Habu. James B. Johnson
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comparative shelter of the bubble.
Reubin touched his wristcomp. “Special design. One of the functions is a signal locator. Your car registers one—surely in case your built-in transponder is inop or perhaps gimmicked so it doesn’t broadcast. Doubtless by now, your apartment has been doused with listening devices.” He put a foot on the bench and leaned on his knee, watching her closely.
“But why?”
“Your mother. More specifically, my questions this morning to Nodivving. The questions alerted them. Which, in turn, means it’s likely they killed her.”
“Mother? Murdered?” Tique was bewildered by this turn of events. “I don’t understand.” Could Reubin possibly be serious?
“Me, neither, but I’m going to. Think about the circumstances of Fels Nodivving himself showing us the results of the autopsy.”
“Mother was a government minister—”
“Certainly. But Wormwood, Inc. has some kind of stake in your mother’s death, as near as I can figure.”
“But why, Reubin? I mean—”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
“How can you say this?” Tique felt strangely empty. This interloper was mixing up her feelings. Emotions she thought dead rose again. Her forehead burned.
“Recall the autopsy. Did you see the chemical analysis of her blood?”
“I wasn’t paying that close attention. Frankly, it was rather odious to me, all that—”
“You didn’t see it.” Reubin sat down and stretched his legs. He interlaced his fingers, twisted his hands inward, and snapped his knuckles. “It wasn’t there. Until I asked, remember?” He laughed dryly, with no humor. “All they had to do was to dummy one up, but they didn’t take the time and effort. Or, perhaps—”
Tique waited, watching him think. Not wanting to think herself. “Perhaps what?”
“Perhaps they purposefully failed to include it so that I’d notice. If I noticed and left the planet quickly, that meant that I was privy to Alexandra’s secret—and making a panicked run for it. But I studied it.”
“What secret?” Tique was more at a loss as each moment passed.
“The secret they killed her for. The secret they wouldn’t have gotten from her, else they wouldn’t leave the sucker-bait of the incomplete autopsy.” Reubin breathed deeply. “I’ve always loved high mountain air. There’s something primordial about it.”
“I say again, Reubin, what secret?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Tique shook her head. “Not only that, but I’m not sure I know what the hell we’re talking about right goddamn now.” More anger seeped into her voice. Was this man toying with her?
“Nor am I.” Reubin’s voice was strong, decisive. “Did you notice the color cross sections of her brain?” He didn’t wait for her response, but continued. “It was difficult to tell because the autopsy got into her brain and the pathologist could have conceivably caused the damage—”
“Reubin? You are frightening me. Will you please start to make sense?”
He looked at her, scooted closer and snaked his arm through hers. She stifled her recoil. “There is a little tuck in the cerebrum, right under the front of the corpus callosum—which is the big band of commissural fibers that connect the hemispheres. Anyway, in that specific brain matter is close access to the pituitary gland and the hypothalamus.” He tightened his arm against her. “Bear with me. This physiology isn’t important, but it’s necessary to understand. They made a mistake. They showed us color frames of the autopsy. There was some discoloration and tissue damage.”
“And?” Tique decided she didn’t want to withdraw her arm from his right now. More confused emotions.
“You don’t know?”
“Damn it, Reubin. Stop asking me if I know. I don’t.”
His smile was grim. “Right. It is not commonly known. But some people have an implant, a biochip attached to points in the brain, the pituitary, and the hypothalamus.”
Tique removed her arm from his. “Sure. You should be a professor. You know physiology. Why haven’t I ever heard of this implant?”
“Only the Long Life Institute knows about it. And those involved.”
“And you, Reubin, and you. Or so you say.”
He rose and paced the short space behind the viewers inside the bubble. “I know because I have one of the implants myself. Only those people who worked on the original development of the Long Life Institute, or one of its ancillary projects, have them.” He stopped and stared at her.
She didn’t let the fierceness of his gaze inhibit her. She returned his stare. “Go on.”
“The biochip,” he said, “contains a couple of simple programs which you can trigger. One is to defeat drug or hypnotic interrogation. You trigger it and your cover story, hypnotically placed there by the most skilled experts in the Federation, is at your demand. You respond with your cover story, no matter what drugs they use, You actually believe the story, too. You don’t fess up about your role with the LLI. So drugs and hypnosis cannot be used against you.”
Though she didn’t want to, Tique asked the logical question, dread flowing through her mind. “And physical torture?”
“The second function of the implant. Suicide. It tells your heart to stop functioning. I’m not certain whether it is a hormonal-directed action, or simple electrical impulse to the appropriate location in the brain. Maybe both. But the autopsy should have showed something out of norm in the chemical analysis. If the biochip launches hormones to the brain function to stop your heart, it would show up. The people at the Long Life Institute are the most expert in hormones in the Fed,”
Tique ignored his words. Suddenly the world changed. “You just told me that someone tortured Mother and she committed suicide?”
Reubin sat again. “That’s the way I figure it. And the autopsy revealed the biochip and your pathologist, Dr. Crowell, removed the biochip thinking it might hold a secret or two. Once brain activity stops, electrical energy ceases and the chip is useless. But she was dead when they dug out the implant. It fits my definition of murder.” His head dropped and his jaw muscles rolled, giving Tique the impression that he was undergoing some sort of internal struggle.
“Why? Why, Reubin?”
He lifted his head. Something flickered in his eyes and was gone just as quickly. Eerie. “She knew something they wanted to know.”
“Connected with the LLI, right?”
“It must be.” He paused. “Those who knew any of the LLI formulae or had any access to the original projects were implanted with the chip. It works off the brain’s own electrical activity.”
“I’m beginning to see,” she said. Her voice sounded weird even to her, “The greatest secret in the known human experience, in history. The Long Life treatment,”
Reubin shrugged. “It could be. If someone solved that, he could bust the Long Life Institute monopoly and name his own price. People wouldn’t have to follow the strict rules of the LLI and its founder.”
Tique was still baffled. “I don’t think I understand fully, yet. You, Reubin Flood, you know the Long Life secret?”
He shook his head. “No. And your mother probably didn’t, either. I was involved only peripherally. I had a part in the R and D of the computer systems for the LLI.”
“God. You’re old.”
A strange look passed through his eyes. “And you’re