Maxwell Huxley's Demon (31 page)

---

Kr
istina submits her new report .
It contains proof that unauthorized process es are running on government mainframes . Her manager sees the connection to Mongolia; NSA sees this as a connection to China.
This escalates the report; bumps all of Kristina’s reports up to position four in the report queue.

All new reports to land in the top ten are immediately presented to unit directors. Within fifteen minutes four directors are reading the executive summary.
Kristina knew what she was doing when she spent all that time on the executive summary, making sure she wrote using language a six-year-old could understand . The executives immediately understand and hit the panic button.

Chapter 30
–Bed of Lies

Three
AM
in Washington D.C.
and Max blows the lock on an electrical utility shed near the Washington Monument. “Are you sure, Catherine?”

“According to the information I have , the cable you are using is enough.”

Max makes his way down a utilit y shaft that leads back toward the monument and Reflecting P
ool.
This takes him about an hour, hobbling along with a cane and a large spool of cable that is almost too heavy for him to manage.
Max worries about his ribs but decides they can heal later.
W
ith a combination of dragging and carrying he finally gets where he needs to be.

When he reaches an industrial grade electrical junction box, Max holds his breath and then taps the cable into the main city power grid. “
Step one done, w hich way now ?”

“Keep going down the access tunnel thirty metres to your left.”

Max drags the cable.
“Catherine, if you ever want to know what it is to be human you are going to have to feel pain.”
It takes him nearly half an hour to string the cable thirty metres.

“
Research instantiated.
Now leave the cable there and string the shieldBots .”

Max says, “
You’
ll also need to stop taking me so literally.
Shield.” Bots flow from his cane. He draws a line of bots from the exposed end of the cable up to an access hatch. A sign on the door reads, ‘
Pumping Station, Restricted Access.
’
“Alohomora.” The lock clicks open.
Max strings the shieldBots up to a large water pump and leaves the end of the trail of bots in an overspill drain. “Is this good?”

“So long as the seedB
ots are connected to the power at one end and the water at the other end then it will work.
T
he bots need to replicate and power up for sixteen hours minimum . Y
ou can only use it this one time , and once you trigger it , there is no stopping it.

---

Mr. Newton walks out the French doors at the back of his house and heads to the north gardens. The drabness of the winter vegetable beds makes him impatient for spring.
Mid-January means it’s time to harvest the cabbage and cauliflower be ds. H
e heads to those beds , pulls on his gloves, takes a knife out of his tool belt and cuts out the mature cabbage, placing each one into a wooden crate.
Servants take care of most things around the estate for him . But when he can , if he’
s home, he does the gardening himself. When the wooden crate is full , he carries it to a nearby wagon and takes another empty crate back to the garden bed.
Back in the garden , he leans over the next row of cabbage. “Hello, Max.”

Max appears out of a fog. “Hello, Isaac.”

“If you insist on calling me Isaac, I’m going to start calling you Harry.”

“If you call me Harry, I’m going to call you Voldemort . How did you know I was here?”

“You left footprints and cane marks in my favourite garden bed. I must s ay I’m most impressed with you, r unning around the world like you have. Held up by treachery and injury. How are your . . .
bouts , ” Mr. Newton taps his temple, “. . . t hese days?”

“
They’
re as useful and horrifying as ever . . .
c an we go inside? I’m cold.
”

---

Max
pulls out a chair and sits at a round table. He looks out the window overlooking the gardens. “Where is she?”

Mr. Newton places hot chocolate in front of Max and sits down facing him. “She’s safe and comfortable. What are you going to do, Max?”

“I’m going to find her and take her away from you, from everyone .
I’m going to protect her and keep her with me.
” Max wraps his hands around the mug of hot chocolate.

Mr. Newton pauses for a moment.

Max can almost see the thoughts pass through Mr. Newton ’s mind .

“Max, listen to me for a minute. As good as you are there are too many layers to this.
Any way I look at it, you lose.
I know Pirelli keeps saying things like that, but I control much more than Pirelli. Before you do too much more , you should familiarize yourself with the phrase ‘ton of bricks.’
”

“I’m good with layers and bricks; you trained me to be good with them.”

“That’s the first layer. The training you knew. But what do you know about the adjustments we made to you. Almost nothing .
We know everything about that, we k now more about you than you do . . .
Wha t do you know about your mother? N
othing.”

Max sips his hot chocolate, hoping it will warm him . “This is what I learned in your school. When reverse-engineering an obscure complicated process, f ind the core first; find the most frequently used sub-process .
Ignore the rest and isolate that process. The rest of the layer s don’t matter. If you can decode the core then you can control the rest.”

“Are you paying attention to the technology we are stealing from you? How does Virginia fit into this? Why doesn’t there seem to be anyone on your side , Max? You’ll never work through the maze of all this.
Especially n o t on your own.
”

“It doesn’t mat ter what layers you think apply, ” Max replies “I’ve bypassed them all. Good luck re—
applying them.”

Mr. Newton shifts in his chair. I t looks like the cold weather doesn’t really agree with him either. “Well then here is a pro cess for you to think about . Some children gradua te from my schools, others get P
rocessed. You’
re graduating , congratulations . This whole thing was a final exam .” Mr. Newton leans toward Max.

Max focuses on Mr. Newton’s face. The room shrinks as Max’s thoughts quicken.
See, you keep missing things. You didn’t think about this?
He tightens his grip on his cane.
I don’t want to do this.
“Do you want to know what I think evil is? Evil isn’t just doing bad things. Evil is forcing others to do bad things . . .”

Max and Mr. Newton lock eyes for a moment. In that moment , Max realizes Mr. Newton graduated long ago.
Then w ho forced him to do this?

“. . . you don’t have any children or even a wife.” Max continues. “You have the schools and your gardens. I’m g uessing that the schools are 99 percent of who you are.”

Mr. Newton sits back. “And?”

“I see your p hone in your pocket. You should check your email.”

Mr. Newton does so. “
OK
, you broke my email; I can’t check it, so what?”

“I’m sorry , but it’s so much more than that.” Max takes out his cell phone and dials, and then hands the phone to Mr. Newton. “I called your executive assistant for you. Your phone won’t work anymore.”

Mr. Newton takes the phone. “Hello, Julie, it’s Mr. Newton here.”

“Oh, Mr. Newton, I’m so sorry to hear the news. Please let me kno w if there is anything I can do, ” Julie says.

“Wh at are you talking about?
”

“What? I’m confused. I’m talking about the email you sent me this morning, of course.
”

“Can you read it to me?”

“
You say, effective immediately you are no longer involved in MGA affairs . . .
you go on to talk about illness and . . .”

Mr. Newton hangs up. “Clever boy.”

“Your access card won’t work anymore, and finger print and retinal scans won’t get you into MGA buildings. It isn’t just that you don’t work there anymore, you never worked there.
The email to your assistant was the last trace of you at MGA and now even that is gone.
I also have a package on its way to your lawyers. It details how to sell off your estate here. When they’re done you won’t have any assets left.” Max stands up. “Bring her to the west end of the reflecting pool tonight at ten.” Max moves to the kitchen door. “You can keep that phone; Catherine will make sure you can make the calls necessary to arrange things. Make calls for any other reason from any phone and Catherine will . . .
make it difficult for you.”

Max leaves the house.

Mr. Newton sits at the table for a long time , wondering who Catherine is, before he calls Pirelli.

---

Kristina runs back to her desk.
She’s j ust out of a briefing where she received approval to implement her plan to clean the mainframes.
She has the budget. Now she needs to pull the team s together. It will be no easy task to simultaneously shut down and revert all of the mainframes operated by three countries.
Kristina calls her counterparts in Canada and Mexico.

Chapter 31
–Exchange

Mr. Newton and Lara stand by themselves at one end of the reflecting pool, with t he Washington Monument eerily reflected in the moonlit water behind them.

Max watches from a distance. He releases commBots . After giving them time to reach Lara he says, “Lara, it’s Max. L
ook t o you r left if you can hear me.”

Lara looks left.

“If you speak, I’ll be able to hear you. I ’m coming to get you. It’
s very important that no matter what happens, you don’t move.
Look right if you understand.”

Lara looks right.

“Come on , Max. Y
ou ’
r e twenty minutes late,” Mr. Newton says.

Max looks for any sign of someone using fogBots . T
hese bots still created minor distortions in the air.

Max stands about twenty metres directly behind Lara and Mr. Newton, w aist deep in water. He still has to come out of the fog in order to use any other commands.
Where did Keith get his fogBots from?
Why did they work so well in bright light?
Why can he hide himself and others?
He only h ad two days to develop that. W
ho’s helping him?

Max turns away from Lara , faces the other end of the pool and says, “
Wave .”
Catherine has programmed his fogBots to ‘listen’ for other command s, so Max only became vis ible for a fraction of a second while he summoned the wave.
Max stand s still in the water. Looking down he sees the water sta r ting to flow away from Lara , a little current swirling around his waist. H
e leans forward .
Timing , timing is everything tonight .
Max waits.

“Well, I guess your boy isn’t showing up. S
orry dear, I think you’re stuck with me.” Mr. Newton turns to walk away and then pauses. He can tell something isn’t right. Max is here somewhere. He turns more and squints up the pool. Something doesn’t look right. The reflection of the Washington Monument is gone from the far end of the pool.
There’s a dark line across the pool from one side to the other.

Max walks forward.
Don’t rush , and you’ll have her.

“
Twelve second s until you must become visible.”
Catherine uses the same commBots to talk directly to Max.

Mr. Newton looks down. The water level at this end of the pool is dropping. As he stand s there, still holding onto Lara, he sees the water recede from the bottom of this end of the pool, rushing away.

Max walks on bare concrete now.
You’re not this good.

Mr. Newton tries to understand, tries to move, but the sight of a large wave rising up out of the pool holds him captive. It ’s actually quite beautiful, he thinks, the way the city lights reflect off the approaching wave, and then he comes to his senses.

Max approaches , still at least ten metres away. He hears the roaring torrent of water gathering behind him.
Without looking, he knows that a lmost twenty-five million litres of water have form ed a two-story wave which is rush ing toward him.

Tick .

Mr. Newton pull s Lara . She stomps hard on his instep and he lets go of her arm. There is a moment when the y look at each other.
He think s he might try to grab her, but the water looks too close, too threatening. He runs, leaving Lara to her fate.