The Archimedes Effect Read online

  He wasn’t too worried about it; besides, he had a guitar lesson this evening, and however that turned out, given his new connection with Jen, it was going to be much more interesting than the rest of his day.

  When they reached the exit, the sergeant said, “Congratulations on your promotion, General Kent.”

  “Thank you, son.”

  He still hadn’t gotten used to that rank, but he didn’t mind hearing his name with it attached.

  “Semper fi, sir.”

  “Always, Sergeant. Always.”

  The escort gave him a crisp and perfect salute, and Kent returned it with one almost as good. He gave the man his ID badge and exited the building.

  Outside, the day was cool, but sunny. It felt almost like an early spring day. Of course, this was Washington, D.C. If you didn’t like the weather, all you had to do was wait—it would change soon enough.

  Lewis General Hospital

  Maternity Floor

  Washington, D.C.

  When Jay logged into Lewis’s scenario, he was surprised to find himself walking down the hall of a hospital. It was a well-built visualization—there was that too-clean antiseptic smell, and that soft echo-stopping sound of carpeted floors and thick walls. Jay looked around, saw mothers walking with tiny babies, or in wheelchairs, holding infants on their laps. The maternity floor.

  He saw Lewis up ahead, standing with her arms crossed, staring through a wall of glass into a large room marked NURSERY.

  Jay approached, not speaking.

  “Well-baby nursery,” Lewis said.

  There were rows of plastic cribs with babies in them, all kinds, and it made Jay smile to see them. He remembered going to see his son in just such a place.

  Not looking at him, Lewis said, “The road partially taken.”

  Jay didn’t say anything.

  “I was engaged once. My fiancé and I got started a little early on our family. I got pregnant, and we decided to wait until after the baby was born before we had the wedding.”

  She kept watching the infants behind the glass.

  “Sean was a seven-pound, healthy, pink boy. Or so we thought.”

  Jay blinked. She had never mentioned having a child before.

  “He had a rare condition, he was born with an aneurysm. A congenital defect. His aorta just . . . burst when he was two days old. He died in a few minutes. Right in the RW version of there.”

  Jay was stunned by this news. “I’m so sorry.”

  She shrugged. “Wasn’t anything that could be done. No way to tell until it was too late. Well. I found out later that this had happened several times in my fiancé’s family—apparently it was a genetic thing. One baby in four or five had it.”

  “How awful.”

  “What was awful was that the son of a bitch didn’t tell me about it. If I had known, I never would have allowed myself to become pregnant—I wouldn’t have risked my baby’s life with those kinds of odds.”

  Jay stared at the floor.

  “I come here from time to time,” she said. She looked grave for a second. Then she gave him a sad smile. “Well. No point in us standing here being morose. It was a long time ago. I can’t change it.”

  Jay nodded. The thought of his little boy dying was beyond painful. His own experience when the baby had developed pneumonia and had to be rushed to the hospital would be with him until, he was sure, he died, even if he lived to be a hundred. He had thought he was smart and powerful—that incident had made him realize just how helpless he was when it came to such things. He couldn’t imagine how Rachel Lewis must feel. How terrible it must be. . . .

  “So, what is the scenario you have on tap for us today?”

  Distracted by his own thoughts, Jay said, “Uh, well, I thought we might take a run at the cowboy.”

  “Cowboy?”

  “Um, yeah, I didn’t have a chance to tell you about that yet. FBI came up with a ballistics match. The gun that killed the G.I. on the Kentucky base is the same one that was used to kill two Metro cops. A great big piece, shoots elephant-stopper bullets. There aren’t that many of them around, and I think I’ve got it narrowed down to the right guy.”

  She looked surprised. “Really? That—that’s great.”

  “Maybe. It might be a dead end—might be that the terrorist they found in the burning truck after Kentucky, Stark, is the guy who bought the gun, but it’s a place to start. The cowboy image is one I came up with once I got it winnowed.”

  “Let’s go find him,” she said. “Lead on. The scenario is yours.”

  Jay nodded.

  Galactic Science Fiction Convention

  Art Show Phoenix,

  Arizona

  Lewis was furious. The stupid son of a bitch Carruth had shot two Metro policemen and never said squat about it—she could understand that, because she would have dumped his ass in a hurry had she known that. But he had kept the fucking gun he used to do it, and shot somebody else! And between the FBI and Gridley, they were about to run the bastard down.

  This was bad.

  She didn’t know how stand-up Carruth would be if they pulled him in for murder. The District didn’t have the death penalty, though life without parole wasn’t a walk in the park. Kentucky still fried people, though, and if they caught Carruth, he’d have to answer for the soldier killed on the base there as well as the ones in the chase car he’d blown up, and it would be in a civilian court, not the Army’s. She couldn’t remember if they used lethal injection or the electric chair down there. Not that it would matter much.

  If he knew he was going to be sent to ride ole Sparky or dance with the Needle, would Carruth give her up to save himself?

  Maybe not, but she couldn’t take that chance.

  Carruth was, all of a sudden, a liability. Maybe a fatal one.

  She couldn’t let the authorities get to him.

  And she definitely couldn’t let Jay here find him.

  How lucky was it that he had come to her with this instead of nailing it on his own? It was his construct, but she had some control, since she was allowed into it. If she had to, she would use it.

  Next to her, Jay said, “I could get you a costume, if you want.”

  “I’ll pass. What are we looking for?”

  Jay always like to have his basic research clean, so the displays in the sci-fi art show were taken from the real thing. He had also learned that true fans hated the term “sci-fi,” too, but that was too bad, ’cuz that’s what people in the real world called it.

  Pieces ranged from pencil drawings to oil paintings to sculptures, some of the last kinetic or motorized. Much of it was first-class and professional work—book covers, trading cards, game or magazine illustrations. There was what appeared to be the skeleton of a gargoyle, cast in plaster or some kind of plastic that looked like old bone, and from what Jay could tell it certainly looked as if it could have been real. Next to that crouched a giant robotic frog that was amazing.

  He saw Rachel taking it all in, and while she didn’t laugh or sneer, he didn’t get the impression she was all that hot on the scenario. She looked distracted. Probably remembering her baby son. He was still thinking about her revelation. So sad. It made him want to put his arm around her and comfort her. At the least.

  But—they had work to do.

  They cruised through the art show.

  Jay saw an oil painting of a centaur with glowing red eyes that looked so creepy Jay couldn’t imagine living in the same house with it—those eyes did seem to watch every move you made. He stood next to the painting and watched people as they came upon it, and that was interesting in itself.

  If it bothered Rachel, it didn’t show.

  There was a quarter-size bronze sculpture of a gorgeous black woman in spandex who had some kind of high-tech guns mounted on the backs of her hands, the barrels extending in a line with her index fingers. It was a beautiful piece of work, and the ten-thousand-dollar price reflected that.

  There were some funny drawi
ngs—covers for Stephen King books that he never wrote, with titles like Big Hairy Monsters! or Huge Yellow Fangs!

  There were altogether too many unicorns and cute fantasy animals—tigers with butterfly wings, winged horses, even flying dogs—and a whole bunch of badly rendered fairies, sprites, Hobbits, and characters from Star Trek and Star Wars, some of them sans clothes. Some of the artists had great imaginations and talent, and some were obviously not folks you’d want to find yourself trapped with in close quarters. . . .

  Some of the paintings, collages, assemblages, and sculptures were, in Jay’s view, flat-out, turn-away-and-make-a-face ugly.

  What was amazing about many of these awful artworks was the bid-lists under them, with ten or twelve names and escalating offers.

  Rachel did notice this and remarked on it: “Somebody would pay two thousand dollars in real money for that?”

  Jay laughed. Apparently, it was true: Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. If he’d had time, Jay would have checked out the faces that matched the names of the bidders on some of the more hideous pictures. . . .

  But not now. Now, he had spotted his quarry—at least he thought so. A tall man with red makeup, but dressed in neo-cowboy clothes—kind of a futuristic version—and with a big, low-slung holstered gun strapped to his hip. The gun had a multicolored ribbon tied around it and the holster—a “peace bond,” Jay had been told. The convention runners frowned on the idea of fans waving guns, knives, or swords around—and the hotel staff really didn’t like it. What better setup for a robbery? A bunch of armed people wearing disguises? You could just walk up to the front desk, point a gun at the clerk, and rob the place, and nobody’d have a clue who you were. Jay could imagine the interview with the local police:

  “Yes, sir, it was a Wookiee, all right. Yeah, he just harned and growled and said, ‘Give me the credits or die, Earthman!’ What was I gonna do? How would that look in the paper, if I got shot and killed by Chewbacca?”

  “That’s him, I think,” he told Rachel.

  “He’s wearing a gun in here?”

  Jay explain the convention policy about such things. “Yeah, if you wear a costume featuring a weapon, you have to keep it holstered or sheathed, or whatever, and the ribbon is attached to do that.”

  “Like that will keep it safe?”

  Jay shrugged. “If you get spotted in the halls or elevators twirling your blaster or carving the air with your enchanted sword, Security will kick your ass out, and good luck catching a cab dressed like the Crab Man from Mars. . . .”

  She nodded, but didn’t smile.

  Right now, convention security and social mores weren’t Jay’s worry. The Red Rider was just ahead, and he needed to stay with him until he found out where he was staying and under what name.

  “Stay loose,” he said. “Let’s see where he goes.”

  They were doing fine. The guy was heading for the door, when all of a sudden the scenario crashed, a full whiteout.

  What the hell—?

  The Pentagon

  Washington, D.C.

  They came out of VR, and Lewis said, “What happened?”

  “Damned if I know. Software glitch, maybe.”

  “You want to go back in?”

  Jay shook his head. “No. I have a meeting with my boss at HQ this afternoon, I need to get back.” He started to strip off his gear. His neck was tight. He did a head-roll to loosen it, rubbed at the back of his neck with one hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Too much chair time.”

  “Here.” She stood, walked over behind him. “I know just the thing. Lean forward a little.”

  Jay blinked, but did what she said.

  She stood behind his chair and dug her thumbs into the base of his skull, started kneading. It felt great.

  “Wow,” he said, “that’s good.”

  “Had a friend once who was a masseuse. She showed me how to work the trigger points.” She put her left hand on his forehead and supported the weight of his head while she continued to work the back of his neck, using her thumb and fingertips.

  Oh, man, that felt good. . . . If she moved her left hand, his head was gonna fall right off. . . .

  “Better?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Okay, turn a little to your right and lean back.”

  He did—and found his head pillowed against her firm breasts. She must be in a squat behind him. She began to rub his forehead with both hands, pressing his head into her bosom harder.

  He couldn’t help himself. He moaned.

  “Like that, huh?”

  Of a moment, Jay knew that if he were to turn his head around and put his face into her boobs, she wouldn’t mind in the least. That she would join him in the chair, and that the massage would turn into something else entirely. . . .

  Jesus!

  He leaned away. “Much as I’d like to spend the rest of the day doing this, I really do have to get back to HQ.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “We can finish another time.” She smiled.

  No question about it. She was letting him know she was available.

  How did he feel about that?

  Thrilled. Scared. Excited.

  And guilty . . .

  27

  Washington, D.C.

  Kent toweled himself off as he stepped from the shower. He was about done when he heard the music coming from the bedroom. He smiled, wrapped the towel around his waist, and headed that way.

  Sitting naked on the edge of her bed, Jen played a guitar he hadn’t seen before. She had some kind of leather-strap thing with suction cups on it stuck to the side of the instrument, propped on her bare left leg.

  Nude with guitar. A beautiful sight.

  She was playing Nelson Riddle’s theme for the television show Route 66.

  The original music had been a full orchestral thing and a single guitar couldn’t address it that way, of course, but what she played was lovely. It brought back a lot of old memories. He remembered the show from when he’d been a little boy—it was about two young men, Tod and Buz, who knocked around the country in a red Corvette convertible, having adventures along the old Route 66. Today, much of that road was Interstate highway, but back in the late fifties and early sixties, when the show ran, it was mostly two-lane, undivided, untamed.

  Kent leaned against the wall and listened as Jen played. It might not have been composed for a classical guitar, but it sounded great the way she did it.

  When she was finished, she smiled at him.

  “Wonderful. But you can’t possibly remember the old television series,” he said, “because I barely do and I’m ten years older than you.”

  She shook her head. “Before my time, except in reruns on the Nostalgia Channel. I saw an episode once—it was silly, but I did like the music, so I transcribed it for this.”

  “I watched the show when I was a boy, eight or nine, I think. Martin Milner, George Maharis, driving their ’Vette through the little towns, looking for a place where they could belong. The world was a simpler place, back then.”

  “Better, you think?”

  “Not necessarily, especially if you were black or a woman or had polio. Or if your father or uncle or brother was on the ground in Korea. But in some small ways, yeah. I can recall going on a couple of trips with my folks when I was little, along the old Route 66. Main Street, U.S.A., it went right through the heartland, mostly between Chicago and L.A. I remember gas stations and truck stops and ratty motels where my father would stop. Made the run in an old woody station wagon once. I drank Coke out of little bottles. I remember the hot sun beating down in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico. Eating bologna sandwiches with mustard on white bread my mother made. Most of the route was upgraded years ago, a lot of it is I-40 now, I think. Now, the only place you see that kind of stuff is in museums. . . .”

  He allowed the memory to fade. He looked at her. “New guitar?”

  “No, an old one. From Romania, called a Trou
bador. Spruce top, maple sides and back. I got it off the Internet a few years back for a knock-around. It was cheap, I didn’t have to worry about it if it got damaged or swiped. Put new tuners on it, and it turned out to have a really good sound for the couple hundred bucks I paid for it.”

  “What’s the little leather doohickey on the side?”

  “Called a Neck-Up. Some longtime players eventually develop nerve or muscle problems with one foot propped on a stool, so somebody came up with this. Keeps the neck at the right angle so you can sit without your leg being cocked up. I use it sometimes when I’m somewhere a foot-stool doesn’t work well.” She waved at the bed.

  He didn’t say anything to that. He just stood there, smiling.

  She was just full of surprises.

  After a moment she looked up at him, saw the expression on his face, and her own grew serious. Gently, she laid the guitar aside, then turned back to him once more.

  “Come on back to bed, Abe,” she said, her voice soft and throaty.

  He dropped the towel and his memories and did so. Yesterday was great, he’d had a full life and a lot of wonderful times to look back on, but he would not trade this—this woman, this moment, this here and now—for any of them.

  Pamela Robb Art Gallery

  Washington, D.C.

  After dinner, Marissa directed Thorn’s driver to take them to a street address a couple miles away from the restaurant.

  Thorn said, “Where are we going again?”

  She said, “We’re going to the Robb Art Gallery to see the Byers show.”

  Thorn said, “Who?”

  She smiled. “Do you ever read a paper, Tommy? Watch the news? Mike Byers, he works in glass. Stained, etched, fused—and the fused stuff is where he shines. After thirty years at it, he was ‘discovered’ a couple years ago and is now the hottest artist in the medium since Dale Chihuly.”