Soulminder (16 page)

The minutes ticked slowly by, and at last they were ready. “All right,” the doctor said, reaching for the panel. “Here goes.” He touched the switch—

Abruptly, Gerakaris body gave a violent twitch. Sommer felt his heart jump in sympathetic response. “Pauley!” he called, tension putting snap into his voice. “Are you there?”

“Mother of God,” Gerakaris gasped. “I—oh, God in heaven, I can’t see. Where—where am I?”

“You’re in the Soulminder office in Washington, D.C.,” Sands told him. “How do you feel?”

“I’m burning up,” the other managed. His body shivered violently. “I can’t see—everything’s just a blur. Have I gone blind?”

“Don’t worry about it,” the doctor advised, his eyes on his instruments. “This sometimes happens, and it’s always temporary.”

Off hand, Sommer couldn’t remember such a side effect ever happening before. But the assurances seemed to help, and Gerakaris calmed down a little.

No. Not Gerakaris.

Pauley.

An icy shiver ran up Sommer’s back. It had worked. It really had worked. A man’s soul had been transferred into another man’s body …

He turned to find Royce gazing rigidly at the man on the table. “Royce?” he prompted quietly.

Royce threw him a sharp look, took a careful breath. “Mr. Pauley,” he said, the name coming out with noticeable difficulty. “Are you—I mean, you
are
Jonathan Pauley?”

“Yes,” the other said. “Why do you … ? I feel strange, Doctor. Is this how it’s supposed to feel?”

“What happened to you, Mr. Pauley?” Royce put in before the doctor could reply. “You disappeared last Friday morning. What happened to you?”

Gerakaris’s head turned, eyes squinting in Royce’s direction. “They came to my house—right into my house—and pulled me out of bed. I don’t know why—they never told me. Can I have something to drink?”

Sands gestured, and one of the techs hurried off toward the prep room. “What did they do to you, Mr. Pauley?” she asked.

“Uh … ” Pauley frowned in thought. “I really don’t know. They put something over my mouth. When I woke up I was in the back of a van.” He shook his head, blinking his eyes as if to clear them. “But they kept giving me stuff, and I kept falling asleep. But then—”

The tech returned with a paper cup of water. The doctor got a hand under Pauley’s head, raising it enough to let him take a few sips. “Go on,” Royce prompted.

Pauley’s eyes suddenly looked haunted. “There was a man,” he whispered. “An old man. Very—” He swallowed. “He came up and looked at me. Asked me some questions.”

“What sort of questions?” Royce asked, keying his tablet.

“He asked … whether I had any health problems,” Pauley said, his voice vaguely confused. “It didn’t make any sense.”

“Is this the man?” Royce asked, stepping close to Pauley and holding up the tablet.

Pauley squinted. “Yes. Oh, Mother of God, yes.” His hand came up, crossed himself shakily. Forehead, heart, right chest, left chest. “He was … evil. I could feel it. He said … he said I would do just fine. And then they took me back to the van and drove me around—”

Abruptly, Gerakaris’s face twisted with emotion. “And then they—
they killed me
!”

The words seemed to ring in the room. Pauley groped for the doctor’s arm, found it and gripped it tightly. “Soulminder,” he breathed. “It’s just like purgatory. You’re dead, but you can’t get into heaven.”

The doctor looked at Sommer. “Dr. Sommer?”

Sommer glanced at Royce, got a confirming nod. “Mr. Pauley,” he said, trying desperately to find the right way to say this, “I’m afraid we’re going to have to put you back into Soulminder for a little while. There’s—” He looked at Sands helplessly.

“There’s a problem with your body,” she said. “A medical problem. Nothing serious—probably why you’re feeling so strange. Okay? You’ll be out again soon, I promise.”

Pauley’s face stiffened. “You’re going to kill me again?” Again, the quick up-down, right-left swipe of hand across chest. “Oh, please. Please, Doctor—”

“I’m afraid it’s necessary,” the doctor said firmly. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right.” He picked up the hypo, set it against the arm—

And Pauley raised his hand in front of his eyes, eyes that were suddenly filled with confusion and horror. “My
hand
—” he gasped.

Sommer braced himself for the reaction.

A reaction that never came. Without a sound, Pauley’s eyes closed, the hand fell back onto the table.

And for the second time in ten minutes, the instruments registered death.

The doctor reached for a second neuropreservative hypo, injected Pauley’s body with it as the hum of the life-support equipment started up again. “It’ll be another couple of minutes, Dr. Sommer.”

Sommer nodded and took a shuddering breath, feeling his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to him as he did so. It had worked. It had actually worked.

And he’d been right. Cavanaugh had indeed stolen another man’s body.

The thought made Sommer’s stomach want to be sick.

A subtle breeze brushed over his skin as Royce moved up beside him. “Congratulations, Dr. Sommer,” he said quietly, a sour tinge to his voice. “You and Soulminder have just created a brand-new crime. Body theft.”

“I hope you’re not going to try and blame
us
for this perversion of Soulminder’s capabilities,” Sands growled.

“Why not?” Royce countered. “It’s your machine, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” Sommer verbally stepped between them. “The question is how we’re going to keep it from happening again.”

“Dr. Sommer?” the physician at the table spoke up. “We’re ready to transfer Gerakaris back.”

“Go ahead,” Sommer told him, turning back to Royce. “It seems to me that what we’re talking about is a stronger security arrangement for both the initial Mullner tracings and the transfer rooms themselves. We’ll get Frank Everly looking into what would be appropr—”

“Adrian!” Sands cut him off.

He spun back to the table. One look at the instruments was all he needed. “What is it?” he snapped, taking a long stride to Sands’s side.

“It’s not taking,” the doctor said tightly, hands hovering uncertainly over the control board. “Gerakaris’s soul isn’t remelding with his body.”

Sands swore under her breath, stepping around the table and elbowing the doctor aside. “Can you tell what’s causing it?” Sommer asked her.

She shook her head. “This has never happened before,” she gritted out.

“Could Pauley have done something to the brain chemistry or Mullner topography while he was there?” Sommer suggested.

The muscles in Sands’s cheeks tightened visibly. “I hope to hell that’s not it. Because if it is … ”

She left the sentence unfinished. Consciously unclenching his own teeth, Sommer shifted his eyes to the bank of readouts. “Let him go,” he said quietly.

Peripherally, he felt all eyes turn to him. “We’ve got no choice,” he said into the silence. “All we’re doing is building up to massive physical trauma in the brain. We’ll put the body on full life-support, let it rest a while, then try again.”

Sands took a deep breath. “All right,” she said, reluctantly but clearly with no better option in mind. “Here goes.”

The readout lights changed, turning from green to amber to red … and the body again died.

“Neuropreservatives,” Sands ordered. The doctor moved to comply, and Sands stepped away from the table to the computer terminal off to the side. Sommer held his breath … “The trap caught him,” she confirmed, straightening up. “He’s back in Soulminder.”

Sommer nodded, turning back to find Royce’s eyes on Gerakaris’s motionless form. The eyes of a man seeing
accessory to murder
on his record. “Don’t worry, it’ll work,” he assured the agent, trying hard to sound confident.

With a visible effort, Royce broke his gaze away from the body. “I hope so, Doctor,” he said, looking Sommer square in the eye. “Because if it doesn’t—if you can’t put a soul back into a body after someone else has been there—then finding Cavanaugh won’t buy us anything but the chance to hang another murder on him. Pauley will still be dead, and he’ll stay that way.”

Sommer felt his stomach tighten. “I know.”

The Soulminder file on Jonathan Pauley was slender, consisting of nothing more than the usual information taken from those who were willing to pay large sums of money for the security of Soulminder’s safety net. Sommer had gone over both the file and Pauley’s newspaper article three times and was midway through a fourth reading when the call finally came.

Sands was ready to try the Gerakaris transfer again.

He arrived downstairs to find the same team assembled as before, along with Tom Dumata and a handful of Soulminder’s other top people. “Adrian,” Sands nodded to him as he strode into the room. “Anything new come up on the Mullner analysis?”

Sommer shook his head. “The computer’s still checking over the third-order effects, but there was nothing on first or second. I think our original analysis was valid, that there were no inherent incompatibilities between Pauley and Gerakaris.”

Sands grunted satisfaction. “Good. That gives that much more weight to the physiological analysis.”

“The neuropreservatives?”

She nodded. “It’s looking more and more like that’s the culprit. The simulations still go crazy when we try putting two doses of the stuff in that closely together, even when the usual flushing procedures are followed.”

Sommer felt his throat tighten. “Possibly just one more of the lovely psychological side-effects neuropreservatives create.”

“Yeah,” Sands grunted. “Instead of completing the transfer into that emotional snake pit, the soul simply refuses to reconnect.”

“Or can’t do so even if it wants to,” Dumata put in from the readout panel. “I think we’re ready, Dr. Sands.”

Sands looked at Sommer, seemed to brace herself. “Let’s do it.”

It was, for Sommer, a distinct and welcome anticlimax. On the table Gerakaris’s body jerked and gasped … and then the Soulminder indicators went out, and he was back.

“Mr. Gerakaris?” Sommer asked as the other blinked his eyes against the overhead lights. “How do you feel?”

“O—okay,” Gerakaris grunted, his voice sounding strained. “That was—God above, that was strange. How long was I in there?”

“Longer than we originally planned,” Sands said soothingly. “But it worked out all right.”

Gerakaris squinted at her, suddenly tense. “There was a problem?” he asked, his hand tracing a surreptitious up-down, right-left across his chest.

And Sommer found himself staring at that hand. Staring at the imaginary cross Gerakaris had just traced across his chest.

Staring at the mental image of that same hand, and that same motion, an hour earlier …

Someone was calling his name. “I’m sorry,” he said, bringing his thoughts back with an effort and focusing on Sands. “What did you say?”

Sands was frowning at him. “I asked if you wanted to ask any questions before we took him to the examination room,” she repeated.

The question spinning through Sommer’s mind almost came out … but this wasn’t the time or the place to bring it up. Even if Gerakaris had any chance of answering it.

But perhaps there was someone who could. “No,” he told Sands. “There’ll be time enough to talk about the experience after we’re sure he’s all right. Go ahead and start the exam. I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Sands’s frown deepened, and he could tell she very much wanted to ask him what was bothering him. But she too knew better than to press the point in front of Gerakaris. “All right,” she said, striving to keep her voice casual. “Give me a hand here, Doctor?”

Sommer left, breaking into a jog as soon as he was out of the room. Back in his office, he read one last time—very carefully—through both Pauley’s Soulminder file and the article. Then, just to be sure, he called up the videotape of Pauley speaking through Gerakaris’s body.

There was no mistake.

He sat silently for several minutes, thinking it through. Then he reached for the phone and punched a number.

A neutral voice answered on the third ring. “FBI.”

“This is Dr. Adrian Sommer at Soulminder,” Sommer identified himself. “I’d like to talk to Special Agent Royce. Tell him it’s important.”

“One minute.”

The phone went blank, and Sommer had just enough time to pick up the Pauley article again before Royce came on. “This is Royce.” The agent sounded tired.

“We just got Gerakaris out of Soulminder,” Sommer told him. “We’re checking him over to be on the safe side, but it looks like the transfer was completely successful.”

“Yeah, your man Dumata just called to tell me that,” Royce grunted. “Congratulations, and I’ll tell you right now that you were damn lucky.”

“No argument,” Sommer agreed soberly. “How’s the search for Cavanaugh going?”

He could almost hear Royce shrug. “Way too early to tell. We’ve sent Pauley’s photo to the Seattle authorities, but we can’t make too much fuss or we’re likely to spook him.”

“I understand.” Unconsciously, Sommer braced himself. “If I may offer a slightly long-shot suggestion … I think there’s a place—or, rather, a group of places—that might be worth staking out.”

He explained where. And then, of course, he had to explain why.

The two men were waiting by the door as he filed out with the others. Young men, Cavanaugh saw, with the look of FBI agents stamped all over their faces.

For a brief moment he considered trying to flee. But the thought was pure reflex, without any real force of will behind it. Their eyes were locked on him, now; they’d identified him, and there was no point in making a fuss.

The game was over, and he’d lost.

The young men moved forward together as he approached, coming to stand directly in front of him. “Mario Cavanaugh?” the elder of the two asked quietly.

Again, there was nothing to be gained by lying. “Yes.”

“FBI,” the other said, holding his ID cupped in his hand. “Will you come with us, please?”

“Of course.” Cavanaugh glanced around at the others milling about. But if any of them had overheard the brief conversation they made no sign of it. “Thank you for not—for doing this quietly.”