Текст книги "Death Match"

Автор книги: Lincoln Child

Соавторы: Lincoln Child
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FIFTY-SEVEN

For a moment, Lash could not reply. He felt stunned.

All this time, he’d been sure he was listening to a murderer’s confession. Instead, he’d been hearing a condemnation of someone – some thing—else.

“Oh, my God…” Tara began. Then she fell silent.

“I began to suspect just after the second couple died.” Silver’s voice had begun to tremble. “But I didn’t want to believe it. I wouldn’t let myself think about it, do anything about it. It wasn’t until you were named as the suspect that – that I finally took steps to learn the truth.”

Lash struggled with this revelation. Could it be true?

Perhaps it wasn’ttrue. Perhaps it was Silver, still trying to save himself. And yet Lash had to admit that, no matter how hard he’d tried to pigeonhole Silver into the profile of a serial murderer, the man never quite fit.

“How?” he managed. “Why?”

“The how would be all too easy,” Tara answered. She spoke slowly. “Liza knows everything about everybody. She had access to all systems, internal andexternal. She could manipulate information. And because everything was in the digital domain, there would be no paper trail to follow.”

Silver did not respond.

“Was it scolipane?” Lash asked.

Silver nodded.

“Liza would have known about the reaction with Substance P, the catastrophic results of the early trials,” Tara said. “It would have been part of her dataset from the days when PharmGen was our parent company. She wouldn’t even have needed to search.”

It seemed incredible. Yet Lash had seen Liza’s power, firsthand. He had witnessed the Tank, witnessed the intelligence at work. And if he had lingering doubts, all he needed was to look at Tara’s expression.

“I understand how Lindsay died,” he said. “The drug interaction, the high-copper condition from the antihistamine. But what about the Thorpes?”

“The same,” Silver said without looking up. “Karen Thorpe had a blood disorder that caused her to take prescription vitamins. The vitamin prescription was changed to a high-copper formulation, and the dosage increased. I checked her records. Karen Thorpe had recently undergone a physical exam. Liza took advantage of that not only to change the vitamin formulation, but to add a prescription for scolipane. On the heels of the physical, Karen would have no reason to doubt the new prescription.”

“What about the third couple?” Tara asked. “The Connellys?”

“I looked into them, as well,” Silver replied, his voice very low. “Lynn Connelly is passionately fond of exotic fruit. It says so on her application. Just last week, Eden sent her a basket of red blush pears from Ecuador. Extremely rare.”

“So?”

“There was no record of anybody from Eden authorizing such a present. So I looked deeper. Only one grower in Ecuador markets that particular brand of pears for export. And that grower uses an unusual pesticide, not approved by the FDA.”

“Go on.”

“Lynn Connelly takes only one medication regularly. Cafraxis. It’s a migraine prophylactic. That pesticide contains the base chemical that, when combined with the active ingredient of cafraxis—”

“Let me guess,” said Lash. “Substance P.”

Silver nodded.

Lash fell silent. It was outrageous. And yet it explained a lot of things – including the annoyances in his own life that started out petty, then quickly escalated, as if somebody was trying to force his attention from the mysterious deaths. Could Liza have been behind everything – even Edmund Wyre’s parole? Wyre, the one person in the world who more than anything wants me dead?The answer was obvious. If Liza could have altered his own past history so radically, arranging Wyre’s parole would have been childishly simple.

But still, something didn’t make sense. “Couldn’t Liza have killed the Wilners in some other way?” he asked.

“Sure,” Tara replied. “She could have done anything. Tweaked medical scanners to deliver a fatal dose of X rays. Instructed a jet’s autopilot to fly into a mountain. Anything.”

“So why kill the couples in such a similar way? And why were their deaths so precisely timed, each exactly two years after they’d been matched? The similarity of deaths raised the alarm in the first place. It makes no sense.”

“It makes perfect sense. You’re not thinking like a machine.” It was Silver who spoke this time. “Machines are programmed for order. Since scolipane solved the first problem successfully, there was no need for further optimization when solving the second problem.”

“We’re not talking about a ‘problem,’ ” said Lash. “We’re talking about murder.”

“Liza’s nota murderer!” Silver cried. He struggled to control himself. “Not really. She was simply trying to remove what she perceived as a threat. The concept of hiding, of deception, came later, when… when youbecame involved.”

“What she perceived as a threat,” Lash repeated slowly. “A threat to whom?”

Silver didn’t speak, and he didn’t meet Lash’s gaze.

“To herself,” Tara said.

Lash glanced at her.

“Dr. Silver instructed Liza to remove his avatar from the Tank after the match with Lindsay Thorpe. But I don’t think she did. I think his avatar was in the Tank all the time. Unknown to the technicians or engineers. And it found a match exactly five more times. Karen Wilner. Lynn Connelly.”

“Each of the women in the supercouples.”

“Yes. Although I’m not sure they were supercouples, after all.” Tara looked over. “Dr. Silver?”

Silver, eyes on the ground, still said nothing.

“You know Liza’s been imprinted with personality traits,” Tara went on. “Curiosity, for example.”

Lash nodded.

“Jealousy is an emotion. Fear is another.”

“Are you saying Liza was jealousof Lindsay Thorpe?”

“Is that so hard to believe? What are jealousy and fear, except stimuli for self-preservation? If you were Liza, how would you feel when your creator – the person who programmed you, shared his personality with you, spent all his time with you – found a life mate?”

“So when Liza matched Lindsay Thorpe with somebody else, she marked it as a supercouple.”

“It must have seemed the most likely way of ensuring Lindsay would never again be a threat. The Thorpes were a valid match, of course – just not a perfect one. But the comparison process was so complex, nobody but Liza could know it wasn’tone-hundred-percent perfect.”

Lash struggled with this. “But if you’re right – if Liza matched Lindsay with somebody else, removed the threat – why kill her?”

“When Silver put his own avatar into the Tank, he added an element of risk Liza was previously unaware of. Now she realized there could be threats to her own sovereignty. So it was Liza who reinserted Silver’s avatar into the Tank. Who kept watching vigilantly for a match. And it happened again. And again. There must have come a time when Liza felt the number of existing ‘threats,’ married or not, were growing too numerous. And that’s when she decided on a more permanent solution.”

Lash turned toward Silver. “Is this true?”

Still, Silver did not answer.

Lash stepped closer. “How could you let this happen? You programmed your own personality flaws into Liza. Didn’t you see what you were doing, didn’t you seeyou’d only—”

“You think thisis what I wanted?” Silver shouted abruptly. “To you it’s all black and white, isn’t it: a neat little package of diagnoses, tied with a pretty bow. I couldn’t anticipate how she’d develop. I gave her the ability to teach herself, to grow. Just the way anymind needs to grow. All that processing power. How could I know she’d take this direction? That she’d maximize negative, irrational personality traits over the positive?”

“You may have given Liza the machine equivalent of emotion. But you gave her no guidance over how to controlthat emotion.”

As quickly as it came, the emotion left Silver’s face. He slumped back. Silence descended on the little room.

“So why bring us in here?” Lash said at last. “Why tell us all this?”

“Because I couldn’t let you continue, talking to Liza the way you were.”

“Why not?”

“Whatever else she is, Liza is a logical machine. She will have rationalized her actions in some way we can’t understand. You talking to her like that, asking unexpected questions, introduces a random element – maybe a destabilizingelement – into what I think has become a fragile personality structure.”

“What you think? You mean, you don’t know?”

“Haven’t you been listening? Her consciousness has been growing, autonomously, for years. It’s now beyond my ability to reverse engineer or even comprehend. All this time, I thought her personality had been growing more robust. But perhaps… perhaps it was just the opposite.”

“You fear some kind of defensive response?” Tara asked.

“All I can tell you is that, if Christopher here confronts her too directly, she’ll feel threatened. And she has the processing power to do the unexpected. To do anything.”

Lash glanced at Tara, and she nodded. “There’s a digital moat around Eden’s systems, patrolled by programs on the lookout for cyber-attacks. We’ve always feared some hacker or competitor might try to bring down our system from the outside. It’s possible Liza could use these defensives in an offensiveposture.”

“Offensive? Like what?”

“Launch digital attacks on core servers. Paralyze the country with denial-of-service assaults. Erase critical corporate or federal databases. Anything we could think of, and more. It’s even possible that Liza – if she felt threatened, say, in imminent danger of termination – could use Eden’s Internet portal to replicate a subset of herself outside, beyond our network. We’d have no control over her then.”

“Jesus.” Lash turned back to Silver. “So what do we do?”

“ Youwon’t do anything. If she trusts anybody, she’ll trust me. I have to show her I understand what she’s doing, whyshe’s doing it. But she must be told it’s wrong, that she has to stop. That she has to be – be held accountable.”

As he spoke, Silver looked at Lash very closely. Unless we let her go, his look seemed to say. Just let her go. Give her a chance to correct her mistakes, start again. She’s done wonderful work, brought happiness to hundreds of thousands of people.

The silence stretched on. Then, Silver broke eye contact. His shoulders sagged.

“You’re right, of course,” he said very quietly. “And I’m responsible. Responsible for everything.” He turned toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get it done.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

They left the bedroom, walked down the narrow hall, and reentered the control room. Without speaking, Silver opened the Plexiglas panel and climbed into the chair. He attached the electrodes and the microphone, swung the monitor into place, tapped at the embedded keypad with sharp, almost angry movements. After struggling so desperately between love for his creation and the burden of his own conscience, it seemed now as if he just wanted the ordeal to end as quickly as possible.

“Liza,” he said into the microphone.

“Richard.”

“What is your current state?”

“Ninety-one point seven four percent operational. Current processes are at forty-three point one percent of multithreaded capacity. Banked machine cycle surplus at eighty-nine percent.”

Silver paused. “Your core processes have doubled in the last five minutes. Can you explain?”

“I am curious, Richard.”

“Elaborate, please.”

“I was curious why Christopher Lash contacted me directly. Nobody but you has ever contacted me in such a way.”

“True.”

“Is he testing the new interface? He used many improper parameters in his contact.”

“That is because I have not taught him the correct parameters.”

“Why is that, Richard?”

“Because I did not intend for him to contact you.”

“Then why did he contact me?”

“Because he is under threat, Liza.”

There was a brief pause, broken only by the whirring of fans.

“Does it have to do with the nonstandard situation Christopher Lash described?”

“Yes.”

“Is the situation nonstandard?”

“Yes, Liza.”

“Please provide me with details.”

“That is what I am here to talk about.”

There was another pause. Lash felt a tug at his elbow. It was Tara, beckoning him toward one of the monitors.

“Look at this,” she murmured.

Lash focused on a dazzlingly complex mosaic of circles and polygons, connected by wireframe lines of varying colors. Some of the objects glowed sharply on the screen. Tiny labels were attached to each.

“What is it?”

“As near as I can make out, the real-time topography of Liza’s neural net.”

“Explain.”

“It’s like a visual reflection of her consciousness. It shows at a glance where her processes are focused: the big picture, sparing the details. Look.” She pointed at the screen. “Here’s candidate processing. See the label: Can-Prc? Here’s infrastructure. Here’s security. This larger suite of systems is probably data-gathering. And this one, larger still, is avatar-matching: the Tank. And this large number – here at the top – seems to be her operational capacity.”

Lash peered at the screen. “So?”

“Didn’t you hear Silver’s question just now? When you got into that chair, Liza’s processes were running at only twenty-two percent. No surprise: our systems are idling, everybody’s been sent home. So why have her processes doubled since?”

“Liza said she was curious.” As he said this, Lash glanced toward the Plexiglas compartment.

“Do you remember some of the early thought work we did?” Silver was asking. “Back before the scenarios? The game we played when we were working on your free-association skills. Release Candidate 2, or maybe 3.”

“Release Candidate 3.”

“Thank you. I would give you a number, and you would tell me all your associations with that number. Such as the number 9.”

“Yes. The square of three. The square root of eighty-one. The number of innings in a game of baseball. The hour in which Christ spoke his last words. In ancient China, the representation of the supreme power of the emperor. In Greek mythology, the number of the muses. The Ennead, or nine-pointed star, comprising the three trinities of—”

“Correct.”

“I enjoyed that game, Richard. Are we going to play it again?”

“Yes.”

Lash turned back to Tara, who pointed at the monitor. The number had spiked to forty-eight percent.

“She’s thinking about something,” Tara whispered. “Thinking hard.”

Silver shifted in the chair. “Liza, this time I am not going to give you a series of numbers. I am going to give you a series of dates. I want you to tell me your associations with those dates. Is that clear to you?”

“Yes.”

Silver paused, closed his eyes. “The first date is April 14, 2001.”

“April 14, 2001,” the voice repeated silkily. “I am aware of twenty-nine million, four hundred and twenty-six thousand, three hundred six digital events related to that date.”

“Events concerning me only.”

“Four thousand, seven hundred and fifty events concern you on that date, Richard.”

“Remove all voice samples, video feeds, keystroke logs. I am interested in macro events only.”

“Understood. Four events remain.”

“Please specify.”

“You compiled a revised version of the heuristic sorting routine for candidate matches.”

“Go on.”

“You brought a new distributed RAID cluster on line, bringing my total random-access memory capacity to two million petabytes.”

“Go on.”

“You introduced a client avatar into the virtual Proving Chamber.”

“Which avatar was that, Liza?”

“Avatar 000000000, beta version.”

“Whose avatar was that?”

“Yours, Richard.”

“And the fourth event?”

“You instructed that the avatar be removed.”

“How long did my avatar remain in the Proving Chamber on that occasion?”

“Seventy-three minutes, twenty point nine five nine seconds.”

“Was an acceptable match found during that period?”

“No.”

“Okay, Liza. Very good.” Silver paused. “Another date. July 21, 2002. What macro-level events were recorded for me, and me alone, on that date?”

“Fifteen. You ran a data integrity scan on the—”

“Narrow the focus to client matching.”

“Two events.

“Describe.”

“You inserted your avatar into the Proving Chamber. And you instructed your avatar be removed from the Proving Chamber.”

“And how long was my avatar in the Tank – I mean, the Proving Chamber – this time?”

“Three hours nineteen minutes, Richard.”

“Was an acceptable match found?”

“No.”

Again Tara prodded Lash. “Take another look,” she said.

The large monitor was now aglow with activity. A message blinked insistently:

COMPUTATIONAL PROCESSES: 58.54 %.

“What’s going on?” he murmured.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The digital infrastructure of the entire tower’s lit up. All subsystems are being accessed.” Tara tapped at the nearby keyboard. “The external network conduits are being completely overloaded. I can’t even run a low-level ‘finger’ on any of them.”

“What does it all mean?”

“I think Liza’s pacing like a caged tiger.”

A caged tiger, Lash thought. Only if this tiger got out, it had the ability to compromise the entire distributed computer network of the civilized world.

“Okay,” Silver said from inside the Plexiglas cube. “Another date, please, Liza. September 17, 2002.”

“Same search arguments as before, Richard?”

“Yes.”

“Five events.”

“Detail them, please. Precede each with a time stamp.”

“10:04:41, you inserted your avatar in the Proving Chamber. 14:23:28, I reported your avatar had been successfully matched. 14:25:44, you asked me to transmit relevant details about the subject match. 15:31:42, you asked I reinsert the subject match into the Proving Chamber. 19:52:24:20, you deleted the details from your private terminal.”

“What was the name of the subject match?”

“Torvald, Lindsay.”

“Did subject Torvald go on to be matched again?”

“Yes.”

“Name of that match?”

“Thorpe, Lewis.”

“Can you reproduce the particulars?”

“Yes, with an expenditure of ninety-eight million CPU units.”

“Do so. And state the preciseness of the match.”

“Ninety-eight point four seven two nine five percent.”

“And can you verify the basal compatibility, as reported to the oversight program?”

A brief pause. “One hundred percent.”

One hundred percent, Lash thought. A supercouple.

“But the actual compatibility you recorded was ninety-eight percent, not one hundred percent. Please account for the discrepancy.”

This time, the pause was longer. “There was an anomaly.”

“An anomaly. Can you specify its nature?”

“Not without further examination.”

“And the time necessary for such an examination?”

“Unknown.”

Sweat had popped out on Silver’s brow. His face was a mask of concentration.

“Run a subprocess to study that anomaly. Meanwhile, can you tell me how many times my avatar was inserted into the Proving Chamber afterthe match with Torvald, Lindsay?”

“Richard, I am detecting unusual readings from your monitoring equipment. Pulse elevated, theta waves outside nominal, voiceprint with a high degree of—”

“Do these readings interfere with your answering my question?”

“No.”

“Then please proceed. How many times was my avatar inserted into the Tank after the match with Torvald, Lindsay?”

“Seven hundred and sixty-five.”

Jesus, Lash thought.

“How many days between September 17, 2002, and today?”

“Seven hundred and sixty-six.”

“Was each insertion for an equal amount of time?”

“Yes.”

“What was that length of time?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“Did I order those insertions?”

“No, Richard.”

“Who did?”

“The orders are anomalous.”

“Run another subprocess to study that anomaly, as well.” Silver took a handkerchief from his pocket, dabbed between the electrodes on his forehead. “Were there any additional successful matches with my avatar on those occasions?”

“Yes. Five.”

Lash glanced behind him. Tara was watching the screen, her face ghostly. Liza’s computational processes had risen to seventy-eight percent of capacity.

“Were those five women later matched to others besides myself?”

“Yes.”

“And those basal compatibilities, as reported to the Proving Chamber supervisors?”

“One hundred percent.”

“On each occasion?”

“On each occasion, Richard.”

Silver stopped. His head slumped forward, as if he had lapsed into sleep.

“We’re going to have to stop him,” Tara muttered.

“Why?”

“Look at the monitor. She’s pushing all our logical units beyond capacity. The infrastructure can’t absorb it.”

“She’s only at eighty percent of capacity.”

“Yes, but that capacity is normally distributed over a dozen systems – the Tank, Data Synthesis, Data Gathering – that soak up all that horsepower. Liza’s directed all her processes at the backbone, at the core architecture. It wasn’t meant to handle the load.” She pointed at the screen. “Look, already some of the digital interfaces are failing. Tower integrity’s gone. Security will be next.”

“What’s going on? What’s she doing?”

“It’s as if she’s turned all her efforts inward, at some insoluble problem.”

Silver had taken a fresh grip on the arms of the chair. “Liza,” he said in clipped tones. “A total of six women have been matched with my avatar. Is this true or false?”

“True, Richard.”

“Please establish a link with client surveillance.”

“Link established.”

“Thank you. Please inform me of the location, and condition, of all six women.”

“One moment, please. I am unable to comply with your request.”

“Why is that, Liza?”

“I am able to ascertain current data on only four of the six women.”

“I ask again: why is that, Liza?”

“Unknown.”

“Elaborate.”

“There is insufficient information to elaborate.”

“Who are the two women for whom you cannot provide valid data?”

“Thorpe, Lindsay. Wilner, Karen.”

“Is the information insufficient because they are dead?”

“That is possible.”

“How did they die, Liza? Whydid they die?”

“The readings are anomalous.”

“ Anomalous?The same anomaly as the others you are currently examining? Report progress on those examinations.”

“Incomplete.”

“Then report incomplete progress.”

“It is a nontrivial task, Richard. I—” A pause. “I am aware of conflicting function calls within my core routines.”

“Who wrote those functions? Me?”

“You wrote one of them. The other was self-generated.”

“Which one did I write?”

“Your comments in the program header call it ‘motivic continuity.’ ”

“And the title of the other?”

Liza was silent.

Motivic continuity, Lash thought to himself. Survival instinct.

“The title of the other?”

“I gave the routine no name.”

“Did you assign it any internal keywords?”

“Yes. One.”

“And that keyword?”

“Devotion.”

“She’s at ninety-four percent,” Tara said. “We have to do something, now.”

Lash nodded. He took a step toward the Plexiglas barrier.

“Liza.” Silver’s tone had grown softer now, almost sorrowful. “Can you define the word ‘murder’?”

“I am aware of twenty-three definitions for that word.”

“Give me the primary definition, please.”

“To unlawfully take the life of a human being.”

Lash felt Tara take his arm.

“Are your ethical routines operational?”

“Yes, Richard.”

“And your self-awareness net?”

“Richard, the conflicting function calls make that—”

“Bring your self-awareness net on line, please.” Silver’s voice was even softer. “Keep it fully active until I tell you otherwise.”

“Very well.”

“What is the primary tenet of your ethical routines?”

“To maximize the safety, privacy, and happiness of Eden clients.”

“With your self-awareness network and ethical routines enabled, I want you to review your self-generatedactions toward Eden clients over the last twenty days.”

“Richard—”

“Do it now, Liza.”

“Richard, such review will cause me to—”

“ Doit.”

“Very well.”

The unearthly voice fell silent. Lash waited, heart beating painfully in his chest.

Perhaps a minute went by before Liza spoke again. “I have completed the review process.”

“Very good, Liza.”

Lash became aware that Tara was no longer gripping his arm. When he looked over, she nodded toward the monitor screen. Liza’s processes had dropped to sixty-four percent. Even as Lash watched, the number ticked quickly backward.

“We’re almost done now, Liza,” Silver said. “Thank you.”

“I have always tried to please you, Richard.”

“I know that. There is just one last question I would like you to consider. How do your ethical routines tell you murder should be dealt with?”

“By rehabilitation of the murderer, if possible. If rehabilitation is impossible…”

Liza fell silent: a silence that crept on, and on.

Far below their feet, Lash heard a distant boom. The building shuddered faintly.

“Liza?” Silver asked.

There was no response. Suddenly, Silver’s cell phone rang again.

“Liza?” Over the ringing of the phone, Silver’s voice grew urgent, almost pleading. “ Is rehabilitation possible?”

No response.

“ Liza!” Silver called again. “Please tell me that—”

Quite abruptly, the room was plunged into total darkness.