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CHAPTER THIRTY

Corfe's forebodings had grown progressively worse while he sat in the back of the Seattle city police cruiser outside Garsten's office, waiting for a representative from the security company to arrive. The van that he said had been stolen was not outside; neither was the beige Cadillac or any other vehicle. There had been no answer at the door, and an officer who toured around the outside of the building had found no sign of life. By that time, Corfe's own suspicion that he had made a mistake must have shown, and the two officers who had brought him had decided there was no evidence of an emergency sufficient to justify a forced entry. Corfe's attempt to confess that he and the missing woman had broken in already hadn't helped—especially when the security company reported no alarms and nothing amiss on their internal TV monitors. Well, it wasn't actually "they" who had broken in, he'd tried to explain, but little machines.

"Machines, huh?" The officers had just barely refrained from asking openly if they'd come out of a UFO that landed on the roof.

When the opened vent that Corfe told them they'd find at the back of the house turned out not to be, with no trace of the things he said would be inside the pipe, that hadn't helped much either. Now, from the way they had been exchanging gossip in the front seats for the last ten minutes and practically ignoring him, it was painfully clear that they had written him off as a crank and just wanted to see this business through, then go find themselves a coffee and donut shop.

A black Lincoln came along the street, turned off onto the parking strip, and drew up beside the cruiser. Corfe stared at it, now totally confused. It was too much of a coincidence not to be the same Lincoln that he had seen drive away ahead of the van. What in hell was going on?

A red-haired man in a brown parka emerged from the Lincoln. The officer who appeared to be the senior of the two, whom the other called Des, got out to talk to him. There was a brief exchange that Corfe didn't catch, accompanied by gestures in his direction. Then the two who were outside the car walked up to the house. The man in the parka opened the door, and Corfe saw him switch off the alarm panel in the entrance foyer. He disappeared inside, Des following.

Well, yes, Corfe thought to himself: If the mecs had triggered an alarm that he'd failed to spot, it made sense that it would have alerted the security company. But how had Garsten's security company known about the van? He still couldn't understand that part.

Unless . . .

He felt sick suddenly, as something that should have been obvious all along finally occurred to him.

"Officer?" The officer still sitting in the driver's seat turned his head. "Could you tell me the name of the security company that this person is from?"

The officer checked a notepad clipped on a rest between the front seats. "An electronics company out Redmond way takes care of it—Microbotics."

Of course! Corfe groaned and slumped back in the seat. Garsten worked for Payne. No wonder Corfe had failed to spot any internal alarm systems when he was in there. If he'd stopped for a moment to think that Microbotics might be handling Garsten's security, he would have guessed there would be nothing obvious. Sophistication was their business.

And if Payne was the one behind this, that was where they would have taken Michelle.

"They're the ones who've got her," Corfe said.

"Who?"

"Microbotics. The owner of the company has a house across in Bellevue. That's where she'll be—and the van. We're at the wrong place."

The officer eyed him skeptically in the mirror. "Security companies don't snatch people off the streets. They'd call us. Do you know who the owner of that outfit is?"

"Sure, Martin Payne. I used to work for them. I just told you, that's where she is."

"Oh, you don't say?" The officer's tone carried a note of conviction that fell somewhat short of total.

The two who had gone into the house reappeared. The man in the parka stayed by the door, while Des came back to the car. "Nah, it's clean inside, Greg. Nobody." He waved a hand at Corfe. "There isn't anything in there like what you said. You wanna come and see for yourself?"

Corfe shook his head wearily. "It's okay. I know."

"He says we're at the wrong place," the officer who had stayed in the car said.

The one outside called back to the house. "It's okay. You can close it up." Then, to the car again. "What?"

"Now he thinks the Microbotics security people grabbed her. He says they took her to Martin Payne's house, in Bellevue."

Des reached inside the car and lifted the radio handset off its hook. "Oh, man," he sighed resignedly. "Here we go for the weekend. Let's just wait in there for a minute, okay? I gotta get instructions on this."

 

The DNC software only communicated with the mec control subsystem. It couldn't access the phone lines, the e-mail, the Internet, or any other means Kevin could think of for possibly getting a message to the outside. He tried again to activate any of the mecs around him in the lab with the idea of using one of them to call Emergency on a regular phone, but it was no use. Every channel was dead. He would have sobbed with the fear and frustration if he could. But he had no bodily sensations or feelings, no impression of possessing physical extent in space. Although he could still think and move virtual limbs in mec-software visual space, his connection to the external world was suspended in a kind of limbo—an electronic sensory deprivation tank. He felt emotions inside, but there was no way to express them.

The full horror of what he had overheard hadn't penetrated fully. He was conscious of it, but in a detached way, as if he were watching somebody else thinking it. A defense mechanism in his mind was delaying the impact somehow, almost as if it knew that he couldn't afford the distraction of dwelling on it right now. But even that realization made his despair worse. Distraction from what? What else was there for him to do that he needed to focus undivided attention on?

He pictured Vanessa again, in the VR suit—probably testing it. What could go under a hotel-room door? she had asked Michelle. That was how they had killed Jack Anastole in the hotel—with some kind of specially modified killer mec directed from another room. And they were going to do the same thing with Eric tonight in his hotel. There was time to warn him yet, if only Kevin could find a way. . . .

So would they have somebody installed in another room in the resort at Barrow's Pass? Or maybe they had developed a relay that could be operated remotely, like Taki's. Kevin thought of the killer mec being there right now in Eric's suitcase and Eric not even knowing, and somehow he virtually shuddered. . . .

No, that was unlikely he decided. The Microbotics mecs were still pretty crude, non-DNC types—the body suit was evidence enough of that. Although, given the kind of equipment that was sure to be available at a place like Microbotics, they would still have more-than-adequate capabilities when it came to communications. . . .

Wait a minute, Kevin told himself. Back up, back up. Like a man fallen overboard from a boat waving frantically before he went under, something in Kevin's already-fading train of thought was trying to get his attention. He tried to think back. . . . Why was it so difficult to track strings of thoughts and associations back in the reverse direction?

It was something to do with Eric's suitcase—suitcase in the car—maybe a mec in the suitcase. . . . So what was the significance of that? Mec in the suitcase, in the car. . . .

Mec in the car! Eric was using the Jaguar. Kevin had hidden two mecs in it—Tigger and Mr. Toad. If he couldn't get to the phone, maybe he could use one of the mecs in the car to warn Eric. But how could he, if he had already established that his communication with mecs wasn't working either? The answer was surely right there, if only he could find a way. . . .

He knew the hardware and software of Neurodyne's in-house system well enough to be aware how improbable this kind of failure mode was. The software channel drivers were modularized; for all of them to fail together was inconceivable. The only place where a malfunction could disable all channels simultaneously would be at the level above that where they all interfaced with the device control supervisor.

An anticipatory excitement bubbled up suddenly from somewhere in Kevin's subconscious, as even before he had fully followed the line through, an instinct told him that here was the solution.

The fault had to be in the device control supervisor. Specifically, that meant in the regular Neurodyne supervisor that handled the codes that all Neurodyne mecs operated on, because that was the supervisor they had been using. They had used the regular Neurodyne supervisor because the mecs they had sent into Garsten's office and the remaining ones in the van were regular Neurodyne production or research models. And, indeed, the others that Kevin had tried to activate in the lab where he was were all regular Neurodyne patterns too. But Toad and Tigger were special "battlemec" types that Kevin and Taki had modified, which used different codes and required a different version of the device control supervisor program. And Kevin kept a copy of that supervisor in the general Neurodyne system! He had put it there so that he could operate his own mecs in the firm's labs.

Maybe there was a way! If he could switch that version of the supervisor in place of the regular one that wasn't functioning, then maybe he would be able to access any of his own mecs that he could get a link to, even if he was shut off from the firm's. Praying that he wasn't building himself up with false hopes, he called down the Control menu and activated sysconf.

Kevin was standing before a yellow wall with a general system schematic showing as an organization chart of colored boxes with interconnections appearing as patch-cords. He expanded one of the boxes to reveal its inner structure, then zoomed in to locate the high-level control subsystem. He isolated the device control supervisor by unplugging its virtual connecting cords, and exchanged it for the box representing the modified program, which in his last expedition to this part of the system he had left hanging conveniently on a virtual nail sticking out of the virtual wall. He repatched the cords to install it, and the box for the Channel Assignment Table, which until now had been blank, activated to display available options. He knew then that this was going to work.

His excitement rising, he selected the code assigned to Taki's relay in the trunk of the Jaguar, and attempted a test link. The entry line in the box changed color, and an icon lit up, confirming a connection. He reset to operator mode, checked the two choices that were offered, and selected Mr. Toad. Moments later he found himself in a dark recess surrounded by plastic tatters and foam rubber. There was distant wind noise and the sound of tires humming on road.

 

Vanessa sat down before the console and dialed the number to interrogate the Jaguar's satellite-referenced positioning system. The response showed as a cursor on a map of central Washington state being presented on one of the screens. The door of the room opened, and Finnion came back in with Garsten.

"He's just coming to the winding part where the cliffs are," Vanessa announced. "Just a couple more minutes. . . ." The other two said nothing.

Vanessa attached the interface lead to the body suit, donned the helmet, and activated the system. She flexed muscles and moved her head, and after a few seconds of adjustment "became" the assassin bug in the box that she had left in the car.

She was looking up out of a deep, rectangular pit. Far above was the foreshortened shape of a car window, streaked by raindrops driven in the slipstream. "It looks as if it's raining there," she remarked. "This is perfect. Accidents happen on wet days in places like that all the time."

 

For several seconds Kevin lay motionless, soaking up the feeling of relief as if it were sunshine. Then he extricated himself from the hiding place at the back of the trunk and crawled through the gap in the rubber sealing to the space behind the rear seat. He climbed out of the canyon of fuzzy vine-mesh walls onto the seat, and waded through grass toward the smoother expanse of leather lining the front edge. The vault of the car's interior curved high above like a sky within the sky. The one outside looked gray and stormy, with streaks of rain running down and back across the windows. The sound system was playing an aria that sounded like Mozart. A briefcase lay on the back seat, and two open cardboard boxes containing a variety of objects were wedged below on the floor.

Before him, the leather back of the driver's seat towered like a Himalayan wall, the blond waves of Eric's hair above the headrest forming a distant, lofty summit.

Then something moved below, right at the edge of Toad's broad-angle cone of vision. Kevin looked down. Something was coming up out of one of the cardboard boxes.

Kevin moved forward onto the rounded bulge at the edge of the seat. It was a mec unlike any that he had seen before—black and insectlike, with six legs articulating from a horizontal body, and a low, tapered head flanked by short pincers. Everything about the way it came up out of hiding and seemed to creep with slow, purposeful menace triggered an instinct that sensed evil. The beetle-like creature crawled over the edge of the box and fell out of sight to the floor; seconds later, it came into view again, climbing up the back of the plinth below the armrests of the two front seats. It got to the top of the plinth, crossed the gap to the fabric-covered side of the driver's seatback, and began ascending, inches below and behind Eric's elbow.

That was when Kevin realized he'd been wrong. The plan had never been to repeat Jack Anastole's hotel-room mishap at all. This time it was going to be a car accident. "They"—his stepmother; her lover; whoever—were doing it right now!

From that point, Kevin was not really in control. Pure reflex took over. He flung himself off the seat, arms and legs spread like a freefall parachutist, and landed sprawled along a cardboard ridge formed by a lid flap bent down inside the box. For a moment he clung precariously, a drop to the floor on one side, a compartmented plastic tray containing paints and craft materials on the other. Then he got his grip and scurried along the ridge to the corner. Trusting to the feel that hours of playing battle games had given him for mec-world physics, he leaped across to the plinth, avoiding the detour of going down to the floor and back up again as the killer beetle had done.

Although the beetle had the superior grasping ability of six legs, whoever was operating it was moving more carefully. Even so, it still had a lead. It seemed to be heading for the top of the driver's seatback. Kevin could either rely on his speed advantage to try and overhaul it, or go forward over the utility top between the two front armrests and hope he could alert Eric. If he opted for the latter and failed, there would be nothing to stop the beetle; and in any case, even if he did manage to get Eric's attention, there would still be the problem of trying to communicate the situation. He crossed the gap from the plinth to the seatback and began climbing after the black shape moving high above, clinging to the russet, fur-covered Eiger.

By the time the beetle reached the top, Kevin had halved the distance between them. When Kevin finally scrambled over the edge, the beetle was a matter of inches away—at mec scale, a couple of car lengths. He could see clearly now that it was of a pattern unlike anything that had ever come out of Neurodyne. It had more external linkages and piezoelectric fiber attachments, and the leg design and jointing arrangement was a different concept. Close-up, the purpose of the sting-like protrusion at the front of the turret head was chillingly plain. It was moving across the top of the seatback, in the space below the headrest. Through the gap, Kevin could see part of Eric's collar and neck, and an ear, his head swaying to the music as he drove. The road ahead plunged into a tight, leftward curve, wet rock rising on one side, a drop disappearing into mists on the other.

 

Vanessa crouched on the seatback, checking the scene ahead through the windshield. The road was treacherous, no other traffic in the vicinity. She bunched, preparing to spring.

 

There was no time to form any strategy. Kevin launched himself as the beetle arched itself to leap onto Eric's shoulder. They collided like metal wasps, Kevin trying to use surprise and his momentum to tear the beetle off and hurl it away. But momentum was of limited value at that scale, more than offset by the gripping power of six legs. The assassin bug held on, turned and parried him, and they rolled over and over along the top of the seat in a tangle of interlocked limbs and appendages.

It was like wrestling with a lobster. Not knowing the situation, Kevin had picked the wrong mec from the two in the trunk. Toad had been built more as a testbed for variable vision than as a fighter. If only he'd brought out Tigger instead, with its gigantic chainsaw, things would have been very different. But it was no use wishing now.

He grasped one of the assassin's legs to try dislocating it at a joint, but each of his arms was countered by another leg, both of them stronger. Another leg seized his head and started to twist. He turned his body, kicking one of the beetle's supporting legs away, and it fell to one side, partly releasing its hold to right itself. He feinted, ducked, and went again for a foreleg, locking close with the assassin for an instant, head to head like boxers in a clinch, and found himself staring into the monster's black, impenetrable eyes. He loosened an arm and tried to dislodge a leg that was forcing him over . . . but he was four limbs trying to fight six; and then he saw the pincers coming in from the side, ducked away . . .

But not quickly enough. An instant later his vision dimmed and lost depth, and he realized that one of Toad's eyes had gone. The other pincers struck; Kevin tried to ward them off, but his thumb had been snipped off before he realized that he could no longer judge distance. Seconds more, and he would be reduced to helplessness. Desperately crooking an arm around the black, angulated carapace, he heaved, straightened his legs, and hurled himself off the edge, taking the killer with him. To the sounds of a contralto singing Mozart filling the air, they tumbled together and landed in the craftworking box behind the seat.

Kevin was on his back in the plastic tray that he had looked down over from the top of the box. Around him were paint tins the size of oil storage tanks, and reels of embroidery thread that looked like drums of marine cable. He righted himself and began clambering over a pile of shiny, hexagonal pencil-logs that rolled and fell, making him lose his footing. The beetle was nowhere in sight, but he could hear scraping sounds coming from the adjacent compartment in the tray.

A pair of steel scissors resting on an edge of the tray offered a convenient ramp. Steadying himself against the dividing partition, Kevin moved cautiously up and peered over. Most of the space beyond the dividing wall was taken up by massive, pipelike pens and brushes. At the far end were several truck-size squeeze-tubes lying on their sides, their ends tapering into cones and capped. The beetle had wrested the cap off one of them, and even as Kevin watched, was maneuvering a gigantic brush—in reality probably about as big as a nail-polish applicator—under the blob of clear goo that was beginning to ooze from the opening. Chemical warfare.

The beetle looked and obviously saw him. Kevin was half blind and had no defense. Yet instead of retreating, he scaled the partition wall and advanced. The beetle turned, brandishing the glue-filled brush, and for a second or two hesitated as if suspecting a trick. Then it came forward and lunged.

Kevin's left arm was pinned by the first swab, powerless to move against the thick, sticky bond. The next blow caught the right side of his head, and in seconds his neck and shoulder joints were stiffening. The beetle circled at a distance, assessing the effect. Then, evidently reassured, it moved in again and plastered his hips and legs. Kevin felt himself wading slower and slower through congealing molasses, then halting completely. The beetle came closer, and Kevin's last impression was of almost sensing its operator gloating. . . .

All just as Kevin had intended. It was a diversionary tactic to keep the beetle occupied for just a little longer.

For it was obvious that Toad was done for. But that had ceased to be of relevance, since by the time the beetle closed in to complete its work, Toad was no longer registering anything.

Kevin had switched channels.

Tigger was already on its way.

 

The man who had come to the front door was small and balding, and wore a lightweight maroon jacket with white shirt and a dark tie. "No, sir, I'm afraid that Mr. Payne is away and not expected back until Monday," he informed the officers. There were four of them with Corfe now. The gray-and-blue Seattle cruiser had arrived at Payne's residence accompanied by a white-with-navy-stripe car of the Bellevue police. "Apart from myself and two other members of the domestic staff, the house is empty at present."

Corfe felt ill. Again there was no sign of the van outside, no beige Cadillac. The two Seattle officers glowered at him, while the one from the local force, who had put the question, looked back at the man in the maroon jacket. "And you are who, exactly, please?"

"My name is Vogl, sir. I'm the house steward."

"And there haven't been any callers in the last hour?" the Seattle officer who was called Des said. "We're looking for a woman in her late thirties, tall, slim, long fair hair, wearing a light blue coat."

"Nobody has been here I'm afraid. I know nothing of any person of such a description."

"I see."

"You are welcome to come inside and check the house for yourselves if you wish."

The four officers looked at each other. Des from Seattle shook his head. The Bellevue officer turned back to Vogl. "Thanks, but I don't think that'll be necessary. We appreciate your cooperation. Sorry to have taken up your time."

Five pairs of feet retraced their steps to the two police cars parked in the forecourt. Corfe knew he wasn't doing himself any favors, but there was no other way. "Then there's no other place," he remonstrated. "She must be at the firm. They've taken her to Microbotics."

"Mr. Corfe, why don't you give it a break?" Des advised.

"Look, I'm not crazy," Corfe said. "I know how this must sound, but it's only a couple of miles away. I'm telling you, a person's life is in danger. These people have killed before. If I'm wrong, okay, you can charge me with wasting your time or whatever. But what if I'm not wrong? Do you want that on your record?"

The senior man from the Bellevue car held up his hands. "Well, I guess you won't be needing us anymore. That's over our line. Good luck, guys." He motioned to his companion, and they got back into their car.

Des looked at Corfe long and balefully, as if making sure his face would be permanently filed for future reference. "Get in," he said, and walked around to the other side of the car. "Okay, Greg, let's move out," he told the driver. "I'll call the Redmond dispatcher to have someone meet us there."

 

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