“That will come. So many other enhancements seem to occupy my time. And it’s a non-trivial task. We can discuss the details some other time, if you’re interested.”
He stepped forward, put a hand on Lash’s shoulder. “I know how hard it’s been on you. It hasn’t been easy for me, either. But we’ve come this far, done this much. I need you to stick with it just a little longer. Maybe it is just a freakish tragedy after all, two double suicides. Maybe we’ll have a quiet weekend. I realize it’s hell not knowing. But we have to trust Liza now. Okay?”
Lash remained silent a moment. “That match Eden found for me. It’s on the level? No mistakes?”
“The only mistake was sending your avatar to the Tank in the first place. The matching process itself would work for you as it does for everybody else. The woman would be perfectly suited to you in every way.”
The dim light, the whispered hum of machinery, gave the room a dreamlike, almost spectral air. Half a dozen images flitted through Lash’s head. The look on his ex-wife’s face, that day in the blind at the Audubon Center when they separated. Tara Stapleton’s expression at the bar in Grand Central when she told him of her own dilemma. The face of Lewis Thorpe, staring at him out of the Flagstaff television screen.
He sighed. “Very well. I’ll stay on a few more days. On one condition.”
“Name it.”
“That you don’t cancel my dinner with Diana Mirren.”
Silver pressed Lash’s shoulder for a moment. “Good man.” He smiled again, briefly; but when the smile faded, he looked just as tired as Lash felt.
TWENTY-NINE
Seventy-five hours,” Tara said. “That means Liza won’t have an answer until Monday afternoon.”
Lash nodded. He’d summarized his talk with Silver, described in detail how the man communicated with Liza. Throughout, Tara was fascinated — until she heard how long the extended search would take.
“So what are we supposed to do until then?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“I do. We wait.” Tara raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Shit.”
Lash looked around the room. In size, Tara Stapleton’s thirty-fifth-floor office wasn’t that different from his own temporary space. It had the same conference table, same desk, same shelving. There were a few distinctly feminine touches: half a dozen leafy plants that appeared to thrive on the artificial light, a paisley sachet of potpourri hanging from the desk lamp by a red ribbon. Three identical computer workstations were lined up behind the desk. But the most distinctive feature of the office was a large fiberglass surfboard leaning against a far wall, badly scored and pitted, the stripe along its length faded by salt and sun. Bumper stickers with legends like “Live to surf, surf to live” and “Hang ten off a log!” were fixed on the wall behind it. Postcards from famous surfing beaches — Lennox Head, Australia; Pipeline, Hawaii; Potovil Point, Sri Lanka — were taped in a row along the upper edge of the bookshelf.
“Must have had a hell of a time getting that in here,” Lash said, nodding at the surfboard.
Tara flashed one of her rare smiles. “I spent my first couple of months outside the Wall, auditing security procedures. I brought in my old board to remind me there was a world out there beyond New York City. So I wouldn’t forget what I’d rather be doing. Audit finished, I got promoted, transferred inside. They wouldn’t let me take the board. I was ripshit.” She shook her head at the memory. “Then it appeared in my office doorway one day. Happy first anniversary, courtesy of Edwin Mauchly and Eden.”
“Knowing Mauchly, after having been scanned, probed, and analyzed six ways from Sunday.”
“Probably.”
Lash glanced at the clutch of emerald-green postcards. A question had formed in his mind — a question Tara could probably answer better than anybody.
He leaned toward the desk. “Tara, listen. Remember that drink we had at Sebastian’s? What you told me about your getting the nod?”
Immediately, he felt her grow more reserved.
“I need to know something. Is there any chance that an Eden candidate who gets turned down after testing might end up getting processed anyway? Go through data-gathering, surveillance — the works — and ultimately end up in the Tank? Getting matched?”
“You mean, like a mistake? Obsoletes somehow making their way through? Impossible.”
“Why?”
“There are redundant checks. It’s like everything else with the system. We don’t take any chance that a client, even a would-be client, could suffer embarrassment from sloppy data handling.”
“You’re sure?”
“It’s never happened.”
“It happened yesterday.” And in response to Tara’s disbelieving look, he handed her the letter he’d found waiting outside his front door.
She read it, paling visibly. “Tavern on the Green.”
“I was rejected as an applicant. And pretty definitively. So how could this have happened?”
“I have no idea.”
“Could somebody within Eden have doctored my forms, guiding them through instead of shunting them toward the discard pile?”
“Nobody here does anything without half a dozen others seeing it.”
“Nobody?”
Hearing the tone of his voice, Tara looked at him closely. “It would have to be somebody very highly placed, somebody with world-class access. Me, for example. Or a grunt like Handerling who’d somehow hacked the system.” She paused. “But why would anybody do such a thing?”
“That was my next question.”
There was a silence. Tara folded the letter and handed it back across the table.
“I don’t know how this happened. But I’m very, very sorry, Dr. Lash. We’ll investigate immediately, of course.”
“You’re sorry. Silver’s sorry. Why is everybody so sorry?”
Tara looked astonished. “You mean—?”
“That’s right. Tomorrow night, I’m stepping out.”
“But I don’t understand—” The flow of words stopped.
I know you don’t, Lash thought.
He didn’t exactly understand himself. If he’d worked at Eden, like Tara — if he’d been influenced by what insiders called the “Oz effect”—he might have torn up the letter.
But he had not torn up the letter. The peek behind the scenes, the rabid testimonials of Eden clients, had piqued his interest almost without his realizing it. And now he’d been told a perfect mate had been found for him — Christopher Lash, so expert at analyzing other relationships yet so unsuccessful in his own. It was simply too powerful a lure to resist. Even the knowledge of why he was here in the first place was no match for the curiosity of meeting — just perhaps — an ideal partner.
But that meeting would come tomorrow. Today, there was something else on his mind.
“It’s not a coincidence,” he said.
“Huh?”
“My application getting processed. It might be a mistake, but it’s no coincidence. Any more than the deaths of the two supercouples are coincidence.”
Tara frowned. “What are you saying, exactly?”
“I’m not sure. But there’s a pattern here somewhere. We’re just not seeing it.” Mentally, he returned to last night’s drive home, when he’d refused to listen to the voice in the back of his head. Now he tried to recall the voice.
You murdered the first two supercouples, in order, Mauchly had said to Handerling during the interrogation. Now you’ve been planning to stalk, and kill, a third.
In order…
“Mind if I borrow this?” he asked, taking a notepad from the desk. Pulling out a pen, he wrote two dates on the pad: 9/17/04. 9/24/04. The dates the Thorpes and the Wilners had died.