Protocol 7 (4 page)

But it didn’t matter to him. Not now. All he could see was the image of his father, smiling stiffly, hiding something horrible behind his eyes. Ha. Ha.

He had to do something about it. He had to.

The man who called himself “Blackburn” stood in the exact center of the room he had commandeered for his private communications. It was a perfectly cubical space; its walls were made of featureless, nearly translucent modules. It was absolutely silent in the room; this far below the surface, not even the movement of the air itself made a sound.

He was staring at a frozen holo-display floating in the air in front of him—a single, motionless image, no bigger than a dinner plate, captured hours earlier by a mobile security cam roaming London. A slice of features belonging to the only human in the image was barely identifiable by facial recognition software that tagged the subject’s identity and forwarded the information to Blackburn, immediately and automatically.

It was an image of one of the many people Blackburn kept tabs on at all times. The man in question was that important—and that dangerous.

“Jonathan Weiss,” he said aloud.

Mr. Weiss was a clever man. That cleverness had made him very useful to Blackburn for quite some time. But now…too clever by half. Too clever for his own good.

The camera had caught him sprinting back to his anonymously rented car in the middle of a cloudburst, fleeing from an odd and lovely British apartment building, complete with red brick turrets and fire-lit windows. It was the home of one Simon Fitzpatrick—a man that Jonathan Weiss had been ordered to avoid at all costs. Another dangerous man—but dangerous in an entirely different way.

Internal audio of their meeting was unavailable; thread interrogation had failed as well. But that didn’t matter to Blackburn. The image itself was enough, because Weiss wasn’t supposed to be in London. He wasn’t even supposed to be in that hemisphere. And his presence there—his meeting with Fitzpatrick, no matter the reason—was absolutely forbidden.

Blackburn sighed bitterly. He hated to admit it, and it had taken an unusually long time by his exacting standards, but Jonathan Weiss had finally outlived his usefulness.

Without moving from the exact center of his windowless room, Blackburn touched his right ear and initiated a call to one of the very few people who had direct contact with him. It took only moments to convey his wishes. It took even less time to receive confirmation.

The instant the command was given and accepted, he put it aside. He had far more important things to attend to. Things that would change the world.

This, at least, is settled, he told himself.

He was wrong.

Simon knocked on the wooden door as hard as he could. Nothing happened. Thirty seconds later, he knocked again. Still nothing.

Oxford’s College of Robotics was housed in some of the university’s oldest buildings—quite a statement for a university that was almost nine hundred years old. In fact, it was actually a collection of cottages and low-slung warehouses, some erected centuries ago, some put up as recently as a year ago. In the middle of the confusion was a two-story stone-and-plaster house with a wood-shingle roof: the office, home, and laboratory for one of the most respected and least liked experts in the field, and one of Oliver Fitzpatrick’s oldest friends.

And Simon needed to see him. Now.

He knocked a third time, waited an impatient ten seconds, then turned the knob and pushed his way in. Of course it’s not locked, he told himself. It never is.

It looked as if a small bomb had exploded in the entryway: papers strewn everywhere, teetering stacks of old books, data chips scattered like snack food. The furniture—what he could see of it—was almost as ancient as the house and remarkably ugly. The tiny-paned windows were blurred with grime, and most horizontal surfaces were dull with dust.

“Hell of a housekeeper,” Simon muttered to himself, and stumped down the hallway to the basement stairs. “Hayden!” he shouted as he dodged the debris. “HAYDEN!”

A high-pitched, young female voice with a pronounced Liverpool accent called up from below. “Down here, Dr. Fitzpatrick!”

Oh, great, Simon thought. She’s here, too.

He was careful going down the stairs—at least two of the steps were dark with rot and cracked from end to end. As he descended, the quality of light changed from the dim reflected sunlight of the untended rooms above to the blue-white glow of the workspace. It made his eyes hurt even though he knew what to expect.

He had to step over an upturned stool to completely enter the lab. The room was huge compared to the space above, at least three times the floor space and twice the height, slightly too cold to be comfortable and absolutely without scent or shadow. It was almost inhumanly tidy as well: every piece of equipment was in its place on a labeled shelf, every worktop was clear and clean. Even the piles of printouts on the desk (and who other than Hayden still used printouts, Simon wondered idly) were stacked with geometric precision. None of that was the work of Hayden’s brilliant but disorganized mind, he knew. No, that was someone else’s doing entirely.

The robot responsible for the extraordinary organization turned part of its jumbled face-panel toward him as he entered. “You usually call ahead,” its female voice emanated from somewhere near the center of its seething metallic mass. “You did not think that was necessary on this occasion?”

“Lovely to see you as well, T.E.A.H.,” he said acidly.

He stopped short when he saw what his father’s old friend and his prize robot were doing. They were facing each other, hunched over a small rectangular panel, heads down, in deep contemplation.

Chess, he thought, and smiled to himself. I should have known.

“Why do you do that, Simon?” Hayden grumbled. “Call her by the full designation? You know it just sets her off. Just call her Teah.”

Simon blinked innocently. “Does it?”

Hayden sighed deeply. “Oh, for pity’s sake…”

Something and whirred in Teah’s sensor array. “Your pulse is slightly elevated, Professor,” she said to Simon. “Subcutaneous capillary action is above average, and detectable encephalic activity is accelerated as well. What is bothering you so?”

“I don’t believe that’s any of your business, Teah,” he said.

“Ah. Apparently I have exceeded the social paradigm assigned to casual conversation,” the robot said stiffly, “though why you would withhold such unimportant situational data begs a host of other even more significant queries—”

Simon swept up the walnut-sized AI relay that connected Hayden to his robot regardless of distance—their little dedicated intercom/cell phone. He dumped it unceremoniously into a cup of cold coffee that sat at the edge of a table.

“What the devil?” Hayden said, sitting up straight for the first time.

“That was rather pointless,” Teah said, sounding more puzzled than upset. “Now you will simply have to buy another relay.”

“And I will have to shout to make myself heard if she’s a room away! Damn it, Simon!”

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said with complete insincerity. “How clumsy of me.”

“You seem to think sarcasm is beyond the range of my sensors,” Teah said with a tone that sounded remarkably like condescension. “I assure you, it is not. I am well aware of your low opinion of me.”

“And yet you continue to speak to me. How thoroughly…inexplicable.”

Hayden stood up, groaning. “Aaaaaallll right, enough, enough. Teah, would you be kind enough to prepare tea and bring it in for us?” He cocked a bushy eyebrow at Simon. “Or coffee? A shot of Glenfiddich?”

“Tea is fine, Hayden, thank you.”

“It would be my pleasure to serve you, Doctor,” the robot said, then slithered and clanked away from the makeshift chess table to the doorway that led deeper into the underground complex. When she was well out of sight, Hayden turned to regard his younger friend. “Well?” he said gruffly. “What is your problem?”

Hayden was skinny and tall with a scruffy beard that seemed to cling precariously to his leathery face. His white hair badly needed a trim; it fell in flat, straight, silvery wings on both sides of his high-browed forehead.

Simon was glad to see him; though Hayden was only ten years older than Simon himself, he had always been one of the few friends of his father that he actually liked. And he also happened to be one of the most brilliant thinkers in the UK. He reveled in his role as a curmudgeon. He did not suffer fools gladly, and though he rarely smiled, he had a sense of humor as sharp as a scalpel. As far as Simon was concerned, his only real flaw was his attitude about AIs. He loved them—more than humanity itself—while Simon, on the other hand, could barely stand sharing the planet with them.

“I don’t think she likes me,” Simon observed, casting an eye at the doorway where Teah had retreated.

“Oh, Teah likes everyone,” the scientist said, waving it away. “Except you, of course. Now what’s up?”

Before Simon began to explain what he had come for, he asked, “Hayden, why don’t you have our Industrial Designer at least give her a facelift? She’s one of the most complex forms of robot out there but still looks like something from a bad sci-fi movie.”

Hayden ignored the comment. “Go on,” he said.

Simon had been thinking about how to broach the subject for hours—ever since he’d left his own flat. He still wasn’t quite sure how to begin. But he opened his mouth, took a breath—

—and a gawky, slightly disheveled grad student rounded the corner, appearing from behind an eight-foot pile of equipment, staring at a floating readout and completely unaware of Simon’s presence.

“Scan’s all done, Hayden,” the grad student chirped. “No bugs. Not a one.”

Hayden scowled. “Well, shit,” he said. “I was hoping…”

The student stopped short, suddenly aware of the new arrival. A moment later, he grinned in happy recognition. “Professor Fitzpatrick!” he said. “Cool!”

Simon recognized him immediately. “Andrew?” Andrew was the epitome of a perpetual grad student—a happy-go-lucky fellow well into his twenties who had never quite grown up: a tousled mass of blonde hair, thin shoulders and thinner hips with barely a hint of muscle tone, bright green eyes, and a sharp British nose. But appearances can be deceiving, Simon told himself. No one would guess that this young man was the single brightest student that Oxford’s College of Robotics had seen in more than twenty years. Hayden thought so, and Simon’s own experience with the boy had proven him right. They were more than happy to let him stay on for a few extra years, just to enjoy the benefits of his remarkable brain.

“Never mind then. Andrew, take a seat. Simon, you’re here for a reason. I know that. Now sit down and spill your guts.”

Still, Simon hesitated. He didn’t want to look Hayden straight in the eye, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to mention this all in front of Andrew.

As usual, Hayden anticipated him. “You can trust him,” he said, tilting his head toward the grad student. “I do. And trust me, there’s plenty to trust him with around here.”

Simon thought about it for a moment as he stared at the chessboard, then came to a decision.

All right then, he told himself. Then he looked at his father’s best friend and said, “Hayden, I think Dad is still alive.”

Hayden lifted his sky-blue eyes and looked directly into Simon for the first time. Those eyes had always terrified him a little. They could see so much—too much, actually.

“Simon,” he said patiently. “We’ve been over this. Shit happens, and your old man got himself caught in a hurricane full of it.”

Andrew sat silent and nearly motionless, watching them both with eyes as big as an owl’s. Clearly, this was important.

“No.”

“Yes. I talked to the university, to UNED, and to the authorities who certified his death. I’m telling you, Simon, he—”

Without another word, Simon took out the black memory card that Jonathan had given him, squeezed the corners just so, and put it on two of the empty squares on the chessboard. Instantly, a black cube almost a meter square blossomed in the air above the table, and Oliver’s head emerged from its darkness.

“What the bloody hell is this?” Hayden demanded.

“Cool…” Andrew said, as fascinated with the technology as the face that was forming in front of him.

“Just watch,” Simon told him.

“Whoever sees this,” Oliver said to a spot just to the right of the scientist, “if anyone does: please get it to my son, Simon Fitzpatrick…”

None of them said a word as Oliver’s speech unreeled. Simon adjusted his seat so he could watch Hayden rather than the image of the back of his father’s head, and cast uncertain glances at the grad student. Andrew was clearly in awe of what he was seeing, but Hayden’s expression was unreadable…though he visibly flinched when Oliver barked out his hollow, entirely artificial laugh: “Ha. Ha.”

A beat after the image faded away, the black cube collapsed into the card.

“Wow,” Andrew said, almost breathless.

Hayden looked up at the younger man, blue eyes burning. “What do you want me to say?”

“There’s more.”

Hayden’s eyes flickered up to meet his. “More?”

Simon pulled the small black book from the inner pocket of his jacket. “Here.”

Hayden leafed through it rapidly, his long, thin fingers trembling slightly—whether from excitement or rage, Simon couldn’t say. He seemed to absorb every page with the single blink of an eye. “It’s a chess diary,” he said, surprised.

“Yes.”

Hayden had been one of Oliver’s closest friends and most challenging chess opponents for more than ten years. Simon suddenly wondered if the games recorded in the little black book were ones that his father and Hayden had played together.

“Your dad never kept diaries…” Hayden said. He paused to absorb another game completely; it took him only moments. “Though maybe he should have. He might have beaten me more often.”

Simon nodded. “I think…Hayden, I think he was trying to tell me something.”