The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (12 page)

“But I didn’t call on you. I mean, that’s how it works, isn’t it? Someone calls you as—how would you describe it?—a last resort? And never a penny earned for your efforts.”

“I like helping out my friends.”

“Like the woman whose husband was killed by the youth gang in Detroit? I understand the police couldn’t find enough evidence for an arrest but that the gang mysteriously dropped out of sight two months later and hasn’t been heard from since.”

“She sends me Christmas cards.”

“What about the owner of that housing project who was found suspended from the ceiling in one of his apartments with rats just out of reach of his honey-coated fingers and toes?”

“The same rats had already eaten a couple of kids.”

“You’re a busy man, Mr. Kimberlain. I’m surprised you could fit me into your schedule.”

“It’s off season.”

“I don’t need you.”

“I think you do.” The Ferryman sat down at last, and somehow it made him look more menacing to Lisa. He seemed too coiled to be able to keep from springing for very long. “There’s a pattern to a series of killings that have been occurring all over the country. Heads of companies either directly or indirectly involved with the military are being systematically eliminated.”

“Then you’ve come to the wrong place, Mr. Kimberlain. I have nothing to do with the military.”

“But you’ve been approached with regard to the POW! toy line.”

“By the government,
not
the military.”

“They don’t advertise themselves that way, Miss Eiseman, because it makes them seem too eager and presents too much of a security risk if they decide to go ahead with the purchase. The man who visited you is known as a procurement officer. He evaluates new discoveries that have potential military benefits, and if his evaluation is positive, his job is to obtain the discovery at the lowest possible price. Then he makes recommendations as to which military branch can best utilize it.”

“And now the military is interested in
toy soldiers
?” Lisa said incredulously.

“It’s the interactive principle that interests them, I’d guess. A kid turns on his television and,
zap!
the figures on his table or the floor start playing out the actions going on on the screen, thanks to signals decoded by chips in your toys.”

She was nodding, as impressed with his research as he had been with hers. “The commands you’re referring to are hidden as rasps, barely audible computerized noises on the sound track. The decoder box sends these sounds through the television to a computer console. The console translates the sounds and transmits them through a small attached antenna to the individual figures.”

“Wires?”

“Not anymore.”

“Then look at it from the standpoint of the procurement office. They look into the future and see us shipping a toy soldier to some Soviet spy. Then send the right signal and,
bam!
the toy shoots the poor dumb bastard.”

“You’re stretching things.”

“I’m just getting started, Miss Eiseman. How about a division of life-size toy soldiers programmed like your plastic monstrosities on Saturday-morning television? Give them titanium shells and equip them with the latest weaponry and they could take over your average Third World country within days.”

“Hardly cost effective.”

“When it comes to new toys for the military to play with, other balance sheets come into play.”

Lisa could feel herself weakening. Fear began to rise in her like a dull ache. She gazed across the desk and saw Kimberlain in a different light. He looked far less menacing, in spite of the piercing blue eyes which seemed able to delve deep inside her.

“Why me?” she wanted to know. “There must be others this procurement office deals with. Dozens, hundreds.”

“Yes, but you fit the pattern of the more recent victims. Each one has been responsible for a more attractive discovery than the one previous. Yours has the greatest military potential so far, in my humble opinion.”

“What would you suggest I do?”

“For starters, you stay alive.”

“And that’s your job?”

“Until I’m convinced you’re safe it is.”

She made herself look brave, though her father’s desk and chair seemed bigger than ever. “I don’t scare easily, Mr. Kimberlain.”

“But you’ll die just as easily as the other victims. Maybe more easily. Most of them had better security.”

The phone buzzed, and Lisa lifted it this time, hand trembling slightly. “Yes, I know… . Tell them I’ll be right down.” She lowered the receiver and said to the Ferryman, “I’m late for a demonstration of our latest POW! line. Since that’s what might be about to cost me my life, maybe you should see it in action.”

Chapter 11

“THE INTERACTIVE TOY MARKET
represents the wave of the future,” Lisa Eiseman explained as they stepped into the private elevator that would take them down to TLP’s research and development department. “Kids want more from their television programs and more from their toys. POW! brings the two of these together.”

“Sort of takes the imagination out of playing, doesn’t it?” Kimberlain said. “I mean, all the kids do is flip on the set, tune in the right channel, and their toys play all by themselves. Regular toy soldiers are more to my liking.”

“I’m not surprised,” she snapped, intent clear. “But your comment about imagination doesn’t hold. Television has become such a crucial part of children’s lives, it was only natural that eventually they would expect more from it. The next generation of POW! toys will allow children to control their army against one being controlled by a chip interpreting signals from the television.”

Kimberlain shrugged, not convinced. “I’ve got a friend who designed a multidimensional television for me. He knows I love movies, and now when I watch them I’m right in the middle of the action.”

“Same thing.”

“Not really. I’m just a spectator, and I know it. No signals from the system telling my pots and pans to do swan dives into the kitchen sink.”

She looked at him harshly as the elevator stopped at their floor. The doors slid open to reveal a long empty corridor. Forty yards ahead a steel fence ran from floor to ceiling.

“This floor isn’t listed on the standard building elevators,” Lisa explained. “You need a special coded pad like the one I inserted upstairs to gain access.”

They stepped out and walked side by side down the corridor.

“It might seem overdone,” Lisa continued. “But industrial espionage in the toy business is a way of life. If you can’t do the research yourself, the maxim goes, steal someone else’s. My father built this wing. I’ve updated it a bit to handle the POW! line.”

They reached the steel gate and Lisa greeted the pair of guards on duty.

“Decent security against industrial espionage,” Kimberlain told her. “But right now that’s the least of your worries.”

“So you say.”

Once they’d been cleared for entry, a guard unlocked a gate carved out of the security fence and they went through and then straight down the hallway beyond. A left turn headed them toward another door guarded by a second pair of uniformed men. Kimberlain thought there were five at first until he realized that three of them were actually life-size models of futuristic soldiers from the Powerized Officers of War collection. All three had square wheelbases for legs and stood about six feet tall, not including the small antennae that sprouted from their heads.

“Each represents a different entry in our latest line,” Lisa explained.

Kimberlain noted that each of the figures was different in structure and features except for the square wheelbase required for motion. The only one that looked even remotely humanoid stood closest to the door and was called Megalon. His upper torso was framed in steel and shaped into huge bands of muscle worthy of a Mr. Universe candidate. His head was an angular robot top that looked like a helmet, with a pair of red eyes beneath a flat forehead. His arms were encased in black; one of his hands was shaped in the form of pincers, the other as an adapter for a variety of weapons attachments. At the moment it held a spear capable of shooting outward and then retracting again.

No wonder the POW! soldiers had aroused so much controversy among parents groups.

Megalon’s two companions were similarly impressive. One stood on the other side of the door in a perpetual hunched stance and featured a lizard-like head that extended straight from its torso. Its arms, black like Megalon’s, ended in pincers. This one was called Armagill, and Kimberlain could almost imagine a skinny tongue swishing inside its mouth, which had a hole in its center.

The third life-size POW! was known as Neutron because of the laser beam it claimed as its major weapon. Standing almost directly across from Armagill, it was the shortest and least impressive of the figures but in many ways the most functional. It had no torso as the others did, just a huge head mounted atop the wheelbase. It had black, slanted eyes and a barrel where its nose and mouth should have been. Kimberlain noted that it was the only one that could rotate a full 360 degrees on its base, and he would have bet this was the one that most interested the procurement officer for its easy adaptation to weapons.

“These are fully functional models, scaled up to use on an upcoming holiday float,” Lisa explained as one of the guards opened the electronic door for her.

“Might make a nice incentive contest prize,” Kimberlain told her. “ ‘Hey, kids, send in the back of a POW! box and you might win a machine capable of ripping your parents’ heads off. Enter as often as you like. Batteries not included.’ ”

He followed her through the door into a small circular auditorium. The seats ringed the room in escalating rows accessible by aisles set at regular intervals, all situated so as to provide a clear view of the staging area located to the right of the door. The seating construction left the front wall free, to allow for placement of a large screen.

Today’s demonstration, though, was going to be live. Situated a bit off center toward the empty front wall was a fifteen-by-thirty- foot terrain setting placed atop a number of squeezed-together tables. The terrain was part jungle, part hills and mountains, and part desert. Various ten-inch-tall versions of the life-sized models Kimberlain had seen in the hallway were arrayed for battle, with a few behind positions of cover to add to the effect.

Kimberlain followed Lisa to their seats in the eighth row. A bearded man in a white lab coat waited until they sat down before stepping up to the podium located between the empty front wall and the display tables. The raised circular tiers around them, Jared noted, were sparsely occupied by not more than fifty people, who were clustered mostly in the first ten rows. A few of these had their notebooks open and ready.

“Thank you all for coming,” the bearded man said without benefit of microphone. “What you are about to see is a demonstration of the next generation of POW! interactive toys, which is far advanced from the last and promises to propel us to even greater heights in our industry.”

A soft murmuring passed through the crowd. Kimberlain noticed that the two guards were standing inside now on either side of the electronically sealed door. Their guns bothered him, and just to keep a closer eye on them, he slid from his chair and took up a vigil against the near wall.

“The various terrains you see depicted,” the bearded man continued, “will all be available soon and sold separately from the POW! action figures.” He tilted an open palm behind him in the direction of a television perched on a raised, movable stand. “As you will soon see, many of the battlefields depicted on the display boards are exact replicas of the battlefields in the POW! action programming. The child turns on his television, and the designated figures respond to signals carried over the air. The child, meanwhile, manipulates his figures with the joysticks and buttons on the console as shown in your brochure. The result is that he or she is able to play along as the action unfolds on the screen. Each battle is made different by the computer’s interpretation of the figures’ positions on the game board.

“Of course, the child does not have to wait for the program to air to use his figures.” He held up a thin wafer cassette game cartridge. “He or she can purchase POW! program tapes separately and plug them into the game computer, which will allow the designated enemy figures to move about and interact with the ones controlled by the child. This is where our greatest strides have been made, for now no single tape will provide the same scenario twice unless the action figures are placed in identical relations to each other. Otherwise, the game board’s built-in computer will program the changes as it receives commands from the cassette, with the figures’ respective positions taken into consideration.

“Children will also be able to create their own programs for the toys and expand them as they grow older. The upshot, of course, is that they will be influenced to buy more and more game board pieces and POW! action figures to increase the scale and intensity of the interaction. I like to think of this like the old Lionel train sets which could be expanded yearly with tunnels, bridges, additional cars and track, until an entire room of the house would be taken up by the toy. In essence, expandable toys allow children to grow with them. They never become outdated. The child will continue adding to them, and all future systems will be designed to accommodate past, less elaborate figures to mix with the ones we will no doubt be creating in the near future.”

He stepped away from the podium, now holding a television remote control device in his hand, and moved toward the huge game board. Many of those farthest away from the game board rose to get a better view.

“To illustrate our latest breakthroughs, my department is pleased to present a pair of demonstrations, starting with over-the-air transmission via the television signals received from our broadcast.” He switched on the television and the POW! logo filled the screen briefly. Then he slid his hands to the console attached beneath the game board.

On the television screen Megalon was faced with an ambush by troops of Armagills and Neutrons.