Micro - Michael Crichton [158]
He pushed open the hatch. It led to the middle of a patch of acacia brush by the parking lot. A fire truck was parked at the corner, but the crew’s attention was focused on smoke pouring from the building.
He walked quickly into the underbrush, picking at his cheek with his fingertips. Had to get that bot out. He reached into his mouth with two fingers, pulled it from the tissues of his cheek, and pinched it between his fingernails, hard, until he felt it crunch. He kept walking. Thorns on the acacias caught at his clothing. He went from one empty lot to the next lot, and crossed behind a warehouse. He emerged from the business park and got on a sidewalk, and walked briskly along, until he reached a bus stop on the Farrington Highway, and he sat on the bench in the booth. Morning sun kissed the scene with a golden glow. It was a Sunday morning; the bus might not come for hours. He’d just have to wait. It gave him satisfaction and a sense of safety to be wearing a ripped jacket spotted with blood. He smiled. He could have been a homeless person, and very ill, the kind of person nobody wants to look at too closely. And he had the hard drive that contained the only complete set of Ben Rourke’s plans for the tensor generator. The only plans.
A dark spot began spreading across the leg of his trousers. It was blood. This worried him. He opened his trousers, and felt around on his thigh, and got it. He held up the bot on the end of his fingertip and squinted at it. He could just see the little blades sparkling in the light. “Whither wander thou?” he murmured to the bot. This was quite good, he thought. He looked like a madman talking to his fingers. He was a free agent. Representing only himself, at the moment.
Catel crushed the bot between his nails and wiped his bloody hand on his pants. It was like crushing a tick. A fire truck rushed past, sirens screaming.
A week later, Lieutenant Dan Watanabe adjusted the angle of a laptop screen that sat on a hospital bed table; in the bed lay Eric Jansen. The screen showed an image of a bot cut neatly in half, with its insides laid open. “We got an ID on the Asian John Doe I told you about. His name was Jason Chu.”
Eric nodded slowly. His leg was wrapped in bandages, and his face was pale and wan: anemia from loss of blood. “Jason Chu,” Eric said, “worked for Rexatack, the company that owned the patents on the Hellstorm drone technology.”
“So Mr. Chu organized the burglary of Nanigen to try to get information on what Nanigen was doing with his company’s patents?”
“That’s right,” Eric answered.
“And you programmed these security bots?”
“Not to kill anybody. Drake reprogrammed them to kill.” He closed his eyes and kept them shut for a while, then opened them. “You can charge me. My brother is dead and it’s my fault. I don’t care what happens to me.”
“You will not be charged at this time,” Watanabe answered carefully.
A nurse came in. “Visit’s up.” She checked Eric’s monitors and said to Watanabe, “Can you guys take a hint or do I need to call a doctor?”
“I’m not a guy, ma’am,” Dorothy Girt said politely, standing up.
Watanabe stood up and said to Eric, “Dorothy would really like a functioning Nanigen bot to analyze.”
Eric shrugged. “They’re all over the Nanigen core area.”
“Not anymore. The place burned to crap. All that plastic. It took two days to put the fire out. There was nothing left. No bots. We found what we think is Drake. Dental records will tell. And that shrink machine—it’s a charcoal briquette.”
“Are you going to charge anybody?” Eric asked, just as Watanabe and Girt were leaving.
Watanabe stopped in the doorway. “The perpetrators are dead. The DA’s getting pressure not to do any prosecutions. The pressure’s coming from—let’s say from government entities. Who don’t want these robots talked about. My guess is this thing gets played as an industrial accident.” His