Death Match

TWENTY-NINE

Seventy-five hours,” Tara said. “That means Liza won’t have an answer until Monday afternoon.”

Lash nodded. He’d summarized his talk with Silver, described in detail how the man communicated with Liza. Throughout, Tara was fascinated — until she heard how long the extended search would take.

“So what are we supposed to do until then?” she said.

“I don’t know.”

“I do. We wait.” Tara raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Shit.”

Lash looked around the room. In size, Tara Stapleton’s thirty-fifth-floor office wasn’t that different from his own temporary space. It had the same conference table, same desk, same shelving. There were a few distinctly feminine touches: half a dozen leafy plants that appeared to thrive on the artificial light, a paisley sachet of potpourri hanging from the desk lamp by a red ribbon. Three identical computer workstations were lined up behind the desk. But the most distinctive feature of the office was a large fiberglass surfboard leaning against a far wall, badly scored and pitted, the stripe along its length faded by salt and sun. Bumper stickers with legends like “Live to surf, surf to live” and “Hang ten off a log!” were fixed on the wall behind it. Postcards from famous surfing beaches — Lennox Head, Australia; Pipeline, Hawaii; Potovil Point, Sri Lanka — were taped in a row along the upper edge of the bookshelf.

“Must have had a hell of a time getting that in here,” Lash said, nodding at the surfboard.

Tara flashed one of her rare smiles. “I spent my first couple of months outside the Wall, auditing security procedures. I brought in my old board to remind me there was a world out there beyond New York City. So I wouldn’t forget what I’d rather be doing. Audit finished, I got promoted, transferred inside. They wouldn’t let me take the board. I was ripshit.” She shook her head at the memory. “Then it appeared in my office doorway one day. Happy first anniversary, courtesy of Edwin Mauchly and Eden.”

“Knowing Mauchly, after having been scanned, probed, and analyzed six ways from Sunday.”

“Probably.”

Lash glanced at the clutch of emerald-green postcards. A question had formed in his mind — a question Tara could probably answer better than anybody.

He leaned toward the desk. “Tara, listen. Remember that drink we had at Sebastian’s? What you told me about your getting the nod?”

Immediately, he felt her grow more reserved.

“I need to know something. Is there any chance that an Eden candidate who gets turned down after testing might end up getting processed anyway? Go through data-gathering, surveillance — the works — and ultimately end up in the Tank? Getting matched?”

“You mean, like a mistake? Obsoletes somehow making their way through? Impossible.”

“Why?”

“There are redundant checks. It’s like everything else with the system. We don’t take any chance that a client, even a would-be client, could suffer embarrassment from sloppy data handling.”

“You’re sure?”

“It’s never happened.”

“It happened yesterday.” And in response to Tara’s disbelieving look, he handed her the letter he’d found waiting outside his front door.

She read it, paling visibly. “Tavern on the Green.”

“I was rejected as an applicant. And pretty definitively. So how could this have happened?”

“I have no idea.”

“Could somebody within Eden have doctored my forms, guiding them through instead of shunting them toward the discard pile?”

“Nobody here does anything without half a dozen others seeing it.”

“Nobody?”

Hearing the tone of his voice, Tara looked at him closely. “It would have to be somebody very highly placed, somebody with world-class access. Me, for example. Or a grunt like Handerling who’d somehow hacked the system.” She paused. “But why would anybody do such a thing?”

“That was my next question.”

There was a silence. Tara folded the letter and handed it back across the table.

“I don’t know how this happened. But I’m very, very sorry, Dr. Lash. We’ll investigate immediately, of course.”

“You’re sorry. Silver’s sorry. Why is everybody so sorry?”

Tara looked astonished. “You mean—?”

“That’s right. Tomorrow night, I’m stepping out.”

“But I don’t understand—” The flow of words stopped.

I know you don’t, Lash thought.

He didn’t exactly understand himself. If he’d worked at Eden, like Tara — if he’d been influenced by what insiders called the “Oz effect”—he might have torn up the letter.

But he had not torn up the letter. The peek behind the scenes, the rabid testimonials of Eden clients, had piqued his interest almost without his realizing it. And now he’d been told a perfect mate had been found for him — Christopher Lash, so expert at analyzing other relationships yet so unsuccessful in his own. It was simply too powerful a lure to resist. Even the knowledge of why he was here in the first place was no match for the curiosity of meeting — just perhaps — an ideal partner.

But that meeting would come tomorrow. Today, there was something else on his mind.

“It’s not a coincidence,” he said.

“Huh?”

“My application getting processed. It might be a mistake, but it’s no coincidence. Any more than the deaths of the two supercouples are coincidence.”

Tara frowned. “What are you saying, exactly?”

“I’m not sure. But there’s a pattern here somewhere. We’re just not seeing it.” Mentally, he returned to last night’s drive home, when he’d refused to listen to the voice in the back of his head. Now he tried to recall the voice.

You murdered the first two supercouples, in order, Mauchly had said to Handerling during the interrogation. Now you’ve been planning to stalk, and kill, a third.

In order…

“Mind if I borrow this?” he asked, taking a notepad from the desk. Pulling out a pen, he wrote two dates on the pad: 9/17/04. 9/24/04. The dates the Thorpes and the Wilners had died.

“Tara,” he said. “Can you pull up the dates that the Thorpes and the Wilners first submitted their applications?”

“Sure.” She turned toward one of the terminals, typed briefly. Almost immediately, the printer spat out a sheet:

Nothing.

“Could you widen the search, please? I want a printout of all relevant dates for the two couples. When they were tested, when they first met, when they were married, everything.”

Tara looked at him speculatively for a moment. Then she returned to the keyboard and resumed typing.

The second list ran to almost a dozen pages. Lash turned them over, one after another, running his eyes wearily down the columns. Then he froze.

“Jesus,” he murmured.

“What is it?”

“These columns labeled ‘Nominal avatar removal.’ What do they stand for?”

“When the avatars were removed from the tank.”

“In other words, when the couples were matched.”

“Right.”

Lash handed her the sheet. “Look at the removal dates for the Thorpes and the Wilners.”

Tara glanced at the report. “My God. September 17, 2002. September 24, 2002.”

“That’s right. Not only were the Thorpes and the Wilners the first two supercouples to be matched. They also died precisely two years after they were matched. Two years to the day.”

Tara dropped the report on the desk. “What do you think it means?”

“That this dog’s been sniffing around the wrong fire hydrant. Here I’ve been digging into the psych tests and evaluations, assuming there might be some human flaw your examinations missed. Maybe instead of examining the people, I should have examined the process.”

“The process? What about the suspect match? Liza’s search?”

“That won’t be done until Monday. I don’t plan to spend the next seventy-odd hours sitting on my hands.” He stood up and turned toward the door. “Thanks for the help.”

As he opened the door, he heard Tara’s chair roll back. “Just a minute,” she said.

He turned.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my office. I’ve got a lot of evidence lockers to search.”

When Tara came around the desk, there was no hesitation. “I’m coming along,” she said.