The guard arm rose, and I followed the marker toward the collection of squat, rectangular buildings. All things considered, I was glad for the guidance, because the park was huge and nothing was marked. I headed down into a short tunnel, which took me to a parking area.
From the garage, I took an elevator up. The doors opened and I stepped out into a dimly lit lobby that looked deserted. My footsteps echoed lightly as I made my way to a large, curved reception desk with an empty chair behind it.
“Hello?”
I saw several red points of light in the shadows near the ceiling. Cameras were watching me. There were two glass doors with badge readers that led inside, and a phone mounted on one wall.
I was beginning to wonder if I had the right place when a man in a suit appeared behind one of the glass doors. He was about my age, with wavy, graying hair, and dressed in an expensive suit. He noticed me as he held his badge up to the scanner.
“Agent Wachalowski?” he asked as he scooted through the door. He had an easy, salesman’s charm, and when he smiled, crow’s-feet formed at his eyes.
“Yes.”
“Hi, I’m Bob MacReady. I am so sorry,” he said, stepping forward and shaking my hand. “I thought I could beat you here. As you can see, we don’t get casual visitors.”
He held out a clip-on visitor’s badge and I put it on, causing him to smile like I’d just performed a trick.
“Excellent,” he said. “Come on, we can talk in my office.”
He buzzed us in and led me at a brisk pace through a maze of cubicle areas and narrow corridors. Unlike the lobby, the inside was brightly lit with flat electric light. The area we passed through was huge but oddly quiet. Occasional voices rose over the hum of the climate-control system and the constant murmur of hundreds of fingers as they worked keypads. Along the far wall was a wide glass panel that looked in on some kind of laboratory. Men and women dressed in clean suits worked over racks of equipment that seemed to merge together into an organized mass of shiny silver tanks, tubes, and electronics. I didn’t recognize any of it. One of the men inside noticed us, and watched me pass.
By the time we arrived at MacReady’s office, I was thoroughly lost. He opened the door and I stepped into the small space, which was dominated by a wooden desk with a pair of computer monitors sitting on it. On the walls behind the desk hung diplomas and certificates, including one for a doctorate in applied cybernetics. Shelves ran along each wall, stacked tightly with technical specifications and texts. The air smelled like old coffee and body odor.
“Please sit down,” he said, closing the door behind us. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.”
He got behind his desk and casually switched on a noise filter. I sat down across from him.
“This is about the bombing, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Not directly.”
“News traveled quickly here, especially once it became known that a revivor had triggered the device. You do understand it wasn’t one of ours?”
“Yes, but you know why I’m here, right?” I asked.
“I understand some of our components were recovered from a foreign combat revivor that had been smuggled into the country.”
“Yes. Mr. MacReady, I’ll be frank. I am only interested in tracking down the people who are bringing the revivors into the country. We don’t believe Heinlein Industries is involved in anything illicit; we just want to know how the parts might have gotten there, to aid us in tracking the traffickers down.”
“I understand,” MacReady said. “We ran the numbers you sent along and were able to trace the components ourselves. The parts were surplus, unclassified and obsolete. They were sold at auction.”
“Along with how much other product?”
“I’ve compiled the complete list and I’ll make sure you leave with it,” MacReady said.
“You understand this was a foreign combat model we pulled them out of?”
“Our current technology is so far advanced beyond those components as to make them irrelevant.”
“I see.”
“It’s very complicated, Agent, and completely legal.”
“I understand. In a nutshell, can you say what the specific components were for?”
“Different things,” he said, “but mainly? Collective command.”
“Which is?”
“Revivors are more sophisticated than they were back when you served, Agent. A collective-command structure allows revivors a common communications connection for sending and receiving information. That may sound like a simple thing, but it’s fairly complicated. Think of it as a version of the Jovanovic-Zaytsev system you use to communicate with your teammates.”
“So it allows revivors to communicate with each other?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “It’s a hub-and-spoke configuration; many to one, not many to many. It allows a single source to command many revivors.”
“And by command, you mean …?”
“Control. Usually they’re given orders, but if the situation requires, the shunts are in place today to override and virtually control them from a remote location.”
“Nice.”
“The revivors also use the system to report back to that common source. Any modern revivor outfitted with one will automatically join a default command chain, if one is available.”
“They can’t talk to each other?”
“They can, just not directly,” he said. He was quiet for a moment, then asked, “Have you recovered any others with the same components?”
“I can’t comment on that.”
“Well, if you have,” he said, “or if you do, or suspect you might, then you would be dealing with someone who wanted to command a unified group.”
“Hypothetically, how many nodes could be commanded in that way?”
“Typically, small groups—say, four to nine—but when commanding many such groups, it can add up. In the future, we hope to have a single command control hundreds of units.”
“Hundreds?”
“The future of revivor technology is today, Agent. The M8 models we’re currently creating far surpass what you would have encountered during your time in the service. Tomorrow will bring even greater advances.”
“Field bring-back?” The ability to raise a revivor on the battlefield, without requiring a trip back to Heinlein’s labs, was something they’d been chasing for years without success. MacReady grinned and gave a shrug.
“Field administration too, perhaps,” he said. “One day, being wired may be as simple as a shot in the arm.”
That took me by surprise, and he seemed to enjoy that.
“You understand what I mean, then,” he said, “when I tell you the components you recovered are no longer relevant.”
“I see.”
MacReady leaned back in his chair and sighed. He still held an easy smile, but his eyes looked grave.
“We are as concerned about this as you are, Agent,” he said. “We want to help in any way we can.”
“I appreciate that,” I told him. “The most useful information for us right now is those auction records you’ve made available. For now, I think that’s all I need.”
“Very good.”
“I did have one last question, though,” I said. “Does the name Zhang mean anything to you?”
“You mean Zhang’s Syndrome?”
I shrugged.
“That,” MacReady said, “is a piece of Heinlein Industries lore, in a manner of speaking. The fathers of the modern revivor were two men named Isaac Ericsson and Olav Sodder, and while neither of them founded Heinlein Industries, they made it what it is today.”
