The Footprints of God (10 page)

She shook her head. "You're saying you could download the sum of human knowledge into this computer— into me—all in a few hours?"

"In theory, yes."

"David, you're talking about something like . . . like a god, almost."

"Not almost. Because that computer model would not only be Rachel Weiss. It would be Rachel Weiss
forever.
It could be backed up and stored, or downloaded into another Trinity computer. It would never have to die."

She pursed her lips to speak, but no words emerged.

"Are you starting to believe me now?"

"What's
your
job at Trinity?"

"I was appointed by the president to evaluate any ethical dilemmas that might arise. During the Manhattan Project, some scientists turned against the atomic bomb for moral reasons, and they had no real voice. The president wanted to minimize the public controversy that was bound to come if Trinity became a reality. He knew my brother in college, and he'd read my book on medical ethics—or watched the
NOVA
series based on it, more likely. That's what made him pick me for the project. It's really that simple."

Rachel looked off into the dark trees. "This sounds anything but simple. In fact, it sounds crazy." She looked back at me, her eyes glinting. "You said Trinity got halfway to success in nineteen months. What's holding up the second half?"

"Building a computer powerful enough to hold a complete neuromodel in its circuitry. The human brain is fairly slow in terms of speed, but it's massively parallel. It contains over a hundred trillion possible connections, all capable of simultaneous calculation, and that's just for processing. It also holds the equivalent of twelve hundred terabytes of computer memory."

She shrugged. "That means nothing to me."

"Six million years of
The Wall Street Journal."

Her mouth fell open.

"When Trinity began, no computer on the planet had that kind of capacity. The Internet as a whole does, but it's far too dispersed and unreliable to be controllable."

"And now?”

"IBM is building a computer called Blue Gene that will rival the processing power of the brain, but it'll still be unable to do things any five-year-old child can."

"And Trinity is different?"

"You could say that. Blue Gene will fill a fifty-by-fifty-foot room and need three hundred tons of air-conditioning just to function. Trinity will be about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. And Godin thinks that's still too big. He's always saying that the human brain weighs three pounds and uses only ten watts of electricity. He believes the solutions to great problems must be beautiful. Elegant."

Rachel gazed up the incline of stone seats, trying to grasp a future that was crashing headlong into the present. "How close is Trinity to becoming a reality?"

I thought of the black mass of carbon and crystal growing almost like a life-form in the basement lab of the Trinity building. "There's a prototype sitting in our lab right now with one hundred and twenty trillion connections and practically unlimited memory."

"Does it
work?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because even if you succeed in loading a neuromodel into the computer, how do you talk to it? The human brain interacts with the world through a biological body with five senses. Imagine your brain downloaded into a box. It's deaf, dumb, blind, and paralyzed. A quivering mass of fear. And thank God for it. Because once a machine like that
can
talk—and listen and act—there's no telling what it might do.''

Rachel looked up at me with interest. "What could it do?"

"Do you remember HAL from
2001: A Space
Odyssey?"

"Sure. The most reliable computer ever made. Urbana, Illinois, right?"

I chuckled softly. "He was until he murdered the crew of his spaceship. Well, imagine what HAL could do if he were connected to the Internet."

"Tell me."

"One Trinity computer connected to a phone line could hold the industrialized world hostage. It could disrupt power grids, rail lines, air traffic control, missile systems, NORAD, Wall Street. It could demand whatever it wanted."

She shook her head in confusion. "But what would it
want?"

"What does any intelligent entity want? Especially one that's essentially human?"

"Power?"

"Exactly." I jumped as my cell phone rang. The ID said "Andrew Fielding." I pressed SEND. "Lu Li? Has something happened?"

"Nothing happen," Lu Li replied in a shaky voice. "I worry about Maya. I think I hear noises outside. You bring her back, Dr. David."

The bichon stopped sniffing the ground, looked up at me, and cocked its head as though listening.

"We're coming. Right now."

"Is she all right?" Rachel asked as I ended the call.

"Yes. She wants us to come back, but we're going to wait a bit."

"Why?"

"Because the NSA heard that call. If they have people in the woods, they'll probably move now. And we'll hear them."

Rachel glanced anxiously at the wall that separated us from the trees. "Do you really think there's someone out there?"

"That's not what scares you," I said. "What scares you is that now
you
think there might be."

She slid off the stage and looked at the door we'd passed through. It was easy to imagine someone waiting behind it.

"You said Fielding was murdered because you and he resisted the project. How exactly did you resist it?"

"We didn't just resist it. We stopped it cold. Suspended it, anyway. Fielding was the driving force, but it took me interceding with the president to accomplish it. It was like trying to stop the work on the atomic bomb during World War Two."

"Why did you want to stop it?"

"I'm not completely sure about Fielding's reasons. I think he kept a lot from me—to protect me. I mean. But my reasons were simple.

"Six months ago, we tested the Super-MRI machine. We used animals first, and there were no problems. The first humans to be scanned were the six of us in the inner circle. Within a week, we all developed strange neurological symptoms. Side effects from exposure to the machine. Fielding believed—"

"MRI doesn't cause side effects," Rachel broke in.

"Not the machines you use. But the magnetic fields generated by the Trinity MRI are exponentially more intense than those in present-day machines. They use superconducting materials that allow massive pulses—"

Maya was growling deep in her throat and looking up the slope of stone seats. I hadn't heard anything in the woods, but maybe the dog had. I put the tape recorder in my pocket, picked up Maya, then drew my gun and pulled Rachel through the stage door.

Darkness enveloped us.

"Stay right behind me," I said, ducking under a branch.

"Did you hear something?"

"No."

If I hadn't had Rachel with me, I would have used stealth to safely reach the house. But speed was the only option now. I plowed through the underbrush, warning Rachel whenever I hit branches likely to whip back into her face. She cried out twice and stumbled once, but she got back up and somehow managed to stay on my heels. As we neared the house, I saw the yellow square of Fielding's patio doors. Lu Li stood silhouetted inside them, a perfect target. The image made me shiver.

When she slid open the door, I pulled her deep into the room. Maya barked wildly until Lu Li bent and held out her arms. The dog leapt into them as Rachel closed the glass door.

"Call a taxi," I whispered over my shoulder.

Rachel went to the phone.

Lu Li's eyes were wet. I touched her elbow, and the dog snapped at me. "I wish I could stay the night with you," I said quietly, "but that would look more suspicious than my going home. I'm going to go to work tomorrow and try to get some answers, so I want everything to look as normal as possible. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"I'll take Andrew's box of toys with me. I don't want anyone to find it here. Is that all right?"

Lu Li nodded, stroking the bichon as lovingly as she would a child.

"I'm going to pull into the garage when I leave, so no one sees me take the box. If anyone asks you what I was doing here, tell them it was a sympathy visit. If they somehow overheard some of our conversation, just act like what you are. A distraught widow."

"What means distraught?"

"Grief-stricken. Grieving."

She smiled bravely. "I no need to act this."

I laid my hands on her shoulders and squeezed, then spoke almost inaudibly. "In the FedEx letter Andy sent me, there was some white powder. Almost like sand. It's in those plastic bags on the couch. Do you know anything about that?"

Lu Li's gaze went to the couch, and her face wrinkled in confusion. "No. Nothing."

"Did you drop it off at the FedEx box?"

"Yes. How you know?"

"It doesn't matter." I knew Lu Li had dropped off the envelope because I had been inside Fielding's head during my last dream. I felt a sudden compulsion to get out of the house. "Rachel? The taxi?"

"Any minute," she said from behind me.

"I want you to go into the garage," I told Lu Li. "When you hear me tap the horn, open the door for me. After I pull in, close the door."

"Okay." She left the room without a word.

I picked up the Ziplocs, then led Rachel to the darkened living room, where wide windows looked onto the street. I dropped the Ziplocs on a chair, then sat on a sofa opposite the window to wait for the cab.

"Is the taxi for me?" she whispered, sitting beside me.

"Yes."

"But my car's parked at your house."

"You don't want to go back to my house. You can get it in the morning if you want to. I'd rather you take a taxi to work."

"Did I hear you tell Lu Li you're going back to work tomorrow?"

"If I don't hear from the president tonight, I am."

"Why?
If they killed Fielding, why won't they kill you, too?"

Her question gave me a perverse satisfaction. "It sounds like you're buying into my delusion."

Her lips tightened, and I could see that she was genuinely afraid.

"Look, if they really wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already. And if they decide to kill me before tomorrow, nothing will stop them. But I think they're too worried about how the president would react to try that. If I'm alive tomorrow morning, it's all right for me to go in."

Rachel sighed and rubbed her temples with her fingers.

"I don't know what's going to happen," I whispered. "If anyone questions you, tell as much truth as you can. You came to my house because I missed three sessions. I got a call from the wife of a friend who died today. She has no family here, so you offered to help console her. We calmed her down and walked her dog. That's all you know."

She studied my face in the dim light. "This isn't what I expected."

"I know. You really thought I was crazy."

She bit her lip, the gesture almost girlish. "I suppose I did. Part of me hoped I was wrong. But now I'm frightened. I know about psychiatric problems. This is something else."

I pulled her close and spoke into her ear. "I want you to forget it all. Unless something happens to me. Then you remember. Remember and scream to high heaven." I pulled back and looked into her eyes. "I won't be coming back to your office."

She stared at me as though I'd said, "We're never going to see each other again," which deep down was what I felt.

"David—"

"Here's your taxi." I stood as headlights rolled to a stop in front of the house, looking close to make sure there was a taxi light on the roof.

She was shaking her head, almost helplessly.

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm going to be fine. You've helped a lot."

"I didn't do a damned thing for you."

I pulled her out of sight of the window, then took the recorder from my pocket, removed the tape, and put it in her hand. "If you want to help, here's your chance." I started to send her on, then hesitated. "There is one more thing you could do."

"Tell me."

I pointed to the Ziploc bags on the chair. "Is there someone at Duke who could safely test that powder for infectious agents and poisons?"

"Of course. There are guys over there who live for that kind of thing."

There was a slipcover on one of the sofa pillows. I took it off the pillow, then put the Ziplocs inside it and handed it to her. "Be very careful with those."

"You're preaching to the choir."

I squeezed her arm. "Thank you. Now, go."

She didn't go. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me gently on the lips. "Be careful. Please, please be careful."

As I stared, Rachel slid the slipcover under her blouse, then walked to the foyer. I heard the front door close softly. Through the front window I watched her get into the taxi. The cab pulled into Lu Li's driveway, then backed out and rolled up Gimghoul Street.

I went out to my car, pulled up to Fielding's garage door, and tapped my horn. Lu Li opened the door from inside, then closed it behind me.

She pulled open my passenger door and set her husband's cardboard box on the front seat. I reached across it and gripped her wrist, my eyes boring into hers.

"Tell me the truth, Lu Li. Do you know what they're trying to build at Trinity?"

After several seconds of eye contact, she nodded once.

"Don't ever tell anyone that," I warned.
"Never."

"Me Chinese, David. Know what can happen."

For an instant I flashed back to her standing silhouetted in the patio doors, a target awaiting an assassin.

"Come with me," I said suddenly. "Right now. Just get in with your dog and we'll go. I'll keep you safe."

A sad smile touched her lips. "You good man. Like Andrew. Don't worry. I already make my own arrangements."

Arrangements?
I couldn't imagine what these might be. I didn't think she knew anyone in the States. "What are they?"

She shook her head. "Better you don't know. Yes? I be okay."

For some reason, I believed her. The revelation that Lu Li had not been rendered helpless by her grief made me ask one more question.