"There's no time," the Laura clone said. "Look." She pointed toward the purple horizon.
"Oh, Mom!"
"It's time to get inside, Joseph."
Laura looked at Gina. The girl smiled in what was almost a wince and shrugged again.
"Don't make me bother your father," she said without lifting her voice. It was easily heard by all — Gina, Laura, and the little boy.
The boy raised his weapon and pointed it at the Laura clone. Laura almost shouted a warning to the old woman, but the boy didn't fire. Instead, a streak of yellow light burst from the rocks and lit up his shirt with a bright glow, sounding a loud electronic chirp.
The boy spun and fired into the rocks toward the source. It was some kind of game, and the boy leapt off the rock to go play it.
The closer Laura and Gina got to the Laura clone, the older the woman appeared to be. She had gray hair pulled back behind her head.
She was kneeling on the ground and pulling up some kind of bulbs — vegetables of some sort. People might not have evolved, but rutabagas appeared to Laura to have mutated. The woman looked up to check the horizon again. The sky was alive with swirling purples and reds. It was beautiful, but Laura felt more drawn to the woman than the landscape. To the computer's depiction of what an old Laura would look like.
"So," Gina said, "what do you think?"
Laura shrugged. "On the whole, I appreciate the flattery. I'm a fine-looking old lady."
"I mean, what do you think about the tour?"
"I think you've been reading too much Kurt Vonnegut on CD ROM."
"That's all? No conclusions you'd like to share with me?"
"Well, let's see. A few million years ago, people didn't live past their mid-thirties because they were dumb as stumps. A few million years in the future, after major advances in nutrition and plastic surgery, we'll all be healthy and happy and attractive well into our eighties."
"She's over a hundred and thirty," Gina said, nodding at the Laura-like woman.
"A hundred and thirty, a thousand and thirty, whatever. I get the point. Knowledge is good."
Gina tilted her head to the side and frowned sadly. "Oh, I'm sorry, Laura. You're not getting it at all. You're just not ready yet. Georgi is coming down the hall, so I'm going to have to say 'bye."
She raised her hand and waved.
"No, wait!"
The scene disappeared, the last vestiges of the lithe girl receding into the nothingness of the black walls — her fingers still waggling their goodbye.
40
"It was unbelievable." Laura said to Filatov. He was leaning over a monitor just outside the virtual workstation with a grim look on his face. "The world was so totally realistic that I completely forgot where I was. Those things open up some incredible opportunities. I mean, the guide could teach medical students how the aorta works by taking them inside a full-sized model of the heart."
"What guide?" Filatov asked distractedly.
"The guide, you know, who leads you around in cyberspace."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Filatov said, straightening up. "But don't get carried away. These things aren't quite ready for home use. That one little simulation of yours cost about thirteen million dollars in computer time."
"What?"
"I hope you enjoyed it, because we haven't done more than a dozen class ones since the 4Cs came on-line. The computational power is too expensive."
"But… what about when computing power comes down by a billionfold? That thirteen million dollars would drop to… what? A single penny!"
"What are you talking about?" Filatov said, brushing past her for the door.
Laura followed. "The computer said that computational power will expand by a millionfold for the next generation and then by a billionfold the generation after."
"A-a-ah!" Filatov said, passing her comment off with an irritated wave of his hand. "How the hell would it know?"
When they got to the control room, Laura saw idle technicians clustered about in groups. The computer center's smooth functioning seemed to have been interrupted by a mass coffee break.
"What's going on in here?" Laura asked.
"They're scared," Filatov said.
"Of what?"
"Hoblenz."
"Why."
"He says he caught one of my operators committing sabotage, Filatov said, his tired eyes rising to Laura. "He was trying to load an optical disk into a drive. The disk is full of control codes for some foreign power, governmental or corporate, we don't know which. Hoblenz thinks he's just found the cause of all our troubles, and he now suspects everyone on my staff, even me!"
"Do you think that operator is the cause of our problems?"
Filatov shook his head. "No. But he would have caused more if he hadn't been stopped."
"What does Mr. Gray think?"
"Hoblenz hasn't called him yet. He wants to find out more before he makes his report."
"What does that mean?" Laura asked. "Where has he taken that man?"
"To the conference room — the main—"
"And you let him?" she burst out. "Just Hoblenz and the man alone?" Laura ran all the way to the conference room and slapped the pressure plate on the wall. She almost smashed her nose into the door when it didn't open. She pressed the plate again — this time harder.
Nothing. Laura began pounding on the door. "Hoblenz! Let me in!" She pounded over and over until finally she heard someone inside.
"Stand back, Laura!" the muffled shout came. "Move down the hall away from the door!"
"Okay!" she replied, and stepped back. Remembering it was Hoblenz, she thought better and headed even farther down the hall to wait.
A blast tore open the wall beside the door with a tremendous boom.
The remains of the pressure plate came to rest on the floor. Two soldiers pried open the door and slid it back into the wall. The stench of smoke from the gun still filled the air as Laura peered sheepishly into the room.
One of Hoblenz's men safed his smoking shotgun with an audible click. There were half a dozen other soldiers, all heavily armed. Hoblenz stood over the conference table, one hand holding a pistol to the nose of a white-jacketed herd, the other holding a thick shank of the man's hair.
But his eyes were on the scene at the door. "What the hell are you doing?" Laura demanded.
Hoblenz looked concerned. "Are we havin' some kinda power problems with those doors?" he asked, ignoring her question. Laura turned to see Filatov standing in the doorway behind her. He was staring at the prisoner — his former operator.
"Mr. Hoblenz," Laura began, "I don't think—!"
"Is the goddamn power on out there?" Hoblenz shouted.
"Yes!" Filatov answered. "We've had no trouble with power."
Hoblenz let the prisoner's head go. Blood ran down the man's upper lip, and one lens of his glasses was cracked. He looked even paler than the norm, and his hair stood straight up where the big man's firm grip had been. Hoblenz walked over to peer into the hole in the wall.
"I'll be goddamned," he said in wonder.
"What?" Laura asked.
"The door didn't work. I mean, even the manual didn't work."
"You didn't lock it?" Laura asked.
"No! You can't lock it! It don't lock!"
"Then why…?" she began, realizing immediately the answer to her half-expressed question. The computer, she thought.
It was the only explanation. Hoblenz looked at her, obviously thinking the same. "Why would the computer lock the door?" she asked.
"Guess it wanted to know what that pissant over there had to say."
Laura looked at the man. "Are you okay?" she asked him.
He looked sick, but he nodded his head.