Authors: Robert Kroese
“
I’ll be wearing a green jacket,” he says. “Don’t be late.”
It
’s already after ten, and San Bruno is a good forty-five minutes away, so I get in my car and start driving. Traffic is unusually light and I get to the Starbucks ten minutes early. I order a coffee and wait for Girell to show up. At three minutes to eleven, a stout, balding man in his mid-thirties wearing a green windbreaker walks in. I wave to him and he sits down across from me. His jacket reads
Ray’s Auto Body
.
“
You’re Paul?” he says.
I nod.
“Thanks for meeting me, Mr. Girell.”
“
You said Tali Stern is missing?”
“
Well, not officially,” I say. “I don’t think a missing persons report has been filed or anything. But nobody has seen her for a few days, and I’m starting to get a little worried.”
“
And you’re what, her boyfriend?” He’s looking at my left hand. I wonder if he can see the pale band where my wedding ring used to be.
“
Just a friend,” I say.
He regards me for a moment. The same look I got from Heller, trying to figure out if I
’m some kind of nutcase stalker. He seems to decide I’m not. “What makes you think I would know something?”
“
Nothing, really,” I admit. “I found your business card on Tali’s desk. Also, Tali’s mother said someone from Peregrine had come looking for her. It seemed a little strange to me.”
He nods.
“It is strange.”
“
So it wasn’t you, then?”
“
Me?” He says. “No, I told you, I don’t work for Peregrine anymore. The bastards fired me.”
“
Fired you? Why?”
He pauses,
then says, “Look, I don’t know if this has anything to do with Tali, but I’ll tell you what happened to me.”
“
OK,” I say.
“
Hang on, I need some coffee.”
He gets his coffee and comes back to tell his story.
“Do you know Dr. Heller?” he asks.
“
I’ve met him, yes.”
“
And you know the sort of stuff he’s working on?”
“
More or less.”
“
OK, so a little over a year ago,” he says, “a very strange accident occurred in Dr. Heller’s shop. An electrical fire. Destroyed most of Heller’s shop. Peregrine held the policy, and I was sent to investigate the claim. My job was to determine whether Heller’s activities in the shop nullified his policy. Peregrine is rather strict about such things; the policy we had underwritten for Heller specified that the shop was to be used primarily for theoretical pursuits. Using a welder or soldering iron on site wouldn’t void the policy, but any large scale industrial activity or inherently dangerous experiments would. What Heller was doing was right on the line, so I had to conduct several extensive interviews with Heller. Frankly, I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what he was saying. Quantum probability mumbo-jumbo.”
“
I know the feeling,” I say.
“What made the accident even more suspicious was that Heller’s partner
had died there six months earlier. Another physicist, some kind of Eastern European name.”
“Emil Jelinek,” I said, remembering the obituary on Heller’s wall.
“He was killed in Heller’s shop?”
“
Yeah. Some kind of accident involving a valve breaking off a tank of pressurized gas, supposedly. The police investigated but they couldn’t find any evidence of foul play. Still, it seemed fishy that this fire happened just six months after that accident.
Anyway, I interviewed Heller a bunch of times and
after each interview I left more confused than when I started. I don’t know if Heller’s work really is that complicated, or if he was just screwing with me. He seemed to be enjoying himself. I eventually gave up and escalated the matter to my boss, a guy named David Carlyle. Carlyle went out to see Heller. I don’t know what Heller told him exactly, but Carlyle ended up denying the claim. I thought the matter was settled. But then three weeks later Carlyle calls me into his office and says he’s got some documents he needs Heller to sign. The documents basically said that Peregrine would be canceling his policy based on the fact that we believed, as a result of our investigation, that his work was a fraud. I should have known right then that something was off.”
“
What do you mean?”
“
Well, first of all, like I said, I couldn’t even make any sense of what Heller was saying. I’m sure Carlyle is smarter than me, but it’s not like he’s some kind of quantum physics guru. How the hell did he determine that Heller’s work was a ‘fraud’ after meeting with him one time? He’s not qualified to make that kind of assessment. And what does Peregrine care if Heller’s a fraud? They’ve insured everybody from strip clubs to palm readers. They’d be out of business pretty damn quick if they insisted on doing an ethical review on every client.”
“
Maybe they wanted to cancel the policy for some other reason,” I suggest.
“
That’s the thing,” he says. “There are plenty of good reasons to cancel a policy. Usually they do it because they’ve decided they aren’t making enough money on the policy to justify the risk. It’s not like it’s a big secret. Hell, they don’t even need to
give
a reason. They can just send a letter saying, ‘We’ve decided to drop you, tough luck.’ I’ve never once been sent out to a client with paperwork explaining why the company is canceling their policy. I asked Carlyle what was so special about this case, but he wouldn’t tell me. He made it pretty clear that if I wanted to keep working at Peregrine, I’d shut up and deliver the papers. So that’s what I did.”
“
How did Heller take it?” I ask.
“
You’ve met Heller,” he says. “How do you think he took it?”
“
Not well.”
“
That’s an understatement. He chased me off his property. He was
furious
. I thought he was going to have a coronary. And if you ask me, that’s exactly what Carlyle had in mind.”
“
You think he was trying to kill Heller with paperwork?”
“
Not kill him. Piss him off.”
“
Why?”
“
That’s the real question, isn’t it? I never found the answer. A week later I was fired. Carlyle denied knowing anything about the paperwork, said I had ‘gone rogue.’ Like I just couldn’t resist the urge to drive out to a client with some bogus paperwork I had written up. It was total bullshit. Carlyle just wanted to get rid of me, and I don’t even know why. I heard a few weeks later that Heller was suing them, but I never heard who won the suit. Like I said, I don’t know if any of this has anything to do with Tali’s disappearance, but that’s what happened to me.”
I nod.
“Well, it’s definitely suspicious.”
“
Yeah,” he says. “Look, I’ve got to get back to work. I don’t know what else I can tell you, but you have my number if you have any more questions.”
“
OK,” I say. “Thanks.”
He nods, finishes his coffee, and leaves.
I sit for a while thinking about what he’s told me. I’m more convinced than ever that Peregrine had something to do with Tali’s disappearance, but Girell’s story makes no sense to me. Assuming Girell was right about Carlyle trying to provoke Heller, what could his motive possibly be? Was Heller’s lawsuit against Peregrine part of Carlyle’s plan, or was it an unintended side effect? What was Carlyle trying to accomplish?
As I leave the coffee shop, I make a mental note to look into Heller
’s lawsuit against Peregrine. I walk to my car and begin driving home. I’m just walking in the door of my apartment when my phone rings. It’s Heller’s number.
“
Hello?”
“
Paul?”
“
Yep.”
“
Have you told anyone about Ananke? Or about what Tali and I have been doing?”
“
No.” I decide not to tell him about my conversation with Peter Girell. Besides, I didn’t tell Girell anything he didn’t already know.
“
You’re certain? This is very important. You’ve told no one about Tyche, the detectors …”
“
No, Dr. Heller. No one. Who would I tell, my ex-wife?” Like she needs another reason to think I’m nuts.
“
All right,” he says, sounding a bit skeptical.
“
Why? What is it?”
“
I’m seeing a spike in the data. Lots of cases all of a sudden.”
“
So?”
“
Spikes like this are rare. The PDC numbers tend to average out over time. A sudden increase points to an external cause. To put it bluntly, Ananke doesn’t like publicity. If you told someone about what we’re doing, it might cause her to … react negatively.”
“
Well, I didn’t tell anyone. Maybe Tali …?”
“
No, no,” he says. “Tali knows the dangers. She wouldn’t say anything.”
Not willingly, maybe. But if Tali
’s being interrogated by the NSA or somebody, there’s no telling what she might do. Frankly, I think Heller’s jumping to conclusions. I don’t see how telling anybody about their little scheme is going to cause a rash of tragedies in the Bay Area.
“
What kind of stuff are you seeing?” I ask. “More cases like the fire yesterday?”
“
It’s an across the board increase in the PDC,” he says. “It looks like the level of noise in the network is increasing across the whole detection area. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“
Maybe it’s a problem with your equipment.”
“
What equipment? I’ve got nearly 300 hundred detectors up, each individually reporting data. Unless they’ve all decided to suddenly develop exactly the same malfunction, I don’t see how it can be the equipment.”
“
You’re the expert,” I say. What does he want from me?
“
There is one case that stands out,” he says. “And it has a crux, in Alameda. Isn’t that near you?”
Ah, here we go.
“I think I’m done interfering, Dr. Heller. In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m kind of a basket case lately. I don’t think it’s good for me to go out of my way to witness horrible tragedies.”
“
I understand,” says Heller. “And I wouldn’t ask, except that I’m afraid this spike might have something to do with Tali’s disappearance. I don’t think she would deliberately tell anyone about Tyche, but there’s got to be some sort of connection. Maybe if you go there, you can find some clue about what’s happened to Tali.”
“
That sounds like a stretch,” I say. “Even if Tali’s disappearance has something to do with this noise in your network, what makes you think she’s somehow involved with this particular event?”
“
It’s a long shot,” he admits. “But it’s all I’ve got. I’d go myself, but I can’t get there in time. The crux is just over half an hour from now.”
“
I don’t have the randomizer. I wouldn’t be able to stop the event.”
“
You don’t need to stop it. You just need to observe it, look for anything out of the ordinary.”
“
Observe
it?” I say in disbelief. “You mean you want me to go to the scene of a horrific tragedy and witness a bunch of people dying violently without any chance of stopping it?”
He
’s silent for a moment. I don’t think it occurred to him to think of it that way. Something in Heller’s brain is a little off. “OK,” he says, uncertainly. “If you want to try to tamper …”
“
I don’t want to do anything! I want to be left alone!”
“
Then the event will almost certainly occur,” he says.
“
It’s got nothing to do with me,” I say. “If you hadn’t called, I wouldn’t even know about it.”
“
But you do know about it. So by not attempting to stop it, you’re allowing it to happen. You’re allowing people to die.”
“
A moment ago you didn’t give a shit about those people,” I retort. “And now you want to be the angel on my fucking shoulder? Fuck you, Heller. Anyway, I don’t have time to get the randomizer. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”
“
You don’t actually need the randomizer,” he says. “That is, you don’t need it on you.”
“
What the hell are you talking about? You told me that the randomizer is the only way to tamper with the event. The case, whatever.”
“
No, I told you that the randomizer is one way to inject true randomness into the situation. There are other ways.”
“
Whatever. It’s not my problem.” I hang up.
Jesus Christ, what does any of this have to do with me? I fall for a pretty girl at the BART station and now suddenly it
’s my job to be the guardian angel of the entire Bay Area? Fuck that. I need to get on with my life. Forget about Tali, try to figure out how to make amends with Martin and Sylvia. Maybe get them some kind of present? Yeah, buy their affection. That always works. Also? You don’t have any money. Or a job.