Silhouette (2 page)

“I do want to go home,” Lynn said, still looking down. “But I want something first.”

Paul's eyes started searching the crowd, probably for Dr. Gross, but I said, “Not from those pain parasites.” So Paul suggested his father.

“He wanted to see you right away, but he didn't want to impose.” He looked down at Lynn, and added that the old man was the closest thing she had to a father. I thought for a moment, then nodded, and joined him in half dragging her to the aero. We made sure she was well strapped, then I lifted the aero away from the street, the scene, the crowd, the fried car, and what was left of my daughter and my best friend. My little Lynn, I called her. My little Lynette …

I stabbed at the preset destination screen after I started shaking with sobs, and the aero bore us up the hill toward the castle, the scan beeping at the others nearby. Lynn actually put her left hand on my shoulder at one point, but she didn't keep it there long.

 

2

When we reached the huge building, the car floated up its side, passing one after another of the lightpads, until it reached the top and landed on the roof. Most of the airborne vehicles owned by BASS entered and exited through the two open-mouth bays in the middle of the north and south sides of the building, but the roof was private access for Saul Rabin's residence. The top floor of the castle was a penthouse apartment, but so much more: an inner sanctum, a holy of holies, a command center, a throne room, and living tomb for the king of San Francisco. And only his three princes—Paul, Darien, and I—could visit him without prior clearance.

I couldn't remember the last time I had landed on the roof—I usually rode the external elevator when I needed to talk to the “Mayor,” as Saul was often called. It was always business, of course; I don't think the old man ever received social calls. He had no friends, after all—just admirers and enemies. Except maybe for Lynn, who was one of the many abandoned children whom Mrs. Rabin had encountered and rescued during her heyday of philanthropy, before the disease had crippled and killed her seven years ago.

Saul's wife had sponsored thousands through her posh Presidio orphanage, but Lynn was the only one Saul ever saw or spoke to, because I met and married her the year after the Mrs. died. The old man had never met Lynn previously, but ever since he'd found out where she had been raised, he had taken an interest in her that was so slight, it would not normally have been noteworthy. It consisted mostly of asking to see her when she visited the castle. But this trickle of affection for Lynn seemed like an avalanche of love when compared to the icy distance between him and everyone else.

Paul landed right behind us and the three of us entered a nearby elevator, inside which a thin red light crawled across our bodies and some hidden hardware confirmed our DNA, brain waves, heart rates, weaponry, and whatever else was necessary to keep the old man safe. I didn't understand much about how the security system worked, but I knew it did. I had been the second man on the scene when one of the tunnel squatters had managed to enter the elevator with an insanely expensive black-market pick, and I had seen the state his body was in after the red line had reappeared on his chest, much thicker and much redder, because the lasers had nearly cut him in half.

No such carnage occurred here, though it would have been a welcome relief from what I was feeling. Instead, after we felt the elevator drop slightly, the door swished open, and as we walked through it to a small anteroom, the slightly different smell and feeling of the artificial atmosphere were evident. Saul was as secretive about the purpose for this as he was about most things; I never knew for sure whether it was a treatment, an immunization, a life-extension technique, or what.

At the other side of the small chamber, another door slid open to reveal our benefactor, standing in the middle of the dark apartment with his huge Chinese bodyguard planted just behind him, as usual. I felt a grave sense of déjà vu, as if I had known from the first day I'd met him that some tragedy like this would eventually befall me, and I would end up standing here before him, feeling wounded and angry, but also guilty for being his accomplice.

“Michael, Lynn,” Saul said, the same words Paul had spoken, but the differences reflected the differences between the two men. Paul's younger voice had been musical and soothing; his father's aging one was cracked and ugly. Paul's tone had oozed genuine sincerity; the old man's sounded more like a barked order. Perhaps Saul had seen too much, and carried too much, in his almost eighty years, to be moved by what was happening to us.

I stared at him, wondering about his apparent indifference, studying the thick, lightning-bolt scar stretching from temple to cheek on the right side of his face, and the gang of thinner wrinkles surrounding it. Physically, the older Rabin was similar to the younger, but with gray hair, less muscle, the scar, and a slump in his still-broad shoulders. I also took in the bald, brown mountain of Asian bodyguard behind him, which made the two Rabins' considerable height and bulk seem bantam by comparison. Min never spoke, and seldom seemed to move, let alone show any emotion.

Because I wasn't moving myself, Paul stepped in front of me and relieved me of my usual duty, escorting Lynn closer to the old man so that he could take her hand and contemplate her approvingly. He stared at her for a moment, but didn't wear the customary proud smile this time, and when he said, “I'm sorry … both of you,” he did sound like he meant it. I also realized that he had called me by my name instead of “Bond,” “James,” or “007,” as he often did, while wearing another small but different kind of smile. I had grown up in England, still had a slight accent, and that character's adventures were reminiscent of mine during the Taiwan crisis.

“My son said you wanted something,” Saul said to Lynn, who closed her eyes, exhaled, and nodded. Then she opened her mouth slightly. The old man lifted his hand and placed a tiny disk on the tip of her tongue, which she pressed against the back of her teeth until it dissolved, then swallowed. She asked how long, and he said a few minutes.

“Lynn will need a bed,” Saul said to me, then gestured across the big room to a pair of doors. “I have a guest room, if you want to use it. Paul stays there sometimes.”

A night in the citadel's dark top floor appealed to me about as much as a room in the jail next door, and Lynn had said she wanted to go home. So I politely declined, thanking my enigmatic employer for his concern.

“You'd better get her to the car then,” he said, and gripped her hands tighter as her legs began to wobble slightly. I stepped forward, putting both hands under her elbows from behind, and noticing from the side that a mild smile was tugging at her lips. I pulled her away from the scarred old man, who held on to her hands a little too long. I nodded at him awkwardly, and at Paul, then proceeded to half carry the half-smiling Lynn to the elevator. I got her out onto the roof and into the aero before her legs went out completely, and pointed the sleek vehicle north, toward the Napa Valley.

I retracted the features center and stretched Lynn out so that her head was on my lap, and stroked her hair for a while as the city became smaller behind me and the sporadic clouds above me grew darker, missing the light of the city.
That drug was for me,
I thought,
more than for her
, as I looked down at my recently estranged but now docile wife. I pretended that she would let me touch her like this when she was no longer under the influence.

We had been married for only six years, but reality had already set in. Our initial whirlwind romance had led to a neotraditional wedding ceremony—largely because of the influence of Mrs. Rabin—and then to Lynn's pregnancy during our first year of marriage. Lynn's only mother figure had something to do with our choice to keep the baby, too. Though she did not advertise her beliefs, we knew that she looked with nostalgia upon past cultures where lovers got married and children were considered a blessing. Although at first I had thought the old lady's ideas were rather novel and refreshing, I was now wondering whether her influence had really been a good one.

Thanks to the strain of living together and having a child, our romance had waned considerably. I did feel that Lynn and I were closer friends than ever before, and the happiness Lynette had brought distracted us from the weaknesses in our relationship. But now our little one was gone—leaving just the two of us and a lot of pain to deal with. That pain was tangible right now in the darkness of the aero's interior, as I stopped touching Lynn and stared at her sleeping face, which was enveloped in shadows. My eyes pressed together, and my face screwed up, as I imagined having to face her when she awoke.

She would say it was my fault, of course, because over her periodic protests I had insisted on remaining in my current position, thus putting my family at risk. And she was probably right, judging by the nagging sense of guilt that had been camping inside me since I'd heard of our daughter's death. I had known that something like this could happen as long as I continued to work for this company, yet I had gone on with it anyway. So it seemed that my pain had a name, and that name was the Bay Area Security Service.

*   *   *

BASS was formed in the immediate aftermath of the Great Bay Earthquake, which had caused even worse damage than the one in 1906, which leveled the young city. The security service was the brainchild of then police chief Saul Rabin, who in his illustrious career as a cop had accumulated so much trust and support from the wealthy and powerful that he could pull off one of the most amazing coups de grace in history.

Sociologists, historians, and others who study these things have long speculated on the dynamics that made this coup unique and unrepeatable. Most of them agree on the “island factor” (or, more accurately, “peninsula factor”): following the disaster, and before the Bay Bridges were rebuilt and the Golden Gate repaired, a psychosocial mass hysteria swelled (some have called it “corporate claustrophobia”), which exacerbated the prejudice in the city among social groups, and especially toward outsiders. Violence erupted in the devastated city, with many of the prominent cases involving people who were not from the city but were now trapped in it. The disaster-relief effort, which was already weak because of U.S. woes at home and abroad, was derailed for weeks by the disorder, until the one thing that everyone wanted was for it to stop, at all costs. The elite were worried about their property, the little people needed the necessities that weren't trickling down fast enough, and the injured, both rich and poor, didn't have time to wait for a “civilized” solution.

The climate was ripe for a benevolent dictator, or a megalomaniacal fascist—anyone with an answer who could make it happen. One man had the opportunity. Fueled by motives locked in his heart, Chief Rabin named himself chief executive officer of this new private corporation, employing unlimited authority with the financial and political support of the richest and most powerful people in the city—plus more than a few jaded billionaires from outside, who found this future legend intriguing. But the most important element of BASS's rise to power, as it turned out, was the annexing of the Silicon Valley and its tech industry, after the damage and chaos from the quake had rendered its security systems useless. When the companies there saw the debilitating collapse of Oakland and other neighbors across the Bay, they begged Saul for protection, and he obliged by making a “covenant” with them (his word) in exchange for exclusive rights to some of the fruits of their research.

CEO Rabin handpicked about a thousand officers from the law enforcement agencies throughout the area, and from the mercenary force of elite soldiers that had been established on Treasure Island in response to the Taiwan crisis and a resurgent China. With the island's fleet of Firehawk helicopters providing mobility for this force, he armed them to the teeth and appointed them judge and jury with a license to kill, if necessary, claiming that this was the only way the city could avoid martial law imposed from the outside. The old man was not creative enough to give these BASS agents a name, but soon everyone was calling them “peacers.” This may have evolved from “public servants,” a term that he had used for them (“p.s.ers” to “peacers”). Or it may have been lifted from his most famous slogan: “We
will
keep the peace.” No one was sure whether the label had originally been meant to convey admiration or cynicism, but it stuck nonetheless. It also struck fear in the hearts of many criminals, who now found themselves in serious danger of losing their freedom, and even their lives, if they failed to change their ways.

Love him or hate him, as many did by now, Saul Rabin had saved San Francisco and the Silicon Valley. Within weeks of the founding of BASS, the only people dying or injured on the streets were the aggressors. The energy that people had been expending on panic was quickly channeled into patriotic enthusiasm for the new regime, and much of the crime that the peacers couldn't prevent was soon squashed by concerned citizens. And the fear of outside intruders, who might rape the limping city, faded completely when the Bay Bridges were reconstructed with airport-tight security checkpoints on the incoming sides, and the Milpitas Wall was erected with similar measures north of San Jose. Residents no longer had to fear that the bloody anarchy in Oakland and the rest of the East Bay would spill over to them.

The government of the United States, weakened by decades of economic crises such as repeated recessions and the payment of debt to China and other nations, was so strained by its attempts to stabilize the East Bay that they were all too glad to grant the city a form of independent statehood that only the most deft politicians understood.

The recent invention of the Sabon antigravity technology and the development of the aeros, however, had turned the young local empire into a growing world power. There were slightly fewer than four hundred of these glorious floating toys, and all were owned by BASS. Saul Rabin was guarding their secrets stubbornly and ferociously, with methods and reasons that were still mostly his own. But as he did, the buying and lobbying power of BASS was increasing exponentially among the nations and corporations of the world. The old man was fast becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet, which was no doubt part of his design.…