that’s inherent in the automobile, say, or even in the mass killing frenzies modern warfare makes possible. We’re dealing with the human soul, Doctor—the human soul. Can’t you see the terrible atrocities that could come out of your line of research?”

  Sommer closed his eyes briefly. “It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons,” he quoted quietly, “but out of bad archangels.”

  “You and C.S. Lewis make my point for me,” Harper nodded. “Soulminder is an archangel, Doctor, so far as earthly creations go. I’m very much afraid that it’ll be beyond your ability to keep it from becoming a demon.”

  “You may be right,” Sommer agreed quietly. “All the more reason for you to help me protect it.”

  He gave Harper a rundown of Soulminder’s tenuous legal standing in the Ingersoll case, along with Porath’s fears that a victory by Marsh might inevitably drive Soulminder under the protective wing of the Federal government. Harper sat silently until he’d finished, his face an unreadable mask. “An interesting bind you find yourselves in,” he commented. “So what exactly do you want from me?”

  “Nothing more than that you publicize the Ingersoll case,” Sommer said, the knot of tension in his stomach easing fractionally. To be talking joint strategy with Soulminder’s most vocal enemy … “I need you to keep it in the public spotlight, to make sure that the basic unfairness of what’s happening doesn’t get lost amid the flurry of learned discourses on law and public policy that are bound to flood the media when this gets a foothold. Above all”—he hesitated—“I need the kind of pressure from you and your followers that’ll make sure the lawyers and judge don’t try to drag things out.”

  Harper snorted. “Lest the influx of customers and their money into Soulminder drop off?”

  “That’s part of it, yes,” Sommer said without embarrassment. “But it’s as much for Ingersoll’s sake as it is for ours. A trial like this, even at its speediest, could take months … but we’ve never kept anyone in a Soulminder trap for more than five weeks at a stretch. Certainly not an old man whose heart’s going to need proper exercise if it’s ever going to heal. Time is on Marsh’s side, and I doubt he would mind losing the verdict if Ingersoll subsequently died when we tried to return him to his body.”

  For a long minute Harper gazed past Sommer, at the lights of the city stretching to the horizon. Then, slowly, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Sommer,” he said, “but I can’t help you.”

  The knot in Sommer’s stomach retightened. “Why not?” he asked, fighting to keep his tone polite. “You see the evil in what Marsh is doing—”

  “But you ask me to support one evil to keep another from happening,” Harper interrupted him. “I can’t do that.”

  “Then you lose everything,” Sommer snapped. “You think this could kill Soulminder? Is that it? Because it won’t. Even if the government doesn’t take us over—even if you shot Jessica and me tomorrow—Soulminder wouldn’t die. You can’t destroy a known technology, Mr. Harper. Not ours, not anyone’s. Somebody, somewhere, will eventually reinvent it.”

  He stopped, embarrassed by his outburst. But oddly enough, Harper didn’t seem angry. “I know all that, Dr. Sommer,” he said quietly. “I know that I’m losing—Focus’s choice of guests on our debate was a graphic illustration of just how solidly the liberal media is on your side, and they’re not the least of the forces arrayed against me. But ultimately, it isn’t my job to win against you, anyway. That decision is God’s, and His alone, and I wouldn’t think of dictating to Him just how He should shape the future of this world. My job is simply to take the stand I think right, no matter how unpopular or hopeless or even ridiculous the cause looks, and to have the courage to act on my beliefs. No matter what the consequences turn out to be.”

  Sommer swallowed, a wave of quiet shame coloring his frustration. “I see I’ve been guilty of believing the popular image of TV evangelists,” he conceded, the words coming out with some difficulty. “I apologize.”

  Harper smiled lopsidedly. “I’ve gotten used to it, I’m afraid,” he said. “In my experience, there are very few people—in any profession or ethnic group—who actually fit the caricatures others build up around them. Unfortunately, many people live their entire lives without realizing that, and those that find out differently are usually unwilling to admit their error.” He stood up. “I respect you for that, Doctor, and for other things. In a way I’m almost sorry I can’t help you.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Sommer said, getting to his feet. Harper beside him, he walked to the door … and there he paused. “One last thing, Reverend Harper. Do you truly believe I’m the Antichrist?”

  “You, yourself? No, not really. But you may well be his unwitting forerunner. The Bible speaks of a mark on the foreheads of the Beast’s followers … and the equipment with which you make your soul-traces does include a band that wraps around the forehead.”

  Sommer stared at him, a cold chill running up his back. For a moment he’d almost forgotten that this was a man who saw the world far differently than he himself did. “I see,” he said carefully. “I’ll do my best to make sure Soulminder doesn’t come to that end.”

  A grim smile touched Harper’s lips. “So,” he said, “will I.”

  Sands was back in the lab when he returned, poring over a pile of folders in a little pool of light from her desk lamp. “How’d it go?” she asked, straightening up tiredly and running a hand through her hair.

  “He isn’t going to help us,” Sommer told her, dropping into his own desk chair.

  “Didn’t think he would,” she grunted. “It would ruin his image forever among the rabid faithful if he did.”

  “I almost wish it were that simple,” Sommer shook his head. “No, I don’t. It may be people like him who’ll help keep us honest.” He nodded toward the papers before her. “What are you working on, the local facility requests?”

  “What else?” she growled. “I’m starting to feel like a millionairess sorting through marriage proposals. You wouldn’t believe the tax breaks and incentives some of these cities are throwing at us. You’d think we were a major league franchise or something.”

  “It’s nice to be wanted,” Sommer murmured. “Just remember that we don’t have enough security mo
nitors to set up more than three or four offices at a time.”

  “I’m not likely to forget,” she countered sourly. “If it weren’t for that one small bottleneck I’d have stamped every one of these things approved and been done with it. Speaking of security, Everly left you the name and number of the man he says is probably in charge of the Secret Service’s worm squad.”

  Sommer craned his neck to scan his desk, located the slip of notepaper. “Douglas Grein. Four numbers?”

  “One public, one private, home phone, and cell,” Sands said. “Everly doesn’t do things halfway. What are you smiling at?”

  “Sorry,” Sommer said. “I was just thinking how I had to practically twist your arm off to get him hired.”

  She snorted, but it was a self-deprecating sound. “Yeah. Well, none of us is right all the time. I’m glad it was my turn to be wrong on him.”

  Sommer looked down at the paper with Douglas Grein’s name on it, the brief flicker of cheer already fading from his mind. “Maybe we were both wrong. Maybe it’s a waste of time and effort to try and keep Soulminder to ourselves.”

  Sands peered hard at him. “This is a rotten time to be thinking about throwing in the towel, Adrian,” she said. “You show any hesitation and they’ll eat us alive. Hang in there—we’re going to win this.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Harper would say that winning wasn’t the most important thing.”

  “Then Harper’s a bigger fool than I thought,” Sands said coldly. “Or else knows damn well he’s going to lose.”

  Sommer didn’t answer. Yes, Harper knew he was going to lose—he’d as much as admitted it tonight.

  And yet, that knowledge didn’t seem to matter in the least to his determination to keep fighting. My job is to take the stand I think right, he’d said, and that had somehow been enough for him. Vaguely, Sommer wondered if he himself would have the courage to fight that way for his convictions.

  Or had he already had the opportunity … and failed?

  It was a question that had bothered him greatly during Soulminder’s first months, one which the recent crises had allowed him to push to the back of his mind. But now it came roaring back to life, like a pile of burning leaves stirred with a stick.

  Because what he was fighting for here was Sands’s vision of Soulminder, not his.

  He hadn’t originally wanted Soulminder to remain a dark and private secret. Had never really agreed that a monolithic corporation would necessarily be the best way to use their invention to save people from unnecessary death. Had certainly never believed that Sands’s single-minded quest for human immortality was a proper goal for such a corporation in the first place.

  So what had happened? Had he been convinced otherwise? Or had he merely conformed his thoughts to hers?

  What was he fighting for, anyway?

  His eyes drifted around the room … and came to rest on the lab table to Sands’s right, where her latest trap design was lying scattered about in a dozen pieces like a dissected electronic frog. The Soulminder trap. The heart of their whole technique—the device that actually held a person’s soul in safety while his or her body was being repaired. From which the soul could be restored when the process was complete.

  And that was what he was supposed to be fighting for. Not security, not legal rights, not even Soulminder itself.

  He was supposed to be fighting for life.

  My job is to take the stand I think right, no matter what the consequences might be …

  “Has Frank gone home yet?” he asked Sands.

  She was still looking at him, he discovered, as he focused again on her. “No, I think he’s in his office doing paperwork,” she said, her face and voice both frowning. “Why?”

  “I need his help,” he told her, scooping up his phone and punching Everly’s number. “I’m going to show Harper that we can play the game the same way he does.”

  “I like it already,” Sands said, a slightly grim smile on her face.

  No, you don’t, Sommer thought to himself. But he remained silent. There would be time enough to tell Sands later what he really had in mind.

  What he had in mind, and how much it might cost.

  There was a man outside the room, of course, lounging in a padded chair that had clearly been swiped from the waiting/visiting area down the hall. Arms folded across his stomach, chin resting on his chest, and legs extended and crossed at the ankles, he looked for all the world like a man whose response to graveyard-shift guard duty had been to fall asleep and hope nothing happened. Sommer kept his eyes on the man’s face as he walked quietly toward him, an unreasonable hope simmering within him. If the man was, indeed, asleep …

  He got to within five yards, and the head came smoothly up, eyes focusing and then widening slightly with recognition. “Dr. Sommer, right?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Sommer confirmed, getting another couple of steps closer before stopping.

  “Nice to meet you,” the guard said. His voice was pleasant enough, but there was a note of wariness in his face as he glanced at his watch. “Three in the morning. You keep strange hours, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Reaching down to the floor on the far side of his chair, he picked up a gently steaming coffee cup and took a sip.

  “One of the prices of fame,” Sommer told him. “How’s he doing?”

  The guard shrugged; as he did, Sommer’s peripheral vision picked up a man in hospital whites pushing a heavily laden equipment cart into view around a corner and start toward them. “He’s okay, as far as I know,” the guard said, replacing the cup on the floor. “’Course, they don’t exactly keep me up to date on these things.”

  “Me, neither. Unfortunately.” The intern and his cart were getting closer, now, the sounds of the wheels just becoming audible. “I don’t suppose you could let me take a look for myself.”

  “Sorry, Dr. Sommer,” the guard said. He sent a brief glance at the approaching cart, then turned back to Sommer. “Judge Billings’s order was very clear: none of the principals are allowed access to Mr. Ingersoll’s body until the case is over.”

  “I wouldn’t have to get anywhere near Ingersoll himself,” Sommer said. The cart was almost abreast of them now. The intern’s right hand briefly left its grip on the push bar—

  And then he was past Sommer, continuing down the corridor behind him. “I could see the instrument readouts from the door, and you’d be beside me the whole time.”

  “Sorry, Doctor, but the answer’s no,” the guard repeated, his voice beginning to harden. “Look, I let you past that door and my butt is lunchmeat—pardon my language.”

  Sommer felt his stomach tighten. “I understand,” he said. “I just wish—well, never mind. Sorry to have bothered you.”

  “That’s all right,” the other said, his tone softening again as he realized Sommer wasn’t gearing up for a major argument. “The judge is the guy you have to talk to if you want to get in.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Well … good-night.”

  “Good-night,” the other said, reaching again for his coffee cup.

  Feeling the guard’s eyes on the back of his neck, Sommer headed back down the hall, turning at the cross corridor leading to the elevators.

  Everly and his equipment cart were waiting for him just around the corner. “You do it?” Sommer asked, heart thudding in his chest.

  Everly nodded. “No problem. I used to bull’s-eye cups smaller than that one, and from further away. The pellet dissolves practically instantly, of course.”

  “Of course.” Sommer took a deep breath. They were committed now. Totally. “How long before he’s asleep?”

  “A man that size?” Everly squinted thoughtfully into space. “Half an hour. Maybe less.”

  “All right.” Dropping his gaze to the cart Everly had been pushing, Sommer did a quick scan of the portable life-support gea
r piled there. If any of it turned out to be defective …

  My job is to take the stand I think right … “Let’s find a safe place to wait,” he told Everly, fighting to keep his voice from trembling. “I’d hate to get caught now.”

  “Right,” Everly said, his own voice glacially calm. “There’s an empty storage closet down this way. While we wait, maybe we can have that conversation you mentioned earlier.”

  Sommer nodded, his stomach achingly tight as he followed Everly down the corridor. No matter what the consequences might be.

  The guard fell asleep on schedule and later awoke without, apparently, attaching any significance to his nap. With Sommer’s gimmicking of the monitors, the theft of Ingersoll’s body remained undiscovered until the shift change at six o’clock. Ten minutes after that, the police were on their way to the Soulminder building, arriving just in time for the news conference.

  Wilson Anders Ingersoll, it turned out, was an excellent speaker.

  “Just don’t think you’re out of the woods yet,” Porath warned Sommer, not waggling a finger at his employer but looking very much like he wanted to. “Billings can be a really vindictive sort, and he could very well slap you down for this.”

  “Slap us down for what?” Everly asked with a shrug. “Kidnapping? Body snatching? Theft of evidence?”

  Porath made a face. “Well, yes, this does sort of fall through the cracks in the law,” he conceded. “He could still nail you with contempt charges, though.”

  “He won’t,” Sands said, shaking her head. “Judges are just as subject to public opinion as anyone else. He wouldn’t dare throw Soulminder’s figurehead into jail, certainly not for cutting through legal red tape to save a man’s life. I presume that’s why you went there yourself, Adrian, instead of just sending Everly?”

  “More or less,” Sommer nodded, going with the simple answer. Sands probably wouldn’t understand Harper’s philosophy that a person should accept direct and personal responsibility for his actions.

  “Just remember that we really didn’t gain anything but some time with this,” Porath said, clearly determined to be gloomy. “Soulminder’s still in legal limbo, and eventually someone else will bring a court challenge.”