Edge of Danger (9 page)

 
Oh, yeah? Then why did you malign both my friend and my mentor? And don’t call me
babe
in that annoying, condescending way either.
“Dr. Kirchner has been—
was
my mentor for a huge chunk of my career. Everything I know I learned from him,” she told him stiffly.

 
“And,” she added, “Marshall Davis is one of the smartest people I know. He’s invaluable to this company and to me.” Eden wasn’t subtle about her steps out of range. “Not only does he work with me, I consider myself fortunate to call him my friend.” Another demerit for Mr. Verdine. He was racking them up fast. How could she have ever thought of him as her fantasy man last night? “I’d appreciate it if you’d grant him the same respect you grant me. I’m serious, Jason.”

 
He gave her an assessing look. “I intimidate a lot of people. But not you.”

 
“Not in the least,” she told him, trying to keep her voice calm. What was he referring to? Her refusal to his frequent requests that they sleep together? Or the fact that he’d been pressuring her into taking the development of Rex into a military application for more than two years?

 
As yet she was undecided about the former, but it wasn’t looking good, and she refused do the latter. She wasn’t prepared to budge on either stance. She’d already gone further than she’d wanted to. Just for her own curiosity. But Jason, no matter how much he paid her, wasn’t privy to that information.

 
“I understand that you were devastated by Dr. Kirchner’s death. But since you refuse to take any more time off, I want you to reconstruct your research on the Rx793 as quickly as possible. I don’t have to remind you that the government has a sizable contract with us. We’ve already been paid ten million dollars for the prototype. Just because the robot was stolen doesn’t mean we don’t have to give them what they paid for.”

 
He held up his hand when she wanted to speak. “Hear me out, would you, please? We’ve gone over this a dozen times, Eden. You know damn well it’s a practical, and in the end,
humane
application of something you’ve already developed. A humanlike robot going into war zones to treat and retrieve wounded soldiers will save thousands of lives. A machine won’t cut it in this application. I don’t understand your reticence now, when you’ve already done most of the work already. I know you’ve experimented with a flexible silicone skin and can make it look human. A few more tweaks is all it would take. They’ve already paid us to produce a dozen adult-sized humanoid androids.”

 
“Money isn’t the issue,” Eden told him, wishing that her damn ego hadn’t been so eager to invent something so potentially open to misuse. “We already
have
a model of motion perception utilizing the output of motion-sensitive spatiotemporal filters with Rex.”

 
Jason frowned.

 
“The power spectrum occupies a tilted plane in the spatiotemporal-frequency domain,” Eden explained, noting the glazed look in his eyes. She laid it on a little thicker. “The Rx uses 3-D Gabor filters to sample his power spectrum for a fixed 3-D rigid-body motion, depth values parameterize a line through image-velocity space…” He had that blank expression she was accustomed to seeing on people’s faces when she started expounding on her passion. Jason wasn’t a scientist, and she usually attempted to put what she was doing in layman’s terms for him. But not today.

 
Her research had been directed at the electrical circuit domain, but she’d branched out.
Way
out. It was a damn good thing Jason didn’t understand one word in a dozen of what she was telling him.

 
Artificial intelligence was a primordial soup of computer and cognitive sciences, psychology, mathematics, linguistics, and computer sciences. The field had been just waiting for that bolt of genius that would bring it all together in a new life-form.

 
Eden, God help her, had made that life-form.

 
“Never mind,” she told him, wishing he’d go away and stop insisting on something she had absolutely no intention of doing. Ever. “What I’m saying is we almost had what you want in Rex. Now Rex and all the notes and files are
gone.
To replicate what we had would take another six or seven years.”

 
“And what I’m saying, Doctor,” Jason stated flatly, the lover gone, “is that you’ve done it once, and you can not only do it again, but this time make it bigger and better. My God, you got accolades for the mobile robot they’re using in Afghanistan to remotely explore caves and remove bombs. People said it couldn’t be done. But
you
did it. A machine that does reconnaissance and bomb retrieval. An amazing and brilliant feat.”

 
The problem, Eden thought, was that she was damn proud of her accomplishments.
Damn
proud. The government had requested a versatile payload carrier. She’d added reconnaissance payloads with a pan/tilt head and night vision. Chem/gas/radiation payloads, and bomb disposal. That bot was doing good.

 
Jason stepped into her space, forcing Eden to take a step back. “Doing this would save countless field medics from endangering themselves. An AI doctor, if you will,” he told her, sounding reasonable as he dangled the challenge like a carrot. “Think about it, Eden. This is exactly what you’ve been working toward for
years.
”

 
“We’ve had this conversation ad nauseam,” Eden told him flatly. She’d already done what he was asking. With Rex. And fresh, exciting new ideas and solutions kept her awake at night.

 
But in light of Theo’s murder, she was going to forget everything she knew, everything she’d learned. She had to.

 
She’d known that proceeding, giving in to the curiosity, was going to get her into trouble. Hell, forging ahead had most likely gotten Theo killed. Damn, she just hadn’t expected anyone, least of all
Theo,
to pay the price for her intellectual curiosity.

 
Artificial intelligence needed three things. Intelligence. Reasoning. And strategy. Strategy was the only element that had been missing. Eden was pretty damn sure she now had that one nailed as well.

 
She gave Jason a level look. “As tempting as the idea is, I can’t do it. We just haven’t reached that level yet.” This was one lie she hated telling. But she was determined to tell it well, and often.

 
She was going to an AI symposium in Berlin the following week as their featured speaker. According to statistics and her peers, she was now the leading expert in the field of AI.

 
She was going to stand up there and flat out lie.

 
Once machines became more intelligent than a human there would be no way to control them. So no matter how much she wanted to lead the AI revolution, she refused to cross that line. At least publicly.

 
If an AI somehow gained
consciousness,
it could very well start making its own decisions. In theory, it could turn on its creators and the danger in
that
was too horrible to contemplate.

 
“You won’t do it.”

 
“Same thing,” she said flatly. “You can always fire me and get someone else to try.”

 
His mouth tightened, and his pale eyes hardened. “There is no one else. You’re the top of your field.”

 
“True.” And that burden was giving her a hell of a headache.

 
He sighed. “I’m sorry I annoyed you.” He touched her cheek with two fingers, his eyes softening. “Forgive me?” He removed an envelope from his inside pocket with beautifully manicured hands. “We’ll shelve this conversation for now. This should please you.” He handed it to her. “I’ve made a list of things already ordered to proceed with the robot. If there’s anything, anything at all, that you want or need, let me know.”

 
Whatever else he was, Jason had charm in abundance. It had taken him more than a year to chip away at Eden’s firm resolve not to date the boss. He’d surprised her with his persistence. But what Eden, like droves of other women,
really
liked about Jason were his millions, and what his money could buy for her. Unlike other women, Eden didn’t want jewels or furs or cars or houses. Eden wanted carte blanche for her lab work. Easy access to the incredibly expensive equipment required for her work. She took a closely typed piece of paper out of the envelope and unfolded it to rapidly scan the list.

 
Okay. She’d give him back a few of the demerits she’d subtracted. Her lab, and all the bells and whistles she could possibly want, were worth a little easing of her standards.

 
“You’ve thought of everything.” And then some.

 
“I believe so.” He shot his cuff to glance at his Rolex. “I don’t have time for breakfast now. I have a ten o’clock meeting. Would you like to go somewhere for lunch later? You should be done with your security interview by then, too.”

 
“No thanks. I think I’ll go home and take a nap. It’s been a long day.”

 
“It’s nine fifteen in the morning,” he pointed out.

 
“Feels later.”

 
He bent his head to brush his lips to hers. “I’ll call you.”

 
Clutching the paper, Eden watched him leave. “I’m not going to sleep with you, Jason Verdine,” she said out loud after both doors had opened, closed, and locked automatically behind him. “No matter how many lovely new toys you offer me.”

 
She shook her head, smiling ruefully. “I must have holes in my head for not
wanting
to, but there you go.” She turned back to her desk.

 
Eden’s steps faltered, and then she stopped dead and froze.

 
There, leaning against her desk, was a strange man.

 
The blood drained out of her head, and her heart started racing painfully in her chest as she stared at him, mouth suddenly dry. The man’s hot blue gaze raked over her from head to toe, as possessive as if he were physically touching her.

 
He radiated sex appeal. Not so much his looks, but something innate, primitive. Compelling. Just looking at him made Eden think of hot, sweaty skin and tangled sheets.

 
God. He made her think about her early morning erotic dream. Heat scorched her cheeks, and her breath quickened in time with her rapid heartbeat.

 
He was—
big,
was her first bewildered thought. No, not big, although he was at least six three, he gave the appearance of being bigger somehow. The man radiated danger. Who the hell
was
he? And how had he managed to breach Verdine Industries’ tight security? Her heart thudded and she felt sweaty and hot despite the air conditioning in the lab.

 
She also felt shaky and disoriented, as though she’d walked onstage without a script.

 
It was almost as if he’d materialized out of nowhere.