The Terminal Experiment

Assuming, that is, that you had nothing to do with his murder.”

Cathy was angry. “Look — in the first place, what happened between me and Hans was a long time ago. In the second place, my husband already knows about it. I told him everything.”

Sandra was surprised. “You did?”

“Yes.” Cathy seemed to realize that she might have made a mistake. She pressed on. “So you see,” she said, “I have nothing to hide and no reason to try to silence Hans.”

“What about your father?”

Cathy looked exasperated. “Once again, he died of natural causes.”

“I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you,” said Sandra, “but I’m afraid that’s not true.”

Cathy was angry. “God damn it, detective. It’s hard enough going through the loss of a parent without you playing games.”

Sandra nodded. “Believe me, Ms. Hobson, I would never say such a thing if I didn’t believe it to be true. But it’s a fact that your father’s dinner order was tampered with.”

“Dinner order? What are you talking about?”

“Your father was on a prescription drug that had severe dietary restrictions. Every Wednesday when your mother was out, he ordered dinner — always the same thing, always safe for him. But on the day he died, his dinner order was tampered with, and he received something that caused a severe reaction, forcing his blood pressure to intolerably high levels.”

Cathy was flabbergasted. “What are you talking about, detective? Death by fast food?”

“I’d assumed it was an accident,” said Sandra. “But I did some checking. It turns out that the national MedBase was compromised a few days before your father died. Whoever did that could have found out that he was on phenelzine.”

“Phenelzine?” said Cathy. “But that’s an antidepressant.”

“You know it?” asked Sandra, eyebrows climbing.

“My sister was on it for a while.”

“And you know about the dietary restrictions?”

“No cheese,” said Cathy.

“Well, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Cathy was shaking her bowed head in what looked to Sandra like very genuine astonishment. “Dad on an antidepressant,” she said softly, as if talking to herself. But then she looked up and met Sandra’s eyes. “This is crazy.”

“An access log is kept for MedBase. It took a lot of work, but I checked all the accesses for the two weeks prior to your father’s death. There was a bogus login three days before he died.”

“Bogus how?”

“The doctor under whose name the access was made was on vacation in Greece when it happened.”

“You can log on to most databases from anywhere in the world,” said Cathy.

Sandra nodded. “True. But I called Athens; the doctor swears he’s been doing nothing except visiting archeological sites since he got there.”

“And you can tell whose records were accessed?”

Sandra dropped her gaze for a moment. “No. Just when whoever was using the account logged on and logged off. Both accesses were at about four A.M. Toronto time—”

“That’s in the middle of the day in Greece.”

“Yes, but it’s also when the MedBase system is under the least demand. I’m told there are almost never any access delays at that time. If someone wanted to get on and off as quickly as possible, that would be when to do it.”

“Still, using food ingredients to trigger a fatal reaction — that would require a lot of expertise.”

“Indeed,” said Sandra. A pause. “You have a degree in chemistry, don’t you?”

Cathy exhaled noisily. “In inorganic chemistry, yes. I don’t know anything about pharmaceuticals.” She spread her hands. “This all seems pretty farfetched to me, Detective. The worst enemy my father had was the football coach from Newtonbrook Secondary School.”

“And his name is?”

Cathy made an exasperated sound. “I’m joking, Detective. I don’t know anyone who’d want to kill my father.”

Sandra looked off in the distance. “Perhaps you’re right. This job gets to you sometimes.” She smiled disarmingly. “We’re all a little prone to conspiracy theories, I’m afraid. Forgive me — and, please, let me say again that I’m sorry your father passed away. I do know what you’re going through.”

Cathy’s voice was neutral, but her eyes were seething. “Thank you.”

“Just a few more questions, then hopefully I won’t have to bother you again.” Sandra consulted the display on her palmtop. “Does the name Desalle mean anything to you? Jean-Louis Desalle?”

Cathy said nothing.

“He was at the University of Toronto at the same time you were there.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“True. Let me put it to you more directly: when I spoke to Jean-Louis Desalle, he recognized your name. Not Catherine Hobson — Catherine Churchill. And he recalled your husband, too: Peter Hobson.”

“The name you mentioned,” said Cathy, carefully, “is vaguely familiar.”

“Have you seen Jean-Louis Desalle since university?”

“Goodness, no. I have no idea what became of him.”

Sandra nodded. “Thank you, Ms. Hobson. Thank you very much. That’ll be all for now.”

“Wait,” said Cathy. “Why’d you ask about Jean-Louis?”

Sandra closed her palmtop and put it in her attache case. “He’s the doctor whose database account was compromised.”

CHAPTER 36

Spirit, the simulation of Peter Hobson’s immortal soul, continued to watch Sarkar’s artificial life evolve. The process was fascinating.

Not a game.

Life.

But poor Sarkar — he lacked vision. His programs were trivial. Some simply produced cellular automata, others merely evolved shapes that resembled insects. Oh, the blue fish were impressive, but Sarkar’s were nowhere near as complex as real fish, and, besides, fish hadn’t been the dominant form of life on Earth for over three hundred million years.

Spirit wanted more. Much more. After all, he could now handle situations infinitely more complex than what Sarkar could deal with, and he had all the time in the universe.

Before he began, though, he thought for a long time — thought about exactly what he wanted.

And then, his selection criteria defined, he set out to create it.

Peter had decided to give up on Spenser novels, at least temporarily. He’d been somewhat shamed by the fact that the Control version of himself was reading Thomas Pynchon. Scanning the living-room bookshelves, he found an old copy of A Tale of Two Cities his father had given him when he’d been a teenager. He’d never gotten around to reading it, but, to his embarrassment, it was the only classic he could find in the house — his days of Marlowe and Shakespeare, Descartes and Spinoza were long past. Of course he could have downloaded just about anything from the net — one nice thing about the classics: they’re all public domain. But he’d been spending too much time interfacing with technology lately. An old, musty book was just the thing he needed.

Cathy was sitting on the couch, a reader in hand. Peter sat down next to her, opened his book’s stiff cover, and began to read:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of