Текст книги "Lock in"

Автор книги: John Scalzi

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

“Just think,” Vann said. “Cassandra Bell announcing it, Marcus Shane standing on one side, Lucas Hubbard on the other. Coming together for every Haden. And then Hubbard dismantling his company, a piece at a time, to keep funding the goal. Until there’s nothing left.”

“It’s a dream,” I said, standing back from the table.

“Yes,” Vann said.

“A more than slightly unethical dream.”

“More unethical than bombing competitors, attacking federal agents, and planning to assassinate a Haden activist?” Vann asked.

“Well, no,” I admitted.

“Then I’m fine with it,” Vann said. “And the only people who will ever know are in this room right now. Anyone have a problem with it?”

No one said anything.

“Then these are the options you have, Hubbard,” Vann said, returning to Bell. “Admit who you are, and tell May and Janis what happened to Johnny Sani. You’re guilty but your company will survive. Keep doing what you’re doing and we flip the script. Bell gets his life back from you and then takes over your life. And you watch everything you’ve ever done fall apart. Make your choice.”

Bell sat there, silent, for more than a minute.

Then.

“At first it was more a thought experiment than anything else,” Hubbard said. And it was definitely Hubbard. Even cuffed to a chair the swagger was there. “I had written the code and modeled the network, designed for a client to integrate full-time. There was no point to it other than curiosity.

“But then Abrams-Kettering came along and the business model I’d been working on was changing. Other businesses started to panic but I knew there were opportunities there. They just needed to be directed. In a way that was effective but untraceable, and not reproducible. If I used the network I designed, I knew I could manipulate people and events in ways that other businesses couldn’t. And in a way that couldn’t be traced back to me.

“It was Sam who pointed out that Medichord had access to Navajo Nation medical records, and that those records weren’t part of the U.S. national health database. We could find a test subject there who would be otherwise invisible—no records elsewhere, nothing to track. We found two. Johnny and Bruce. We moved on Johnny first. He was…”

Hubbard stopped, realizing how what he was about to say would sound to Johnny Sani’s family.

“Say it,” Vann said.

“He was mentally deficient,” Hubbard said. “Easy to fool. Easy to control. We set him up in California through a Chinese company Accelerant had a minority stake in. Our contacts with him were through one-of-a-kind threeps. Everything untraceable even though Johnny wasn’t smart enough to figure it out. Overcautious. We kept everything small as possible. Only Sam and I knew everything.

“When the network was installed we tested it first for a few minutes at a time, then an hour or two. We became comfortable using Johnny for more things. Driving him on simple tasks. A little corporate spying. Some bits of sabotage. Nothing really significant. Simply testing the capabilities.

“We figured out that Johnny was limited. Not in his brain—that didn’t matter when I was driving him. But the same lack of identity that attracted us to him limited him. Having no identity makes it harder to move in our society, not easier.

“With what we learned from Johnny, we started working on commercial network models. We own Lucturn, and we had the database of networks to work with. I came up with the interpolator method to hack into the networks and leave a door open. All we had to do was wait for the right opportunity.

“Then Abrams-Kettering passed and the walkout and march were planned. It was the right opportunity to destabilize the market and pick off companies we wanted.

“I knew Nicholas Bell was an Integrator. I’d known people who used him. And I knew that when Abrams-Kettering passed, he would be looking for a long-term contract. But I didn’t want to approach him directly. I had one last job for Johnny Sani. I drove him out to D.C. and used him to contact Bell, posing as a tourist. I used him to get into Bell’s mind.

“When I was in Bell, Sam was supposed to link right in and take over Johnny. But Sam got distracted for a couple of minutes. Johnny came to, looked around, grabbed a love seat, and ran at the window with it, and pushed it out into the street. Then he came back, grabbed a glass, and smashed it against the dresser. I thought he was going to use it on me. I put up my hands.

“He yelled at me, telling me that now someone would come up to see what was happening. He wanted to stop being used. He wanted to know what he was being used for. He said he wanted to go home.”

Hubbard paused again.

“Keep going,” Vann said. “If you won’t say it, Bell will. It’s all coming out, Hubbard.”

“I laughed at him,” Hubbard said. “I knew Sam was coming to link to him and then that would be the end of it. So I told him that what he was being used for was to make me very rich. He wanted to know if he’d ever been made to hurt people. I told him that he didn’t remember it anyway so he shouldn’t worry about it.

“Then he said to me, ‘I know you’re a bad man and I know you won’t let me go home so now I’m going to make trouble for you.’

“And then he cut his throat.”

May and Janis stared at Hubbard stonily. I remembered Klah Redhouse telling me how they tried not to show too much grief.

“I’m sorry—” Hubbard said, looking at May and Janis.

“Don’t you dare,” Janis spat. “You’re not sorry Johnny is dead. You were going to kill someone today. You’re sorry you got caught. But you did get caught. You got caught because Johnny stopped you from getting away with what you were doing. He made trouble for you, just like he said. My brother was slow but he could figure things out if he took enough time. He figured you out. And now look at you. My brother is ten of you.”

Janis helped May up out of the chair. The two of them left the room without looking back.

“You saw him cut his throat, but then you panicked, didn’t you,” Vann said, after they left. “You actually left Bell’s body for at least a couple of minutes.”

“Yes,” Hubbard said. “I left but Sam told me to go back in. He said if Bell told anyone about his experience that they would figure out what we had done, and sooner or later it would come back to us. I had to stay with Bell until the thing was done.” He snorted. “He said he’d come up with a cover story that would last through Saturday, and that would be long enough. For all the good it did either of us.”

“You were gone just long enough for Bell to give us a clue,” Vann said. “He was confused just enough by what was happening to let us know something was seriously wrong. Thanks for that.”

Hubbard smirked ruefully and looked up at Vann. “Now what,” he said.

“Now it’s time for you to go get arrested for real, Mr. Hubbard,” Vann said. “Go back to your body. Do it now.”

“You need to swap out the patch,” Hubbard said.

“About that,” Tony said.

“What about it?” Hubbard asked.

“We lied to you,” Vann said. “There was no patch.”

“There was a general patch that closed the interpolator back door,” Tony said. “That was true. So if you backed out you wouldn’t have been able to come back in.”

“But we knew you wouldn’t do that,” Vann said. “So we decided to press our luck.”

“There was no script-flipper either,” Hubbard said.

“If we had that, we would have led with that,” I said. “And then we would have made you watch your company burn.”

“Now, go, Hubbard,” Vann said. “My colleagues are waiting for you. You’ve got a lot to answer for.”

Hubbard left, which was not noticeable.

Nicholas Bell surfacing was. He shook himself, almost knocking over his chair, and sucked in his breath. “Jesus,” he said.

“Nicholas Bell,” Vann said.

“Yes,” Bell said. “Yes. It’s me.”

“Nice to meet you,” Vann said.

“Hold still,” I said, gently putting a hand on his shoulder. “I need to get you out of these cuffs.” I undid him. He shook out his arms and rubbed his wrists.

“Mr. Bell,” Vann said.

“Yes,” he said.

“What Hubbard said about Johnny Sani,” Vann asked.

Bell nodded. “It was true,” he said.

“I’m sorry you had to watch that,” Vann said.

Bell laughed, shakily. “It’s been a long week,” he said.

“Yes,” Vann said. “That it has.”

“I hate to say this,” I said, to Bell. “But we need to have you answer some questions. We need you to tell us everything you saw or heard while Hubbard had control of your body.”

“Trust me, I intend to tell you everything I know about that son of a bitch,” Bell said. “But there’s something I really would like to do before I do that. If I can. If you don’t mind.”

“Of course,” Vann said. “Tell us what you would like to do.”

“I’d really like to see my sister now,” Bell said.

Chapter Twenty-five

VANN POINTED AT the stage in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where the speakers for the Haden march stood. “Your father looks pretty good up there,” she said, nodding toward Dad, standing next to President Becenti and Cassandra Bell, held in a portable cradle.

“He looks like an ant,” I said. “Which for my father is pretty impressive.”

“We could get closer to the stage if you want,” she said. “The rumor is, you know a guy.”

“I do,” I said. “But I think we’re fine where we are.”

Vann and I stood at the periphery of the crowd, far down the Mall from the stage and the speeches.

“No riots,” Vann said. “I wouldn’t have put money on that yesterday morning.”

“I think the Hubbard thing took the air out of those sails,” I said. News of Hubbard’s and Schwartz’s arrests was significant enough to escape the news dead zone of a late Saturday afternoon. We made sure that everyone had as much information as they wanted on the details. Saturday night in D.C. was no more filled with incident than most Saturday nights. Sunday was Sunday.

“We dodged a bullet,” Vann said, agreeing. “In a general sense. You took several.”

“Yes,” I said. “If I have learned anything this week, it’s to invest in economy threeps. I can’t afford this sort of attrition.”

“Yes, you can,” Vann said.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I can. But I don’t want to.”

We walked the Mall, her in her sling and me in a borrowed threep. She glanced back toward the stage. “You could have been up there,” she said. “Standing there with your father. You’re still famous enough that you could have given his deal with the Navajo even more credibility.”

“No,” I said. “Dad’s got credibility to burn, even after this week. And I don’t want that life anymore. There’s a reason I’m an FBI agent, Vann. I want to be useful for something else other than as a poster child.”

“The Hadens could still use a poster child,” Vann said. “Abrams-Kettering still takes effect at midnight. Things are going to get harder from here. A lot harder.”

“Someone else can do that job,” I said. “I think I’m better at doing this job.”

“You are,” Vann said. “At least this week you were.”

“They’re not all like this, right?” I said. “The weeks, I mean.”

“Would it be so bad if they were?” Vann asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes. It would.”

“I did say I was going to ask a lot of you,” Vann said. “On that first day. You remember.”

“I remember,” I said. “I’m not going to lie to you. I kind of just thought you were trying to scare me.”

Vann smiled and patted my shoulder. “Relax, Shane,” she said. “It gets better from here.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“Excuse me,” someone said. We looked over and there was a threep, standing with a few other people. It pointed to Vann. “You’re that FBI agent. The one that arrested Lucas Hubbard.”

“Yes,” Vann said. “One of them.”

“How cool!” the threep said, and then motioned at the group. “Would you mind? If we got a picture?”

“No,” Vann said. “Be happy to.”

“Awesome,” the threep said. Then it and the group began to crowd around Vann. One of them handed me a camera.

“Would you mind?” she asked.

“Not at all,” I said. “Everybody crowd in.” They crowded in.

“You’re loving this, aren’t you,” Vann said.

“Just a little,” I said. “Now. Everyone say ‘cheese.’”

Acknowledgments

As always, I think it’s important to acknowledge the people behind the scenes at my publisher, Tor Books, who make such an effort to getting my books to you. This time around, these include Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor; Miriam Weinberg, his assistant; Irene Gallo, art director; Peter Lutjen, cover designer; Heather Saunders, interior designer; and Christina MacDonald, copy editor. Also Alexis Saarela, my publicist, and of course Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor.

It’s also important to thank Ethan Ellenberg, my agent, and Evan Gregory, who handles my foreign sales. They do a frankly fantastic job for me, and I’m lucky to have them.

Thanks also to Steve Feldberg at Audible and to Gillian Redfearn at Gollancz.

Many thanks to friends and readers who have cheered me on and/or been there as welcome distractions when I needed to be distracted. This list is very long, so rather than list it out, assume that you’re on it. Thanks, y’all.

I really mostly just want to thank my wife, Kristine Blauser Scalzi. I wrote this book in 2013, which was in many important ways a really amazing year for me (I won a Hugo for Best Novel in it, for Redshirts, as just one salient example), but also very, very stressful. Simply put, she was the one who had to put up with me. That she did so with love and patience and encouragement instead of strangling me, throwing my remains into a wood chipper, and then pretending she had never been married to me at all is a testament to the fact that she is, in fact, the single best person I know. I love her more than I actually express in words—an irony for a writer—and am every day genuinely amazed I get to spend my life with her.

I try to let her know how much I appreciate her, as often as I can. This is me letting the rest of you know, too. You have this book because of her.

—John Scalzi, 11/29/13

Tor Books by John Scalzi

Note: Within series, books are best read in listed order.

THE OLD MAN’S WAR SERIES

Humanity has finally made it into interstellar space. But the planets fit to live on are scarce—and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. And they don’t want young people for fighters.

Old Man’s War

The Ghost Brigades

The Last Colony

Zoe’s Tale

The Human Division

Short Fiction in the series: “After the Coup”

STAND-ALONE FICTION

The Android’s Dream: Earth is on the verge of war with a vastly superior alien race. A lone man races to find the one object that can save our planet and our people from alien enslavement—a sheep. Yes, a sheep. And just wait until you read Chapter One.

Agent to the Stars: Thomas Stein, one of Hollywood’s hottest young agents, knows a thing or two about closing deals. But negotiating for an entire alien race—a hideous and smelly one—is going to require all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster.

Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: Some of the best and most popular Whatever entries from the first ten years of the blog—a decade of Whatever, presented in delightfully random form, just as it should be.

METAtropolis: Five original tales set in a shared urban future—from some of the hottest young writers in modern SF.

Fuzzy Nation: ZaraCorp holds the right to extract unlimited resources from the planet Zarathustra as long as it’s certifiably free of native sentients. When the planet’s native Fuzzies turn out to be intelligent, language-using beings, well, ZaraCorp has a problem.

Redshirts: Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel! The starship ensigns were expendable…until they started comparing notes.

Lock In: Fifteen years from now, a new virus sweeps the globe. Most experience nothing worse than fever and headaches, but 1%—that’s 1.7 million people in the United States—find themselves fully awake and aware yet “locked in” in this novel of our near future.

STAND-ALONE SHORT FICTION

“The President’s Brain is Missing”

“The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Book One: The Dead City: Prologue”

www.tor-forge.com

About the Author

JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His massively successful debut, Old Man’s War, won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony, Fuzzy Nation, and Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog, Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com), has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

LOCK IN

Copyright © 2014 by John Scalzi

All rights reserved.

Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Cover photograph by Peter Lutjen

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Scalzi, John, 1969–

    Lock in / John Scalzi.

        p.  cm.

    ISBN 978-0-7653-7586-5 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-4935-8 (e-book)

  1.  Virus diseases—Fiction.   2.  Epidemics—Fiction.   3.  Isolation (Hospital care)—Fiction.   4.  Virtual reality—Fiction.   5.  Paranormal fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3619.C256L63 2014

    813'.6—dc23

2014015247

e-ISBN 9781466849358

First Edition: August 2014