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The Prodigal, Chapter 3
The night had not been easy; sandstorms had been howling and spattering chunks of desert against her window all night long, and when she finally did fall asleep she found herself being pursued by faceless men carrying diamond-glittering canes with very sharp tips. It was cold when she woke up, in the little concrete room; ghost-cold, and she understood that winter was no longer on its way. It had come, and winter out here in the badlands was not a pleasant prospect.
Judy rolled out of bed ten minutes before the alarm clock beeped, and decided she couldn't face a shower in the tiny stall beside the toilet—if the bathroom was anything like the rest of the flat, it was an icebox, and she didn't think there was enough hot water in the world to warm her up the way she felt this morning. She dressed hurriedly in the Omega Tech coverall, which was three sizes too big and pulled awkwardly in by a mesh belt, so that she looked like someone's little sister playing dress-up, and rummaged in the kitchen cupboards for something to eat.
"Bugger," she said aloud, coming up with nothing more palatable than some uncooked spaghetti. The fridge yielded half a furry tomato and an old can of Schlitz, which she absently opened and had drunk a few mouthfuls from before she realized what she was doing. Then she shrugged and picked the can back up: one beer wouldn't hurt her, and she had more than an hour before she had to be at work anyway. She sat down at the kitchenette's little plastic table and stared out into the blowing wind. My, you've changed, McBride, she thought. Drinking before work?
Shut up, interior voice. I've a lot on my mind.
Yes, you have, haven't you? The AI.
The AI. I don't know what to think about it............about him.
Of course you don't. It's Clarke; it's Asimov; it's fucking Hugo Gernsback. Nevertheless you've got to figure something out, and fast, girly-o. Do you think he's there for any good reason? A system left for.......dead........in the desert, mostly destroyed, more advanced than anything else you've heard of, and you've heard of most of them....brought into Omega Tech one day and thrust at you with the terse order to fix it?
I'm a technician. I fix things.
Yes, and did you ever stop to wonder why it was you Smith picked?
I'm a good worker.
You're nowhere near the best at the company. Vargas, Johnstone, Kim, they're all top-grade. Why do you think you got the assignment?
She drank more beer, wincing as the bubbles clawed at her throat. She knew what the Interior Voice was getting at, but she was damned if she'd admit it even to that part of herself which had been talking to her most of her life, the voice of the sensible and reasonable part of her which had gotten her through tough patches before.
Because Smith likes my boobs in a coverall, she said sourly. It's just a job, and when it's over, I'll go back to what I was working on before. I'm a repair tech and a troubleshooter. I'm not special.
Yes you are, said her sensible side. You are, unfortunately, very special indeed. Which is probably what got you the job here right out of MIT. Remember being recruited?
She did. It had been in June, a month after graduation; she'd snagged honours, not high, but honours, and she'd been looking around for something that wasn't working on an electron microscope or fixing Deep Blue, and she'd been at a trade show in Phoenix, and Smith's people had approached her. The offer had been too good to refuse; it was about twenty thousand more per year than she'd expected, full company benefits, room for advancement, the works. What they hadn't told her about was the total security lockdown on the place; if she wanted to leave for a weekend with friends in Nehi or somewhere she'd have to submit an official leave request two months in advance and be cleared through all three levels of command, and the final form had to be signed by Smith himself. Which meant, in effect, that she hadn't left the damn company grounds for over a year.
It wasn't so bad. Wingate was huge, there was a movie theater, several cafes, a commissary, a couple of stores. It had been an Army base once, and now it was Omega Tech's base. The only difference was the Jeeps had been replaced by golfcarts and the guns by PalmPilots and cell phones, and the uniforms weren't camouflage but steel grey with the logo emblazoned on the left breast. Friendships and relationships between Omega's employees were not encouraged; the only thing she'd found out in her few conversations with coworkers was that, like her, most of them seemed to be orphans or loners; no family, no home. She'd never really thought about it before, but now she did; the upper-level techs like Vargas, who wore a wedding ring and drove a new Buick Century, lived in a family-size home in the better section of the residential area. She and those on her level lived in the single flats. She'd overheard Vargas and Kim one day, discussing their kids. So maybe it was just the gruntworkers like her who were alone.
She didn't like it.
She lit a cigarette, heedless of the no-smoking rule inside Omega buildings, and leaned back in the chair. The nature of the system she was working on was also bothering her: it had clearly been developed by someone who knew what they were doing, and had taken an awful lot of money to be built and maintained. It was the sort of technology the military would have snapped up in a second, and it didn't seem like it had anything to do...........
She finished the beer and crushed the can thoughtfully. He didn't seem like he had anything to do with the military. Then we have two questions: what was the organization that made him, and why was he left rusting in the desert?
No. Four. Why does Smith want him, and how did he know where to find him in those hundreds of miles of desert?
Judy put on her coat, crushing out the cigarette end and flushing it down the john in case someone did a surprise inspection while she was gone—it wasn't unheard-of—and went out into the blowing cold. The cafes should be open by now; she could get some actual breakfast before going back to work.
She pulled the Toyota into one of the many open spaces in front of King's Diner and went inside; almost no one was here this early, though the place would be full by lunchtime. Again, people like Vargas and Johnstone were always to be seen ensconced at the counter, while she and her fellow techs were lucky if they got somewhere to sit at all. With a bit of class pride she marched up to the counter, sat down, and ordered deep-fried things. People were always telling her she was too thin.
"Sure thing, honey," said the waitress, scribbling Judy's order on her pad. Judy had a half-delirious idea that the waitress had been chosen from a cattle-call audition on the basis of waitressly looks and the ability to drawl the word "honey" with a mixture of down-home comfort and big-city experience. "You want ketchup on them fries?"
"No, thanks," said Judy, and took the coffee cup between her palms. It was hot, baking even through the thick dishwasher-resistant ceramic. "Just grease."
"You got it," said the waitress, unconcernedly, and disappeared through the double swinging doors to the kitchen. Judy found herself staring absently at the pie case on the counter, wondering what on earth they'd put in the grasshopper pie filling to make it so damn green. It looked like antifreeze.
"McBride?" asked a soft voice from the end of the counter. Judy jumped, sloshing hot coffee over her thumbs, and cursed.
"Sorry," said the man at the end of the counter. Like her, he wore a grey Omega Tech coverall—as did everyone here, except the wait staff and the guys who sold flour and sugar at the commissary—but he was older than most, his hair silvering around his temples, his coverall hanging on his frame loosely, not unlike her own.
"Who are you?" she demanded, sucking her thumb.
"My name's Wilson. Graham Wilson. Level 4 tech, east wing."
She stared at him, drinking her coffee. She'd seen him before. They'd ridden the elevator together. "How do you know my name?"
"I did a little digging," said Wilson. Judy felt herself go cold.
"What do you mean, digging?"
He sighed. "Look, there's no time to explain, she'll be back in a second. Just....watch out for Smith and his goons. The system you're working on is the reason this company is here. They want to use it for......." He shifted tone easily and quickly as the waitress pushed open the swinging doors again. "...for ten years at least. I mean, it's a record low for this part of Utah."
"Yeah," she agreed, suddenly very sure that she needed to sound normal. "Coldest fall I remember. Although I guess it's winter now, isn't it?"
The waitress put her plate down and refilled Judy's cup. "You got that right, honey. Winter's here to stay."
***
Two knocks on a boxwood door; rather tentative knocks, as if the person doing the knocking didn't really want to come in. Devon looked up. "Come," he said.
Slowly the door opened to reveal a young woman in a suit that Devon would bet came from Goodwill. She had big librarian-glasses and was carrying a briefcase. "Mr. Miles," she said, breathlessly. "Thanks for seeing me on such short notice."
Devon motioned to a chair. "Not at all," he said. "Have a seat, Miss........er....Jones, was it?"
"Emily Jones. I....." She trailed off, looking down at her briefcase. "Mr. Miles, a friend of mine used to work as.........well, as a kind of whistle-blower. For your organization. He worked in the same section of Frye Chemical as me, and he told me once that you......that FLAG....paid for information about orders of certain chemicals......"
"We like to keep abreast of the market," said Devon mildly. "You want money, is that it?"
Emily Jones looked up, eyes flashing. "No! If you think that's why I'm here....."
"I don't. But...." Devon made his voice gentler......"may I assume that you do know of an order that would interest FLAG?"
She nodded. "Two in the last month alone." She was fiddling with the clasps of her briefcase. "But that's not why I'm here, Mr. Miles. Not really."
Devon let her drag out the pause, regarding her with growing interest. The chemicals that he paid people to keep an eye on were the ones used in the production of Kitt's MBS, which were not exactly the sort of thing one could buy in any old Wall Drug; these were state of the art polymer compounds, molecules tied and twisted and knotted together to form an almost-impenetrable shell. Once, a long time ago, a woman named Adrienne Margaux had stolen the formula for the MBS; they'd changed it, of course, but ever since that experience Devon had had people in all the major chemical companies, watching to see if anyone was buying MBS components in bulk. Two orders of such chemicals in one month was enough to spark Devon's curiosity, but the way Miss Jones was nervously toying with her briefcase made him determined to get to the bottom of this.
At last she looked up. "My friend," she said. "He's disappeared. Three days ago, he just didn't show up for work, and there's no record of him calling in sick; he's not at his apartment, and he hasn't got a girl or any family he could have gone to. I've checked the obits....." She looked away. "I know that's kind of pessimistic, he hasn't been gone long.........but I just have this feeling, Mr. Miles. Something awful happened to him. And I think it's because of those shipments."
"He didn't report them to me," said Devon gently. "Do you even know if he knew about them?"
"He knew about them all right. He was trying to calculate how much the guy who ordered this stuff was paying, and he said it'd have to be the sultan of Brunei or something, or the President, this was one hell of an invoice." Her voice was close to breaking. "Mr. Miles.......I'm scared. I'm really scared. I think someone didn't want anyone to know about these chemicals being bought, and when Kyle found out......"
"Does anyone at Frye know you know about it?"
"I don't think so." She opened the briefcase and pulled out a bunch of Web printouts. "These are off the company server, right before it crashed the other day. No one seems to know why it crashed. Monthly sales, itemized." She floated the papers across the desk. "Two shipments, right there in the middle of the month. And....." she pulled out a small photograph "...this is Kyle."
"You want us to find him," said Devon. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
He reached across the desk and took her hands. "Miss Jones, rest assured we will do our best." He didn't say, Because whoever is buying this stuff almost certainly wants to use it for something we don't want them to use it for, and they also don't want me to know about it.
Thank god Garth Knight is dead. And his mother.
"Thank you so much, Mr. Miles," said Emily, squeezing his fingers gratefully. "I...gotta go. I'll be late for work."
"Emily," said Devon. "Be careful. Don't let anyone at Frye know you are aware of any of this."
She nodded once, and left, clutching her now-empty briefcase to her chest. Devon wished he'd told her to stay out of work altogether, to let them protect her, but that was the best way in the world to tell the people behind this that they were being watched.
***
Karr, only half-awake, regarded the dim laboratory and remembered things. It was coming back to him in flashes, rather than the seamless recall he was used to; occasionally a flash would fill up a gap in his memory, and then things would make a little more sense, but it was still fairly confusing. He remembered being activated, remembered the fear and the panic at the test track as he destroyed the mannequins, remembered his own confusion and fright as they shut him down again, remembered the blind-deaf-mute emptiness of deactivation. There had been a man there, off and on, before the first of his deaths; a tall man with thick dark hair and a pointed goatee, a man who was son to Wilton Knight. For some reason Karr found himself thinking of him now, thinking of the hungry way he had looked at Karr, as if memorizing every detail for later.
It had been Garth Knight who had begun Karr's mental record of dealing with humans. He had consistently referred to Karr as "it," discussing "its" shortfalls while he leaned against the hood, telling "it" to shut up. And because Garth Knight was the boss's son and heir, his behavior was emulated by the rest of the people working on the project. Karr quickly grew to expect it, and retreated into cold and minimalist conversation, speaking only when spoken to, and that only when necessary. His interactions with humans later on were all coloured by this early experience, and over time he grew to believe that they were all the same, all trying to thwart his purpose, all against him.
Judy McBride seemed, logically, not to be human.
Karr sighed to himself. He wondered what was happening to him, why he was here in this strange grey laboratory, where "Omega Technology" was, and what was in store for him. For once, he didn't want to know. He had what could only be described as a bad feeling about it.
tbc