“There is something different about you, something familiar.”
She knew he had seen her on the holo-net channels. She had picked a poor disguise. He thumped over to her and handed her the drink. Then he leered down at her, his warm alcoholic breath washing over her. Something in his manner, something that his mind was hiding brought her a sudden jolt of fear.
“You look just like the witch-girl I was supposed to kill last night.”
Tamara spilled her drink. Bourbon soaked quickly into her pants, spreading coolness over her thighs. He smiled at her, and took her tiny hand in his.
“You’re tricks don’t work on me, Tammy. I damned near caught you last night, but this way was much easier.”
“How…?” she gasped, fear choking her words.
“Here,” he said, grabbing her small hand up in his.
“I know all about you. Come on and read me.”
Tamara knew it was a challenge. James liked challenges, he had an ego as big as his hat-size and wanted to pit himself against her. Besides, he was half-drunk, and for a giant that meant he was close to the berserker state. Then he opened his mind to her, and she knew everything.
She knew that the giant got a thrill out of the idea of “doing her” before he killed her. He was intrigued by the idea that she might want it that way, that she would like it that way. He also had had special government training to resist empaths. In his official career he had killed nearly a hundred men, and now that he was free-lancing he would go on killing.
She did something then that she had never done in the presence of any man except for Sato. She opened her eyes. She opened her eyelids, that is, but behind them there weren’t any eyes. Instead James Billings found himself looking directly at her exposed brain cells, protected only by a milky membrane. Beyond the membrane floated living pink tissue, blood pumping through the thin squiggly lines that were arteries and veins.
James Billings opened his mouth, perhaps to laugh or perhaps to scream, but what he also did was lose his concentration. It was all the opportunity that Tamara had and she took it. She shoved as she had never shoved before. She had learned her way through his mind a bit by now, he was drunk and he was off-guard. Up close like this, she could even perceive his brain inside his thick skull. She could feel the workings of his neural network, the chemical stimuli and responses.
First, she turned him on his bosses. She sparked a tiny flame of hate, then built it up, blaming all the tragedies of James Billings’ life on them. She dredged up memories of a scared father, beating a screaming two hundred pound eight-year-old son with a shovel. She conjured his first experience with a girl, her screams, his hands squeezing the life from her afterward. Finally, she made him relive the first time he got wired on blur, the fanatical rage, the fury of the berserker. When she had turned his heart into a pounding steam-press, when his nostrils were flaring wider than a dying bull’s, she let go of him and closed her eyes. He ignored her. He pulled the closet door off the wall, reached inside and brought out a heavy combat rifle. Normal men would have to mount it on a tripod to use it, but he carried it easily in one hand. He walked through the door into the hotel hallway, not bothering to open it first. He headed for the elevators, for the penthouses fifty stories up, where the bosses were.
Lying in the wreckage behind him, Tamara wept a few tears for James Billings. Although she had no eyes, her tear ducts were in place. After a time she got up and slipped out of the hotel, before the riot police and the Special Forces teams could arrive.
TA 96
Samuel Giddeon’s transcript, as interpreted by the ATLAS system’s network server:
… hope so, I’m not used to this transcriber thing in my head. It should be transmitting everything that I sub vocalize, but of course, I have no way of knowing.
I’m approaching the guardhouse now. I have forgotten how cold it gets here in the Rockies. I’ve only been outside a few times in my life. New Mexico, despite its name, seems to be nothing but pines, rocks and ice in the winter. Even the electric fence that runs between the two higher fences of barbed wire and chain links can barely put out enough heat to drive off the drifts of snow.
I’m having a bit of trouble with the bomb just now; it keeps riding up on my ribs. I think the gels might be contracting a bit due to the cold. I hope no one notices that my paunch is lifting itself and puffing up like a cobra’s hood.
Report: Dr. Robert Kieffer, Physicist, Technical Area 21.
Dr. Gideon showed up two hours earlier than expected. He explained that he had taken an earlier flight and had gotten into Albuquerque the night before instead of this morning. Gideon was the new software expert that we had been waiting for to help us with the ATLAS system. He was older than I had expected. A lot older. I had been told that he was in his late twenties, a hot new recruit from MIT. Instead I found him to be a large, slow-moving man in his late thirties or early forties. By large, I mean fat.
He passed security easily; we skipped no procedures. We signed in, went through the metal detectors and Geiger counters and unstrapped our personal computers to put them through the x-ray machine. I was assigned as his primary escort for the day, as he was an uncleared visitor.
I must state for the record that I was taken completely by surprise by subsequent events, as I believe everyone was at TA 96.
Gideon’s Transcript:
What strikes me most is just how healthy they all are. Their color is so good, their cheeks so pink and rosy. Few of us at the compound look so hale and full of vigor. I feel like I’m watching another speed-learning video.
Bob Kieffer seems like a friendly man. He reminds me of the older man, Reno, who services my cell back home. While we slide our security badges into the small brass dish that is the only access underneath the two inch-thick bullet-proof glass, I see the photos in his wallet. He seems to have a wife and a little girl. The little girl is holding a red figure-a Star Viking doll! I’ve seen them during culture-orientation days on television. I always like the commercials best; they seem to say the most about people.
Bob has a keen mind, I can see that already. His movements, like his mind, are very quick, almost bird-like. I sincerely hope that he makes it through today.
The guards are grim-faced. They merely stare at us through the thick, slightly greenish glass. It seems to be taking forever for our security badges to be accepted by the barcode reader. Clipboards are signed, IDs are passed back and forth, the procedures are endless. Other fully-cleared personnel are backing up at the front of the guardhouse now, looking annoyed. The security men ignore them and move at the same methodical pace.
I notice the interior of the guardhouse. Squinting through the glass into the gloom, I see a rack of guns on the wall. Two automatic rifles top the rack. Below this is a shotgun with a string of shells velcroed to the stock. At the bottom is a large, ugly, black thing with a tripod. An M60? I can only hazard a guess. All the weapons have a worn look to them, and I wonder if they have killed anyone in the past.
Finally, the guards let us pass. As though a cork has been fired from a champagne bottle, people are streaming by on both sides of us while we reorganize our security papers. My breath is blowing cold and white. I notice my fingers are quivering a bit of their own accord.
“Quite good security you have here, Bob,” I comment, relieved that I have made it into the compound without incident. Nothing in the bomb or the ignition system contains more than the amount of metal found in a single of house key. None of the detectors picked it up.
“Yes, but you get used to it.”
“An army of terrorists couldn’t bust into here.”