Free Soulminder by Timothy Zahn Page B

Sands commented, her voice growing thoughtful.
    Everly shrugged. “Light does tend to keep the rats away.”
    “In that case, maybe we should turn up the rheostat a little.” Sands looked at Sommer, an odd glint in her eye.
    “What?” he demanded suspiciously. He’d seen that look before.
    “I was just thinking,” she said, “that maybe you ought to accept that head-to-head with Harper, after all.”
    “Now you’re kidding,” Sommer growled. “Why don’t you just stake me out over an anthill and invite the media in?”
    “It might not be a bad idea, actually,” Everly said. “It would help keep the pot stirred, as well as showing them that you’re not some shadowy government bureaucrat they can’t even find, much less confront. It’d make Soulminder more human.”
    Sommer glared at him. Sands was already way too good at talking him into things he really didn’t want to do. The last thing he needed was someone else feeding her ammunition. “So one of you do it,” he growled. “If you think I’m going to be turned into dog meat on Harper’s own show—”
    “Well, now, of course you wouldn’t want to face him on his own ground,” Sands soothed. She must have sensed victory, Sommer thought sourly; she’d shifted into conciliatory mode. “I meant neutral territory. One of the Sunday talking-head shows or something. Maybe a prime-time debate special—we’re big enough news to pull something like that.”
    “You could require that other religious leaders be invited in, too,” Everly suggested. “It would give a more balanced view of the questions involved, besides giving you a chance to bring in some allies.”
    “Sure,” Sands said, nodding. “It wouldn’t be any harder than going up to Capitol Hill and facing Barnswell and his crowd.” She hesitated. “And it’s something only you can do, Adrian. You’re the public image of Soulminder, not me.”
    A fact that she’d been reminding him of and pushing him with ever since Soulminder’s creation. How much of that, he wondered, was public hero-worship, and how much merely Sands’s own self-fulfilling prophesy?
    And did it really matter?
    As a theoretical matter, perhaps. As a practical matter, not at all.
    With a quiet sigh, Sommer pushed his chair back to his worktable and reached for the phone.
    “ … but as the initial euphoria about the breakthrough itself ran its course,” the reporter droned on, “questions and doubts began to appear … ”
    His eyes on the monitor, Sommer took a deep breath and willed calm into his throat. Why the producers had felt it necessary to recap Soulminder’s brief history for the viewers he couldn’t imagine—there couldn’t be any adult in the Western Hemisphere who hadn’t heard the story over and over again in the past year.
    But it hadn’t been worth arguing about. So he sat and suffered the pre-broadcast jitters, and wished they could just get on with it.
    As, he suspected, did at least three of the other four guests. Rabbi David Kaufmann was puckering his lips in and out as he stared the monitor, while the Reverend Robert Edgington’s hands rubbed back and forth endlessly across his chair arms and Father James Barry ran a finger inside his clerical collar as if trying to loosen it. Even the host of this circus, Barbara Leach, was staring down at her notes as if seeing them for the first time, a tight set to her mouth. Only Harper, at the far end of the semicircle, seemed totally at ease.
    The taped history lesson was coming to an end. Sommer took a deep, calming breath; he sensed the others doing the same. A shadowy figure behind the lights raised a hand and counted off the seconds—
    And by the time the red light on the central camera flicked on, everyone in front of it was calm and collected.
    “Good evening to you,” Leach said into the lens, her voice gravely polite. “Welcome to this special edition of Focus . For any who tuned in late, my guests this evening are, to my left, Dr.