Ramez Naam - Apex

Maybe I should have taken that Secret Service detail after all, she thought.

The car was waiting for her on the tarmac, as she’d requested, a sleek silver all-wheel sedan under a uniformly grey sky. The flight crew helped her load the gear bags she’d brought into the trunk. Pryce thanked them, re-confirmed her next booking with them, and then was off.

The drive from Billings to Miles Jameson’s ranch took five hours, across icy, treacherous roads, with high winds gusting across them. More than once the car decided to stop and shelter until conditions improved. Each time she urged it on. Vehicular traffic was light, to say the least.

She could have chosen a closer airfield to land in, but she hadn’t.

She could have rented the car under a false name, but she hadn’t.

The trap had to be baited. The bait had to be dangled long enough for the predator to pounce.

And the bait was her.

She didn’t know when Jameson’s Secret Service first became aware of her. Sixteen kilometers back, when she’d taken the road that led to just four ranches, of which Jameson’s was one? Thirty-two kilometers back, when she’d driven through the one horse town on the way here? Further back? As far back as Billings? She hoped not. That would not bode well for her plans.

One way or another, they were waiting for her at the gate to Jameson’s sprawling ranch. Two large black SUVs sat there, behind the gate, windows tinted, their door and body panels bulging in ways that spoke of armor reinforcement. In front of the gate stood two tall, broad shouldered men in mirrored glasses and heavy black coats with SECRET SERVICE loudly emblazoned in red. Large automatic weapons were openly held in their gloved hands, pointed down.

The house was somewhere back there, more than a mile away, well out of sight.

One held up a hand towards her, palm out. The Tesla was stopping itself already.

The agent who’d held his hand out walked towards her, towards the driver’s side. The other stood there, immobile, impassive, blocking her way.

These are Secret Service agents, Pryce told herself. They’re loyal. These are the ones I can trust.

Staring at the guns in the hands of the massively muscled men with their lethal fourth generation enhancements, it sounded hollow.

Pryce rolled down her window as the agent drew near.

He leaned down, his eyes hidden by his mirrored shades, his jaw a sculpted thing. Pryce didn’t recognize him.

“Dr Pryce,” the agent said, his voice a gravely bass. “We weren’t expecting you.”

Pryce didn’t react to the use of her name. She’d known they’d have her ID’d by now. By the registration of the car. By her phone. By facial recognition once she’d drawn near enough.

She turned away from the agent, looked straight ahead at his partner. “I’m here to see President Jameson,” she said curtly, the voice of a Cabinet member to an underling.

“I’m afraid you’re not on our list of visitors for today, Doctor,” the agent said. “I’m going to have to ask you to turn around and depart.”

Pryce turned and looked back at him now, let anger show on her face.

“Young man,” she said, acidly. “I am the National Security Advisor to the current President of the United States. I’m here to see former President Jameson on that authority, to discuss a matter of the gravest possible importance to national security.”

She paused, watched the agent.

“Now, relay to Miles Jameson that I’m here. And that I’m not leaving until I see him.”

They kept her waiting for an hour. The anxiety built and built inside her. It was one thing to construct a plan, to game out a series of moves on a chessboard. It was one thing to know in the abstract that the sequence of moves would work.

It was another thing entirely to actually put oneself in play. To be the piece, on the board, at risk of capture should the opponent discover a flaw in one’s strategy.

The agents in front of her periodically held their fingers to their ears, made the tiny lip motions of men sub-vocalizing. They were talking with someone.

Then abruptly the gate was opening. One of the agents was motioning her out of the car.

Pryce opened her car door and rose.

“He’s ready for you, Dr Pryce,” the agent she’d spoken to told her. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll drive you down there.”

She sat in the back of the massive armored SUV as the agent played chauffeur.

“I’m Agent Taggart,” he said.

“Carolyn Pryce,” she said, neutrally.

She saw the agent smile in the rear-view mirror, like Pryce introducing herself was the funniest thing in the world.

“You’re not cold in that thin jacket, Dr Pryce?”

“I left my parka in the car,” she answered.

Taggart ferried her to the vast, sprawling main ranch house, led her inside, and left her in the care of another Secret Service agent, a tall, muscular, dark-skinned woman Pryce recognized. Middle-eastern origin. A Muslim, if Pryce remembered right. Lebanese? Syrian? Something like that. You saw so few in this line of work.

What was her name?

“We have to ask you to relinquish your briefcase and phone, Dr Pryce,” she said, “along with your shoes, belt, and any jewelry. And I’m afraid we’re going to wand and search you.”

Pryce nodded. She’d expected that. What was the woman’s name?

She stripped herself of jewelry, kicked off her shoes, pulled off her rings, held out her arms as the agent wanded her, again and again, thoroughly.

“Now I’m going to pat you down, Dr Pryce,” the woman said. She was nearly six feet tall, with broad shoulders, strong arms.

The voice did it. Pryce kept her arms outstretched as the agent did a thorough, professional job.

“You were on President Jameson’s protection detail four or five years ago,” she told the woman. “When I was on the Veep’s staff.”

The agent smiled at her. “That’s right.”

“Your name’s… Noora?” Pryce went for it.

The agent smiled wider, finishing the pat down.

“You have a good memory, Dr Pryce.”

Pryce smiled.

“You have to in this job.”

“Clear,” Noora said into her throat mike. Then to Pryce, “I’ll have your things waiting for you here when you’re done with the President, Doctor.”

They led her to a large library, with a peaked, two-story ceiling. Sliding double doors graced one wall. A gas fire was burning in the fireplace. Decadent. Jameson wasn’t here. No one was. But her skin tingled. She was certain she was being observed, being recorded, having every aspect of her physiology measured and analyzed.

Pryce walked to soothe herself, studying the books on the shelves, looking for a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince or some such.

She found Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, instead, Mark Twain and Herman Melville. Classics, mostly. Expensive editions. Shelves and shelves of them. Not a speck of dust to be seen.

And then there, one short shelf of the early authors who’d warned of the perils of transhumanism. Fukuyama, a paper copy of Our Posthuman Future . Kass, the man they’d called “The President’s Philosopher” back at the turn of the century; a leather-bound edition of Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity ; Barrat’s warning tome on sentient AI, Our Final Invention; even a copy of McKibben’s naturalist’s argument against human augmentation, Enough . That one surprised her.

A sound caught her attention. She turned. The double doors had slid open, and there was Miles Jameson, looking remarkably composed in a red button down shirt and black slacks in his wheelchair, a grey-haired man in a jacket and open-collar shirt next to him, and a muscular dark-haired young man in shirt and slacks behind him.