Safe House

“Microsurgery,” Maj said, “that kind of thing?”

“More involved,” her father said. “I don’t understand the details. Frankly, I don’t think a lot of people are equipped to understand the details…which is probably the source of the trouble. He’s really one of the brilliant ones, a groundbreaking scientist in his particular art. Which is building the smallest machines anyone’s ever seen, and programming them to do the most delicate work possible…at the molecular level, maybe even the atomic level.”

He folded his arms and looked thoughtful for a moment. “He and I met at Georgetown together when I was doing my master’s-level work. One of those unusual friendships — heaven knows, ‘interdisciplinary’ stuff is considered strange enough on campus. When a physicist or a biologist starts to hang around with humanities people, there are those who’ll start to question the sanity of both sides. And there was the language barrier as well. And even beyond that, a certain amount of mistrust. Everybody knew why his government had sent him over, and Armin wasn’t too sure at first that we weren’t all spies. But despite everything, Armin and I hit it right off. And he amazed me from the very beginning. I knew he was going to be big at whatever he decided to do.”

Her father stretched, then smiled a little. “You know this thing, that your mom likes to do when you complain?” He lifted one hand, rubbed the thumb and forefinger together. “‘This is the world’s smallest violin, and it’s playing just for you?’”

Maj laughed, and her father looked ironic, for the truth was that mostly her mother used that gesture on him. “Well, once, as a joke, when he had met your mother — this was some time before we were married — and heard her use that line on me, he built that. The world’s smallest violin. Four longchain molecules fastened together with benzene rings, and one molecule knitted back into itself for a bow. Five thin little hyoprotein constructs for strings on the violin. One to string the bow. And a little submolecular wheel and pulley to make the bow go back and forth across the string. I saw it work. Of course, you needed an electron microscope to see it.” He grinned.

“He did that as a joke?”

Her father nodded, somber. “That was always the problem with Armin,” he said. “You never knew what to say around him, because you might give him an idea for something he could build…and then he would vanish for weeks at a time until it was done. Oh, he’d come out for exams and lectures and so on…. but in between times, you wouldn’t see him until he’d succeeded at what he was doing.” He sighed. “Absolutely brilliant man. And with the most important part of brilliance — persistence.”

He let out a long breath. “And now,” he said, “I can’t get in touch with him. Which, if it means what I’m afraid of, suggests that what he was afraid was about to happen has happened. They’ve arrested him.”

“Oh, Daddy, no!”

Her father nodded, looking grim. “Maj, I don’t know for sure. But he had hoped to be at his new contact address by now, so he told me the other day…so one way or another, something’s gone wrong. I really hope they don’t have him. It would be bad news if they did. But it’s so soon, maybe too soon, to tell….”

He leaned back and looked across the room at nothing in particular. “He saw this coming some time ago,” he said softly. “Armin has been…well, maybe a little too brilliant. The Calmani government has been very much shut out of trade, the way Carpathia has. Import sanctions linked to improvement of their human-rights record — and since they have no intention of improving that, there are all kinds of things they can’t get. High-technology things, mostly. To have someone like Armin was a big coup for them — someone whom they could, in a way, use as a bargaining chip with the West. You want our technology, you have to trade us things we want.”

Her father raised his eyebrows. “That by itself, maybe, didn’t bother him. He loved his country, though I doubt he would have extended that love to his government. But Armin rarely stopped to think about such matters. He wanted to get busy creating things, and he was willing to stay where he had been born and do that…help his people, work for them, especially when he thought the Calmani government would help him do that. And for a while, he thought he was doing all right, and that the work he was doing would actually get to the people he was trying to help. But then I think he started to realize that the government had other plans for what he was doing. Especially the medical end of it. He was involved mostly with building micromechanisms that would heal people. The government, I suspect, saw them in an entirely different light. I don’t know the details…but that was when Armin decided to detect. He was intent on getting Laurent — that’s Niko’s real name — out of there. Well, that’s gone well enough. Except that now the government certainly knows what he intends by what he’s done.”

“Oh, no…” Maj swallowed.

Her father shook his head. “Exactly what the problem is at the moment, what it is that made Armin decide to jump right now, I can’t say. He wasn’t willing to discuss it much, and I wasn’t willing to press him on the subject. He was none too sure of how secure his own communications were; even the last one I got came to me secondhand. But I think he had come up against some kind of crunch. Either he felt that he couldn’t go on with his work as he had been…or that it was becoming too dangerous somehow…He was very oblique.”

Maj was still stuck with the idea that Niko’s, no, Laurent’s father was in some little windowless cell somewhere, with secret police looming over him. She imagined how she would feel in Laurent’s place, and shivered. “If they do have him…then what?”

“I wouldn’t necessarily think that would be a permanent situation,” her father said. “Armin has a lot of friends working for him, there…and here. Though ‘here’ may matter more at the moment. Net Force is interested, as you’ll doubtless be hearing. I spoke to James Winters this morning. It was the least I could do.”

Maj blushed hot and slipped down off the desk to look at a book in a nearby bookshelf, for no reason except to keep her dad from seeing the look. “You think they can get him out?” she said.

“If they can’t, they can at least work out who to contact who can actually do the job. Net Force is owed all kinds of favors, all around the world, in some unlikely places.”

Maj wondered if this would be enough. “That’s a help, anyway.”

“Yes. But there are other things on my mind.” That worried sound was in his voice again, and it made Maj’s head turn. “The Calmani authorities are hardly going to just sit around and let this happen without acting, honey. That’s not their style. They’re going to do their best to alter this situation to their liking. One good way to put pressure on Armin to do whatever it is they’re trying to get him to do would be to threaten Laurent.”

“But he’s here,” Maj said. “What can they—”

Then she stopped. This house was not exactly a security zone. It was an ordinary suburban house with ordinary suburban locks on the doors and windows, and an ordinary security system mostly designed for stopping burglars, not kidnappers. If armed people came along and tried to snatch someone who was living here — She opened her mouth to say, “The police—” and then stopped herself again. The police here were good…but were they good enough to take on armed snatch operatives? Or fast enough?

“We have a little security that doesn’t show,” said her father. “And more to be added shortly, at least of the ‘passive’ kind. Some guys will be coming from ‘the phone company’ to install it over the next day or so, so don’t be surprised.” He ran one hand over where his hair used to be. “It’s a happy coincidence that I asked a month ago to have our lines checked for bandwidth constriction. This will look as if that’s being fixed, to the casual observer…but as a result, people on ‘our side’ will be watching the house and its environs a little more closely than would otherwise be the case, until Laurent’s dad makes it safely over to this side of things.”

Maj nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I assume part of my job in this is to keep an eye on him.”

Her father nodded. “You can’t do much during school, I know that, but Mom will be working from home during the business week for the next little while, and she’ll be able to keep an eye on him during the day. If you could just keep an eye on his ‘recreation time,’ that’ll be a help.”

“Does he have to stay inside?”

“Oh, no. Though he may need a little coaching in how to act when he goes out. He’s not a dumb kid. He’ll catch on quickly.”

Maj knew that already.

“Though,” her father said, “you might want to keep an eye on what he’s up to online, as well. His father was concerned about that.”

“What? About him being in the Net?”

“Yes.”

“But they have it, too….”