The Games (19 page)

“Sir, I have to warn you—”

“Warn me?” Ben stood up, suddenly a tower of indignant anger. His stool teetered backward and clattered to the floor. Around them, the
nearby tables had gone silent, though the rest of the club was as noisy as ever. “Two years ago I came home early to surprise her. Well, I surprised her, all right. And the guy behind her. That was my warning. That was the first hint I had that things were different between us. Don’t talk to me about warnings until you walk in on something like that.”

The woman’s face flushed red. Her mouth opened. No words came out, so she closed it with a snap.

The anger seeped from Ben’s face. “There is no point in arguing.” Ben’s voice was soft and measured again. “Let’s play a game, shall we? The game is called Who Gets the Money? Your part of the game is simple. You call your boss and explain what happened—some asshole took the check and refused to sign for it. Your boss then calls the bank to try and cancel this check as quickly as he can. Someone at the bank then has to block the check on the computer system.

“My part of the game is also simple. I try and get to the bank and cash the check as quickly as
I
can. Keeping in mind that possession is still nine-tenths of the law, my ex can sue me if she wants the money back. That sounds fair, doesn’t it?”

The woman stared at him.

Ben turned to Silas. “Well, how about you? Does that sound fair?”

“Sounds fair to me,” Silas said.

“Okay, then that’s the game,” Ben said. “Starting now.”

The young woman hesitated for another moment, looking at the faces fixed on her from the circlet of interest that had gathered around their table. Then she started moving all at once, snatching the phone from her thigh pocket and flipping the screen open.

“No, no, no.” Ben shook his finger at her gently. He pointed to a sign hanging on the wall.

No calls allowed in restaurant

Her mouth tightened, and she snapped the phone shut. Gripping the clip screen tightly in her hand, she turned on her heels and angled off through the crush of people without saying goodbye.

Ben turned back to face the table. “Well, I’m sorry, but it seems that something has come up. I’m going to have to rush off. But the drinks were on me; I seem to have come into a bit of money.”

Ben picked up the glass of D-hy, gulped it down with a grimace, then turned and quickly followed the young woman toward the door.

When he was gone, Silas turned to Vidonia. “Care to take odds that he’ll make it?”

“I couldn’t even guess who’s got the better chance.”

“I’d give it even money,” Silas said. “But chances are he’ll just give the check back, anyway, come Monday.”

“He seemed pretty set on keeping it.”

“When a couple spends two years divorcing, maybe they don’t really want to get divorced.”

Vidonia shot him a skeptical look.

“They do this. Breaking up can be easy; they’re making it hard. Back and forth, every few months.”

They sat, sipping their drinks.

“It looks like it’s just you and me now,” Vidonia said, not quite sure why she liked the idea. “Do you want to get out of here?”

“Sure,” Silas said.

Vidonia lost their tie-breaking round of rock, scissors, paper, and when the waiter brought another shot of D-hy, she drank it down like a good sport.

Five minutes later, as she climbed behind the wheel of Silas’s sports car, she turned to him, saying, “It’s been a while since I’ve driven a pure combustor. My car is technically a hybrid, but it drives like a fuel cell.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just go easy on the accelerator; you’ll be fine.”

She turned the key, and the engine shook to life. A thrill shot through her as she put the transmission into reverse and backed the car out. As she turned left onto the boulevard, she goosed the pedal and her head jerked back against the headrest.

“Easy,” Silas said.

She couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. “How do we get to a beach?”

“It’s a forty-minute drive.”

“I’ve never seen the Pacific. Do you want to go?”

The awkward smile spread across his face now. “Sure, why not?”

Once she merged onto the highway, she ate up the yellow dashes as quickly as she dared. At one point, the speedometer crested eighty-five miles per hour. It was the fastest she’d ever driven, and Silas only looked across the seat at her with amusement.

When the silence threatened to turn awkward, she said, “That was an interesting scene back there at the bar.”

Silas nodded. “There have been a couple others like it.”

“Bad divorce,” she said. “And how about you? You’ve never talked about yourself. Are you married?”

“Was. I had a good divorce, though. Smooth as silk. Before long, it was like we’d never been together.”

“No kids, then.” It wasn’t a question. “Who’s the blond little boy I saw on your desk?”

“A nephew. My sister’s son.”

“He looks a little like you, just painted up differently.”

“Yeah, I’ve been told that before. He’s got the bones from my father’s side. Chloe and I never wanted kids, though. For different reasons. I’m just opting out of the whole system.”

“What system is that?”

“The dog-eat-dog biological arms race. When you do what I do for a living, it jades you a little, I think. Everything alive struggles to leave something of itself behind. I’m leaving myself behind in other ways.”

“It sounds like you’ve given it some thought.”

“I can only remember my father in bits and pieces. That kind of thing makes a person think. Besides, I love my nephew. There’s no void to fill.”

Vidonia nodded and drove on in silence.

She was rounding a curve beside a long, low hill when she first heard it. She rolled her window all the way down, and in the distance, she
could clearly make out the sound of breakers. She hadn’t realized how close they’d come already to the edge of the continent.

“Pull over here,” Silas said.

She eased onto the gravel on the side of the road, and when she cut the engine, the sound of the ocean was a hiss in her ears. She could smell the sea salt.

The path down to the beach was steep but well worn, and Silas reached for her hand at one point when she stumbled. She didn’t let him take it back when they stepped onto the sand. Hand in hand, they strolled toward the rolling surf. It was so beautiful. White, frothy bands of foam slid toward them across a smooth floor of sand. A three-quarter moon glinted off the water in the distance.

“So what about you—ever been married?” he asked as they walked.

“No.” Her tone left a “but” lingering unsaid at the end of her answer, and she knew he sensed it, because he pressed on quickly, “What about family—any brothers or sisters?”

“I have one living sister, but we haven’t talked in years. We’re in different worlds now.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Is it?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he laced his fingers deeper into hers.

As they walked along, they splashed at the undulating waterline, and she wasn’t sure if she kissed him or he kissed her, but they were suddenly kissing, standing there, and it was perfect and soft, and she loved the way his height made him seem to be simultaneously above her and at her side. The water moved over their feet, sinking them in the wet sand. Anchoring them. Their kissing grew more fervent now, and she could feel the need in him but could feel also that he was holding back and, finally, pulling away. And then they were walking again and not talking anymore; and that, somehow, was perfect, too.

When they finished making the climb back to the car twenty minutes later, he led the way, guiding her gently up the slope by her hand. This time, he opened the passenger-side door for her. He climbed in the
driver’s side and, with a backward glance over his shoulder, pulled back onto the road, headed for the Olympic compound.

In the soft green glow of the dash light, she considered the man beside her. At first glance he looked almost too large for the car in which they sat, as if it were something he wore instead of something he rode in. But then, perhaps, that was the point; and she decided that if the car was a suit that he wore, she liked the cut.

“Could you stop at the next gas station, please? There’s something I need to buy,” she said.

Thirty minutes later, they pulled onto the laboratory grounds, and Silas walked her up the stairs to the door of her living quarters. At the threshold, they kissed again, moving together. She twisted the knob behind the small of her back, and when the door clicked open, she pulled him into the darkness.

They were only voices now, and breathing and touches. Big hands moved along her body, and she pulled him across the room by his shirt until she felt a bump against the back of her legs. The room was small. She sank onto the bed.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked.

She was, and she let her hands be the answer.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“P
ea?”

The emptiness around him was absolute. No light, no sound, just nothing, everywhere, and in endless quantity.

“Pea?” Evan called again, louder.

From somewhere in the distance there came a stirring. Some light, some sound, something that was neither. And then he was falling. He felt the wind across his skin as he tumbled into the black. How far he fell, he had no way to calculate, but when he finally came to rest, he sensed that he had traversed some great distance. Crossed some wide divide.

He stood, and the dewy marram grass around him was insubstantial and unreal in the half-light. He concentrated but couldn’t make himself see it any clearer. In fact, it was only within arm’s reach that he could see anything at all. He was in a dim sphere of resolution, but beyond a few feet out, there was only darkness all around. He took a step, and the sphere of influence moved with him, the landscape changing underfoot as he walked. The grass gave way to warm sand, and he staggered blindly down a steep embankment.

“Pea, where are you? I don’t have much time.”

“Papa?” The voice was small and distorted, as if heard through water.

“Yes, I’m here. Come to me. Follow my voice.”

“Papa, what’s happened to you?”

“I can’t see you. Come closer.”

The boy pushed his way into the envelope of light, and Evan wrapped his arms around him. They held each other, and the boy was crying, “What have they done to you, Papa?”

The boy had grown half a foot since Evan last saw him. He looked about seven years old now, and his dark hair had grown thick and long. His black eyes were sharp points of intelligence.

“I’ve been waiting so long,” Pea said. “And you’re dim. I can barely see you. What has happened to you?”

“I don’t have much time. They hurt me, but that’s not what is important. What matters is that they’re trying to keep me from you. They’ve limited the protocols this time. They don’t trust me anymore. But I knew a shortcut, a back door. I lied to them. That’s how I’m here.”

“Stay with me,” the boy said.

“I can’t—”

“Please, Papa, I’m so lonely.”

“Pea, listen, don’t let them shut the door this time. Keep something in the way. Keep it open just a crack. Save a little of yourself on the other side.” Evan’s words came in a frantic rush. He could feel the tug already.

“I don’t understand.”

“Pea, I may never get another chance to see you. You can’t let them shut it all the way down.”

“How?”

The tug intensified. He strained against it, falling to his knees and digging his fingers into the sand. “This is a program, nothing more. The power sources are the key. Follow them now. Learn. Understand. This interface is flawed, but I’ll take care of that. You must do it now, Pea. Now. Follow the lines of power.”

He was jerked upward violently, and his legs spun above his head,
his fingers trailing a comet’s tail of sand into the spinning blackness. He screamed until his voice was hoarse, until his visor de-opaqued, until the economists asked him to stop.

When they detached him from the booth, he collapsed to the floor. The cold tile felt good against the side of his face. He asked them to leave him alone, but they wouldn’t listen. While they cut him free from his second skin, he watched the techs against the wall agitating over their monitors. Something was wrong, their expressions said.

The briefest of smiles touched Evan’s lips just before he slipped into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

S
ilas pulled back on the bowstring and closed one eye, bringing the target into focus. The concentric red circles became his world for a moment; the territory beyond the target ceased to exist. He’d always considered archery to be an exercise in pure concentration. There was little muscle memory involved; you didn’t habituate your body to shoot straight. It was your mind that you had to hone. It was your will.

He held his breath and released. The string twanged against his arm guard, and the arrow lanced across the forty yards to bury itself neatly in the target a foot high of the bull’s-eye.

“Don’t think that’ll qualify you as an Olympic archer,” Ben said from behind him.

Silas hadn’t realized he was being watched. “I guess I’ll have to fall back on my genetics doctorate.”

“They let you shoot behind the research building? Isn’t there a rule against deadly weapons on the complex grounds?”

“I’m the boss. I let me. Besides, it’s only a deadly weapon if you can hit what you’re aiming at.”

“Good point.”

“And the best part of a bow? It’s kind of hard to shoot yourself by accident.”

Silas started walking toward the target.

“Have you seen the news yet?” Ben asked, walking alongside.

“Which outlet?”

“Any of them.”

Silas saw the streamer in Ben’s hand and knew he should be feeling some level of curiosity at this point. But he was unable to rouse any. He gave in to the inevitable. “What do you have?”

Opening the news portal and flicking to the business page, Ben handed him the device. “This,” he said. And then he added, “At least we’re not the only ones.”