Outside, Rembrandt van Haas had never felt as frustrated as he was now, trying to gain information and entry into the transport lab. Like Coydt, he’d been awakened by an aide and told of an alarm and reports of weapons fire and, since then, had received only the official line from the Security troops ringing the building. Those troops themselves were decidedly uncomfortable; they felt that no matter what they did regarding the director, they were alienating one of the two people who could effectively do something nasty to them. The young lieutenant finally decided on bluntness with the director and rigidity to Coydt. She’d gotten the officer into this mess, and she would be expected to get her out.
“Sir,” the lieutenant said carefully, “we have no idea what went on there except what the brigadier stated. Her orders were most emphatic and included you, I’m afraid. I don’t like this any more than you and didn’t ask for this, but you must see it our way. Our immediate superior has given us an order. You are her superior, and normally it would not apply to you, but the brigadier was pretty graphic as to what would happen to us if we allowed anyone through. You may threaten us with good cause, but we will still have to answer to the brigadier first. We can see no compelling moral reason for disobeying her. She has said she will answer to Admiral Cockburn and to you later. We must accept that.”
Van Haas nodded. “All right. Carry on.” There was no purpose served by keeping these little fish between a rock and a hard place. He strode back to his small electric vehicle and picked up the phone. “Get me Brigadier Ryan, and I don’t care what you have to do to get him.” Then he ordered his driver to take him to Signals building.
Michael Ryan looked like the stereotypical Irish pub crawler, the sort that would be cast in an Irish working-class drama. Ireland had survived the Borelli pulses better than most of the West because it was so lightly industrialized, and he was the only member of either board who had actually been born and spent his early childhood in “The North,” as it was called, leaving him with a characteristic Irish brogue.
His parents had eventually managed to immigrate to Australia when he was twelve, joining relatives there for a generation, escaping the poverty and lack of future that remaining in the homeland meant. Still, he’d known very hard times and he never forgot them.
He had joined the Australian army to pay for his university, and had managed the nearly impossible feat of rising from the enlisted ranks all the way to colonel on merit. He was an electronics expert and a brilliant politician, and yet maintained a close relationship with his troops. With little hope of making it to general officer ranks because of his background, however, he’d jumped at the chance to oversee the Signals part of Westrex, even though the task and even the means of accomplishing it were unprecedented. Although still a colonel in the reserves of Australia, inside Westrex’s independent corporate army he had finally made brigadier.
Ryan, in fact, trusted his enlisted personnel more than he trusted his fellow officers, which was what made him so useful at times like these.
The Irishman was already sitting in a communications monitoring post when van Haas arrived. He turned, nodded to the director, and said, “I thought you’d have been here before now.”
“I’m not used to being told there’s someplace I can’t go here,” the director responded. “What the hell is all this?”
“I’ll punch it up and you can watch it for yourself.”
Security had been forced to use Signals to run much of its own communications system. While Coydt now had her own experts, they still had to use the system Ryan had designed and the laws of physics. While Coydt spied on everyone, Ryan spied on Coydt—and everything Coydt saw. Security suspected it. That was why much of its work was now being carried out at Site K, beyond Ryan’s range and authority. However, they had no idea just how extensive his network could be.
Van Haas watched with horror the strange dimly lit play acted out between Watanabe and the security staff. He was as much stunned by her apparent ease at circumventing the Guard position as he was watching her die. “Oh, my God!” Then he paused a moment. “We’ll have to revise our whole interlock now.”
“No need,” Ryan told him. “Oh, it’s true you can circumvent the 7240 computers if you have to—we’ve just seen it, and certainly we’ll find out how it was done. It won’t apply to the 7800’s though. Their Guard design isn’t modular, it’s integrated and in a different way, and there are lots of nasty little safeguards for meddlers. Still, ’tis an unnerving sight. I’ll grant ya that.”
“But—what the hell is Coydt trying to do in there?”
“As near as I can make out, I think she’s going to try to resurrect the old girl. She’s tied into her pet people up on K, and their 7800. I can’t get past that encryption system as of now, but I could jam it if you want.”
Van Haas considered it for a moment. “No. In this case, if she can pull this off, she’ll save us no end of grief, as well as demonstrate the powers of the 7800—or limitations, if it doesn’t work. Besides, I really liked Suzy.”
“‘Aye,” Ryan sighed. “Still, ’tis unnerving to think this sort of thing is even remotely possible. I mean, she’s not even waiting the traditional three days.”
The 7800 was characteristic of its type when asked if Watanabe could be restored. It responded that it saw no theoretical reasons why it couldn’t be done, with some limitations, but having never tried it, there was no way to be sure.
There was certainly no way to restore the scientist at the point where she’d been shot; the only good bet was to ignore Watanabe-present and run the prior program for when the scientist had allowed herself, months earlier, to be turned to energy and encoded. Some restoration might be possible if it knew the exact electrochemical arrangement at the time of death, but it did not, and by the time it had been fed the body, too much time had elapsed for any accuracy. The brain had a complex and efficient automatic method of shutting itself down in an orderly way at death, and this had already taken place.
It was all very methodical and very pedestrian until the remote computer asked very matter-of-factly, “Has the soul gone or dissipated?”
The question startled not only Coydt and Johnson but everyone listening in or monitoring on K. Where the hell had a computer gotten that?
“Uh—the soul is an unknown quantity,” Coydt managed.
“No empirical evidence of its existence is known. Question cannot be answered and may not be material here.”
“Empirical evidence undeniable,” the computer responded. “Suggest attempt at reforming using matter currently in conversion and programming matrix from earlier experience.”
“Approved.”
“However, additional mass must be introduced. Blood and tissue loss is severe. Bleed in power from the grid and channel it to the object tube. Power will briefly dim the network but the amount required is relatively small enough that it will cause no effect and little notice to others.”
“Approved. Do it.”
There was, in fact, a very slight dip in the lights and a momentary flicker on the screen in Ryan’s office, but otherwise nothing happened. At the light speeds computers and energy networks moved, they never noticed the slight loss, only the aftereffects, and then only because they were expecting them.
“Potential mass now sufficient for proper conversion,” the computer told Coydt. “Request permission to download required programs to slave computer system.”
“Granted. Go.”
The conversation between the 7800 and Coydt’s position was extremely slow, both because of time delays and because of the slowness of human thought versus computer thought, but it was a silent conversation. Neither Ryan nor van Haas nor any of the observers on Titan could know exactly what was going on unless, like the power drop, Coydt announced it vocally.
“Permission to integrate elements?” the 7800 asked.
Coydt thought a moment. ‘ ‘Can subject be brought back in sedated condition?”
“No evidence subject can be brought back at all.
The brigadier was beginning to know the frustrations of dealing with a computer’s mind. “If resuscitation achieved, can subject be restored in sedated position?”
“Risks are too high in this instance. Recommend against any modifications at this time. However, there is a slight period of shock lasting thirty seconds on average.”
It would have to do. “Have someone right down there with a strong sedative,” she ordered the troops. “I’ll wait until you can find one. I want her out before she knows she’s back. Move!”
The small medical team dispatched by Security for the casualties had been held up downstairs, as confused as the rest outside, but they could supply what was asked.
“Why a sedative?” Marsha Johnson asked worriedly.
“Because if she came out as she was four months ago, we’d have to explain all this and fast,” the brigadier told her. “And if we did that, we’d have a setup of the conditions that caused it. I don’t propose to bring her back only to have her do this all over again. I want her to awaken in a psychiatric-care ward, where we can try to ease the pain before it builds up again.”
That seemed reasonable.
One medic was brought up with the small inoculator and taken by one of the soldiers out onto the lab floor. Both were assured there was no danger if they did not actually touch the tube or base until told it was safe to do so. The substance chosen was quick, as instructed. Once in the bloodstream, it would knock the average person out in three to five seconds.
“We’re going to do it now!” Coydt announced loudly, and there was a collective intake of breath not only from those around her but also from Ryan and van Haas. Even the dullest of the troopers understood by now what was being attempted, although few of them believed it was possible.
“Stand by!” the brigadier announced, and then silently said to the computer, “Run program as instructed.”
A light went on inside the giant tube, not so much for the computer’s benefit but as an automatic mechanism so that observers could get a good view. There was a whining noise, then something seemed to crackle, and inside the tube an eerie sight was taking place. Outlined there was a figure, a humanoid shape framed and defined only by energy. The shape filled in with an increasingly complex grid, and the image became three-dimensional, holographic. The grid lines of energy grew increasingly fine until, inside the shape, there was solidity. An eerie, glowing skeleton took form, then a whole network of organs, then a circulatory system. It was like watching a computer teaching aid on how the human body was constructed. The process was quite fast, but not fast enough for the human eye to miss each major stage. The 7800 had decided to take it slow and easy.
Now the skin and hair and surface features were in, and it was clearly the nude body of a whole, unpunctured Suzy Watanabe. Whole—but did it live?
A buzzer sounded, and the nearly invisible door in the tube clicked.
“Medic! Now!” yelled Coydt, and the startled and awestruck medic rushed to the door, opened it, and with the help of the soldier pulled the limp body out. She knelt down and gave a cursory check to the form.
“My God! She’s breathing!” the medic exclaimed, awestruck.
“Administer the damned sedative!” the brigadier snapped sharply.
The medic snapped out of it, took a quick, professional estimate of size and body weight, set the little injector dial, and moved close to give it to the still form.
Watanabe’s eyes fluttered, then opened, and an expression of anger and confusion was on her face. “What the fuck—?” she managed, even as the injector forced in the sedative, but that was all she managed before passing out once again.
Spontaneous cheers and scattered applause broke out.