Authors: Robert Kroese
“
It wasn’t Heller,” I say. “I was there. I stopped the Alameda event. Whatever it was, it didn’t happen because of me.”
“
You?” asks Tali, confused. “Why would you …?”
I shrug.
“I thought it was what you would want. I didn’t realize you needed the event to happen. I also interfered with the apartment fire in Hayward. That is, I guess I caused the fire. So that was my fault too.”
“
Aha!” says Carlyle. “I shouldn’t have doubted you, Tali. It hadn’t occurred to me that Heller had enlisted Paul as his errand boy before the bombing.”
“
I wasn’t his errand boy,” I growl. “It was my idea. He just wanted me to observe …”
“
And did you observe?” asks Carlyle, that smug grin flashing across his face again.
I get his point, and I can feel the blood rushing into my cheeks. I
had
been Heller’s errand boy.
“
At the time,” Carlyle continues, “I thought Tali was playing me for a fool. I tried to get her to admit that she had fabricated the Alameda event to make me think the Tyche system was unreliable, but she insisted – truthfully, as it turns out – that she had given me an accurate reading of the data. Not only that, but she then informed me that her access to Tyche had been cut off. She said she thought Heller must have suspected that she was being forced to use the data, so he revoked her access. I didn’t believe her about that either.”
“
It’s true,” I say. “Heller saw that she had been accessing the system and he cut her off.”
“
Well, then I have to apologize about that as well,” says Carlyle, glancing at Tali. Tali nods almost imperceptibly.
“
At that point, I didn’t have a lot of options,” Carlyle continues. “I thought Tali was lying about being cut off, so I decided to call her bluff. I called Heller and told him I was going to kill Tali if he didn’t produce evidence of foreknowledge of an event. I never intended to go through with it, and I certainly didn’t expect Heller to respond by sending someone with a bomb into a crowded mall. Maybe I should have; the guy was obviously insane. But he gave me what I wanted: a prediction of a major event at the mall. You know the rest. I never held Tali against her will; she came along to the mall as a gesture of goodwill. I think by that time she had realized that protecting Heller was doing her no good, and that it was in everybody’s interest to force Heller to give up Tyche.”
“
When you showed up at the mall,” Tali says, turning to me, “I knew what must have happened. Carlyle had scared Dr. Heller so badly that he didn’t dare leave matters up to chance. He was determined to make something bad happen at the mall, because he was convinced that if it didn’t, I would be killed. I knew what had to be in that briefcase. But Paul, you have to understand that there’s no way that you could have known. What happened at the mall, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened.”
“
Bullshit,” I say. “I know it’s not
my
fault. I mean, I’ll take the blame for being a complete dupe and a dumbass, and for thinking you were an innocent victim in all this, Tali. But I’m no murderer. And this didn’t ‘just happen.’ Jesus Christ, Tali. You sound like Heller. Heller made the bomb, and this son of a bitch provoked him into doing it. If there’s any justice in the universe, both of them will rot in hell for it.”
“
I’m sorry, Paul,” says Tali. “I don’t particularly like the way things turned out either, but you have to understand that they couldn’t have happened any other way. You see that, don’t you?”
I shake my head.
More of Heller’s fatalistic bullshit. I wish I’d never met this girl.
She continues,
“And maybe you don’t care, but part of my deal with Peregrine was that they pay for your defense. It’s a tough case, but they have very good lawyers. If there’s anyone who can win it, it’s them. Or at least save you from death row.”
I laugh humorlessly.
“Saving me from certain death, that’s kind of your thing, huh, Tali? What happens to me after you swoop in and save me, that’s not really your concern. And hey, fuck all those people who are going to die in fires and car crashes that you could be preventing, right?”
Tali says
nothing. Her expression is unreadable.
“
Well, Paul,” says Carlyle, unfazed by my outburst, “I appreciate you taking the time to come down here and answer my questions. I’ve got nothing further for you, so if you’re satisfied that Tali is all right, I’ll let you be on your way.”
Nice. Let me be on my way. Where am I going to go?
Maybe I’ll have a cab take me to the Golden Gate Bridge. They’ve made it pretty hard to jump from these days, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I stand up and head for the door. As I do, there
’s a knock from the other side.
“
Come in,” says Carlyle. “We’re finished in here.”
The security guard who
’d frisked me earlier walks in, holding a manila folder in his left hand. His right hand is inside his jacket. “Mr. Carlyle, I need you to come downstairs.” I step out of his way, keeping my hands in sight.
“
What for?” Carlyle says, frowning.
The man glances at Tali.
“Sir, the security audit is complete and your suspicions were correct.”
For a moment no one says anything. Carlyle is studying the security guard, as if trying to probe him telepathically. His eyes fall to the folder in the man
’s hand.
“
Get them both out of here,” says Carlyle. Tali takes a step back. She has a guarded look on her face, but she doesn’t really seem surprised.
“
Yes, sir,” says the guard. “But first, I really need to get you downstairs. It isn’t safe here.”
Carlyle is losing his temper.
“Mike, the only threats to my security are the two people standing in front of you. So I repeat:
get them out of here
.”
The man bites his lip.
“Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“
Jesus Christ, Mike. Are we playing charades? What’s in the fucking folder?”
“
Preliminary results of the security audit,” says Mike, glancing at Tali again. “We’ve found evidence that someone has been masking the results of the Tyche program.”
“
Someone?” asks Carlyle. “She’s standing right next to you, Mike. It’s not a secret. We knew she was probably spoofing the results. That’s why we did the audit.”
Tali suddenly looks
scared.
“
Yes, sir,” says Mike, uncertainly, but doesn’t make a move.
Carlyle
’s face is turning red. He speaks slowly, through gritted teeth. “Mike. Could you please draw your gun and escort these two individuals out of my office?”
“
Sir, it’s just that … we were able to remove the mask she implemented and get a look at the actual data. It shows a high probability of a violent death occurring near detector number 21482 in the next –” He glances at his watch. “ – fifty-five seconds.”
Carlyle
’s eyes fall to the little black doodad on his desk. He reaches out and picks it up, looking at the label on its back side. I can tell by the way the color drains from his face what number is on it.
“
Mike,” he says slowly. “Please take this thing and escort these two out of my office as quickly as possible.”
Mike doesn
’t move.
“
Mike,” says Carlyle again. “Pick that goddamn thing up and get it out of here or I will shoot you in the face.”
Mike moves toward the desk, but as he does so, Tali
strikes him on the back of the head with something. The marble falcon falls from her fingers to the carpet. Mike pulls a nine millimeter pistol from a shoulder holster but then stumbles, dazed from the blow. The gun falls from his hand and he slumps to the floor.
I manage to catch the gun and point it at Carlyle just as he retrieves his own gun from the desk. Mike is moaning on the floor, holding his head. Blood pours between his fingers.
“Get out of here,” I say to Tali. “If somebody’s going to die here, it’s not going to be you.”
She hesitates.
“Paul, I want you to know …”
“
I do,” I say. “It’s OK. Heller was right. I’m still alive so that I can save you. I don’t know why exactly, but I know he was right. Don’t make a liar out of him. You owe him that much.”
She nods dumbly and backs out of the room.
OK, Carlyle, me and you. You’ve got a lot more to lose than I do, brother.
“
I’m not going to shoot you,” I say. “I don’t care what the goddamned machine says. I’m not a murderer. I didn’t kill those people at the mall, and I’m not going to kill you. Now I’m going to back out of this room, and you’re going to let me. We’re all going to live to fight another day.”
He smiles and shakes his head slightly, not letting his eyes off me. His hand is steady on the gun.
“It doesn’t work like that,” he says.
“
You know,” I say, “I’m getting really fucking tired of hearing that. It works however you want it to work. I don’t shoot you, you don’t shoot me. Nobody dies. The machine is wrong this time.”
“
If you believe that,” he says, “take the detector with you.”
I look at the little black box sitting innocently on the desk. It
’s just an antenna, I tell myself. All it does is collect data. It can’t
do
anything. But somehow I know that’s wrong. That little box knows that someone is going to die near it in the very near future, and if I pick it up, that someone is going to be me. But if I don’t?
“
Time’s almost up,” he says.
If I pick it up, I know he won
’t shoot me until I’m out of the room, because the farther the detector gets from him, the more likely he is to live. And the more likely I am to die. Fantastic.
I pick it up and stuff it in my jacket pocket, holding the gun on him the whole time. I back slowly toward the still-open door. I
’m only two feet from the doorway when Mike’s hand clutches my ankle, pulling me toward him. I lose my balance and fall to the floor. Mike gets on top of me and draws his hand back. I can see that he’s got the marble falcon in his hand. His shirt is soaked with blood.
“
Let him go!” Carlyle yells. “Mike, for Christ’s sake, let him go!”
Mike swings at my head with the statue, but I manage to get my arm up in time to block it. I see he
’s got a crazy look in his eyes, like he isn’t all there. A head injury will do that.
“
Mike!” Carlyle yells again. He’s backed all the way against the window, like he’s worried about getting the plague or something, waving the gun toward us. “Get off him! You have to let him go!”
Mike raises his hand to take another swing. Carlyle fires his gun, hitting Mike in the shoulder and causing him to drop the falcon. He loses his balance and falls on top of me. Insanely, Mike is still grabbing at me, clutching at my face, my hair, my clothes.
He gets a firm grip on my jacket but I twist out of it. I push him away and scramble out the door, slamming it behind me. I’m shaking bad from the adrenaline, but I manage to run down the hall. Tali is waiting in the elevator, holding the door open for me. “Come on!” she yells.
As I near the elevator, I hear a noise behind me and turn to face it. Carlyle is pointing his gun in my direction. I fall to the ground as the gun goes off, firing wildly in Carlyle
’s direction. I’m aware of a cacophony of gunfire echoing through the halls, but it’s like I’m observing it from outside. I have no idea which shots are his and which are mine. Finally the noise stops, and Carlyle and I face each other down the hall. Not knowing whether I’ve been shot, I look down at my chest. Something is wrong: I’m not wearing my jacket. It had gotten torn off during my struggle with Mike. And the psionic field detector is still in the pocket.
A spot of blood has appeared in the center of Carlyle
’s shirt and spread rapidly across his chest. He falls to the floor, still. On the floor just behind him is my jacket.
I stumble onto the elevator and we go down. The guard in the lobby doesn
’t give us any trouble; I’m waving Mike’s gun around like a man with nothing to lose.
We find Tali
’s car in the parking lot and peel away. Tali seems to be driving aimlessly, taking the path of least resistance to put as much space between us and Peregrine as possible. Whenever there’s a green light, she takes it.
My hands are still shaking, but I
’m starting to calm down a little. I keep expecting to see a splotch of blood appear on my chest the way it did on Carlyle. I can hardly believe none of his shots hit me. And now he’s dead.
It
’s too bad in a way that both Heller and Carlyle are dead. If there were any justice, Heller would have lived to see what Carlyle had become: the perfect expression of Heller’s “life force,” striving to conquer, to overcome, to exert his will over the entire planet. Peregrine
über alles!
That’s what you get when you combine genius, will and reason and leave out morality, Heller, you motherfucker. Human beings reduced to numbers on a corporate spreadsheet.
Tali pulls
over and starts doing something with her phone.
“
What now?” I ask.
“
Shut up,” she says. A worried look has come over her. “Jesus,” she mumbles. “Jesus.”
“
What? What is it?”
“
I was afraid of this,” she says. “Ananke is fed up.”
“
What does that mean? Fed up with what?”
“
We need to get out of the city.”
“
And go where?”
“
Doesn’t matter. We just have to get out.”
We head toward 101 to get on the Golden Gate Bridge, but traffic is backed up.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Tali is muttering.
“
What? What’s going to happen?”
“
Take a look,” she says, handing me her phone. It takes me a few seconds to realize what I’m looking at: it’s a map of the Bay Area, but most of it is covered with red blotches.
“
What is all that stuff?”
“
Take a guess,” she says, making a U-turn.
I
’m not really in the mood for riddles, but it’s not like I have anything better to do. I study the map while she maneuvers down side streets, trying to find an alternate route to the bridge. After a few minutes, I see it.
“
Fault lines,” I say.
She nods.
“Holy shit,” I say, staring at the map. I’ve figured out that I can zoom out by pinching my fingers together on the screen. The red just keeps going, covering almost the entire Bay Area, from Monterrey to Santa Rose. Even Sacramento is half red. “My God,” I say. “How big …?”
“
Nine point oh, maybe nine point five.”
“
Jesus Christ.” The 1989 Loma Prieta quake that wrecked the Bay Bridge was a six point nine. An eight point nine would be a
hundred times
as powerful.
She
’s given up on the main roads and is attempting a shortcut through the Presidio. Finally she gives up on roads altogether, driving across long stretches of grass in a beeline toward the bridge.
“
How long do we have?”
“
Until one forty-three,” she says. That’s eight minutes from now.
“
Why didn’t you check this earlier? You could have been out of town by now!”
“
I couldn’t!” she snaps. “I was doing everything I could to keep Peregrine from getting the real data.”
“
Why?”
“
Jesus, Paul, if you haven’t figured it out by now …”
I hear sirens behind us, but I know there
’s no way in hell we’re pulling over. I look behind us and see flashing lights several cars back. Tali cuts across another lawn.
“
I thought you said if Peregrine kept the data secret …”
She shakes her head.
“That was bullshit. Peregrine can’t use the data any more than we can. If they start making decisions with major consequences based on the Tyche data, Ananke is going to stop them. I tried to tell Carlyle, but he wouldn’t listen. I had to pretend to come over to his side, to act like I thought Peregrine could use the data.”
“
But why hasn’t she stopped them already then? Why did she let things get this far?”
“
You remember what I said about Carlyle being a genius? That part was true.”
Shit. I
’m starting to understand now. Carlyle’s epiphany about using Heller’s data to remake the insurance industry had been just that: a stroke of genius, uncaused, unpredictable. Ananke never saw it coming. Sure, why not? If there are such things as artistic genius and scientific genius, why not business genius? And Carlyle’s plans weren’t subtle, like Heller’s had been. Carlyle was planning on taking over the world by taking advantage of the Tyche data. And now Ananke was going to put him in his place – if she had to destroy the whole Bay Area to do it.
We fly through the toll gate and get on the bridge. The phone says we have six minutes. The sirens are loud now; the cops are on the shoulder, gaining fast.
“
What’s she trying to do?” I ask.
“
Dunno,” says Tali, swerving wildly around a Miata. “Take out the Peregrine building, for sure. Wipe out as many detectors as she can. Destroy the data. Bankrupt the company. Probably all of the above.”