Hammered (18 page)

And if I find out I’m wrong, and she had something to do with Mashaya getting shot, I’ll put the bullet in her head myself.

“What kind of trouble?”

“Vanishing without leaving a forwarding address and ditching her friends kind of trouble.”

“Kidnapped?”

“Not … as such.” Mitch shrugged. “She went with somebody. As far as I know there was no threat of force. But that’s not the only kind of duress.”

Mobarak thought about it for a long while before he answered. “I can’t share confidential information with you, of course.”

“Of course,” Mitch answered, and realized that he’d been holding his breath. “Look, Doc. How long have you got to talk?”

Mobarak shrugged. “Half an hour. I’ll make the time. I feel really bad about Jenny. She’s been through a lot, and she’s awful brave about it. It’s unprofessional, but …”

Mitch grinned. “You get attached. Yeah, I know. Me, too. Come on, let’s make some coffee or something.”

“There’s a break room around the corner.” Mobarak waved Mitch ahead. Industrial gray carpeting scuffed under
his loafers. The door was locked; Mobarak keyed them in. “Do you take anything in your coffee?”

“Black.”

“You
do
know Jenny.” Mobarak pressed the button on the coffeemaker. It whirred, weighing and grinding beans. Steam hissed, and the musky, silky aroma filled the room.

“Jenny? That’s what you call her?”

“It’s her name.” The doctor shrugged, pulling plain, too-small ceramic mugs from the cabinet over the sink. “She’s been kind enough to donate a lot of time to my research. We go way back.”

“Huh.” Mitch accepted the mug that the doctor extended to him. It warmed the palms of his hands when he cupped it, and—sudden odd thought—he wondered if Maker ever missed that sensation. “I never would have thought her the sort for charity work. No, actually, I’m full of shit, Doc.”

“What do you mean?” Mobarak lounged against the counter, stirring his own drink with a plastic straw.

“Oh, Maker. I always thought she was an army doc or medic of some kind. She’s always fixing up some kid with a busted finger or something. Amazing she finds the time to keep her business running.”

“She was an EMT,” Mobarak answered. “I suppose I can tell you that. Special forces first. When she returned to active duty, she managed to pull a combat exemption and flew medevac.”

Mitch nodded, smiling. “I just found that out yesterday, actually, along with all sorts of other things I didn’t know. And I’m guessing she’s really sick now because of it, isn’t she?”

The doc took a big breath and held it—confirmation—but shook his head. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

“All right.” Mitch swirled strong, hot coffee around his mouth, swallowed, and sucked his teeth.
Thank God this
guy sucks at keeping confidentiality.
“Look, do you know anything about her having a sister?”

“No next of kin, as far as I’ve heard. She’s got an emergency contact listed, but it’s a friend in Montreal. An old army buddy, I think.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Huh. Is this
only
about Jenny, Detective?”

“No.” Mitch turned aside and kicked the leg of the cheap card table shoved into the corner. “I think whatever has her on the run has something to do with my … with a friend of mine, a fellow officer. Who got killed.” He heard the pain in his own voice and despised it for a weakness.

Whatever. Mobarak took a rattling breath. “Look.” The doctor shook his head. “She mentioned you to me. If you’re the same Mitch. And I can’t—I can’t share information with you. I’m already over the line.”

Mitch heard the
but
in his voice and leaned forward, holding his breath, blinking hard before he glanced back up and caught the doctor’s eye. He nodded, afraid to encourage him.

“But I’ll call that contact. See what I can do about getting her a message. Okay?”

It would have to do.

“I am not,” he said at last, “Richard Feynman.”

If the coffee Elspeth was sipping had been real, it would have come out of her nose. “Excuse me?”

The physicist smiled and ran a hand through tousled gray hair. “Because Richard Feynman died fifty-three years ago.”

Her cup rattled on the table when she set it aside. “All right, Dick,” she told him. “You got me. You’re not Feynman. So tell me what the hell you are.”

“I don’t know,” he said carefully.

Elspeth Dunsany grinned hard. “Postulate, Dick.”

His hands tapped his knee, restless, seeking. “I have always held reliance on paranormal explanations to indicate a lazy mind. But I sure as hell feel like Dick Feynman.” He shrugged. “Even though Richard Feynman is dead. So I’m left with interesting gaps in my logic.”

Elspeth raised an eyebrow inside her VR suit. Her image mimicked the motion. “How did you find out that you were dead?” she asked him.

He held out a portfolio. “I found the library. These clippings were in there. Along with more information about my compatriots—and myself—than I ever imagined existed.” He sighed. “It’s a shame that I never got to Tanna-Tuva.”

Gabe Castaign moved his long-fingered right hand through the three-dimensional interface, directing data streams with thoughtless dexterity. With the left one, not looking, he flipped open a box of mints and picked one out, sucking it off of his fingertips. Elspeth, leaning over his shoulder, caught a sharp scent of wintergreen. “May I have one of those?”

“Sure.” He slid the tin into reach. “My kids made a big
deal about how much I smelled like garlic when I got home last night. I figured I’d take pity on you.”

“Kids?” They’d had dinner again the night before—Sunday dinner. Thinking of garlic and indulging, Elspeth took two of the hard little candies, wincing at their strength.

“Girls,” he said with a grin. Still without glancing away from his monitor plate, he touched another icon. The interface plate shimmered, and a hologram of two golden-haired adolescents materialized over the far left corner of the desk. One was perhaps thirteen, the other ten or eleven. The taller girl leaned smiling into her sister, an arm around her shoulders; the younger one seemed taut and focused, leaning toward the camera. The younger had eyes as blue as her father’s. Those of the older were gray-green.

“That’s Leah, after my mom. The younger one’s Genie. She’s named after my wife.”

“How long have you been married?” Elspeth almost laughed out loud at herself, pleased she managed not to let disappointment show in her voice.
He did mention that before, but I assumed …

He leaned back. Elspeth smelled warmly spicy aftershave. “We were married four years,” he said. “Leukemia. I raised the girls on my own, more or less.” He glanced away, frowning, and tapped the image down. “Do you have any kids?”

“Married to my work,” she said. “And then I went to jail. Not much conducive.”

A rough-edged silence stretched between them, punctuated by the crunch of Gabe chewing on his breath mint. He broke first. “So how do you get your artificial personalities to be more than really complicated chatter-bots?”

“Turing test stuff?” She shrugged and stepped around the desk, so she could speak to him from the front. And, incidentally, control her urge to lean against his shoulder. “Well, you don’t, really. No, that’s wrong.” Her hands tumbled over
one another in midair. “They’re exactly like really complicated chatter-bots. You just keep adding layers and layers of complexity and information and reactions and algorithms until you get to these very complex multifaceted variables.”

“Tolbert equations.”

“Yes. And you give it all the memory you have, and put it into a series of increasingly complex situations.”

“And then?” Gabe’s hands slowly stopped moving, hanging amid the jeweled lights of his interface. His brow furrowed and he looked up at Elspeth, meeting her gaze directly.

“And then one day it either wakes up or it doesn’t.”

“Oh.” He didn’t say anything for a moment, looking back down at his carefully trimmed fingernails. “That’s not mighty scientific, Doc. How do we know that it works?”

“Because it works.” She shrugged. “Sometimes. And why it works sometimes and not others … hell, your guess is as good as mine.”

“What if I pointed a gun at you and told you, ‘I need an answer’? Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

Her hands spread wide. “Dammit, Gabe. I’d say it comes down to will to live.”

“You sound like you have something specific in mind.”

She nodded. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

He grabbed his jacket and followed her out the door.

The lab and offices sat on a little green oblong not far from the University of Toronto, where Elspeth had taught in the days before she found herself in jail. There was a coffee shop on every third corner, and the familiar street names were like a homecoming. She breathed in the late summer air, slinging a sweater retrieved from her office over one shoulder. It had rained overnight, but the humidity was rising with the sun, and the day promised heat.

Gabe was taking his jacket off again. “You know, September, I keep thinking it ought to be cooler.”

She shrugged. “It’s not even really autumn yet.”

“True.” His voice dropped. “Okay, so what was so important you didn’t want to tell me about it indoors?”

“Ah. Well.” She scuffed concrete with the sole of a loafer. “Richard Feynman, frankly.”

“The physicist? One of your original five artificial personalities.”

“Yes.” She reached up to swat at a dangling leaf. He grinned, and she blushed. “More than that.”

“Oh?”

The conversation was interrupted as they arrived at the coffee shop, and Gabe ordered just plain coffee. Elspeth got a cappuccino with extra whipped cream. They took the drinks outside and sat at a blackened aluminum table meant to look like cast iron. Elspeth took a long sip of her drink and watched Gabe fuss with cream and sugar.
Is this someone you can trust? Well, you’re not telling him anything Valens doesn’t already suspect.
“He’s the one that worked. Developed awareness. Became … a person.”

“Ah hah.” His voice was neutral, interested. “That’s quite a judgment call, Elspeth. What do you base it on?”

She felt gratitude. “Once we were engaging in ontological discussion on the nature of consciousness, it was hard to deny his point. I remember once, I told him that he was nothing but electrical impulses in crystal, and he came back that I was the same thing in meat. It was a hard point to argue.”

“What happened to him?” Gabe leaned forward. “Why aren’t we using those records?”

Elspeth laughed. “That’s why I went to jail, more or less. I wouldn’t give him up.”

“Give him up? To whom?”

She nodded and played with her paper cup. “Valens
wanted my work for the army. For the war effort. I deleted my most recent backups. Was going to erase Richard, too.”

“And did you?”

“I …” her voice trailed off. “I gave him an Internet connection and bought him some time. I hope he made it. I don’t know.”

“Ah.”

“The colonel was not amused. Especially after my research partner broke a soldier’s nose with a printer stand.” She grinned at Gabe’s startled laughter. “That was Jack Taylor. I made him turn state’s evidence against me. He had a wife.”

His laughter trailed off. “And then you went to jail for over a decade.”

“Indeed. I never did tell them that I didn’t delete all those records. The ones we’ve been working from are earlier backups.” She pushed her chair back and stood up, picking up her nearly full cup before he could ask the question forming in his eyes.

After so many years, what made you change your mind?

He came around the table to her, leaving his coffee cup behind, and touched hers to the side with two fingers on her wrist. She looked up, startled, into those earnest, cheerful eyes.
How does anybody who has been through so much—wars, left widowed with children—smile like that? I wish I had his spirit.

“I admire your guts, Elspeth,” he said. “What do you think about making one of these working dates into a real date, sometime?”

Elspeth turned aside and set her coffee down on the table.
Just like Momma, running around with the white boys
, she thought, and the thought came very close to making her laugh out loud. Which he would have misunderstood entirely. “Actually, Gabe, I’m not looking for a … dating relationship right now.”

“Ah.” He stepped back and turned away to retrieve his coffee. “Mad at me for asking?”

“Not at all. I’ve got a counterproposal. I’d hate to ruin this friendship with expectations and the dating game foolishness. I’m not in the market for a husband; that’s never been my goal in life.”

He nodded to show that he was listening, and she was kind enough to wait until he swallowed the coffee.

“So how would you feel about a little friendly sex once in a while?”

Adrenaline hits. The bottom drops out of my world.

Gabe Castaign barrels down the corporate-blah hallway, arms spread wide, yelling a welcome like he hasn’t seen me since Christmas. He’s as big as Razorface, maybe bigger, but Gabe is all teddy-bear these days, while Face is a gleaming, well-oiled hunk of muscle. Ignoring Valens and Barb, prisoner’s escorts on either side of me, he’s ready to sweep me into an embrace.

Come to think of it, he hasn’t seen me since Christmas, and he seems not to notice the steaming coffee slopping over his hand. There’s a little dark-haired woman about my age four steps behind him. She balances a paper cup in her hand as well, and I see her startlement in the long moment that stretches while that rivulet of coffee trickles over Gabe’s wrist, slow as honey on an October morning.