Death Match

When she said nothing, he went on. “I know what you’re thinking. Why did she kill her husband? She didn’t want to. But she had to. Yet even as the flood of brain chemicals drove her half mad, her love for Lewis Thorpe remained. And how do you kill somebody you love? As painlessly as possible. And you would go together. That’s why the deaths happened at night: Lindsay could slip a dry cleaning bag over the head of her sleeping husband before slipping one over her own. She probably waited for him to fall asleep in front of the TV. Same with Karen Wilner. She was a librarian, she would have access to scalpels in the book repair lab. A fresh scalpel is so sharp you wouldn’t even feel it opening your vein — not if you were asleep, anyway. But I’ll bet she sliced her own wrist more hesitantly, that’s why it took her longer to die.”

“What about the baby?” Tara murmured. “The Thorpes’ child?”

“You mean, why did she survive? I don’t know the morphology of Substance P well enough to speculate. Perhaps the mother-child bond is too elemental, too primitive, to be broken in such a way.”

Now he reached across the table, took Tara’s hand. “Lindsay may have killed herself and her husband. But this isn’t about that. It’s about first-degree murder. Somebody inside Eden knew exactly how to make Lindsay Thorpe self-destruct. Somebody knew her medical background, knew about the early tests on scolipane, knew how to create that precise chemical cocktail within her blood. And that somebody had the power to fake a paper trail, doctor her medical orders, even modify her prescription. You said it yourself: it has to be somebody with world-class access to your systems.”

His grip tightened on her hand. “I think you know where this is leading. It’s the answer, the only possible answer. And you have to be strong. Because this person must be stopped. He got to Karen Wilner the same way. He’s singling out the women, making them self-destruct. In just two days, the third couple will—”

He stopped abruptly. Tara was no longer listening. Her expression had shifted from his face to somewhere else: somewhere over his shoulder.

He turned. Edwin Mauchly was approaching from the front of the diner, surrounded by half a dozen other men. Lash did not recognize them, but he knew they must be Eden security.

Quickly, Tara pulled her hand from his.

Lash, stu

“Dr. Lash,” Mauchly said. “If you’ll come with us, please?”

As comprehension broke over him he rose instinctively, ready for flight. One of the guards placed a hand on his shoulder and, gently but irresistibly, guided him back into the seat.

“You’ll find things a lot less painful if you cooperate, sir,” the security officer said.

Vaguely, Lash was aware Tara had slipped out of the booth and was now standing behind Mauchly.

A few seconds ticked by. They seemed very long. Lash glanced around the diner. A few faces were turned in his direction, watching with mild curiosity. Then he looked up at the surrounding guards. And then he nodded and — much more slowly — stood. The security staff closed around him, and he felt himself propelled forward.

Mauchly was far ahead now, already leaving the restaurant. One arm was draped protectively around Tara’s shoulders. “I’m sorry you had to be put through this,” Lash heard him say. “But it’s all over. You’re safe.” Then the door closed behind them, the sound cut off, and the two melted into the gathering darkness of Fifty-fourth Street.

Tara vanished without looking back.

FORTY-TWO

Richard Silver stepped carefully from the treadmill and paused, breathing hard, while the belt finished decelerating. Turning off the machine, he reached for a towel and mopped his brow. It had been one of his toughest workouts — forty-five minutes at six miles per hour, eight-percent grade — yet his mind remained as troubled as when he first got on.

Dropping the towel into a canvas bin, he left the exercise room and walked down the corridor to the kitchen, where he filled a glass of water from the tap. Nothing he did seemed to remove the oppressiveness that hung over him. It had been this way since the morning, when the sheet naming Lash as the only possible killer emerged from the printer.

He took a few disinterested sips, placed the glass in the sink. He stood a moment, staring without really seeing. And then he sank forward, leaning his elbows on the counter and pressing a fist against his forehead: once, twice, a third time…

He had to stop. He had to get on with things, he had to. Maintaining a semblance of normality was the only way to get through this least normal of times.

He straightened. Four-fifteen. What would he normally be doing now?

Having his afternoon session with Liza.

Silver exited the kitchen and headed for the end of the corridor. Usually his mornings were devoted to reading tech journals and white papers; his early afternoons to business matters; and his evenings to programming. But he always made time to visit with Liza before di

He guarded this time against all interruptions, always began promptly at four. Today was the first time he’d been late since Liza and her vast array of supporting hardware were installed in the penthouse, four years earlier.

Slipping into the contoured chair, he began fixing the electrodes, struggling to clear his mind. Only long practice made it possible. Minutes passed while he prepared himself. Then he placed his hand on the keypad and began to type.

“Richard,” came the haunting, disembodied voice.

“Hello, Liza.”

“You are seventeen minutes late. Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, Liza.”

“I am pleased. Shall I begin with the status report? I have been testing the new communications pseudocode you installed and have made some minor modifications.”

“Very good, Liza.”

“Would you like to hear the process details?”

“No, thank you. We can skip the rest of the report today.”

“Then would you like to discuss the latest scenarios you assigned? I am preparing to undertake scenario 311, Creating False Positives in the Turing Test.”

“Perhaps tomorrow, Liza. I feel like proceeding directly to the story.”

“Very well.”

Silver reached beneath the chair — careful not to loosen any of the electrodes as he did so — and pulled out a well-thumbed book. It was his mother’s, one of the very few he’d retained from earliest childhood.

The high point of his sessions with Liza was always the reading. Over the years he had progressed from the very simplest stories, teaching her, by example, the rudiments of human values. It was satisfying in an almost paternal way. It always made him feel better, less lonely. Perhaps today it could clear even the dark cloud of guilt that hung over him. And perhaps by the time he’d finished reading, he would have the courage to voice the question he both yearned — and dreaded — to ask.

He paused to refocus his mind, then opened the book. “Do you recall where we left off, Liza?”

“Yes. The rodent Templeton had retrieved the egg sac of the spider.”

“Good. And why did he do it?”

“The pig had promised sustenance in return.”

“And why did the pig’s friend, Charlotte, want the egg sac saved?”

“To ensure the survival of her children and thus the propagation of the species.”