A Cosmic Christmas Read online

  “This looks normal,” I said.

  He motioned at the far wall. “Maybe the screen is behind that. A holo there would reflect here just like a real mirror.

  We went over to the other mirror. I reached out—and my hand went through the “glass,” vanishing into its own image. “Hah! You’re right.”

  Then I walked through the holo.

  I had one instant to register the screen across the room before I head the whirring noise. Spinning around, I saw a metal wall shooting up from the floor. It hit the ceiling with a thud.

  “Hey!” I pounded on the metal. “Allen? Can you hear me?”

  A faint voice answered. “Just barely. Hang on. I’ll find a way to get you out.”

  I looked around, wondering how many other traps Sadji had set for us. The room was small, with pine walls and a parquetry floor. Light came from two fluorescent bulbs covered by glass panes on the ceiling. A table and a chair stood in the center of the room. Actually, “table” was the wrong word. It was really a large metal box.

  I scowled. If this was Sadji’s idea of a “warm holiday” I hoped I never saw his vision of a cold one. Lights glittering like demented fireflies in an otherwise darkened room, mirrors to make the studio look huge—it was an ingeniously weird way to trick us into this prison. And when I had found the studio’s normal lights instead of stumbling in here, the chandelier’s display gave perfect cover for the laser beams that had to be crisscrossing the studio.

  I went and sat in the chair, too disheartened to stand anymore.

  “Hello,” the table said. “I am Marley.”

  I blinked. Marley? “Can you let Allen and me out of the house?”

  “Yes.”

  That sounded too easy. “Okay, do it.”

  “You must use your key.”

  “I don’t have a key.”

  “Then I can’t let you out.”

  That wasn’t much of a surprise. “So why are you here?”

  A panel slid open on top of the table, revealing a hole the shape of Allen’s medallion. “I am the lock.”

  I put my thumb in the lock. “Here’s the key.”

  A red laser beam swept over my hand. “No it’s not.”

  Oh well. I hadn’t really expected it to work. “How do you know what the key looks like?”

  “I have a digitized hologram of it. By using lasers to create an interference pattern for whatever appears in the lock, I correlate how well it matches my internal record.”

  Could it really be this easy? A holo made from Marley’s own hologram would correlate one hundred percent with its record. I grinned. “Good. Make a holo of the key inside the lock.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have nothing to print a hologram on.”

  I motioned at the ceiling. “What about the light panels?”

  “I have no way to print or etch glass.”

  “Oh.” So much for my bright idea. “I don’t suppose there’s anything else here you could use.”

  Marley’s laser scanned the walls, floor, ceiling, and me, avoiding my eyes. “Appropriate materials are available.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I am incapable of kidding.”

  “What materials?”

  “Your hair.”

  I tensed. “What do you mean, my hair?”

  “It is of an appropriate thickness and flexibility to use in making a diffraction grating that can serve as a hologram.”

  “You want me to cut my hair?”

  “This would be necessary.”

  “No.” I couldn’t.

  Why not? I could almost hear the voice of the therapist who had treated my anorexia. You’re the same person with or without your hair. She had also said a lot of things I hadn’t wanted to hear: You’ve spent your life looking in mirrors to find flaws with yourself, striving for an impossible ideal of perfection. It’s no wonder you’ve come to fear you’re nothing without the beauty of form, of motion, of body that your profession demands.

  “Pah,” I muttered. Then I got up and hefted the chair onto the table. By clambering up onto it I was able to reach the light panels. Both came off easily. I climbed down, put one panel on Marley, and smashed the other against the table.

  Just do it, I thought.

  So I did it. I used a glass shard and my hair fell on the floor in huge gold swirls. While I mucked up my hair, Marley’s laser played over me. When I finished, a panel slid open on the table to reveal a cavity full of optical gizmos.

  “Put the materials inside,” Marley said.

  As soon as I had stuffed the hair inside with the glass, Marley closed up the cavity again. Then I waited.

  After what felt like forever Marley spoke. “The hologram is complete.”

  “Use it to make a holo inside the lock.”

  The glass slid up out of the table, looking like it had been melted and reformed with my hair inside. The glossy gold swirls were so intricate it was hard to believe they came from hair. Marley shone its laser on it, using a wide beam, and a red medallion appeared in the lock. I moved my head and saw a reversed image of the medallion floating on the other side of the glass.

  “Will you let us go now?” I asked.

  “Yes. Mr. Parker is in the hallway north of this room. He appears to be looking for an entrance into here.”

  So Marley could see the rest of the mansion. It had probably monitored our actions all day. “Can you talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Tell him I’m free, that I’ll meet him in the garage. Then let me out of here and unlock the front door to the house.”

  Marley paused. “Done.”

  I heard the wall behind me move, and I turned in time to see it vanish into the floor. When I walked into the studio, an infinity of shorn Bridgets stared back at me from the mirrors. I looked like I had stuck my finger in a light socket.

  I surprised myself and laughed. Then I set off running.

  The front door was wide open. I sped out into a freezing night, heading for the garage. It was also open, spilling light out into the darkness. I could see Allen inside seated in front of a holophone next to the console, a dais about six inches high and three yards in diameter. Fiber-optic cables connected it to the console and a holoscreen about ten feet high curved around the back of it.

  Allen looked up as I ran over to him. “How did you—God, what happened to your hair?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later.” I motioned at the holophone. “Did you reach your father?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no answer at his house. I’m trying his office.”

  A dour-sounding computer interrupted. “I have a connection.” Then the booth lit up and Sadji appeared on the dais, sitting at the desk in his office. The curtains were open on the windows behind him, showing a starlit sky.

  “Allen.” He smiled. “Hello.”

  Allen stared at him. “What are you doing there?”

  “Some business came up.” Sadji looked apologetic. “I’m afraid I can’t make it until tomorrow afternoon.”

  Allen scowled. “Dad, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I just got held up.”

  “Nothing? What the hell do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  Sadji frowned. “Allen, I’ve talked to you before about your language.” He drummed his fingers on the desk. “I’m sorry I’m late. But matters needed attending to. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Then he cut the connection, the holo blinking out of existence, as if he had dematerialized.

  I stared at Allen. “That’s it? After everything he put us through?

  “If you think that’s bad, look at what else I found.” He touched a button and light flooded into the garage from behind me. I turned around and saw lamps bathing the mansion with light. They showed the cliffs plunging down on the west side of the house in sharp relief. But instead of a sheer drop on the east, there was a snowy hill only a few feet below the level of the ledge where we ha
d fallen: no holocliff, no holoclouds, just a nice, innocuous hill with pieces of the broken ledge lying half buried in the snow there.

  I turned back to Allen. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Well, I know one thing. I’m not going to stay here.” He stood up. “He can spend Christmas with himself.”

  “This just doesn’t seem like Sadji.”

  After a moment Allen’s frown faded. “He’s been late before. A lot, in fact. But he’s always made sure we knew right away. And I’ve never known him to run a holoscape when he wasn’t around to monitor it.

  None of it made sense to me. “Do you know why this business trip had him so worried?”

  He scowled. “Victor Marck went after Parker Industries again.”

  “Again?”

  Allen nodded. “A few years ago he tried to take us over. Almost did it too. But Dad stopped him. He stopped him this time too.” He grimaced. “Marck can’t stand to lose.” That’s why he hates my father so much. Not only has Dad plastered him twice now, but both times he really whacked Marcksman Corporation in the process. Already this morning the Marcksman stock had dropped by a point. It’s going to get a lot worse before it recovers.”

  I tried to catch my elusive sense of unease. “If we hadn’t been caught in that holoscape, would you have thought anything was odd about our holocall to your father?”

  “I doubt it. Why?”

  “Maybe someone tampered with the computer.”

  For a moment Allen just looked at me. Then he said. “There’s a way to find out.” He turned back to the console and opened a panel, revealing a small prong. He pushed up his shirt sleeve and snapped the prong into a socket on the inside of his wrist.

  I drew in a sharp breath. It was the first time I had seen someone make a cyber link with a computer. It meant Allen had a cybnet in his body, a network of fibers grown in the lab using tissue from his own neurons and then implanted in his body. Sadji had wanted to have it done, but he couldn’t find any surgeon willing to perform so many high-risk operations on a man who had more power than some of the world’s heads of state.

  Allen had an odd look, as if he were listening to a distant conversation. Then I realized his “conversation” was with the computer.

  “There’s a virus,” he suddenly said. “No, not a virus. A sleeper, a hidden program. It has an interactive AI code that emulates my father’s personality.” His forehead furrowed. “It also predicts how he’ll move down to the smallest gesture, then works out the hologram each rendered figure of him would make if it were real. And it’s fast. It can calculate over sixty interference patterns per second.” He whistled. “It’s making holomovies of him.”

  I stared at him. “You mean that holocall was fake?”

  “You got it.” Allen swore. “The sleeper is also set up to record arrivals and departures. After you and I go it will destroy itself, leaving a record of our presence disguised to look like the operating system made it.” He paused. “But whoever set it up didn’t know about Dad’s holoscape. When the sleeper identified me, it set off a part of the holoscape that was supposed to identify us on New Year’s Eve.”

  This sounded stranger and stranger. “So those holos in the house weren’t supposed to be going when we came?”

  Allen nodded. “We weren’t meant to fall out that window either, at least not how it happened. There are safety nets, but the routines that control their release aren’t running.” He regarded me. “According to Dad’s calendar, he meant to be here when we arrived. And it’s obvious he never meant for us to be imprisoned in the holoscape. It’s just a game he had set up for New Year’s Eve.”

  I frowned. “Then he couldn’t have written the sleeper.”

  Allen pulled the prong out of his wrist. “I know only two other people who have both the ability and the resources to do it: Victor Marck and me. And I sure didn’t.”

  “Why would Marck want evidence to prove we were here?”

  Allen paled. “Can you imagine what it would do to Parker Industries if both my father and I were suddenly, drastically, out of the picture? It would be a disaster.” He gritted his teeth. “And I can guess whose vultures would be ready to come in and strip the remains clean.”

  I spoke slowly, dreading his answers. “How could he get both you and Sadji so thoroughly out of the picture?”

  His voice shook. “Implicating me in my father’s murder would do just fine.”

  “No, Allen, no.” Sadji dead? I couldn’t believe it.

  “We’ve been fighting Marck for years. I’ve seen how his mind works.” Allen took hold of my shoulder. “How do you think it would look: you and I come here, spend the night, then leave. A few days later my father’s body is found on the grounds, time of death placed when we were here or not long after we left.”

  I swallowed. “No one would believe we did it.”

  “Why not? Who has a better motive than me? I stand to inherit everything he owns. The greedy son and beautiful seductress murder the holomovie king for Christmas. It would splash across every news report in the country.”

  “Sadji’s alive. Alive.” I put up my hands, wanting to push away his words. “No one would dare hurt him while we were here. The computer would record their presence just like ours.”

  Allen had a terrible look, as if he had just learned he lost someone so important to him that he couldn’t yet absorb it. “Not if they left him to die before we came. They could have used a remote to turn on the system after they were gone.”

  “But Sadji’s not here. We’ve been through the entire house.”

  Sweat ran down Allen’s temples. “The damn computer keeps telling me he’s in his office.”

  “Marley!”

  “What?”

  “It’s a sensor Sadji set up for the holoscape room in the dance studio. It knew exactly where you and I were.”

  Allen grabbed my arm. “Show me.”

  We ran back to the holoscreen room in the dance studio. My holo of the medallion was still in the lock, keeping the room open.

  “Marley.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. “Can you locate Sadji Parker?”

  “Yes,” Marley said.

  I almost gasped in relief. “Where is he?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “This isn’t a game. You have to tell us!”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Allen slammed his fist against the wall. “Damn it, tell us!”

  “You must supply me with the proper sequence of words,” Marley said.

  “Words?” I looked around frantically. “What words?”

  “The ones printed on the key.” Marley sounded smug, like a game player who had just pulled a particularly clever move. Then he closed a panel over the holo medallion, hiding it from our sight.”

  I whirled to Allen. “The medallion! What’s written on it?”

  He had already pulled it out of his pocket. “‘Proverbs 10:1,’” he read. “‘A wise son makes a father glad.’”

  “That is the correct sequence,” Marley said. “Sadji Parker is located in storage bin four under the floor in the northeast corner of the garage.”

  Allen grabbed my arm, yanking me along as we ran back to the garage. He hurled away the rug in the corner and heaved on the handle of a trapdoor in the ground there. When it didn’t open, he ran across the room and grabbed an axe off a hook on the wall. Then he sped back and smashed the axe into the trapdoor, raising it high and slamming it down again and again, its blade glittering in the light.

  The door splintered, disintegrating under Allen’s attack. He dropped the axe and scrambled down a ladder into the dark below. As I hurried after him, I heard him jump to the floor. An instant later, light flared around us. I jumped down and whirled to see Allen standing under a bare light bulb, his arm still outstretched towards the chain as he looked around the bin, a small dusty room with a few crates—

  “There!” I broke into a run, heading for the crumpled form behind a crate.


  He lay naked and motionless, his eyes closed, his mouth gagged, his wrists and ankles bound to a pipe that ran along the seam where the floor met the wall. Ugly bruises showed all over his body. Dried blood covered his wrists and ankles, as if he had struggled violently against the leather thongs that bound him.

  I dropped on my knees next to his head. “Sadji?” In the same instant, Allen said, “Dad?”

  No response.

  I undid his gag and pulled wads of cloth out of his mouth, trying desperately to remember the CPR class I had taken. “Please be alive,” I whispered, tears running down my face.

  Slowly, so slowly, his lashes lifted.

  I heard a choked sob from Allen. Sadji looked up at us, bleary eyed. As Allen untied him, I drew Sadji’s head into my lap and stroked the matted hair off his forehead. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

  “It’s all right,” I murmured. “We’ll take care of you now.”

  It seemed like forever before they all left, the police and the doctors and the nurses and the multitude of Parker minions buzzing around the mansion. But finally Allen and I were alone with Sadji. No, not alone; the bodyguards hulking discreetly in the background would never again be gone, neither for Sadji nor for Allen.

  Sadji sat back in the cushions next to me on the couch, dressed in jeans and a pullover. He had refused to go to the hospital, but at least he was resting now, his furiously delirious attempts to go after Victor Marck calmed by food, water, and medicine. His face was pale, his wrists and ankles bandaged, his voice hoarse. But he was alive, wonderfully alive.

  He watched Allen and me. “You two are a welcome sight.”

  I took his hand. “Do you think they’ll be able to convict Marck?”

  Sadji’s face hardened. “I don’t know. That hired thug he had waiting up here for me will be out of the country by now.” He spoke quietly. “But no matter what happens, Marck will pay a price far worse, to him, than any conviction.”

  Allen regarded him. “The only thing that could be worse to Marck than the electric chair would be losing Marcksman Corporation.”

  Although Sadji smiled, it was a harsh expression far different than the gentleness he usually showed me. “He’ll lose a lot more than Marcksman. The publicity from his arrest will finish him even if he’s not convicted.”