Cutting Edge

65

The hilltop was in Styria, somewhere north of Graz but not yet to the mountains. It wasn’t the biggest hill, nor the smallest, only a middling swale that would show wide contours on any map. It certainly wasn’t worth a name, and neither of the two people who stood near the crest made any effort to record where they were or how they’d gotten there. No effort at all.

For autumn in Austria, it could not have been a more ordinary day. The skies were partly cloudy, the temperature moderate, and the wind stirred occasionally from no particular direction. Altogether, hesitant conditions that gave away nothing about what would come in the following days.

DeBolt stood back from his job. He was shirtless, and his exposed skin gleamed with sweat from his exertions. He limped toward the rock where Lund was sitting and put down the shovel.

“Leg holding up?” she asked.

“More or less. The knee’s pretty swollen, black and blue both above and below … but it’ll be fine.”

“I think you tore ligaments.”

“Maybe.” He sat down next to her.

She chinned toward his work. “I could have helped with that.”

“No, I wanted to do it.”

Neither spoke for a time, and they sat in silence staring at the freshly turned plot of earth.

“Should we say something?” he asked. “Maybe put a marker on it or a cross?”

“Was he Christian?”

“I don’t think he was anything. Thomas Alan Heithusen, Marine Corps gunnery sergeant. I found out that much.”

Lund didn’t ask how. “Sounds Christian,” she said. “But from what little we know … I think bringing him here was enough.”

DeBolt nodded.

“I wonder,” she said in contemplation, “what makes a man like that?”

DeBolt didn’t have to ask what she meant. He looked out over the hills, and said, “What makes any of us like we are.” He recognized the bleakness of his tone, and how it reflected the mood he’d been in for far too long. Would there ever be an upswing? he wondered. He remembered better days, before the crash, before Alaska, but they’d somehow been rendered vague and distant. Almost untouchable.

Lund said, “I have to go back to Kodiak. I’ve got a lot to face up to there. Not sure how long it will take, or if I’ll have a job when I’m done.”

He nodded. “Yeah … I’m sorry about that. That you might lose your job because of me.”

“Not your fault, DeBolt.”

“I liked Kodiak.”

“Me too,” she said. “Civilized isolation.”

He stood, took the camping shovel in hand, and with a big arcing swing heaved it far out into the forest. There was a rustle as it landed in the distant brush, then silence returned. DeBolt regarded the forest around them. “This isn’t a bad place. It’s peaceful.”

“I wonder where Patel will end up.”

“Don’t know. He was a smart man with big ideas. But he never considered what META would cost others. He only saw what it could do for him. Same with Delta, I suppose … in the end it got the better of them both.”

“And now you’re the only one left. What will you do with it? Use META to get rich?”

He turned and looked at her, saw the smile. “I guess going back to the Coast Guard is out of the question. But I have prospects.”

“Like?”

“Given what I’m capable of … there are a lot of possibilities. I could become a scientist or a journalist.”

“A detective,” she offered.

He laughed out loud, his gloom lifting in a flash.

“What’s so funny? CGIS could use someone like you.”

“Sure. And what happens when I tell them in the interview that the NSA has put radio waves in my head? People who say stuff like that end up in straitjackets.”

“Not if it’s true.”

He took a seat on the rock next to her. “I was already working on a degree, majoring in biology. I thought I might try to go to med school.”

“There’s an entrance exam for med school, right?”

“The MCAT.”

“Bet you’d score pretty high.”

He smiled. “Maybe. But who knows how long I’ll have META. Someone could flip a switch tomorrow and turn it off forever.”

“But if they don’t?”

“Right now, I need some rest. Honestly, if I had to do something tomorrow … I think I’d go to Fiji and surf.”

After a long pause, she said, “That’s it? You’ve got the most amazing gift a human has ever known … and you want to go surfing?”

“Not just surfing—Fiji. The best waves on the planet.”

“It’s not much of a long-term plan, DeBolt.”

“I need time to think things through. Maybe I’ll get a job, something simple. Something that doesn’t involve information at all. A lifeguard or a bartender. I can make a few bucks and get by, deal with people without having to learn anything about them.”

“Bartenders learn about people — they just do it the old-fashioned way. Can you mix a Manhattan?”

“No.”

“Then lifeguard it is.”

He was silent for a time, and his good nature faded as quickly as it had come. The darkness closing in again. He said reflectively, “I see things differently now.”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t know. I guess you could say I’m more … cynical.”

“About what?”

“Everything.”

“Trey, you’re not old enough to be jaded.”

“Age has nothing to do with it. I’ve had more near-death experiences in the last month than in a career of rescue swimming. I’ve seen people do horrendous things to one another. If that’s what META brings, I want no part of it.”

“But you can’t turn it off. It’s there in your head, connected, whether you like it or not.”

“I can ignore it.”

She looked at him questioningly. “Can you?”

He fell quiet.

Lund dug a heel into the wet grass. “Computers, information … where does it all end? I mean, compare technology a generation ago to what exists today. Smartphones, Google Glass, Wi-Fi everywhere. Now you’ve got META. What will it be like in fifty years?”

“I don’t know. But I’m convinced of one thing — merely designing a technology doesn’t make it a good idea. As far as META goes, I’d like to toss the whole concept into the deep end of the ocean.”

“Even given what it might do for you?”

DeBolt picked up a handful of smooth stones and stood. He walked to a ledge and whipped a rock sidearm over the hillside. He did it a half-dozen more times before saying, “When I was in high school my grandfather died. He was a great guy, took me hiking and skiing a lot when I was a kid. He was never rich, but he did okay. He and my grandmother had an average house, with the usual stuff — big TV for watching games, a ’sixty-nine Camaro in the garage he always wanted to restore but never got around to. They lived in the same house for forty years. Then she died, and he started to go downhill. My mom was getting bad by that time, early-onset dementia, so I was pretty busy with her. There was no way I could handle him too, so we moved him into a nursing home. It was actually all right, they took good care of him. I got the job of selling my grandparents’ house, getting rid of all their stuff. And let me tell you, after forty years in the same place — people accumulate a lot. He died two years later, more or less peacefully. His wife was gone, he was tired, and he let go because it was time. A few days after he passed, I stopped by the nursing home to thank a few people for all they’d done. As I was leaving, a nurse gave me a small box. Inside were a pair of glasses, a cheap watch, an electric razor, and a framed picture of Grandma. That was it — all his worldly possessions.”

He threw one last rock, then looked at Lund, and said, “You come into this world with nothing. You leave with what can fit in a shoebox. Everything in between … it really doesn’t amount to much. It’s the experiences that count. The places you go. The people you meet and what effect you have on them. That’s all anybody ever leaves behind.”

She looked at the fresh grave. “And what did he leave behind?”

DeBolt was silent for a long time. He turned back toward the hills, and said, “I’ve never killed anybody before.”

“You’ve saved a lot of lives.”

“It’s not the kind of thing you can add and subtract, come up with a net zero.”

“You had no control over what happened, Trey. Delta forced the issue. It was his life or yours … and probably mine,” she added.

He thought about it, then nodded. “Thanks for putting it like that.”

Lund stood and walked slowly to DeBolt’s side. She reached up and kissed him on the cheek. “So there you have it,” she said. “I’m heading to Alaska, and you’re going to Fiji. Any idea how we get there?”

“For you it’s easy. You walk into the nearest Bundespolizei precinct. I’ll find my own way. But I was thinking … maybe we could put it off for a day or two.”

“Stay on the run? They’ll be looking for the car.”

“We’ll ditch it.”

“Where do we stay?” she asked.

“I still have enough cash for a couple of sleeping bags, some food, maybe a tent. Sleep out under the stars. Nobody can track that, can they?”

“Not even you.”

They hiked back slowly to their stolen Mercedes. Neither addressed what would happen after Kodiak and police interviews, after Fiji and falling off the grid. Perhaps because they didn’t know. Or perhaps because they did.

When they reached the car it was still running. The main road was only a mile away, and DeBolt knew he would soon have a connection with a macrocell GSM antenna — yesterday he’d discovered how to differentiate source signals.

Lund paused before getting in the passenger seat. She looked out over a nearby lake, the low sun reflecting on its glassy surface.

“Might be nice camping over there,” she said.

“Maybe we can get back before dark.”

“I wonder what time the sun sets tonight.”

DeBolt thought about it. But only for a moment.

He said, “I have no idea.”