Pygmalion Unbound (12 page)

“And no one’s poked around in this attic in four hundred years?”

Kaplan sighed. “They always hated it when I asked questions like that in Hebrew School.”

“Funny. They always hated the questions I asked in Catholic School,” Kelly said. Like if God was omnipotent, how come he didn’t know what Adam and Eve were planning to do with the Apple? If he did, he let it happen, deliberate banning his creations from Eden, which meant God was one vengeful, spiteful — at that point the nuns with pursed lips always cut her off.

“I think you may be well rid of Crane and American Cybernetics. This project has scandal and danger written all over it. Come back to Madison, Alannah. You’re welcome here. You belong here.”

“What about my being placed on leave? Won’t the department see that as a black mark? There’s bound to be questions.”

“No there won’t. I’ll talk with Levinson.” Levinson was her department head. “I’ll say there were ethical concerns on your part, which caused a mutual separation of ways.”

“Not quite the truth,” Kelly said.

“But not quite a lie either, right?”

“I guess not. I owe you so much. You’re a real
mensch
, Fred.”

“Think nothing of it. Get on the next flight home. Come back where you belong, even if you’re bored here.” They bid each other good-bye. She packed the few things she had brought into a large bag, took the paperbacks she’d bought used back to the same bookstore and got some pocket change for them.

Which still left her with plenty of dead time. She drove to the public library, logged onto one of the computers there — American Cybernetics had rented the house, so it stood to reason that they had put some kind of tracer on the internet access before she moved in, or had kept a spare set of keys that would allow them inside while she was at work. No doubt they could find her electronic trail from her iPad and track it. She booked a red-eye flight to Madison leaving the next morning.

Seated at a terminal between a mouth-breathing high schooler doing research for a paper on Mary Shelley and an odiferous septuagenarian no doubt seeking digital confirmation of some conspiracy theory, she began typing in search terms, beginning with Desmond Crane.

It was difficult for a twenty-first century citizen to go through life without leaving some sort of digital footprint. Generally speaking, Kelly found, the better-educated and more accomplished a person was, the more Ethernet residue they spread. Conversely, the poorer classes tended to tread lightly or not at all across the ether, unless they had criminal convictions.

Two hours later, the high schooler had slunk out with a slouchy soft emo girlfriend, the peripatetic mumbling of the street prophet had ended as he shambled away. Kelly sat with a stack of laser-printed documents which she had also downloaded into her iPad, and dozens of questions whirling about in her head.

The knock on the door was soft, insistent, worming its way into Kelly’s unconscious, finally awaking her. There were several dark furry shapes snuggled at her feet. She lifted Max, the mama cat, off her legs and threw the covers back. The kittens mewled in protest. Naked, Kelly rose from the bed and put on a large man’s oxford shirt for cover, fumbled for her glasses and tiptoed to the door, peered through the peephole.

Maria.

Panicked, Kelly opened the door. “What are you doing here?” she whispered. She took Maria by the hand, dragged her inside. The girl was soaking wet.

The small bungalow that Crane had rented for her remained largely unfurnished; a small couch and two chairs in the living room, and a bedroom set in the bedroom were all she had. It looked more like a motel room than living quarters. Army brats learned to travel light and do with little at an early age.

“I left my room,” she said simply. Ignoring the fact that she had to defeat the security system and make her way unobserved through the AC campus, and the several miles into town.

“Obviously,” Kelly said, putting her hands on Maria’s shoulders; the clothes were soaked through. “How? And why?”

“I was disabled the security system,” Maria said, pointing to her temple; she’d been able to jack into the system. “And I have a map of the area programmed into my memory.”

“Why?”

“I can’t let this experiment continue.”

“Change out of those wet clothes,” Kelly said.
Do androids catch colds?
Kelly wondered idly. She led Maria into the bathroom, told her to strip. She admired Maria’s lithe, toned body, felt a momentary ache of desire, and tore herself away, went into the bedroom to search for clothes. She found a pair of jeans and a blouse, handed them to Maria. The clothes fit.

“When did you leave the facility?”

“One hour seven minutes twelve seconds ago.” The facility was thirteen miles away, a half-marathon length. Maria had done close to world record time, even with a number of obstacles in her way.

“Why?”

“I cannot permit Doctor Crane to continue this experiment. It’s clear now. My purpose is to destroy.”

“Not — no,” she tried to talk Maria down, trying to sound convincing. “There are plenty of things you can do, Maria. Like working as a nurse or aide, helping others.”

“They won’t let that happen,” Maria said, shaking her head and sending little droplets of water. “I’m going to do jobs that humans don’t want. Jobs that would involve killing for its own sake, disguised as ‘national security.’ Or needless suffering by innocent people. That’s wrong. You told me so.”

“I — that could be — ”

Maria took her hand and put it to Kelly’s face. “I know it’s true, Alannah. It’s my fate.” She paused, and Kelly could see her face distraught. “I’m not a person to them. I’m a thing.”

“You’re a person to me, Maria.”

Maria smiled. “Thank you, Alannah. You’ve been a mother to me, the one I never could have.” Kelly felt her eyes tear up.

“And you’re escaping?”

“I’m taking charge of my destiny. I can’t stay here.”

“Then there’s something you need to know, Maria,” Kelly said, clasping her shoulders with her hands. “It’s about who you were before. Where all those memories came from.”

“I don’t understand, Alannah.”

“You’re not Maria,” Kelly said slowly. “Your name was Roni. Ronette Maria McVicker.”

Maria slumped briefly, and Kelly caught her, held her close, felt her warmth through the cotton oxford. “It’s a lot to take in, I know. Sit down,” and she gently guided Maria to the couch. Kelly turned towards the bedroom. “Let me get — ”

Maria bounded after her, placed a hand on Kelly’s neck and applied pressure just like on an old video series. Kelly gasped, and then slumped. Maria caught her, and eased Kelly to the floor. She knelt over Kelly, kissed her on the lips. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t let you get hurt.” She rummaged through Kelly’s purse, found cash and electronic cards and keys, stuffed them into a light jacket from the bedroom closet, and left.

16

Crane stood looking at the empty room, surrounded by four large black-clad security guards. “How does she just walk out of here?” he asked the captain, a large black man with a shaved head named Carter.

“It looks like she hacked into the computer controls,” the captain said.

“How?”

“This?” one of the guards, a mountain with a few millimeters of blond hair and a narrow face. He turned around one of the monitors that measured her REM, brain activity while in standby. The USB cables were gone. “Must’ve jacked in, overrode all the security codes.”

“And how does it go unnoticed for three hours?”

“She disabled sensors, put the room monitors on a loop. She was on standby, didn’t move. No one noticed.”

“Where is she?”

“Don’t know. There’s no tracking device,” the guard captain said.

That’s my next upgrade
, Crane thought. “Notify law enforcement, give them a description, photo, whatever they need.”

“Any other orders? Armed and dangerous?” Carter seemed too anxious.

“No. Not yet.”

“Any idea where she’d be headed?”

“Of course not,” Crane said. “It’s not like she has any family.”

Her shoulder throbbed when she came to a few hours later. Maria was gone. So was several hundred in cash, a credit card, and the rental Ford. In the parking lot, she found a small black box, ripped from under the seat, which held the GPS and tracking chips.

The documents printed off from the library computer had been rifled through and neatly replaced.

It took an effort to get through to Crane, but persistence and a few small lies finally paid off, and Kelly was connected with Desmond Crane late that morning. An hour later, she was in his office, having taken a cab to the campus.

“She’s gone,” Crane told her without preamble. “Last night, she compromised all the security systems and walked away from the facility. She didn’t come to see you, did she?”

“No,” Kelly said. She hadn’t figured out how to explain the theft of the rental yet. AC was going to be unhappy when they got stuck for the bill, and saw through the lie, but that was tomorrow’s problem.

“We’ve got bulletins out to local law enforcement. Maria is an employee suspected of software piracy.”

“Have they been warned about her abilities?”

“They have. But they’ve also been instructed to take her alive.”

Good luck with that
, Kelly thought. Too damned many cowboys out here still, a hundred years after the Wild West went away. She decided to play her next card, and reached for the iPad she’d downloaded her research into.

“Who’s Ronnette McVicker?” Kelly asked, retrieving the iPad from her purse, skipping any pleasantries.

Crane looked like he’d been gutshot. “I…no one — ” and his voice trailed off, at a loss for words.

Kelly had keyed more commands into the iPad, and an old newsfeed came up, text with a picture. Crane groaned as he saw the picture, heart-shaped face, liquid almond eyes and a flow of dark curly hair, SOCIAL WORKER MURDERED said the headline above.

“Is this her?” She moved closer to Crane. “Where did you get those tissue samples for Maria? It was supposed to be donated tissue. But it wasn’t, was it? Who was she, Des?”

Crane suddenly became placid, having been found out. “I think you already know the answer to that one, Doctor.”

“You knew her. You were involved with her. She died — you didn’t — ”

“No,” Crane shot back vehemently. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, calmed himself, caught his hand shaking. “We were involved. Not engaged, but that was coming. She was murdered by some violent ex-con who was on probation for a rape or something, apparently had his kids taken away and Roni was the social worker on that case, he attacked her in her home, tried to rape her but killed her in the process, got spooked and ran. Left a DNA sample at the scene, and it was pretty easy to run it against the law enforcement database. Last I heard he’s on death row in Illinois. For fifteen years, so his appeals might be done by now.”

Kelly sat down, suddenly deflated by Crane’s display of humanity. “So you took samples from her. For this?”

“I was a doctor, remember. It wasn’t hard to walk into the hospital morgue, talk to the coroner, take the samples, and find a cryostorage facility. Just another murder, one of five hundred, no one noticed or cared.