Authors: Timothy Zahn
The agent cocked a slightly puzzled eyebrow at that. “No problem,” he said. “This way, please.”
Walking between them, Cavanaugh stepped through the large ornate doors and out into the sunlight. The game was over, and he’d lost. And yet, he felt none of the angry frustration he should have felt at such failure.
Instead, his mind was filled with genuine relief. Relief that the lie was finally over. And mild surprise that he should feel that way.
Sommer hung up the phone, and for a long moment the office was silent. “Well?” Sands asked at last.
“They’re finished with their interrogation,” Sommer told her. “Royce will be bringing Cavanaugh back here in about half an hour. For his execution.”
The word hung heavy in the air. “He destroyed his own body, Adrian,” Sands reminded Sommer gently. “He doesn’t have any claim to the one he’s using now.”
“I know.” Sommer sighed. “It just seems … I don’t know;
wrong
, somehow. Execution without due process, or something.”
“It can’t be helped,” Sands said, a touch of impatience creeping into her voice. “Pauley has rights, too. And a lot better claim to those rights than Cavanaugh has.”
Sommer grimaced. “You sound like Congressman Barnswell.”
“Well, maybe for once he’s right,” she growled. “Even Barnswell can’t be wrong
all
the time.”
“I take it you haven’t seen the bill he’s preparing to introduce into the judicial committee.”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” Sands said calmly. “I think it’s a good idea.”
Sommer stared at her. “I thought you were the one who didn’t
want
Soulminder used as a justice machine.”
“No, no—I was the one who didn’t want it to be a prison substitute,” she corrected him. “Offering maimed victims the temporary or permanent use of their assailants’ bodies is something else entirely.
That’s
justice, Adrian. More to the point, it’s justice that fits the mood of the country.”
The justice of judicial vengeance.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth
. “Oh, it fits the mood, all right,” Sommer admitted wearily. “Fits it perfectly. The only problem is that it won’t work.”
“Well, of course it’ll take some overhauling of the legal system—”
“No!” Sommer snapped. “It
won’t work
. Period. Royce was right, Jessica—the soul isn’t some kind of standardized module you can pull out of one body and plug into another. Habits, memories, temperament—they’re all locked into the brain and body chemistry, as much as they are into the soul itself.” He took a deep breath. “When Pauley was in Gerakaris’s body, he crossed himself, twice. But he did it Eastern Orthodox fashion, not Catholic. The way
Gerakaris
, not Pauley, would have done it.”
Sands’s eyes were steady on him, the lines around her eyes tight. “That may not be all that significant,” she suggested slowly. Carefully. “Maybe a small habit like that … I mean, they
are
both very religious men, after all.”
Sommer closed his eyes briefly. “Do you know where they picked up Cavanaugh?”
“No, I didn’t read the—”
“They picked him up in a church. St. James Cathedral, to be exact. Attending Sunday Mass.”
For a long minute the room rang with silence. A strangely horrified silence. “Are you suggesting … ?” Sands’s question faded away unfinished.
Sommer nodded. “There doesn’t seem to be any doubt about it. A totally amoral criminal boss attends church … and according to Royce, was actually eager to clear his conscience of all the slime he’s participated in.
“Tell me, Jessica: what do you think would happen to a normal person transferred via justice machine into the body of a psychotic killer?”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, very quietly.
CHAPTER 4
The Hand That Rocks the Casket
The air was dry
but comfortably warm as Dr. Adrian Sommer stepped out the door of the unmarked plane and started down the steps, his two companions close behind him. The warmth was a distinct and welcome change from the 747’s overenthusiastic air-conditioning, and an even more welcome change from the January blizzards taking place five thousand-odd miles to the north. It was, he decided tiredly, precisely the right time to vacation in South America.
Some day he would have to try it. A vacation might be nice.
He’d asked that the reception committee be kept small, and for a wonder the Chilean government had taken him at his word. The man in military dress uniform waiting at the foot of the stairway stood there alone, with only a single stretch limousine waiting a discreet distance behind him on the tarmac.
Such willing cooperation was a good sign. Sommer could only hope it would continue.
“Welcome, Dr. Sommer,” the man awaiting him smiled as Sommer reached the tarmac. The other’s English held just the slightest trace of an accent, one composed of what seemed to be equal parts Spanish and British. It was a combination Sommer hadn’t run into before. “I am General Miguel Diaz, Minister of the Interior. On behalf of General Jose Santos and the Chilean government and people, allow me to welcome you to our country. It is an honor to have one of the co-inventors of the Soulminder visit our humble country.”
“It’s an honor to be here,” Sommer told him as they shook hands. “My colleague, Dr. Sands, asked me to thank you personally for your invitation to her, and to send her regrets at being unable to accept.”
“I understand fully,” Diaz assured him. “The day-to-day management of your Soulminder empire must leave Dr. Sands very little time for traveling.”
“It certainly doesn’t,” Sommer agreed. “May I introduce my staff: this is Mr. Samuel Alverez, my technical adviser.”
“Señor Alverez,” Diaz nodded, offering his hand as Alverez stepped eagerly past Sommer to take it. “If I may say so, you look very Chilean to me.”
“You have a good eye,” Alverez said, smiling with a twenty-five-year-old’s standard youthful enthusiasm. “My parents came to the United States from Santiago during the height of the Pinochet regime. This has been my first chance to see their land—I’m very much looking forward to it.”
“Your interest does our country great honor,” Diaz smiled. “Perhaps you’ll have time to take a proper tour. If you’re interested, the resources of my office are at your complete disposal.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” Alverez said.
“And this,” Sommer said, gesturing to his other side, “is Mr. Frank Everly.”
“General,” Everly nodded, offering his hand.
For just a second Diaz’s eyes narrowed. Then his face smoothed out again, and he took the proffered hand. “Señor Everly,” he nodded. “The same Frank Everly, I presume, who oversees security for all of Soulminder?”
“You’re well informed, General,” Sommer commented, trying to read the other’s face.
“I’m always interested in men of outstanding abilities,” Diaz said, his eyes still on Everly. “To handle security so successfully for so important a corporation as Soulminder is a great achievement indeed.”
“It’s not that hard,” Everly said with easy modesty. “The secret’s in finding the right people to do all the real work.”
Diaz favored him with a slightly stiff smile. “You’re too modest.” He looked back at Sommer, eyebrows raised slightly. “There are no others, Doctor?”
“None who’ll be coming with us into the city,” Sommer told him. A true statement, but misleading: the rest of Everly’s twenty-man security team was, in fact, already in Santiago, having quietly infiltrated the country as tourists and businessmen over the past two weeks. Members of the team would be moving with them from now on, an invisible defense perimeter augmenting whatever security the Chileans themselves provided. “And speaking of the city … ?” he added, surreptitiously stretching his shoulder muscles.
“Yes, of course,” Diaz agreed, waving the limo forward. “It
is
a long flight, isn’t it? I remember the first time I flew to the United States—I don’t think I’d ever before had a true feeling for just how
long
South America really is.”
“I had the same thought,” Sommer nodded. “Somewhere over Peru, I think.”
Diaz smiled. “Well, you’ll have a couple of hours now to recover from the trip.”
“I thought nothing was happening until the formal dinner tonight,” Sommer said, frowning.
“It is,” Diaz said, a slightly sour look on his face. “But the great dog Media proved harder to put off than even the most impatient of our own government officials. I’m sure you’re familiar enough with media sorts, Doctor: if you take their bone away from them one place you must give it back elsewhere or suffer their incessant howling.” He shrugged. “In this case, the only way to keep them from the airport was to promise a news conference at the Ministry this afternoon.”
Unless you just decided to shut them all down for the duration
, Sommer thought with a touch of fatigue-driven cynicism. Unfair, really—for all the tendencies to excess inherent in military rule, the recently established government
did
seem to be working hard at tolerating its detractors. “No problem, General,” he assured the other. “When did you schedule it for?”
“Four o’clock.” The limo pulled up beside Diaz and a smartly dressed sergeant jumped out to open the rear door. “Exactly”—Diaz consulted his watch—“two hours twenty minutes from now.”
“That’ll be fine,” Sommer nodded, ducking his head and climbing into the limo.
“Your communications said you wouldn’t require more than the one suite,” Diaz continued, ushering Everly in beside Sommer and pointing Alverez to the seat facing them, “but we have nevertheless reserved three more suites for you, in the event that you changed your mind.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Sommer told him. “We brought only a handful of other people with us, and they’ll be staying aboard the plane. It’s quite comfortable,” he added as Diaz seemed about to protest. “A sort of scaled-down version of Air Force One.”
Diaz shrugged and got in beside Alverez. “As you wish, Doctor. The offer will remain open, though, for the duration of your stay.” He leaned forward. “To the hotel.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver nodded.
“I have to confess,” Sommer commented as they started across the tarmac toward a distant security fence, “that I was a little surprised to learn that the Soulminder facility here was under the Interior Ministry’s jurisdiction. In most countries we work directly with the Health Ministry.”
“Ah, but in most countries the Soulminder is reserved for the rich and powerful,” Diaz countered. “In Chile, it’s open to all, so who better to operate it but Interior?”
It was a vague logic, one that several weeks of thought on Sommer’s part had failed to really penetrate. “I see,” he said. “I wonder, General, if you’d tell me just what exactly your vision is for Soulminder in this country.”
Diaz frowned. “You were sent our full proposal.”
“Proposals are written by bureaucrats. I want to hear it in your own words.”
The general’s face cleared. “Ah. I see.” Turning his head, he gazed out the window, and for a moment he was silent. “As I mentioned before, Dr. Sommer,” he said at last, his voice low, “in most countries—including the United States—your Soulminder safety net is available solely to those who can afford to pay the price. The very rich, the very powerful, and their friends.”
“And the middle class,” Everly murmured.
“Many countries have no middle class,” Diaz said, showing a brief spark of annoyance at Everly’s interruption. “And even in those that do, there are still many others who are too poor to afford the Soulminder’s protection.”
Sommer nodded, an echo of old frustration sending wisps of acid pain through his stomach. It was a problem that had haunted the edges of his thoughts for nine long years, ever since the very beginning of Soulminder’s commercial existence. If the Chileans had finally solved that problem …
“Regardless,” Diaz continued, “in Chile we saw that happen—saw the inequity, saw the unfairness—and resolved that it would not happen here. And so, when you granted us our first Soulminder facility, we set out to find a way all could share in it.”
He turned back to Sommer, a new fire in his gaze. “
That
, Dr. Sommer, is our vision,” he said quietly, earnestly. “A nation with every single man, woman, and child protected against unnecessary and premature death. A nation whose people are allowed to live out their full lives … and, perhaps, even beyond.”
An unpleasant shiver ran up Sommer’s back.
To live even beyond
. “Soulminder is a medical tool,” he reminded Diaz firmly. “If it allows people to live out their natural lives, that’s all we can expect from it.”
“Of course, Doctor,” Diaz said easily. “I was referring merely to the vast research you and others are putting into medical advances. Advances we can hope will push back by a few years the death which is, of course, inevitable.”
“Of course,” Sommer echoed. But the words were polite and meaningless, and both men knew it. Like Jessica Sands, Diaz was looking to Soulminder’s future … and what he saw there was the dream of immortality.
A dream that already possessed Sands. Sommer could only hope it didn’t do the same to Diaz. The future, he knew from bitter experience, could all too easily swallow up the present.
The hotel suite wasn’t the most luxurious that Sommer had ever been in, but it was easily in the top ten. Extending over the hotel’s top two floors, the levels connected by a wide spiral staircase, the place looked like it had been designed to sleep an entire presidential entourage. The three of them, Sommer thought more than once, were going to feel just a little bit lost.
Their luggage arrived from the plane while they were still looking around the suite, a promptness that pointed to an extremely perfunctory customs inspection. Leaving Everly and Alverez to unpack, Sommer took a quick nap, setting his alarm to leave him enough time to shower and shave before the news conference. His timing was right on the money, and he’d just finished choosing his tie when the front desk called to say that General Diaz had arrived.
The news conference itself was a virtual replay of hundreds of similar ones Sommer had endured over the past nine years. Though there were a handful of questions about the technical aspects of traps and Mullner traces and a few about his own personal involvement with it all, the bulk of the questioning centered on the social implications of Soulminder for the people of Chile. Most of the questions he’d heard many times before, in a variety of different contexts, and he could probably have answered them in his sleep. Others were new, and actually required a certain amount of thought before he could respond.
And there were others—the more pointed political questions in particular—which were conspicuous mainly by their absence.
The news conference lasted until nearly five o’clock, after which it was back to the hotel for a quick change into black tie and a drive to the presidential palace for the formal welcoming dinner. What with the meal itself, the required round of glowing speeches, and the post-dinner mingling and conversations, it was after midnight before they finally made it back to the hotel.
“Well, that was fun,” Alverez commented, heading over to the suite’s wet bar as Sommer shrugged off his jacket and shoes and flopped down onto an ornate but nevertheless comfortable couch. “You always get wined and dined this well, Dr. Sommer?”
“Not always,” Sommer said, working at freeing his windpipe from the strictures of his tie. “It usually depends on how badly the hosts in question want something from me.”
“In which case the generals must want that second unit pretty badly,” Everly commented, pulling a portable bug-detector from his suitcase and beginning a leisurely stroll around the room. “You’ll notice that among all the glitter and glitz they keep finding ways to remind you of how democratic and egalitarian they’re being these days.”
“You’re a born cynic, Everly,” Alverez called, carefully measuring out a small nightcap.
“Cynics aren’t born, they’re trained,” Everly countered.
Sommer eyed his security chief thoughtfully. “Back at the airport, Frank, General Diaz seemed to recognize your name. Does he know you?”
Everly shrugged. “Probably only by reputation. I spent a couple of years here in 2001, during the Escobar administration. The government and I had some differences.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Alverez commented, wandering back to the center of the room with his drink. “Weren’t you still with the CIA back then?”
“Actually, the CIA was generally supportive of the regime,” Everly said. “I just had a bad habit of thinking for myself, which didn’t exactly endear me with anyone. Actually—”
He broke off as the cell phone Sommer had set on the end table beside him trilled gently.
“Uh-oh—they heard you,” Alverez said, not sounding entirely facetious.
Sommer glanced at the ID and thumbed it on. “Hello, Jessica.”
“About time,” Jessica Sands’s familiar voice came. “I’ve been calling every twenty minutes since ten o’clock. You forgot to turn on your cell after dinner again, didn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged,” Sommer said, feeling a sense of relief. He hadn’t really expected it to be the Chilean police. But still … “You
can
leave messages on this thing, you know.”
“And
you
know I hate doing that,” Sands said. “How’d the evening go?”
“About as expected,” Sommer told her. “You really ought to join in these things sometime.”
“No, thanks. Anyway, you’re the one they all want to meet.”
Sommer rolled his eyes. But she was right. For most of the world, Dr. Adrian Sommer was still the image and heart of Soulminder. “Lucky me,” he murmured. “I hope you didn’t call just to make sure we were getting to bed on time.”
“Actually, I called to give you some news that may have not filtered down there yet. The Supreme Court verdict on Arizona v. White finally came in this afternoon. The law was upheld, six to three.”