Chrysalis

32

“I’ll stop a car… and I won’t use my thumb!”

In front of Logan, two hundred — odd people broke into laughter as Claudette Colbert instructed a dubious Clark Gable in the art of hitchhiking: raising her skirt four or five inches above one very attractive knee.

Unable to sleep, Logan had paced aimlessly around his suite. From his vantage point, the view from the window revealed just a segment of the vast Torus, curving around the inner rim of the valley. As always, countless lights winked on its various levels as the third shift got up to speed. Then, something on the Western Skyway caught his eye. The lights flashing from one section of its upper level — some kind of retro ballroom, he’d assumed — tonight were all scales of gray. Then he suddenly realized what it was and, quickly dressing and grabbing his ID and Voyager, set off to get a closer look.

A section of the spoke’s topmost level was given over to a cinema. Tonight, he learned, was the start of Screwball Comedy Week, kicking off with the pre-Code classic It Happened One Night. Logan knew the film well, and he slipped into the rear row of the theater just as Gable finished assembling the Walls of Jericho.

The theater was a real find: lavishly appointed with Art Deco decor, sporting buttery leather chairs. Looking up at the ceiling, he saw the arched roof of glass far above had been opened to the sky, and — it being a pleasant evening — night air was streaming in from the dome of stars, the scent of evergreens mixing with fresh buttered popcorn.

It was peaceful here in the dark, surrounded by so many others, enjoying the sophisticated comedy. For Logan, the surroundings had another benefit: they got him out of his inner space, helped achieve some objective distance.

Because he was faced with a monumental decision.

Quickly, he ran down a mental checklist. The software and hardware behind the Voyagers, while proprietary and cutting edge, couldn’t be weaponized. As for the synaptichron itself, a device he’d felt almost certain was responsible, the scientists at BioCertain had set him straight. What can those tiny things deliver? Micro-impulses of electrical energy. The worst you could do is up its voltage… which might tingle a bit, but nothing else. Even Dr. Purchase, the closest likeness to a flesh-and-blood Walter Mitty Logan had ever met, agreed vigorously on this point.

So if the devices couldn’t be made harmful from the inside, so to speak, could they be tampered with after the fact? Peyton and his minions had spent the day looking into that possibility, conducting numerous interviews and spot checks. It seemed units were constantly surveilled until they left the Complex, after which they were monitored by some tamperproof system Logan hadn’t even tried to understand.

And now it was Saturday night. Tomorrow, their opponents would deliver their wire instructions for the billion dollars. And the day after that, if anything went wrong with the payment — still in the delicate process of being assembled — a thousand customers would die.

On-screen, Claudette Colbert had quickly managed to get them a ride — only to discover the driver had a loud and dreadful singing voice that he nevertheless insisted on exercising. “Aren’t you afraid you’ll burn out a tonsil?” the irritated Gable finally asked, to another laugh from the appreciative crowd.

The only bright spot, if it could be called that, was — as far as Logan knew — there had been no “demonstrations” that day. Tomorrow I’ll kill a civilian or two, the last note had threatened. Janelle Deston had died on Friday afternoon — and Saturday was apparently a reprieve.

…Was there some reason for this? Was there some mechanism, or set of circumstances, that required this madman to move up his demonstration?

The question wasn’t answerable. It was time to look at the answers they did have. Because his watch had ticked down to thirty-nine hours. And if nothing was done, this particular Chrysalis would soon metamorphose into something out of a nightmare.

He had assumed — everyone had assumed — the Voyager units were the instruments of death. The upgrade had been flawed or corrupted by a rogue program or the marriage with BioCertain’s synaptichron. Or there was a killer on the inside, working in the VR department. But they had examined all these possibilities and many more… and come up empty.

A new thought hit him, and he sat upright in his theater seat.

It suddenly occurred to Logan that the entity behind all this might, essentially, have led them up a blind alley. If you postpone the rollout… If you try to recall any Voyager devices or take them off-line… Was that a giant smoke screen: a finger pointing them directly at Wrigley’s own division?

Logan bolted from his seat and made for the theater lobby. A wave of laughter rolled over his shoulders, but he didn’t look back. His thoughts had already leaped ahead to a new and chilling question.

If he now believed — and, as far as it was possible, he did — the Voyager units and their rollout weren’t behind this threat…

…Then what the hell was?