Evan cleared his throat. He started to answer several times but each time thought better of it, struggling for a different way to phrase his response.
“Why?” Baskov shouted.
Evan flinched. “The computer designed the product based on the directives it was given. I don’t know what else to say. I really had nothing to do with the design at all. The computer did everything.”
“What were the directives?”
“Just a list of what they wanted the product to be able to do.”
“The product. You mean the gladiator.”
“Yeah, the product. The computer was supposed to design it for those specs.”
“Specifically, what were these specs?”
“I don’t remember. Um, let me look, I think I still may have a list around here somewhere.” Evan stood and ruffled through a stack of papers on top of a filing cabinet.
“You don’t have a software file on it?”
“I can’t seem to locate my laptop at the moment.”
Baskov watched the fat man root through his disorganized office. Baskov sat silently for five full minutes before rising and walking toward the door.
Evan felt a wave of relief at seeing the old man turn to leave. He’d already given up hope of finding the documents he sought, but he’d been too afraid of Baskov’s reaction to say so. The laptop might have been lost or thrown out weeks ago. Evan had no idea where it might be. He’d been losing things more and more often lately. He was slipping, and he knew it.
At the door Baskov turned. “How can we get the information out of the Brannin computer files?”
“There are no files, at least not in the sense that you mean. Everything is in V-space. Only one way to access memory. We’d have to start it up again, run the program.”
“With the per-minute cost, an unscheduled run isn’t going to happen,” Baskov said.
“Helix lab has copies, I’m sure.”
Baskov nodded, then turned and disappeared through the doorway.
A small kernel of hope formed somewhere in the back of Chandler’s mind.
He thought of his computer. His precious V-space. There was a chance he might soon run his program again.
SILAS SHUFFLED through the massive stack of envelopes on his desk. The mail was mostly advertisements, though a few scientific magazines and professional letters were also sprinkled in. He came to the letter from his sister and put it aside. He would read that one later, at home.
He talked to her at least once a week on the phone and visited her every couple of months, but the letters were special to him. They would be filled with the layered minutiae of her everyday existence. She would tell him about the flower blooming outside her window, or the fight she had with her boss. Actual letters, in the old style. Paper you could hold in your hand. It would all be in there, laid down in lines, her life.
She’d started that when she’d first gone away to school, and then sporadically continued the habit for years until she married. Then the letters stopped for a while. After their mother died, the habit had returned, like some childhood habits will.
He didn’t write her back. But that was okay; she didn’t seem to expect it. She wrote because she needed to share her life with him, not because she needed a reciprocal share of his in return.
Their relationship was close, in its own particular way. Silas had always considered this a minor miracle, considering how far apart they lived and how different their lives were. That was a blessing he didn’t take for granted. His sister’s family was the only family he had. And except for Ben, the only real friends.
He wasn’t lonely. On a weekly basis, he interacted with hundreds of people, knew several dozen well—and when time allowed, he could always find somebody to talk to, catch lunch with, and even occasionally go out with on those rare evenings away from the lab.
But letting them inside was somewhat harder. That was something he’d never been good at, and now that he’d entered his forties, he felt that it had almost ceased to be a viable option.
He flipped the envelope over, and out slipped the usual family photo of his sister, her husband, and their son. They were an attractive family. The kind you might expect to see in prime-time sitcoms or ads about orange juice —the dad neat and professional, the mother beautiful, the son a mixture of the two in a smaller, smiling package. It felt good to look at them, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on why.
He put the envelope in his upper desk drawer and tried to summon the ambition to sift through the rest of the mail.
CHAPTER THREE
A small contingent gathered in the entryway of the lab administration building while the sun lengthened through the glass brick, stretching a grid of shadow across the plush green carpet.
Silas hated these things.
He made a point to arrive at six on the nose so he wouldn’t have to mingle. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. He nodded his hellos just as the group began disjoining to its respective vehicles. Silas entered the convoy in the middle of the pack, four cars down from the front. Except for the driver on the other side of the tinted glass, he was alone.
When his car pulled away from the curb, he flipped the TV on and tried to empty his mind. TV was usually good for that. He would need a kind of mental anesthetic to get through the evening.
The car moved west toward the city and the sun. They eased through the technical district’s narrow streets and merged onto the crowded highway. By the time they’d traversed the mountains, night had fallen.
The car took a left on Carter Street and slowed at the conference square. People in business attire carrying label-forward bags turned their heads toward the line of limousines. He knew they were speculating about who might be inside. And he knew Baskov would probably like him to roll his window down and wave, possibly win a few more fans for the home team.
After winding through a grid pattern of short drives, the procession came to a stop in front the Mounce Center. The building was an enormous, stylistically oblique structure that had always reminded Silas of a woman’s fedora. Baskov loved to use it for press and sponsor events. Cement planters circled the arched entranceway, providing seats for tired downtown shoppers, tourists, and businessmen, who now stared as the delegates made their way inside. Silas turned his face from the flash of a camera.
Like many large upscale conference centers, the Mounce had the requisite ultramodern expressionistic sculptures on display in its grand lobby. They’d changed it around some since Silas had last been here a few months ago—the same general sculptures but shifted slightly into a new conformation. The abstract figures now gave the distinct impression of having sex, though it disturbed him not to be able to tell in exactly what position it was happening.
An usher led them in loose formation to the dining hall, which was crowded with noisy men and women in business suits. They stood in shifting groups or sat at round tables with white tablecloths and crystal champagne glasses. Most were already drinking. A few, by the looks of them, were well on their way to drunk. Baskov believed in being fashionably late, and the dinner had probably been scheduled for thirty minutes ago. Silas supposed that was one way to make the begging seem less like what it was. Baskov would want them feeling privileged to give their money up. His speech—given usually after the appetizer and before the main course—would hammer that point home.
All eyes were on them as they made their way around to the back of the room, where the host table spread before an enormous bank of ornate windows. Silas nodded to several people as he edged the crowd, and he sat at the first opportunity. Baskov, of course, was at the center of the table. Silas enjoyed his relative anonymity at the periphery.
Pretty college-age waitresses poured glasses of water while the crowd on the main level discovered their
