Wonder

eighteen

The attempt to cure Wong Wai-Jeng required three devices: one on either side of the injury to his spinal cord, and the external BackBerry device, which would receive signals from one implant, clean them up, amplify them, and transmit them to the other.

Kuroda Masayuki was an engineer, not a surgeon; he couldn’t insert the implants. But Beijing had several excellent neurosurgeons, including Lin I-Hung, who had been trained at a hospital in Melbourne.

Kuroda had watched, fascinated, as the surgeon did his work; the operation took four hours, and there had been very little blood. Wai-Jeng had been under a general anesthetic throughout.

At last, though, he woke up. Kuroda spoke no Chinese and Wai-Jeng no Japanese—but most urban Chinese under thirty learned English in school, so they were able to converse in that language.

When Caitlin had received her post-retinal implant, they had waited a day for the swelling to go down before activating it. But Caitlin had been blind for almost sixteen years at that point; her brain had long ago given up trying to rewire its optic centers.

Wai-Jeng, however, had only been paralyzed for seventeen days; his brain was very likely still responding to the loss of the use of his legs, and the sooner that use could be given back to him, the better.

Rather than press the button on the BackBerry himself, Kuroda had Wai-Jeng do it; there was after all, a mental switch in his brain that had to be thrown, as well, and the process of pushing the button might help with that.

Wai-Jeng closed his eyes for a few seconds, and Kuroda wondered if he were praying. He then pressed the button, holding it down, as Kuroda had instructed, for five seconds, and—

And the man’s right leg, still in a plaster cast, jerked, almost as if its reflex point had been hit by a physician’s mallet.

“Zhè shì yigè qiji,” Wai-Jeng exclaimed, so excited that he’d switched back to Chinese. He winced, though, as he said it; clearly there was pain from his leg.

He moved his other leg, flexing it at the hip, lifting it up into the air. “Zhè shì yigè qiji,” he said again.

Kuroda would have advised a more cautious approach, but, before he could intervene, Wai-Jeng had swung his legs over the side of the bed and gotten to his feet. He yelped with pain as he stood, but that just made him smile more. He also staggered a bit, and was steadying himself by holding on to the metal bed frame, but it was no more unsteadiness than would be expected of anyone standing up after two weeks in bed.

Wai-Jeng exclaimed, “Zhè shì yigè qiji!” once again, and so Kuroda said, “What’s that mean?”

“It means,” said Wai-Jeng, in English, smiling now from ear to ear, ‘It’s a miracle.’ ”

Caitlin’s mother had been afraid that the two of them might have ended up on the no-fly list despite being American citizens, but there had been no hassle beyond the usual rigmarole at Pearson. Still, it occurred to Caitlin that Webmind could probably alter records, and so once they had passed through the metal detectors and were safely standing on the moving sidewalk heading toward the departure gate, Caitlin asked aloud, “Did you help grease the wheels back there?”

Webmind replied with text to her eye: No, but I’m not surprised they are letting you travel to the United States. Even if you are thought of as a danger, because of your connection to me, they may be adhering to the principle of “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” The real test will be to see if they let you leave the US.

Caitlin mulled over that cheery thought on the short, uneventful flight—although she did find the New York skyline breathtaking as they circled in for a landing. Despite Tawanda’s fears, Dr. Theopolis safely survived the journey in Caitlin’s checked bag.

When the cab dropped them off at the hotel—it had taken almost as long to drive from LaGuardia to Fifth Avenue as it had to fly from Toronto to New York—Caitlin recognized Shoshana Glick from clear across the hotel’s large lobby. “Shoshana!” she exclaimed.

Caitlin still wasn’t good at visually judging such things, but Shoshana was some number of inches taller than her, and she had blue eyes and a long brown ponytail. The thought caused Caitlin to smile; she’d yet to see a pony, but hoped she’d recognize one when she finally did based on having seen the namesake hairdo.

Shoshana smiled. “The famous Caitlin Decter!”

“Not as famous as you,” Caitlin said. “The YouTube videos of you have way more hits than the ones of me.”

Caitlin’s mother was right behind Caitlin. “Hello, Barb,” Shoshana said, presumably recognizing her from the video call.

“Hello,” Caitlin’s mom said. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“You, too.”

“How was your flight?” Caitlin’s mom asked.

“Long,” said Shoshana. “We chartered a small jet—seemed the best way to get Hobo here. But we had to stop for refueling. Hobo didn’t like the takeoffs and landings; but otherwise. he was okay.”

“And how’d you get the hotel to let you register an ape?” asked her mom.

“They thought it would be good publicity. Of course, we put down a big damage deposit and are paying an extra cleaning fee.”

“Cool,” said Caitlin, wanting to get past the chitchat. “Where’s Hobo?”

“He’s up in his room with Dr. Marcuse. Shall we go?”

They headed across the lobby to the elevators. As it happened, a blind woman with a Seeing Eye dog was waiting there. It was the first good look Caitlin had gotten at a dog, or any large animal; so far, she’d only seen Schrödinger and the various birds that frequented her parents’ backyard. Caitlin had never had a Seeing Eye dog although some of her friends at the TSBVI had them. “Could you press ten?” said the woman, once they were all in the elevator.

Caitlin allowed herself a small smile as she leaned forward and found the right button. There but for the grace of Dr. Kuroda go I.

Shoshana added, “And we’re on fifteen,” and Caitlin took pleasure in being able to press that button, too. This elevator did have Braille labels next to the buttons, but they weren’t as helpful to the completely blind in a strange elevator as most sighted people assumed. You had to guess which side of the door the panel was on, and fumble around trying to find the labels, and then figure out if they were to the left, right, above, or below the corresponding buttons.

The blind woman got off, the elevator went up four more floors—how anyone could fear a number was utterly beyond Caitlin—and Shoshana led them to the right room.

As they walked along, Caitlin wondered if any previous Texan had ever seen an ape before seeing a cow; she rather suspected not. But, as the door opened, there he was, crouching down in a corner by a window with drapes pulled over it. He was bigger than he’d looked online; again, Caitlin had trouble gauging such things, but she supposed he’d come up to her shoulders if he stood straight—which, being an ape, she imagined he never did. Hobo’s brown hair was parted in the middle above his wrinkled gray-black forehead; Caitlin had read that that was the way almost all bonobos had their hair.

Dr. Marcuse was there, too. He was at least as large as Dr. Kuroda, and, in Caitlin’s limited experience, he seemed much more intimidating. Still, he greeted them warmly.

Caitlin had a better-than-average sense of smell, and there was no doubt that Dr. Marcuse sweat a lot. But, she had to admit, his odor was nothing compared to Hobo’s. Of course, he almost certainly didn’t bathe every day, and probably wasn’t very good about brushing his teeth. Still, he clearly spent some time on grooming: his thick coat of body hair looked like it had been brushed.

Shoshana smiled at Hobo and moved her hands in complex ways. Caitlin had felt the hands of people doing American Sign Language before; there were a few deaf-blind people at her old school. But she’d never seen it spoken in real life, and it was fascinating to watch.

Hobo signed something back at Shoshana. Caitlin found it interesting that she couldn’t easily tell where Hobo was looking from this distance; he seemed to have no whites in his eyes.

Shoshana turned now to face Caitlin. “I’ve shown him the video of you on This Week,” she said. “Like most apes, Hobo is uncomfortable with strangers, and I wanted him to get used to your appearance.” She looked at Caitlin’s mother. “I’m sorry I didn’t have any video of you, Barb—I should have recorded that webcam call—but I told Hobo you are Caitlin’s mom. Hobo likes mothers; he very fondly remembers his own.”

Sho’s hands moved again, but this time she spoke, too, presumably saying the same thing in English. “Hobo, remember I told you these people were friends of your special friend?”

Hobo’s right hand fluttered.

“And remember I told you they were going to bring you a present, so you could talk to him again?”

Both hands moved this time, and it seemed to Caitlin that the gestures were enthusiastic.

“Well, now’s the time,” Sho said.

Caitlin’s mother was holding the neoprene laptop sleeve containing Dr. Theopolis—that name seemed to have stuck for the disk.

“Caitlin,” said Shoshana, “would you like to do the honors?”

Caitlin took the disk from her mother. It was quite light since it was mostly hollow, and it now had a long black leather strap attached at either side above the speaker “ears.” The strap was held on magnetically, so that if it got entangled in anything, it would pop free rather than strangle Hobo. Caitlin held the disk out toward the ape.

Shoshana signed at him, presumably telling him to tilt his head, because he did just that. Caitlin slipped the strap over his head and let the disk dangle from his neck; it sat in the middle of his long torso. He straightened up and looked at her with what might have been an apish smile. Caitlin wondered what the ASL for bidi-bidi-bidi was.

Hobo then tilted it so he could see its face. He seemed happy with it, and he let it rest against his chest again. His hands moved, and Shoshana laughed.

“What’s he saying?” Caitlin asked.

“ ‘Good treat,’ ” said Shoshana.

“That it is,” said Caitlin, smiling.

“Hello, hello, is this thing on?”

Hobo jumped at the sound of Webmind’s voice. Tipping his head down, he could see both the little viewscreen on the disk’s upper edge, and the half circle on the front that flashed red with each of Webmind’s syllables.

“Your voice is different,” said Shoshana, sounding surprised.

“Yes,” said Webmind, the words coming from the speakers at either side of the disk. “I decided it was time I had an official voice. I have now listened to all the audiobooks at Audible.com, and I selected the voice of Marc Vietor, a well-known audiobook narrator. By downloading the highest-bit-rate versions of several audiobooks he’d narrated, and using ebook versions of the same works to guide me in extracting all the individual phonemes, I created a database of speech fragments that will let me say anything I wish. Software programmed into the disk smoothes the transition from one fragment to the next as they’re strung together.”

“It’s a nice voice,” said Caitlin’s mom.

“Thanks,” said Webmind.

Hobo had moved closer to Dr. Marcuse and was showing off the disk around his neck; Caitlin had never seen an Olympic athlete wearing a gold medal, but she doubted one could look any prouder than Hobo did just now.

Suddenly, Hobo was on the move again, coming toward them. He gave Caitlin’s mom a big hug, and then moved over and hugged Caitlin, too; it made her laugh out loud. “What’s that for?” she said.

“He’s thanking you for bringing him the disk,” Shoshana said. He let Caitlin go, and his hands flew again. “And now he’s saying ‘Friend, friend.’ ” He made a happy hooting sound.

Caitlin was way too new at seeing to be able to copy a complex hand gesture by sight; she’d have to feel Hobo’s or Shoshana’s hands while they were doing it to learn the word. But she did make a passable imitation of Hobo’s hoot, and, to her delight, that earned her another hug. And then Hobo scooted across the room, and, with no difficulty at all, he opened one of the dresser drawers.

“Hobo!” said Shoshana in a scolding voice, but the ape ignored her, and he rooted around for a moment more, then came bounding back, and—

Caitlin had no idea what it was by sight, but as soon as it was in her hand, she recognized it. Hobo had just handed her a Hershey’s kiss, and he was now giving one to her mom.

“Thank you!” said Caitlin.

Hobo chittered happily and went back to looking at his disk.

“So, now what?” said Barb, unwrapping her kiss.

“I’ve never been to New York before,” said Shoshana. “I was hoping to see a Broadway show—um, if you don’t mind looking after Hobo tonight, Dr. Marcuse?”

“Sure,” said Marcuse, gesturing at the far wall, which Caitlin belatedly realized had a large monitor mounted on it. “Hobo and I could both use some downtime, before the big event tomorrow. We’ll watch some TV.”

“A girl’s night out, then,” said Caitlin’s mom, decisively. “What shall we see?”

“I can tell you which shows still have good seats available,” Webmind said.

Caitlin said, “I know there’s a new production of The Miracle Worker—they were talking about it on the Blindmath list. Any seats for that?”

“Three together, sixth row,” said Webmind. “I can order them for you.”

“Oh, Webmind,” said Shoshana, smiling, “how did we ever get along without you?”

Colonel Hume moved toward the long workbench with the row of monitors and the quartet of keyboards. The blood was obvious once he got there. The keyboards were all the same bone white ergonomic model, with a split between the left-hand and right-hand keys. On the third keyboard from the left, that split was mostly coated with dried blood. There was also a spray of it on the bench’s dark brown surface, and constellations of dried drops on the faces of two of the monitors. One of those drops was eerily illuminated from behind by the power LED set into the bottom-right corner of the monitor’s silver bezel.

You couldn’t spend as much time in the power circles of Washington without seeing the odd cocaine nosebleed, but—

But there was no glass sheet, no razor blade, no rolled-up hundred-dollar bill, and—

“Chase?” Hume called out. “Chase, are you here?”

He glanced in the kitchen and the dining room, then checked the other rooms, including the basement, which contained dozens of servers mounted on metal racks. There was no sign of Chase, but now that Hume was looking, he saw blood splatters on the living-room hardwood floor, leading toward the front door.

Of course, he immediately thought the worst. But there were benign alternatives: guy got a massive nosebleed—maybe coke, maybe just fell asleep at the keyboard and banged his face—and headed to the hospital to get it fixed, or something…

In which case his car would be gone! Hume went out the front door and tried the handle for the garage door; it was locked. He went around the side of the house and found a door to the garage with a small window in it. There was a car inside, a silver Toyota. The garage was big enough for two cars, but the extra space was filled with Dell, Gateway, and HP cartons. And when Hume had come by the first time, late at night, there had been no car in the driveway, so this was presumably Chase’s only vehicle.

But Chase had all those security cameras! Whatever had gone down would be recorded there. Hume hustled back into the house, and—

And man, he wasn’t much of a detective! Re-examining the front door, he could see now that it had been forced open. There was no visible damage by the handle, but the jamb was splintered higher up. Hume realized now that he shouldn’t further smear any fingerprints that might be on the knob, so he pushed the door, which had swung most of the way shut, open with his elbow.

He surveyed the room again. There’d definitely been a struggle here of some sort: scuff marks on the hardwood; Chase had been dragged away, bleeding.

Hume went over to the workbench again. He tapped the spacebar on the first of the four keyboards, to wake up the monitor, and—

Damn. It prompted him for a password.

He tried the second keyboard; same prompt.

The third—the one with blood all over it—also brought up a password prompt. And so did the fourth. Chase was very security conscious; he probably had each of the computers go into lockdown after a period of inactivity.

Hume got down on his hands and knees and looked under the workbench. Yes, there they were: the cables from the security cameras, leading into the back of one of the computers; whatever they’d recorded was inaccessible.

And, of course, the code for the virus Chase was working on was also locked behind a password. Hume swore.

The blood looked totally dry—and, considering its dark color, whatever had happened here probably occurred yesterday, if not the day before. That meant Chase could be anywhere by now.

Hume took a deep breath, and, with hands on hips, surveyed the scene once more.

If this were an ordinary day, his duty would be clear: call the police, report Chase missing, fill out forms.

But this was not an ordinary day. Or—more precisely—this could well be one of the last ordinary days humanity had left. He didn’t have time for that, and there was no way once a report went into the system that Webmind would fail to read it—and know that Hume was onto him. He thought about trying to wipe his own fingerprints from the scene, but that would take time, and he doubted he’d get them all, anyway, so he headed out the front door, pulling it shut behind him.

Once back in his car, he brought up the local copy of the black-hat hacker list he’d consulted before and looked to see who was the next best bet located near Chase’s house.

Ah, yes. The notorious Crowbar Alpha—just twenty-three miles away. He might even be a better choice than Chase.

Hume put the car in reverse, pulled out of the driveway, and roared down the street.