A pause with bright, wide-awake eyes staring up. “Daddy, are we ever going home? Because Mommy says that ... She says that this isn't our real home. She says we've got a real home.”
Stunned, Connor hesitated. “Yeah, buddy, sure we're going home. Just as soon as I finish my job.”
“But where is it?”
“Where's what?”
“Home,” Jordan whispered. “Where's home?”
With a sad gaze, Connor leaned forward. “Well, our real home is real, real far away from here. You don't remember it because you were just a baby when you were there. You weren't a big boy like you are now. But it's in the mountains where it's warm and where there's grass and trees and streams. It's where you can throw rocks in the streams and play in the woods. And where you can have a dog, and a cat, and maybe we can even build a tree house! And we'll all be together! You and me and Mommy!”
Jordan's wide eyes stared. “I hope we can go home real soon.”
Connor nodded, touching the small face in his weathered hand. “We will, buddy. I promise.”
“You promise?”
“Yeah. I promise.”
Jordan smiled. “And you always keep your promise.” Connor gazed down, gently placed a hand on his son's chest. “Yeah, buddy, I always keep my promise.”
Chapter 9
His face was as lifeless and white as the belly of a dead fish, the stark hair cut almost to his scalp. Although his manner was calm, his fists were tight, like a man holding back a pathological urge to strike. It was an uncommon look for a scientist.
“Now,” Sol Tolvanos whispered, leaning over Frank. “I am ordering you to turn over control of GEO to my people! Either that or you will be placed under military arrest!”
Frank shook his head. “GEO isn't going to obey you,” he answered, refusing to look up from his seat. “And neither will I.”
Shouting, the Russian slammed his hand onto the table, snatching up an ashtray. In a rage he flung the thick glass plate to the tile floor where, to Frank's sharp astonishment, it didn't shatter. It hit the floor and bounced high into the air, straight up, spinning like a Frisbee to land on the desk again where it spun for another second, settling in the same place it had been. For a split second even Tolvanos seemed shocked.
Frank used it. “If you're such a brilliant physicist, Tolvanos, you should be able to figure GEO out all by yourself.” He smiled. “After all, it's only a computer, isn't it?”
“Don't insinuate that I am a fool, Doctor,” Tolvanos muttered, staring through opaque white eyes. “I know that GEO is a unique entity. And I admit, reluctantly, that it is the peak of artificial intelligence – an actual learning computer with its own independent neutrally-copied network personality. A machine, certainly, but almost a living being.” He paused. “Yes, Dr. Frank, I know everything about GEO.”
Frank's face went cold as a gravestone.
“And I must say …” Tolvanos shook his head, “ … that it was rather ghoulish of you to electromagnetically copy your dead wife's neural web for the Logic Core. Isn't that a bit, ah, Frankensteinish? Even for you?”
With a slow blink Frank looked up. “Rachel designed GEO,” he heard himself say. “She was the one who invented neural networking. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Really?” Tolvanos replied. “If I didn't know better, Doctor, I would say that you copied your wife's neural network so that you could continue to have her at your side.” He paused. “How unfortunate that her untimely death prevented her from seeing GEO's ultimate completion. An automobile accident, wasn't it? Yes, truly unfortunate. Especially since she did, indeed, possess a brilliant mind. She might have been proud of you.”
Frank's face was whiter. “I'm sure she is,” he said.
Tolvanos stared down. “And now I ask you again, Doctor. Will you not do your job as a professional? Will you not surrender voice control of GEO to my team?”
“No,” Frank returned the tone. “I won't. GEO belongs to me.”
Adler was sitting sorely to the side. “Frank, your behavior is completely without justification. It is childish, petulant, and inexcusable, and you are making me regret ever signing you on to the project!”
“I hate it.”
Frank tried to resist the fatigue, but they had been pressuring him for over an hour in an argument that began in Adler's office and proceeded to the Observation Room to find Hoffman and Chesterton gone and GEO locked in self-diagnosis. Tolvanos had ordered Frank to surrender voice control. Frank had refused. A stalemate. Things had heated up quickly.
Frank knew that Tolvanos had been, until recently, the leading researcher in Russia's illegal development of germ warfare, a science outlawed since the United Nations Treaty of 1972. Now, with the Soviet union essentially defunct, the Russian was a freelance researcher working for the private defense industry, selling his skills to the highest bidder.