The Unborn Page 6

  Meredith decided to add a large wooden table to the kitchen, and it appeared in the scene after she typed in the new description. Then she dimmed the image and selectively dimmed or brightened objects in her own study, so that it looked as if her own meal was sitting on a table in 19th century England.

  Thoughtfully she nibbled at the spicy pasta and salad, finally setting them aside, unfinished. She typed a sentence describing her female protagonist carrying a tray of dishes into the kitchen and setting it on a counter. Tall with long black hair that cascaded in curls about her shoulders, the young woman entered the kitchen. She wore a long blue dress with a low-cut bosom. Meredith had not named her yet, and didn’t think the face looked quite look right. It was too smooth and perfect, but needed to show some signs of hardship, despite her young age. She added weathering to the description of the face, and care-worn brown eyes. The changes appeared in front of her, as if by magic.

  Staring at the three-dimensional scene, she took a moment to change the eyes to green, then decided she didn’t like that and returned them to brown. She also decided to make the girl’s breasts smaller, and cover them more. Meredith wanted to emphasize that she was a proper, modest young woman who would never carry on an illicit liaison with anyone, especially in Victorian times. With the modifications in place, she nodded. It was getting better.

  At the author’s key-command the young woman swept her arm across the tray of dishes on the counter, and they clattered to the stone floor. The computer’s sound mechanism simulated these noises. The action had not been intended. Meredith had done it on impulse, but it gave her a general idea. Maybe she would let one of her characters—probably a different one—go wild in the kitchen, hurling dishes and pans in all directions. But first she needed to set that up.

  Next she described a person that was very familiar to her—and a small boy appeared by the table, standing there, looking back at her. Travis, their dead son, had dark hair combed forward, hazel eyes, and a small nose. He was crying, reaching out to her. Sometimes she brought him back like this, but it wasn’t real; she reached toward him, and her hand went right through him. He didn’t stop crying.

  With tears in her eyes, Meredith switched off the VR function, leaving an ordinary computer screen in front of her, containing only the words she had typed. Again her study surrounded her. She deleted the description of her dead son.

  The etchpads and books on the floor were distracting, so she spent time cleaning them up and stacking them on a nearby shelf. This showed that the carpet, suddenly exposed by the objects that had been cleared away, was covered with specks of dirt.

  At her computer command, a red sphere flew into the room and dropped onto the carpet, where it glowed and whirred, vacuuming the dirt. Afterward it left, returning to a storage compartment in another room.

  By the time the vacuuming was completed Meredith was thirsty, so she went down to her own kitchen for a diet soda. At her voice command the refrigerator door slid open, but inside she saw no more bottles. She considered making a trip to the store or placing a home service order by computer, then realized the folly of her actions—creating tasks and obstacles to avoid writing. In a pitcher she mixed a can of frozen orange juice with ice water, poured a glassful and drank it quickly, then followed it with another.

  After a stop in the bathroom she again found herself in the study, staring blankly at the computer screen. She ate part of the yogurt, set it aside and closed her eyes. Moments later she felt herself nodding off to sleep. She straightened to remain awake, but could do little more than stare at the computer screen.

  The story wasn’t working for her. Much worse, she would never be with her precious Travis again, would never feel the warmth of his touch or listen to his sweet voice.

  ~~~

  In the shadows outside, Riggio stood on the sidewalk staring across the street at the townhouse with the brick front. He was near enough to watch without being noticed, so that he could see lights go on and off in rooms on the second floor, and Meredith passing in front of the windows. She appeared to be alone.

  Then a shocked awareness came over him.

  What am I doing here? he wondered.

  He saw her profiled behind a drawn shade, a silhouette removing her clothing. His pulse quickened. But then, feeling suddenly ashamed, he looked away.

  Meredith lived only a few blocks from Riggio in the Wallingford district of Seattle. She’d grown up in this neighborhood, and told him she’d known Mrs. Monroe since her childhood.

  I shouldn’t be here, he thought. It is not right to spy on her.

  A strange feeling came over him that he might hurt her someday, for no reason that he could understand. He didn’t like the feeling, hated it. But it gave him a strange, frightening pleasure.

  Hoping no one had noticed him, he strode away into the darkness.

  ~~~

  In Denver, Agent Jantz was having a problem with her exosuit. It was flickering on and off when she tried to walk, causing her to stop and go, stop and go. This had happened once before, and was supposed to have been fixed. It was irritating. Maybe she should change models when she got back home.

  She made a call, and presently an ExoCo specialist came to her hotel room to work on the suit, a stocky man with a stubble of black beard on his face. “It just needed minor adjustments,” he reported after a few minutes, putting his tools back in his case.

  Jantz didn’t tell him what she thought, her displeasure at the continuing problem. He’d been pleasant, and had completed the work quickly and efficiently. Her complaint was not with him.

  As he was leaving, her computer beeped five times on the desk in rapid succession, signaling an important message. The repairman hesitated at the door, looked curious.

  She showed him out, walking smoothly now, with the lower portion of her body glowing orange. Then she turned to the computer, learned that a yellow Merkur registered to the murder victims in Denver—the Baldwins—had been found in Seattle.

  Agent Jantz made arrangements to go there on the next maglev train.

  CHAPTER 11

  Meredith stood in the doorway of Johansen’s office. He sat at his polished mahogany desk, reviewing a printout of the agency’s profit-and-loss statements, as he did each month. He also had a pile of reports from insurance companies, so that he could see which were expanding or pulling back, as well as which were willing to insure accounts across the solar system, and which preferred to only do business on Earth.

  “I’m about to offer Riggio the promotion,” she said. “Is everything going okay with the reports?”

  He nodded. “We’re still profitable, and every insurance company we deal with has a low loss ratio, thanks in no small part to the way we manage the risks of the clients we send to them. Yes, business is good.”

  Despite his upbeat tone, Piers looked tired and a little disheveled, suggesting that he had not had a good night’s sleep. This happened to him on occasion, when he was deeply concerned about agency operations. He paid close attention to finances, and worried about a lot about things that could go wrong.

  A woman spoke behind Meredith. It was Johansen’s wife, Dorina. “Every day’s a good day, right Piers?” she said as she walked past Meredith, “with all the pretty women in your office.”

  “Now dear,” he said with a smile, “don’t start on that again. You know I’m dedicated to you.”

  “And you can’t find ugly women who are qualified to work here, right? But qualified for what?” Dorina Johansen chuckled as she went around to the side of his desk and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  A small blonde, she was around her husband’s age, and dressed well, in a tailored black suit with gold jewelry. She’d had work done on her face and body, and looked good—he’d paid for the best doctors. She insisted that her hair was still its natural color, but Meredith doubted that, considering she was past her seventieth birthday.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said.

&nb
sp; “And you’re an old devil, Piers.” But she was smiling.

  Meredith had seen variations on this interaction before, and it always amused her. She slipped out of the office.

  She wasn’t sure how Riggio would respond. Most people would be happy to be offered a promotion, if they wanted to get ahead in their careers. But Riggio Tarizy was different from anyone she’d ever met. With his apparent memory gaps, he might not know what he wanted out of life. Assuming he was telling the truth.

  In observing the new receptionist at work, she’d noticed he was a fast learner, and he was pleasant enough to her, and respectful, but he almost seemed to be afraid of her, though she could not imagine why. She’d only been nice to him, and helpful.

  Riggio did not seem to be particularly shy, but if he truly had amnesia, he had a great deal to worry about, a lot to wonder about. He had his own questions that needed to be answered. He might need to find out who he was himself, before anyone else could get to know him.

  As it was now, his co-workers were only interacting with him on a superficial basis—because he kept a barrier up with them, just as he did with Meredith. She didn’t think it was a false face he was doing intentionally; rather it was the only face he could present under the circumstances, because he was so uncertain of his own identity. At times she wondered if he might be hiding from someone, if he was on the run.

  And at times she thought she saw something strange in his eyes. Every once in awhile, at unguarded moments, his sea-blue eyes flashed with startling intensity. It almost frightened her, until she reminded herself of what he’d done for her. She thought it was more the look of a trapped animal, a desperate creature who could not figure out any way to break free from whatever was confining it.

  Meredith wanted to make him relax around her, and get to know him a little better. She didn’t intend to flirt with him; it wasn’t anything like that. She didn’t have those sorts of feelings about him. But she liked him and wanted to do what she could to make him feel better.

  She didn’t want to ask if he had a girlfriend or bother him with snoopy questions like that, the sorts of things that Nicole and the other girls in the office had been whispering among themselves. They seemed to be enamored by his good looks, and curious about whether he was straight or gay, or perhaps even—as Nicole was beginning to suspect—asexual. Meredith had noticed that he was skittish around these women, as he was around her.

  To her, the young man seemed—well, she could not quite put it into words. He was unusual. Not threatening. But unusual. She couldn’t figure him out, but wanted to believe he was being truthful.

  Riggio wore his usual worried expression when he entered her office. For several moments he stared at the ornate engineering and electronics degrees on her wall, and at the certificates of award with them.

  She gestured for him to sit down, and said, “You’re doing a very good job, Riggio, and getting along well with your co-workers. Mr. Johansen asked me to tell you that he likes the way you’ve been deflecting the attentions of Nicole and the other girls who keep flirting with you. You’re paying attention to your work, as you should, and not succumbing to flattering remarks. Mr. Johansen likes employees who are serious about their work.”

  Riggio appeared to be uneasy at the comment, looked away.

  She was about to tell him Piers was going to admonish Nicole and the others, but decided not to mention that right now. Instead, she said, “Mr. Johansen asked me to tell you that you’re being promoted—if you want a better, higher paying job, that is. He’s offering you the position of risk-management trainee, with a pay increase of ten percent. It would involve learning on the job from risk managers such as myself, working as an assistant to all of us.”

  “In the office, or would I go out in the field?”

  “Both. Mr. Johansen used to accompany me and the other agents on some of our client visits, to all parts of the solar system. But he’s getting older now, and can’t handle the rigors of the click chambers the way he used to. I don’t like to travel by conventional spacecraft, it’s not efficient. Have you ever bent space and time in a click chamber?”

  “I might have.” He looked down at the floor. “But I’m not sure.”

  “You’re young and healthy, shouldn’t have any trouble. Well, would you like the job? Maybe you can accompany me to Saturn or the Asteroid Belt.”

  “Sounds exotic. You really go to interesting places.”

  “Well?”

  He thought it over for a moment, then nodded and smiled. “Sure. I’d like to give it a try.”

  “Then come with me,” she said. “I have something to show you.”

  ~~~

  She led the way down a hallway. Stopping at a large black door, Meredith touched an identity pad to unlock it, and entered a large room. Riggio had never seen anything like this. Strange objects hung on the walls and from the ceiling, and sat on the floor in neat rows. Some of them looked like electronic devices, with controls and analog or digital screens, while others were constructed of glistening red, blue, or green ceramics or plastics. Some had tubes connected to them, in spiral arrays and other arrangements. Others were mysterious boxes or ovals, or various geometric shapes. He thought they all looked portable. The smaller ones could be lifted, while the larger units were on wheels, or had what looked like hover attachments on the undercarriages.

  “Piers is an inventor,” she said, opening a door at the rear and taking Riggio into a work area, with long benches on the walls, and uncompleted projects on the benches. “He invented many of the devices in these rooms. Most of what you see here is for scanning, machines that are capable of analyzing a wide variety of mechanical devices and assessing the risks of operating them.”

  She removed a tube-shaped device from a wall bracket, and activated it so that a bright pink light came from one end. “This is one of the simplest,” she said. “When pointed at a small electric motor it can determine how long the motor will operate, and what the likelihood of problems are.”

  He looked closely, had never heard of anything like this.

  She activated a small electric motor that was attached to one of the benches, and it whirred on. “Like this one,” she said, stepping back. She bathed the motor in pink illumination, showed him a series of readouts that appeared on top of the tube.

  “Wow, that’s really something,” Riggio said. He went to another, larger device on the floor, with similar scanning tubes on it, in varying colors. “Is this for larger motors?” he asked, “or more complex ones?”

  “Exactly. You’re going to learn how to use all of these tools, so that we can take them out on jobs.” She smiled. “Think of the risk manager—me—as being like a doctor, while you are like a nurse, bringing with us any scan-machine I might need. It’s not so difficult. You’ll get used to it.”

  “This place is like an armory,” Riggio said, “full of weapons.”

  “That’s a good way to put it.”

  She went on to show him a variety of devices for different situations—to analyze and risk-assess stoves, deep-fat fryers and other kitchen equipment, as well as units to assess the dangers of amusement park rides, and of general machinery. She even had one that Johansen had become famous for inventing—a scanner that dispatched nano-machines to perform extremely detailed analyses—tiny robots that spread through the interior workings of anything mechanical, looking for hairline cracks, production mistakes, design errors, wear and tear, obsolescence factors, and the like.

  Only advanced risk managers operated these units, she said, because of the danger of the mini-robots getting away from the operator and entering human bodies, causing fatal internal injuries. It was a problem that had been worked on repeatedly by experts, but never totally solved. The nanos kept interpreting human beings, and even animals, as machines to analyze for defects, a chronic inability to distinguish biological versus non-biological.

  As a result, each operator had to wear protective clothing when the scanner was turned on,
and keep anyone who was not protected far away, until all of the miniature robots were back inside the scanner.

  “The little ‘bots live inside the scanner,” she said. “It’s their home, and they must always return to it after the machine is used. That scanner, while unique, is not for everyone; it has its pitfalls.”

  “Fascinating,” Riggio said. “Where is it?”

  She smiled. “Locked in a vault, of course. We wouldn’t want the critters to get loose and cause havoc.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Whichever scanner we use,” she said, “even an examination with our own eyes or magnifying glasses, we’re looking for defects—metal fatigue, design error, hairline cracks, decay, weathering, random factors that can cause breakdowns. Piers has patents on many of the devices you see here. He’s one of the leaders in his field, known all over the solar system.”

  Riggio walked from row to row and along the walls, looking at the machines. Finally he paused and asked, “I assume that was a scanner I saw you using on Sam Howe’s beehive ride?”

  “That’s right.” She stood by the doorway to the back room. “I scanned the beehive for safety, and each of the capsules as well. The equipment gave me readings on each of the track intersections, along with the workings of the capsules, and provided me with an overall rating. All of the ratings were satisfactory, but only as long as Sam agreed to increase the time between capsules as they passed through intersections, so that they wouldn’t collide.”

  “Then how—”

  She cut him off, and said with a smile, “How did I get into trouble on the ride anyway, you were about to ask? How could there be a fire hazard with one of the capsules?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Scanners analyze risk,” she said, “but risk is always present. There is no such thing as zero risk—except perhaps certifying that pig iron underwater cannot catch fire, or that a 5 mile per hour wind cannot knock down a masonry building. But such examples are not practical, and are just amusing things to say. In the real world—in our solar system of life and commerce—nothing is perfect. There is always danger of failure. The trick is to reduce the level of risk as much as possible and come as close as possible to eliminating it.”