Fear the Future (The Fear Saga Book 3) (19 page)

Neal stretched and rubbed his eyes. Opening them he realized one of the armchairs was occupied. He smiled at the only human he had anything close to normal daily interaction with. He had a slew of human and AI assistants, people and machines who maintained the plethora of technical marvels that enabled his daily life, but he rarely had what might be considered a real conversation with them. He had those with his many advisors and friends, of course, but rarely were those conversations face to face. And even then …

“Well, hello there, Garfunkel,” said Jennifer.

He looked at her confused, then frowned and ran his hand through the remnant of his once bushy head of hair. It may be thinned on top now as he tiptoed up to forty, but it still managed to make him look like a low-rate Einstein impersonator in the mornings.

“No, don’t!” she said laughing, but with genuine affection in her eyes. “I like it like that.” And she stood, placed her book on the small table between the two chairs and walked over to him.

He did not respond, but pretended to be offended, even as he reveled in the simple fondness, something he had not enjoyed much in his life and which he had never needed more than he did now.

“Besides,” she said as she came to stand by him. He stood to face her, and she reached up to run her own hands through his hair, “I like to do that.”

She seemed to be about to kiss him as her lips pursed, but then she scruffed his hair once more and said, “Who’s my little poodle?”

He laughed, swiping at her hands and saying, “Oh Jesus, Jen, get off me!”

But at that she grasped his face in both hands, and with all seriousness said, “No, darling, I won’t.”

And now she did kiss him, without mockery. Something in him seemed to give as they embraced, as he was both relieved and invigorated by the kiss, both more relaxed and more alive at once. A strange juxtaposition, perhaps, but then love born in conflict is often the strangest and most powerful kind.

As they parted, he said in a whisper, “I didn’t know you were here. You should let me know in future.”

“When you have time for me you will reach out, I know that,” she said. “And besides, if you want to know where I am, you only have to ask Minnie. I know your spies watch me at all times.”

She said that last part with feigned woefulness and he rolled his eyes.

“Oh, here we go,” he said, then serious again. “I would never do that. You know that, right?”

But he could. He could have her followed wherever she went. Watched at all times. And far, far worse. They both knew he had been forced to do terrible things to people who had crossed him in the last year. With just cause, no doubt, with the most just of causes, perhaps, but terrible things nonetheless. It was a strange power dynamic for a relationship, but one that the loved ones of truly powerful people had faced throughout time. It was both the attraction and the curse, both magnet and moat.

But Jennifer was strong enough to face that, and she faced it now, saying firmly, “Neal, darling, of course I know that. Don’t be silly.” She locked eyes with him once more, smiled, and then started walking back toward the door, pulling him with her as she went. “Now, you have been inside too long, literally. You need to go for a walk.” He resisted, but she said, “That is
not
a request.”

He nodded with a sigh but he knew it was a good idea. He could go anywhere on base and he would still be in contact, still be safe, Minnie would see to that. So he let her pull him out of his little hovel, and then linked arms with her and let himself be guided.

Once outside his quarters, they walked arm-in-arm down a long corridor that ran to his room and nowhere else, and then through the heavy doors at its end, guarded by one of Minnie’s growing number of Phase Eight automatons.

Neal neither acknowledged the guard as they passed by nor paid attention to it as it fell in at a discreet distance behind them. If he wished to speak to Minnie, he could do so through the wireless port still attached to the back of his neck. To speak directly to this avatar would be like calling someone on the phone when they were sitting right next to you.

They walked along a broader corridor, and then out on to a long indoor promenade that was bustling with activity. Around them, people and machines moved this way and that, some noting the auspicious personage suddenly walking in their midst, but most either deliberately aloof or just plain oblivious. To either side were large work spaces filled with people either talking animatedly or lying prone on couches, watched over in their machine slumber by the all-seeing eyes of Minnie all around them.

She saw from the eyes of her Phase Eight automaton, from eyes and sensors on machines walking or rolling around the space, from cameras by doors where access was limited, and even from the eyes of people walking while they worked with some subroutine or other of hers, their open links giving her proxy access to everything they heard and saw along the way.

Her eyes were everywhere, a throbbing surge of data coming to her from the TASC districts around the globe, from its many operatives, ambassadors, and delegates, from Climbers on the elevators now spanning the globe, from the few but mighty EAHLs and Big Feet slaving powerfully both on the ground and in space on projects for TASC’s Member States.

In various places around the world, she had whole buildings of solid state memory, with layers upon layers of AIs sorting and analyzing and categorizing the data and distributing important bytes to notable parties, be it diplomatic packages to Jim Hacker’s administrative staff, military updates to General Toranssen, or more clandestine information to Ayala and her own staff of analysts led by the enigmatic Saul Moskowitz.

But all this happened unseen, an invisible, world-spanning hurricane of information swirling inward into the seeming tranquility of Minnie’s mind, her sanity protected only by her unique and inherent ability to compartmentalize herself on a spectacular scale.

And so, while she did all this, while she conducted countless conversations, while parts of her sorted and filed and flew and walked, a very real part of her, an unnecessarily large part of her attention, perhaps, walked behind Neal and Jennifer as they traversed the broad promenade that ran the length of Rolas Island.

They could have headed straight for Neal’s own private landing pad behind his quarters, with its open view west to the ocean beyond. They could have headed for the main Elevator Atrium half a mile to their left, its newly run cables visible through the glass ceiling that ran the length of the promenade as they rose into the sky above the island. A Climber could even now be seen coming to ground, and would no doubt be departing again in a matter of minutes, the downtime on the ground brought down to the absolute minimum by the machine dance of loading gantries that filled the new Elevator Atrium.

But Neal had seen that amazing sight many times, and while it still never failed to amaze, it was not what he needed now. So Jennifer guided him to the right, away from the elevator and the Atrium that housed its anchor. Away from the madding crowd which thinned quickly the farther they got from the hub of activity around his own office, toward the broad plaza that marked the end of the promenade, and the south coast of the island.

The North End of the promenade opened directly onto the bridge to the mainland, the artery by which all of the materials and machines were delivered to the Atrium for preparation and packing for lifting into space. The southern end, then, was the quiet end. They had plans for a dock here. To make this yet another mouth to feed the growing hunger of the expanding elevator.

Someday soon the Big Foot at work on construction and unloading projects across the channel on the mainland would be sent here. It would clamber into the water of the channel like some gargantuan bather and wade to the island, an island it had already helped rebuild over the year since its destruction. Then it would walk south in great lumbering steps to meet waiting engineers and anchored cargo ships and it would help the tiny little men build a great pier here.

What would take ordinary cranes months would take the leviathan machine days, as it took what human hands could achieve and multiplied it to something greater, closer to what human minds could dream.

Almost. For there were some very inventive minds spread across TASC’s districts now. Very inventive indeed. Maybe inventive enough, thought Neal, as they stepped into the sunshine. The promenade ended in a hundred-foot-wide semicircular deck that faced south to the sea. Its balustrade overhung the natural cliff line, and as they stepped into the fresh air, the Atlantic rollers could be heard breaking, unseen, a hundred or so feet below.

To the left and right, broad concrete steps ran down to the coast, to what was left of the island’s untouched natural landscape. People dotted the area, eating and drinking, or just taking a turn in the sea air between bouts of work on one of the district’s many scientific, engineering, or administrative projects. Neal and Jennifer did not join them, but turned to the right to one of the staircases leading down to the coastal path.

There were folks walking and running up and down the steps, to and from the pathway that led off round the island. Some enthusiastic souls made it a point to run all the way around the island, some had even started a running race each Sunday, to the shouting support of many, and the grumbling moans of those that the race displaced from simply walking the stark but beautiful pathway.

At the bottom of the staircase a second path broke inland, not far, but up a little incline to an open area against the side of the massive island straddling the building that Neal and Jennifer had just emerged from. It was a memorial park and Neal smiled ruefully as he came up to the broad wall and the pond that ran alongside it. Etched into the wall here, at the base of the massive building they had constructed on the ruin of the original SpacePort, were names. A few thousand of them, if one cared to count.

In front of the wall was a broad pond, kept clean by a set of tiny roaming turtle-like robots that sifted and processed any leaves or twigs that landed on its surface. But they did this not to keep the water clear, the water was black by design, turning the whole into a reflecting pool that showed the wall of names against the rising wall of the new SpacePort, and the sky beyond, blue now, but filled with the full southern sky’s array of stars at night, when this space was equally stunning in its somber beauty, perhaps even more so.

Close in to the wall, a low promontory ran over the pool, running along the base of the wall to allow visitors and mourners alike to read the names up close. Neal didn’t always walk along it when he came here, but he did today. He knew many of them but not all, not by a long shot. His friends were in here. But they were among many. This was a list of all those that had willingly sacrificed their lives to the cause.

They could have broadened it to the millions who had died from the plague they had brought down on humanity’s heads, or the thousands dead and dying from the aftereffects of the nuclear fallout that had irradiated a swath of the southeastern United States. But right or wrong, this was for combatants, not victims. Years from now they would no doubt need another memorial for the civilian casualties, if anyone was left alive to build it.

He paused by the first name he knew he would see: Martin Sobleski. Jennifer had known him only as her captor. Neal had tried to tell her of Martin’s bravery and inventiveness, of the fact that he had willingly signed up for a mission he had no place on, and which he knew meant his likely death.

They did not speak of it now, though. For Martin had signed her up for that fate as well, and only the luck of the damned and the awesome power of one Quavoce Mantil had saved her from an end even worse than Martin’s.

Neal had told her also of Laurie West, and as he saw her name his hand came up to touch the place. Such a brilliant mind. Such a loss. How much better might they have faired if she had survived? What would she have done differently? Would they now be forced to be so isolated, so totalitarian, if she had been at the helm?

But they had faired all right, he had to believe that. He had regrets, too many to count. But all things considered, he hoped she would be proud of their accomplishments, and of him.

He inhaled sharply as he came to the next name. They both did. The man whose name this island now bore. The man whose body was still somewhere in this very building’s foundation. The man whose wife had, against all probability, become even more fearsome after his death, her purpose renewed, what little tractability she might have had now hardened into steel-like resolution. He feared her himself. To not fear her would be folly.

What Ayala and Barrett had shared few had understood, or even been privileged enough to witness. But she had loved him and he had loved her. For better or worse. Another casualty, Neal thought, his hold on Jennifer’s arm tightening, as she looked at his face, her own full of concern, full of love.

Love was precious solace in these terrible times, but for Ayala it had only made this whole ordeal infinitely more painful, thought Neal. Did Ayala begrudge him for embroiling them in all this? No, that was a ridiculous thought. She was the most pragmatic person he knew, except perhaps for Minnie. But she did not thank him for it either, there could be no doubt about that.

In truth, he did not expect many thanks when this was all said and done. Frankly, he didn’t care much for them anyway. He would do what had to be done, as he had up to now. Things his friend Laurie West might have been unable or unwilling to do. He would fight with everything he had.