“So, how do we do it?” Plath asked. “How do we get in there and destroy those servers?”
“I believe what Mr. Stern is about to tell us is that we don’t,” Keats said. “We’d have to get past ground-floor security, go up to seventeen where we would be shot at. A lot. Then somehow we’d have to reach the connecting stairwell and climb to eighteen, where we would have another fight on our hands, with forces coming from all over the building to attack our rear.”
“Exactly. Now, we’d have some advantages—we can use our network access to shut down elevators, block some doors, turn off cameras, that sort of thing. But to actually have a decent chance of success? We would need a hundred men.”
He laid that last fact out like a poker player showing the ace that would win the pot.
Keats snorted. “A hundred men?”
“In Midtown Manhattan. Imagine a hundred armed men appearing on the street outside the Tulip. There would be no way to avoid the police being involved, especially once bullets started to send plate glass falling down onto pedestrians.”
“Isn’t there some kind of … I don’t know,” Plath said, frustrated. “Some Tom Cruise kind of thing? Crawling up the side of the building?”
“The shape of the Tulip, with that suggestive bulge at the top, means that’s physically impossible, even if we were insane enough to try such a stunt.”
Stern turned away from the monitor with an air of finality, but Keats leaned past him and pointed at the screen. “Did you see this? Eighteen isn’t the only floor that’s shut off from elevators. This is, what? Thirty-four, yes?”
Stern spun back and peered closely at the monitor. “I believe you’re right. But the heat signature is quite average on thirty-four, so that’s not our server farm.”
“No,” Keats agreed. “But it’s something.”
“In the end, as you can see, the building is effectively impregnable. Not that we would ever have participated in such a thing, anyway, but just so that you know: that server farm cannot be taken out by direct attack.”
“Which means our friend Lear has ordered us to do something impossible,” Keats said.
Plath looked troubled and uncertain. But she finally stood up, took Stern’s hand, and thanked him.
Back on the street Plath said, “So why did Lear tell us to do the impossible?”
Keats had no answer to that.
Unless, of course, it isn’t impossible.
In Plath’s mind the towers fell.
BRAZIL
Lystra Reid was nowhere near when the president of Brazil was discovered naked and babbling on a street in São Paulo, apparently collecting dog feces in a Gap shopping bag.
The president was taken to a hospital, where no explanation could be found for his condition. He was diagnosed first as suffering a breakdown as a result of stress and overwork. But it soon became clear that this was no mere nervous breakdown but a complete psychotic break.
He had gone mad.
A solemn vice president assumed the office and attempted to reassure a worried nation. But halfway through her speech she appeared to become distracted.
There were, she said …, “Bugs.”
And soon after she began to weep and curse violently, and from there began to scream and had to be taken away by her chief of staff and security personnel.
LOS ANGELES
The Los Angeles County coroner, Dr. Baldur Chen, issued two different reports on the death of actress Sandra Piper. One was very thorough and public and reached the obvious conclusion: suicide.
The second was a report prepared with help from an agency in Washington. That agency sent its own pathologist to “assist.” This second pathologist focused on an exceedingly careful examination of the actress’s brain. Dr. Chen had never seen an autopsy that involved centimeter-by-centimeter microscopic investigation of the brain tissue.
It would have taken a much more obtuse man than Dr. Chen to fail to recognize that the agency pathologist was looking for something very specific.
Both pathologists signed off on a second, eyes-only report that dealt with this second, microscopic examination. The conclusion was that there was no evidence of nanotechnology present.
Dr. Chen was required to sign an official secrets document and was solemnly warned that he would go to a federal prison if he revealed the existence of this second report.
NINE
The Twins arrived back in New York with no more fanfare than Plath and Keats. It had been expensive, but crossing into the U.S. without a passport was possible. Not impossible. Not with enough ready cash.
They had been helped into their specially built shower, then slept for many hours until Jindal had them awakened as per their orders.
Cranky, but relieved to be home again where the environment had been shaped to their needs, they drank coffee, ate pastries, and sat in their tent-size bathrobe while Jindal gave them the rundown. This program and that business.
“We don’t care about the P and Ls,” Benjamin snarled after a few minutes of spreadsheets. “Do you think we give a damn about long-term profits? Have you found BZRK?”
Jindal licked his lips and rocked back on his heels. He always stood in their presence. “No, sir. Thrum’s lead took us up a dead alley. She’s beginning to suggest that she’s being played.”
“Played? Hannah Thrum?” Charles made a dubious face.
“She thinks, and sirs, I agree, maybe, that Sadie McLure and the McLure chief of security are laying a false trail to—”
“We’re being played by a teenager?” Charles was usually the calmer brother, but this insulted his intelligence.
Benjamin slapped the table with his palm. “If we can’t find them, we can still go after their allies. This chief of security. His whole department.”
Jindal started to smile, almost as if he thought it was a joke. Then his smile faded. “Sir?”
Benjamin glared at him. “Never mind. Not your sort of work. No. No, get Burnofsky in here.”
Jindal stiffened. He had kept Burnofsky at arm’s length, suspecting, suspecting very damned strongly that the genius had been compromised by BZRK.
“Are you sure you want—”
“Get him. And get out.”
Benjamin remained silent a while, judging his brother’s mood. Charles, he concluded, was frustrated, but not yet ready to accept that they were entering a new phase. Charles did not yet understand that they were losing. In fact may already have lost.
Charles still half believed the silly cult they’d financed, Nexus Humanus, was of some use. He still seemed to think that the work of their remaining twitchers—no great prodigies among them—was just marking time, doing damage control.
“You’re still trying to hide,” Benjamin said aloud at last. “Our whole life, you always wanted to find a way to hide what we are.”
“What we are?” Charles said a bit pompously. “What we are is two great men, who have—”
“We are freaks,” Benjamin said, but not angrily. “Everywhere except on the Doll Ship. They’ve taken that from us. BZRK, the intelligence people, the police, all of them, all the forces of the normal. They’ve destroyed the one, small place where we could be. Just … be.”
“We have this place, still,” Charles said.
“Our cage. Our gilded cage.”
“Yes,” Charles admitted. Then he heaved a sigh. “The tide has turned, has it not, brother?”
“Yes,” Benjamin said. He reached awkwardly across their body to pat his brother’s chest. It was as much physical affection as they could deploy. You could not hug a man who was attached to you. “The tide has turned. The governments have become aware. In secret we had a chance. But secrecy is impossible now. They will come for us, and they will take us. They’ll put us on display. They’ll call it a trial, but it will be a carnival freak show. And then they’ll put us in a cell until we die.”
The angled mirror that let them look in each other’s eye revealed that Charles was crying.
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So, Benjamin thought. Perhaps he sees at last.
“You were too softhearted, Charles. Always. You thought you could improve them, as we did on the Doll Ship, and yes, it was a magnificent dream, brother. But we now face Sodom and Gomorrah, and no righteous man is to be found to justify their salvation.”
The silence that followed was long.
“What,” Charles asked finally, sounding exhausted, “would you have us do?”
“We tried to gently show the world the error of its ways,” Benjamin said. “We tried the carrot. Now comes the stick. Now comes judgment. Now comes righteous wrath, brother. Or do we wait for our chance to star in their freak show?”
“No,” Charles whispered. Then louder. “No, by God. Now comes Judgment Day. We hit them. We hit them so hard they can’t stand up. And then we show them that we have worse still in store unless they submit.”
Benjamin smiled. The doorbell sounded. “That would be the good Dr. Burnofsky.”
In Rome, the Pope was working his way methodically through his daily audiences. He was a humble man despite the pomp of his ancient office, and he still, after many years in the job, felt a bit put off by the need to play the kingly role.
First up there was the priest who had defied death threats to keep an inoculation program going in narco country. The priest was young and cocky and brave and offered to shake the Holy Father’s hand rather than kiss his ring.
Then the two Little Sisters of the Poor, one of whom had been attacked on a mission in Burma. The Pope rose from his seat to embrace them each in turn and to whisper words of encouragement. They left with tears streaming down their faces.
Then the usual collection of businesspeople and media people, all of which would culminate in the Pope getting to meet a famously good-looking actor to thank him for his charitable work. As far as the Holy Father knew the actor was not a Catholic, but he was still a great talent and this Pope rather liked the conversation of talented people.
A banker, a reporter, a union boss, an Argentinean politician (the Pope was not fond of politicians as a rule), a scientist who had discovered a way to raise sorghum crop yields dramatically, and last, before the actor, Lystra Reid, a youngish woman with tattoos peeking out from beneath her expensive clothing.
“Your Holiness,” Lystra Reid said, and knelt, and kissed his ring.
And at that moment four of Bug Man’s nanobots leapt from her lips, slick with lipstick, to the cold metal of what was known as the Fisherman’s Ring.
A quarter mile away, Bug Man said, “And that’s how the pros do it,” and did a little fist pump.
The Pope’s audience was broadcast via a closed-circuit station from the Vatican, and of course streamed, so Bug Man could see it all play out in the macro even as he was marveling at the unusual smoothness of the ring’s gold surface.
“You’re back,” Burnofsky said. “I mean, welcome back.”
They stared at him, unnerving him as they often did. Were they going to kill him right here, right now? Surely they must suspect that he had been wired. Maybe he should just put it out there; maybe he should just blurt it out.
Are you watching all this, Nijinsky? Or are you in my ear listening? Or are you drunk and passed out, you sad degenerate?
Burnofsky was pleased to realize that he was not afraid to die. Yet, he was afraid to die too soon. BZRK had reprogrammed him, brutally shifted his emotions, but it was crude work. Typical of the lesser BZRKers. Vincent would have done a better job. Vincent would have found a way to wire him for true loyalty. All Nijinsky had accomplished was to turn Burnofsky—for now at least—away from the bottle and the pipe. He had implanted very strong inhibitions against telling the Twins all he knew. He had turned Burnofsky’s most terrible secret into a source of sickening pleasure, and oh, that had been cruel work.
But still: crude and ham-fisted. Burnofsky could no longer be said to be working for the Twins, true, but he was still working for himself, still pursuing his own agenda. Nijinsky thought his watchful biot would allow him to see and understand what Burnofsky was doing.
Foolish boy. Male model. I’m one of the great minds of the century, and you think I can’t carry out my work right under your nose?
“Karl, it’s good to see you,” Charles lied.
Benjamin’s one-eyed stare would freeze lava.
“It’s good to have you gentlemen back,” Burnofsky said. “I’m, um, well, sorry for your …”
“Defeat?” snarled Benjamin. “Are you sorry for our defeat?”
“Your loss,” Burnofsky said, finding the right word. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Fuck your sympathy,” Benjamin snapped.
Charles intervened smoothly. “My brother and I are both grieving. You can understand our … impatience.”
“What can I do for you?” Burnofsky asked. Benjamin’s anger had sent him back in his mind to Carla. To his daughter. It had been in this room, just over there, closer to the desk. That’s where he had come to them—drunk, stoned, filled with sorrow so deep and shame so dark that it would poison him as surely as a dose of strychnine. There, yes, right there he had reported to them that the deed was done and his daughter was dead.
They had said then that they were sorry for his loss.
He swallowed hard, trying to avoid the terrible rush of pleasure that flowed each time he recalled the murder, each time, oh, God, to enjoy it, to be excited by it …
For a moment he thought he might vomit. Or actually become physically aroused. Or both at once.
I will kill you, Nijinsky. I don’t know how, but I will kill you.
“Massed preprogrammed attack,” Charles said, trying to take control of the conversation to forestall more rage from his brother. They could still use Burnofsky, so long as they were careful. Let him reveal all to BZRK: without details it would mean nothing.
“What about a preprogrammed attack?” Burnofsky asked cautiously.
Charles smiled. “It’s time we learned more about some of our … toys.” He nodded. “Yes, Karl, we want to learn how to do it.”
“You mean, how to program an attack using self-replicating nanobots? Yourselves?”
“Are we too stupid?” Benjamin demanded. “Is that what you think? Do you think we rose from where we began to all of this by being stupid?” He waved his hand to encompass all of what he’d earlier called his gilded cage.
No, by being rage-filled lunatics, Burnofsky thought. And by having a very rich grandfather.
“I am very well aware of your intellect,” Burnofsky soothed.
“Perhaps not quite on your level, Karl,” Charles said. “But as I understand it, there’s an app for this.”
Burnofsky’s first thought was that they meant to use it against him. But no, there were so many ways they could kill him, they wouldn’t be cute about it.
“Gentlemen,” Burnofsky said, “if you have thirty minutes, I can teach you to use the app.”
“Wake up, Anthony. You have a visitor.”
Bug Man sat up fast. The lights were on. But it must still be night out beyond the shuttered windows.
George III had a cup of coffee in his hand. He gave it to Bug Man.
“What?” Bug Man said.
“Someone wants to meet you.”
Bug Man was not yet fully awake, but he was getting there fast. “No one knows I’m here.” Awful suspicion blossomed. “You sold me out! You mother—”
“Drink your coffee,” George said, and sighed. “If I was selling you out, would I start by bringing you a cappuccino? It’s full-fat milk—you’re not watching your cholesterol, I hope.”
Bug Man took a sip. George was trying to act cool, but he was upset. Something had disturbed his typical sangfroid.
“Put on some clothing. It’s just one of my compatriots here to brief you on next steps.” He was lying. He was lying and he was jumpy, very unlike his usual self.
“In the middle of the night?”
“She has an early flight.”
George left the room. Bug Man took another sip of coffee. A soft knock at the door.
“Yeah, George,” Bug Man yelled, “I’m getting up. Damn, give a brother a few minutes to—”
The door opened. It was not George, but a white woman. Medium-tall, slender, good-looking but sharp edged. Brunette.
“Hello, Anthony. I’m sorry to barge in on you. But I have to get back to New York, so I don’t have a lot of time.”
She sat down on the foot of the bed, a position that made Bug Man quite uncomfortable since under the blankets he wasn’t wearing anything. He was very conscious of his skinny chest and well-formed but not exactly muscular shoulders.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Lystra.”
“You were the pathway.”
She smiled. She tilted her head, looked closely at him, making eye contact, taking her time in responding. Smart, that’s what he thought of her on first impression. That she was smart. And not bad if you liked older women. And she was on his bed.…
“I’m a lot of pathways,” Lystra said.
“So, George said—”
“Do you like George?” she asked.
“Not really,” Bug Man said.
“No, you wouldn’t. George isn’t really like us, is he?”
“Like us?”
“George is so serious. He never plays games. You and I, we like to play. We enjoy the game as a game.”
“Do we know each other?” Bug Man asked. Alarm bells were going off in his head. He recalled George’s furtive eyes.
“In a way. I’ve played you at different times in different games, yeah. I use several online identities. But you’re better than I am. Quicker reaction time; very, very good at taking advantage of terrain. And an amazing three-dimensional thinker. I can see why the Armstrong Twins hired you: your natural abilities, yeah, and your total lack of moral core.”