The Media Candidate (29 page)

His best option was to get to the safety of his
office at the lab. There he would be able to warn Guinda undetected
and retrieve the paper copy of the Halvorsen files. The security of
the lab would provide him a safe haven from which to make his next
move. He would probably have to get Guinda to the lab for her
safety. He wondered how hard it would be to elude whoever or
whatever surveillant was assigned to him today.

Elliott crept toward a window facing the front
of his house. Without moving the curtain, he carefully peeked out
the window and spotted a small gray car parked about three houses
down. It looked bigger than the one he evaded the day before.
This one,
he thought,
might contain one of those
eight-legged robots that could run down somebody like me with four
legs tied behind its back.
He pictured a giant spider stalking
him. He noticed his hand on the curtain draw rope becoming clammy.
“It’s just a machine,” he whispered. “Don’t think of it as a
spider, just one of Sherwood’s goddamned toys. Besides, it may just
be another one of those silly cars.”

He wasn’t sure how to deal with this new spy.
Was it the same kind he had easily outwitted before or a more
advanced one that could handle stairs and sidewalks? Or were the
robot’s instructions more malevolent than before? He knew a little
about hit robots. Could COPE, or Sherwood, have such a fate in mind
for him or Guinda, or both of them?

Elliott looked again through the hazy dawn at
the little gray car. He pulled one side of the drapes back about an
inch, just far enough to get a glimpse. But in that brief moment,
he saw the car move, just a little bit, just enough maybe for it to
get a better vantage point. Maybe it had to move just the tiniest
amount for one of its sensors to zoom in on that curtain to maybe
see who was behind it. But with the light so dim, maybe it hadn’t
even moved at all.

The sudden, or imagined, movement, of the little
car startled Elliott. He pulled away from the window, retreating
behind the curtain that protected him from unseen sensors that must
be continually scanning his house. Those marvelous sensors were
focusing attention on him with a passionless commitment that no
human could ever match. The wheeled spy was constantly on guard so
not to miss even the slightest movement in his house, not a door
opening, not a blind closing, not a secret glance toward it. Its
vision system was superior to a man’s. It could detect the
slightest change and then instantly zoom in on that tiny event to
examine and record even finer-grain data. And all the while, it
would maintain constant vigilance over the larger scene, looking
for anomalies, searching for clues of any kind to keep ahead of its
victim. And always seeming to be asleep.

Elliott imagined that the innocuous looking car
could be much more than just a spy. It might contain a wily,
impersonal killer, a killer whose actions would be difficult to
trace back to its human master. He thought about Halvorsen—and her
killer. Maybe his turn was next; maybe Guinda had already succumbed
to this evil. He peeked through a crack in the curtain. “You’re
perfectly patient and perfectly in control. For now,” he growled.
“But you can’t feel anxious about an approaching struggle. You
can’t prime yourself to do better than you’re programmed to do or
give more than a hundred percent. But I can.”

He backed his car out of the garage into the
street and drove away. After he had gone about a half block, the
little gray robot car lurched forward in pursuit. Elliott rounded
the corner as usual and then floored the accelerator. By the time
the robot rounded that corner, Elliott was nearly to the end of the
block. He reeled around that corner with a squeal and saw his
opportunity. He screeched to a halt, opened the door, pressed the
AUTO button, and dove out between two parked cars in the street,
slamming the door behind him. He lay perfectly still on the street
as his car sped away toward a destination he’d programmed into it.
He stopped his heart as the robot car zoomed by.

When he heard it disappear around the next
corner, he raised himself onto his stiff and bleeding knees and
thought,
Those robots aren’t so smart after all
. He limped
toward home, hardly noticing his torn and bloodstained pants. He
had defeated a professional hit robot, and it was easy. He proudly
walked up to his front door. Within a minute, he left for the lab
on his bike.

* * *

Elliott was not the only one making progress,
however. The robot had soon determined that Elliott’s car was
lacking an occupant and began a methodical backtrack. The
exploration progressed slowly but exhaustively, using the robot’s
visual, infrared, and chemical sensors to their fullest. The hunter
worked onerously backward, searching for any trace of Elliott. It
appeared to be more tracker than automobile as it scouted both
sides of the street back along its path. Shuffling forward,
backward, to each side, it moved like a bloodhound, systematically
comparing and analyzing; intensively exploring, sniffing, scanning,
until it reached the two parked cars where Elliott had taken
refuge. It probed the invisible bloodstain on the pavement, noting
the residual heat where Elliott had lain, interrogating the
surroundings to determine the direction he had gone. It easily
located the trail from Elliott’s DNA scent.

But now the gray car needed support. The rear
hatch popped up just a crack, then checked itself. Some event
swelled the shadowed interior, some ritual driven not by zeal but
by millions of lines of computer code, a program so complex that no
human genius could decipher it in a human lifetime, yet so basic in
function that it radiated an artform, a lifeform, all its own.

The hatch then sprang open with a snap,
splitting the Sunday dawn silence. Out of the inner gloom emerged a
slender, black leg. Its curved shape extended, then straightened,
then curled, then waved in a circular motion as it searched for
footing. Once it located the ledge, it probed briefly to locate its
edge, all the while the leg growing, twisting, curling sinuously
like a shiny black-racer snake seeking prey. It probed further,
locating the ground a few inches away.

Having surveyed the bounds of its environment,
deliberation and caution transformed into quickness and confidence
as it rose from the car in an artfully choreographed and executed
assemblé
. Each of its eight legs danced to some unheard
melody, anticipating the needs and movements of the other seven.
Eight legs acted in concert as the spider scrambled in quick but
fluid movements onto the ground.

It was a spider, yet it was not a spider. It
lived but was not alive. It saw and felt but had no passion or
vision. It engendered vitality but propagated death. When the
spider walked, its legs seemed to be dancing like a principal of
the Bolshoi. When running, its legs seemed simply to disappear and
then reappear in a different place, each reappearance furthering
the ambitions of the brain within.

The spider had more-highly-developed functions
than the gray car. But what made it such a terrible adversary had
less to do with its sensors and cunning than with its incredible
mobility. Each of its jet-black, seemingly jointless, legs actually
comprised over a hundred joints made of piezorestrictive materials,
which allowed the legs to tie themselves into knots if desired. In
spite of this amazing flexibility, a spider could arm-wrestle eight
men to a draw and run down a target like a panther.

Its body was the size, shape, and color of a
pure-black house-cat, but turned sideways. It could move in any
direction equally well without turning. Two camera-like eyes were
attached to a pair of telescoping tubes to elevate or separate the
eyes when it needed stealth or extreme stereo vision. A third lens
for infrared gleamed spitefully like the mirror of the wicked Queen
Aurora and was confined to the body of the spider.

It hunted and killed in almost total silence,
the only sound coming from the tap, tap, tap of its carbon and
urethane feet when it charged across a hard surface, terror
writhing from it like an octet of cobras.

Now those finely honed hunting instincts had
been released. It lunged forward with electronic zeal on the trail
of today’s target, Dr. Elliott T. Townsend.

Elliott pedaled down the driveway, turned away
from the direction of the approaching spider, and disappeared
around the first corner just before the spider, with the little car
following it, entered his street a block away. Elliott had made
this trip to the Lab so many times that it was reflexive. On this
early Sunday morning, though, he wasn’t challenged by speeding
cars. Long shadows stretched across vacant sidewalks and streets.
The sun greeted only a lone biker … and a synthetic spider.

The events of the last twenty-four hours filled
Elliott’s mind so full of questions that he had no room left to
think of where he was going. Fortunately, he didn’t need to be
conscious of his destination to make progress toward it.

Nor did the spider need to see its prey to track
it. The still, damp, morning air was perfect for chemical tracking,
and the spider had a quiver of sensors to perform this wonder. It
was able to track the slight trace of Elliott’s body vapors. The
process was slow, but continuous. While the spider laboriously
tracked Elliott’s trail, the little gray car began its own wider,
less-focused search, always in communication with its partner.

Meanwhile, Elliott pedaled past the University
confident that he at least didn’t have to worry about being
followed. He would be to the Lab in about ten minutes, and he began
prioritizing what he had to do when he got there. Since there was
so little traffic, he could see, and be seen, for some distance. He
didn’t give this fact much consideration until he noticed a car
stop at an intersection ahead. As he approached, a knot tightened
in his stomach when he saw it back up and disappear behind some
parked cars.

What else could it mean
, he thought.
It’s waiting to ambush me. I can’t go back. All I can do is to
go where it can’t.
He stopped, dragged his bike up the curb,
and ran it over to the low fence marking the edge of the
University. He grunted his bike over the fence and then followed it
with even more grunting. He hadn’t climbed a fence in thirty years,
and never before with such passion. As he went over the top, his
shoe caught, and he ended up lying on the ground on the other side
with his foot hanging at the top of the fence. Even in this awkward
position, he could see the little upside-down car speeding toward
him.

“Damn these old bones!” he cursed as he yanked
his foot loose with bits of flesh still clinging to the fence. “Why
don’t they work for me like they used to?” The pain stabbed up his
leg, but he had no time to think about that. His only chance was
escape through the campus. As he mounted his bike, the little car
screeched to a halt on the street just thirty feet away. He faced
his adversary grimacing in pain. He tried to hate it, but he
couldn’t. It was just a bunch of plastic and metal and integrated
circuits. But he could hate its master. He could hate COPE and the
coward that had programmed this thing to torture him. And he could
fear it.

But then the little car did something that
notched the fear-level up. A small turret rose from its top with an
electrically powered gun that pointed at Elliott as he fled. There
was no sound, no smoke, as it fired. Elliott expected to feel a
bullet enter his back. He pictured himself knocked off his bike and
the gun taking aim for a second shot to make sure the job was
finished. He waited for the impact as he bumped over the grass
toward a grove of Ponderosa pines. Then he heard it, but not what
he expected. He heard the bullet ricochet from a steel pipe in the
fence. The same fence that had just mangled his foot now saved his
life. Once again, he thought the robot wasn’t so smart, but he’d
been wrong the first time.

He’d covered about half the distance to the
trees over the dewy grass, and he hoped it would take a few seconds
to recharge the firing capacitors of the silent weapon. “Not enough
time!” he grunted loudly. “Got to get into those trees!” He pedaled
harder and harder, and the trees loomed before him, but he knew
he’d be too late. He visualized the bullet flying toward him and
knew this would be the end. But he had to try; he had to play it
out. He reached the first tree, but it was too late.

The gun fired just as he swerved behind that
first mammoth pine tree. The bullet blew him off his bike. But it
was wooden shrapnel from the bullet ripping into the tree just
inches behind him that made him lose control and dive headlong into
the pine bark mulch. He lay there for a moment believing he’d been
spared, not just for a few more seconds, but for always. Now all he
had to do was to keep covered behind these trees until he had lost
the robot car.

He gathered himself together to peer around the
tree back toward the little car, but hope was ripped from him like
a grizzly ripping the heart from its prey. For the first time, he
actually saw a spider, not just read about it. And this spider was
after him. Its blurred legs carried it across the empty street
toward the little car and toward him. The spider would be able to
follow him anywhere he went. The hopelessness of his situation
suddenly gripped him. How had the stakes risen so high since the
incident with the inept robot car yesterday?

Elliott wasn’t the strong biker he’d been years
before, and the rigors of today had worn him down so he dreaded
what must happen next. The thought of running such an uneven race
added weights to his limbs. As he began running with his bike
toward the far side of the grove, the spider locked its sights onto
him and cleared the fence like a deer.