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Roddy's doing. He's embarrassed me."
"So you're giving him a spanking, shutting him down?"
"This is the last of his functions. All the final samplings and decodings are
done here."
Jonathan notes that while standing before this man, Seefa Schnee seems less
twitchy. She does not break out in muffled curses or kiss her hand.
"I can't find Jill," Nathan says.
"Do you work here?" Jonathan asks him.
"No," Nathan says. "Who are you?"
"Doesn't matter." Jonathan spots a gardening pick, lying on a platform
half-hidden among the peas. He plods out through the rich mud to the platform
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"No," she says firmly. "Roddy and I, we screwed up from start to finish.
It's time to shut it down and do it over, that's all."
"You succeeded. You made Roddy," Nathan says, unable to conceal his
admiration. He notices that the other man is pushing through the trellises,
with a pick, toward the enclosure.
"They paid me," Seefa says. "Not much, but it was enough. You guys could have
had Roddy, not them."
"What would he have been like?" Nathan asks.
Jonathan hesitates, finding the mud and rows of plants tougher going than he
thought, and looks around for another way, but apparently decides to avoid the
direct path. He turns instead toward the old INDAs arranged near the edge.
"You could have been his daddy," Schnee says. "They insisted I use them for
templates, for his basic personality model. You would have been better."
"Jesus, Seefa," Nathan murmurs. He spreads his arms and shakes his hands up
and down in wordless question.
"I don't know," Seefa says. "I've been deeply embarrassed. Roddy is a
disappointment."
Nathan has run out of words. He just stares at her.
Schnee looks down at the pathway, then to one side, just as Jonathan's pick
strikes the first INDA. She leaps across the dirt toward him.
"No!" she shrieks. "Not you! Stop!"
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Nathan follows and for a few minutes, they struggle with the man, manage to
take the pick away, but he's already done enough damage. Seefa stands back,
hugging herself with her thin arms, then runs for the elevator.
Jonathan stares at Nathan, out of breath. "I need to get out of here," he
says, as if this might serve as an explanation.
"I don't care, go," Nathan says, and turns to walk to the glass enclosure.
Mary and the agents enter the high chamber. They walk through a pungent
ground-hugging mist toward a small, thin woman with black hair and wild black
eyes. The woman stares at Mary's pockmarked face as if seeing a ghost.
"What's wrong with you?" she screeches. She looks at all of them. "Get out of
here! There are too many!"
Mary looks up with stinging eyes at the structure that fills most of the
chamber, like stacked planting trays in a giant's garden shed. A man wearing a
filthy and disheveled gray longsuit walks toward them from the elevator
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336
G R E G B £ A /
"Disinfectant and insecticide," he says to them. "We have to leave soon or it
might make us sick."
"Yes, get out!" the small, intense woman demands. "None of you belong here!"
"Are you public defense?" rhe man asks Mary.
"I am," she says, and starts to choke. The man examines her closely, the sores
on her face, the trembling in her hands.
"My god, you're ill," he says. "You've got it, haven't you?"
She nods. There's no need to ask what he's talking about.
"Seefa Schnee?" Daniels asks, approaching the thin, agitated woman.
They're all coughing now.
"Get her out of here," Torres orders.
The woman refuses to leave, flailing and kicking up the noxious mist. Torres
finally maneuvers behind her and picks her up bodily, carrying her like an
angry child through the door.
Mary looks up at the top of the chamber. Anorher lone man gazes down at her
from the top level.
"Come on up," he says. "Somebody has to see this. Use the elevator."
Mary considers, nods, and enters the cage. At the top, she gets out.
"You look pretty bad," the man tells her.
She nods. I'll survive. Who are you?"
He makes a sympathetic face and offers her his hand. She shakes it weakly.
"Nathan Rashid," he says, and turns to walk down a path soaked with
antiseptic.
"She shut down most of it, and that other fellow did a job on the
INDAs up here. But... You're PD, aren't you? Not FBI?"
"Seattle PD," Mary confirms.
"I don't know why you're here," Nathan says. "But somebody has to see this.
They killed my daughter. I mean, my friend, my project. I think I've found one
of the culprits."
"One of whom?"
"The money men. Seefa must have scanned them for personality patterns.
They're still here, parts of them. The system's collapsed. We're down to
basics, some simple memories. Roddy probably never accessed the memories, just
the patterns, but they're here."
He takes her into a glass enclosure and shows her the decorated chair, the
console, the displays. The image of a man floats above the console, in three
dimensions.
Mary comes around to view the man directly.
"Welcome," the image says. "My name is Terence Crest. I'm forty-one years of
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age, married, with two daughters." He says this with a little twist to his
face. "I've been asked to participate in this scanning, and they tell me it's
an honor to become part of a future thinker. A well-financed honor, to be
sure.
Well, here I am."
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rigor of drug-induced death. Crest looks like any other man his age, a little
better dressed, a touch impatient. Nothing worth making a fuss about.
"I'm here," the image repeats. "Is there anything you need to ask me? I'm
dynamic, they tell me some of my memories are here. Please don't waste time."
He chuckles. "This machine, if it is a machine, has lots to do."
"Do you know him?" Nathan asks Mary.
"No," Mary says. "How do you turn this off?"
"There's not much left. Just these patterns. If you flip these switches, we
pull the remaining INDAs off line, and since that fellow with the pick
destroyed the memory backups, it will all fade."
Mary reaches for the switches.
"I'm waiting," says Crest, the image of Crest, the last, almost living part of
a dead man.
"Do you mind?" Mary asks Nathan, fingers poised. She does not know whether she
can stay on her feet much longer. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]