The Games (5 page)

“I don’t see how they could be. Flight is probably the single most difficult form of locomotion from a design standpoint, and this thing certainly doesn’t look like it was built along avian lines. The bones are huge, strong.”

“But why even try? There isn’t really room to fly in the arena.” Baskov bent closer. “And those big ears are a liability. The eyes, too.”

“Now you understand my frustration with your chosen designer. We need to talk to him.”

Baskov’s expression faded from wonder to irritation. “Chandler isn’t as easy to reach as he used to be.”

“Where is he?”

“Where isn’t the problem. He just isn’t easy to reach anymore.”

A
FTER WALKING
Baskov back to the lobby, Silas returned to the nursery and sent Keith home for the night. He stood alone at the side of the crib, silently watching the baby breathe. It
was
a baby. Big as a newborn calf but just as underdeveloped and fragile as any human newborn. He extended a hand through the bars and stroked the infant’s back. It lay on its tummy, legs drawn up, bottom stuck in the air.

It’s beautiful
.

But then, almost all life is beautiful at this stage. Pure innocence combined with complete selfishness. Its only function was to take from those around it so that it could live and grow, while remaining completely unaware of the effort involved in meeting its needs.

Silas closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of the creature. He felt himself relax a little. His sister hinted once that she thought he’d become a geneticist to create something that was a part of him. She was wrong. That was why people have children.

He wanted to create something better than himself. Better than any man could be. Something a little closer to perfect. But he had always failed. His creations were monsters compared to this. They were just
animal Frankensteins that acted out impulses society wouldn’t allow men to indulge in.

But he’d come close once. Teddy.
Ursus theodorus
had been loving, gentle, and even intelligent, after a fashion. That last quality had cost the first prototype its life. It had been
too
intelligent. Some people got nervous. The board of directors had had its say, and late one evening, he’d been forced to place the little creature on a table and inject it with enough animal tranquilizer to stop its breathing. He’d stood back with ice in his gut while his creation died.

The next series of Teddys were dumber and better suited the board, but it wasn’t the same for Silas. He’d lost his stomach for pet manufacture. When the position at the Olympic Commission became available, he’d jumped at it. If he was going to watch his successes die, he would know to expect it from the outset. No more surprises.

But this was a surprise.

But not my surprise. Not my baby this time
.

Chandler was deranged. There was no doubting that. And this was his creation. Silas fought back a surge of begrudging admiration for the man. In all Silas’s years as a geneticist, he’d never even come close to developing a creature like the one that lay before him now.

He shoved the feelings to the side, letting the anger take its place. Chandler knew nothing about genetics. He knew nothing about life. All he knew was computers. And his computer had been the true creator, after all.

This perfect little life form that lay snoring on the other side of the bars had been created by an organized composite of wires, chips, and screens. Somehow, all this beauty, all this perfection, had come from a machine.

CHAPTER TWO

E
van Chandler leaned his significant mass against the wall near the window, picking sores into his face with absentminded fingers. The fluorescent lights hummed softly in the background, providing a subtle soundtrack to the visions in his head. His eyes focused inward on some distant dimly lit horizon. For Evan, that horizon had been growing ever darker over the last several months.

A sudden clap of thunder brought his consciousness swimming to the surface like some strange, stunted leviathan. With an expression approaching surprise, he looked out into the desolation of the early evening. Rain dribbled its way down the glass. God, he hated storms.

He shifted off the wall and trudged over to his desk, where he eased his weight onto a loudly wailing swivel chair. His desk was a sprawling mountain range of papers, folders, and empty foam food containers. He considered the room before him. Stacks of computer digilogs stood at ease like drowsy sentinels against one wall. Several dead brown plants drooped from their pots in various stages of decomposition. He cast his muddied hazel eyes around the chaos, looking for his laptop amid the clutter. Eventually, he gave up. It would be easier to get another than to sift through the various geological layers of refuse he had accumulated.

He knew there was something he was supposed to do today, someone he was supposed to see, but he couldn’t quite remember. Looking
around the room, he experienced a painful moment of lucidity, saw vividly where he was going, what he was slipping into. It scared him, but the feeling faded. It always did.

A knock on the door startled him, and his fat rolls shimmied as he jerked his chin up from his chest. He’d faded out again. Lost time. Outside the window he saw the storm had passed.
Good
. “What do you want?” he called.

A young woman opened the door and leaned her head through. He recognized her face, though he couldn’t quite place her name. Sarah, or Susan, or something like that. Was it his secretary? Did he even have a secretary anymore? He couldn’t remember.

“It’s getting late, Dr. Chandler,” the woman said. “The rest of the team and I are going to call it a day, I think.”

Team?
“Okay.”

She shut the door softly. Curious, he got to his feet and shuffled over to where she had been standing. He swung the door wide and stepped out into the construction chamber. A dozen people dressed in tech cleans were gathering up their equipment. In the center of the room stood a huge monolithic plug booth, half finished. The electronics gleamed under the spotlights. He remembered now. Oh, yes, he remembered.

He picked his way slowly between the piles of electronic equipment and stepped up to the booth. He ran his palm across the smooth surface of the faceplate. It was cool to the touch, smooth and soothing. He felt better. The riptide in his head ebbed ever so slightly.

“How much longer?” he asked the woman as she closed the lid on her pack.

“Should be finished in two or three days.”

He didn’t bother to respond. His knee creaked audibly under his weight as he bent to inspect the optronic connections leading from the mainframe. He twisled the cable between his fingers, tugging the connection slightly. Nice and tight. You couldn’t be too careful, after all. This was his conduit. His church. This booth would help him talk to God.

E
VAN WAS
into the third bite of his burger when he heard the knock on his office door. Anger surged. They knew he wasn’t to be disturbed during lunch. A moment later, just as he brought the burger back up to his mouth, the knock came again.

“What is it?” he snapped.

The door swung inward, and Mr. Baskov limped through.

“Good morning, Dr. Chandler.”

Evan nodded. “Mr. Baskov.”

“May I sit?” Baskov asked.

“Go ahead, just clear off a chair.”

Baskov leaned his cane against the arm of a leather chair, picked up a haphazard pile of papers from the cushion, and placed them on the floor.

“To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?” Evan asked through a squishy muffle of burger, bun, and tomato. A runnel of juice split his chin and deposited another stain on his filthy shirt.

“There was a birth,” Mr. Baskov said. “Do you recall the work you did for us on the Helix project?”

“Of course I remember the project.” Evan swallowed and wiped his hands with a napkin. “It’s the only thing I’ve been allowed to use the Brannin on. Why does everyone around here treat me like I can’t remember my own name?”

“Good. There has been concern, you see, about the work done with the Brannin.”

“Well, I’ve had some concerns of my own. I’m concerned that I’ve spent the last fifteen years of my life on the design of a computer I’m not being allowed to use.”

“I have nothing to do with that. The concern—”

“And I want to know why it’s called the Brannin, anyway. Why isn’t it called the Chandler? I designed it.” His hamburger made a loud
bong
as he slammed the last oily chunk into the wastebasket near his desk. “Nobody else can even use it.”

“There are investors who decide such things. A name is a commodity, like any other.”

“My name could be a commodity.”

“Once again, I can’t really speak to that circumstance, but I have come today to ask you an important question. Do you think you could answer a question for me, Dr. Chandler?”

“These research institutes think that just because you are under contract with them, they have the right to claim and name. So what if the research was done at the Brannin Institute? I could have gone anywhere. They were begging for me. Harvard, C-tech, the Mid—”

“Dr. Chandler!” Baskov’s tone stopped Evan’s rant. “Why does the Helix project newborn have wings?”

Evan’s expression changed. He leaned back in his chair, lacing his pudgy fingers behind his head. “Wings, really?”

“Yes. It also has shiny black skin and prehensile thumbs. But let’s start with the wings, okay?”

“I don’t know why you’re asking
me;
I don’t know.”

“That’s what Silas said. You both can’t use the same excuse.”

“Who’s Silas?”

Baskov shook his head in disbelief. “He’s the head of Helix Development. You’ve met him two or three times. How can you not know about the wings?”

“The guys at Helix fed me the directives. They were the ones who should have gone over them with a fine-tooth comb. If there is a problem with the product, then there must have been a problem with one of the directives.”

“Silas said he had nothing to do with the design. He’s putting the responsibility on your shoulders.”

“Do I look like a geneticist to you? I design virtual-reality computers, not live meats.”

“And it was your computer that developed the designs.”

“They think just because they have you under contract, they can tell you what projects to work on. It’s
my
computer. What gives them the right?”

Baskov took a deep breath, and his eyes gathered force beneath his shaggy eyebrows. He leaned forward in a conspiratorial manner, and when finally he spoke, his voice was soft and measured. “This isn’t a game, retard. I don’t care what kind of genius you are supposed to be. What I see sitting across from me is a three-hundred-pound sack of shit that doesn’t have mind enough left to hold a conversation.”

Outraged, Evan attempted to stand, and Baskov slammed his hand down on the desk. “Sit the fuck down!”

Evan sat.

Baskov leaned forward. “You have no idea who you are talking to. You have no idea what I can do to your life if you’ve fucked this up somehow.” Baskov paused, his eyes two sighted gun barrels. “Now, I want you to think real hard, if you still can. I want you to explain to me why the new gladiator looks the way it looks. Why?”

Evan cleared his throat. He started to answer several times but each time thought better of it, struggling for a different way to phrase his response.

“Why?” Baskov shouted.

Evan flinched. “The computer designed the product based on the directives it was given. I don’t know what else to say. I really had nothing to do with the design at all. The computer did everything.”

“What were the directives?”

“Just a list of what they wanted the product to be able to do.”

“The product. You mean the gladiator.”

“Yeah, the product. The computer was supposed to design it for those specs.”

“Specifically, what were these specs?”

“I don’t remember. Um, let me look, I think I still may have a list around here somewhere.” Evan stood and ruffled through a stack of papers on top of a filing cabinet.

“You don’t have a software file on it?”

“I can’t seem to locate my laptop at the moment.”

Baskov watched the fat man root through his disorganized office.
Baskov sat silently for five full minutes before rising and walking toward the door.

Evan felt a wave of relief at seeing the old man turn to leave. He’d already given up hope of finding the documents he sought, but he’d been too afraid of Baskov’s reaction to say so. The laptop might have been lost or thrown out weeks ago. Evan had no idea where it might be. He’d been losing things more and more often lately. He was slipping, and he knew it.

At the door Baskov turned. “How can we get the information out of the Brannin computer files?”

“There are no files, at least not in the sense that you mean. Everything is in V-space. Only one way to access memory. We’d have to start it up again, run the program.”

“With the per-minute cost, an unscheduled run isn’t going to happen,” Baskov said.