Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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PART TWO

We have here an unusual opportunity to appraise the human mind, or to examine, in Earth terms, the roles of good and evil in a man: his negative side, which you call hostility, lust, violence, and his positive side, which Earth people express as compassion, love, tenderness.

–

Star Trek,

“The Enemy Within” (Spock)

Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other. And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

–Gilbert Keith Chesterton

21

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, Captain Ryan Brock felt like shit as the helicopter he was in banked to the north to continue its trip back to Palm Springs. He was pretty sure he had taken more electricity in a sixty-second period than the entire power grid of the Eastern Seaboard. Four jolts in quick succession from a Taser set to maximum power wasn’t something he was eager to try again.

And now Steve Fuller was in his vision, projected in front of the lower part of his eye as a tiny image in the specialized glasses he was wearing under his headphones. Like bifocals, when he looked straight ahead his view was unobstructed, but when he shifted his eyes downward the tiny imagine of Fuller, only centimeters away, looked like it was projected on an eighty-inch screen made of air.

Big Brother? Very Big Brother, with a face the size of a car tire.

But even if Fuller’s face had been tiny, Brock would have no trouble telling that the man was not happy. Not happy at all. Probably worried about Brock’s health after the unfortunate Taser incident, he thought wryly to himself.

Fuller was in the back of a stretch limo, using a section of the lacquered bar as a table for his laptop, which showed Brock’s image and transmitted his own. Not unexpectedly, Fuller wasted no time on pleasantries. “Please tell me I’ve been misinformed,” he said icily, barely above a whisper. Brock had never known the man to explode or even raise his voice. It was when the opposite happened you knew you were in trouble. The quieter and colder his voice got, the more infuriated he was. If you had to lean forward to hear him, you weren’t going to enjoy the outcome. “Please tell me you didn’t lose everybody? Tell me that on the most critical mission you’ve ever led, with unlimited resources at your disposal, you and your teams didn’t go oh-for-three. Or was it oh-for-four? I may have lost count.”

Brock knew it was a rhetorical question, but he also knew it called for a response—and one that ignored the sarcasm of the question. “We were unsuccessful in all of our mission objectives,” he said simply.

“Let’s recap, shall we?” said Fuller, absently swirling a glass of unknown liquid in his right hand. “You let this girl, this Ph.D. student named Erin Palmer, escape from your men in San Diego. No, escape isn’t the right word. I think the word I’m looking for is overpower. She overpowered your men. And outmaneuvered them. She was playing chess and they were playing checkers. It was supposed to be the other way around.”

Brock fought to keep his face impassive. Yes, they had been outplayed at the heliport in San Diego, but their mission briefing had been woefully inadequate. Not just in describing the extent of Erin Palmer’s fighting skills but in the very nature of the assignment. It was presented to be as routine as a walk on the beach. She had agreed to an interview and was willingly, and happily, coming on board the helo.

But given the secrecy Fuller operated under, Brock rarely knew the reason for what he was asked to do. Which was just plain stupid. Why did Fuller have such a hard-on for this girl? Understanding what was going on, the bigger picture, helped a team understand the motivations of the people they were trailing or trying to capture, and enhanced their own motivations. It allowed them to anticipate the unexpected in many cases, or react better to it if they couldn’t anticipate it. Turning Brock into a pair of remote hands, without a brain, was crippling.

He had been told nothing other than Erin Palmer’s name, background as a scientist, and that she was not to be harmed. So when things changed, when the mission went to hell and the rug was pulled out from under, it would have been nice to know what the fuck was really going on. Otherwise, Fuller had to know the options open to Brock’s team had been limited to the point of being nonexistent.

“Then your team let her disappear in LA,” continued Fuller, still barely above a whisper. “Just disappear. You knew exactly where she landed—in real time. You had more people hunting for her than hunted for bin Laden. And she just slipped through like Houdini. This is a fucking grad student, not Carlos the fucking Jackal.”

Brock didn’t respond.

“So I make that oh-for-two. But that isn’t the end of the world, is it? Because we know exactly where she’s going to be. And we even learn that Drake is sending a surrogate to the meeting. We even get you deep background on the surrogate.”

The helicopter Brock was in banked again and continued cutting through the cloudless blue sky.

“And both of them got through your trap? Both of them?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid so.”

“You’re afraid so. What we need to find out is if she’s just that good, or if you’re just that bad. Did I not make it clear just how fucking important this was?” he whispered, and if Brock hadn’t turned the volume of his headphones to their maximum level, he couldn’t have begun to make this out. “I know I didn’t tell you why they were important. But am I given to fits of hyperbole? Do I seem the type to alarm easily? To cry wolf?”

Brock shook his head, but didn’t reply.

“How many men did you have on site at the student union?” asked Fuller.

“We had ten,” came the reply. Brock had almost said, “ten of my best,” but had stopped himself from walking into that particular verbal trap.

“Ten,” repeated Fuller. “And how many in direct visual contact with the targets?”

“One. Only me.”

“Only you. So what genius decided that would be a good idea?”

The question this time didn’t deserve a response. Fuller knew full well it was Brock’s operation and he had made this decision.

“This girl was already paranoid after what happened in San Diego,” said Brock. “And even having one person at the food court, big as it is, was a risk, as we found out. How conspicuous did we want to be? If there had been any way to blend in, we’d have had five men in direct visual contact.”

Brock was still convinced he had made the right decision. All of his men had that mercenary, Special Forces, stick-out-like-a-neon-sore-thumb look to them. Not the old professor look, and not the look of an undergrad only a few years removed from the acne phase of life.

“As it was,” continued Brock, “they had no trouble picking me out of the hundreds of people in the food court. They came to me straight as an arrow.” He paused. “But even so, this should have worked. Even when they took me out. There are a number of exits from where they were, the literal heart of the student union, but I had men on all of them, so they couldn’t slip through.”

“Wow,” said Fuller sarcastically, “you and I must not have the same definition of the word couldn’t. Any guesses how they did, in fact, slip through?”

Brock and his team had easily been able to piece together their quarry’s strategy after the fact, once every muscle in his body wasn’t paralyzed from taking a million fucking volts. They had incapacitated him in a way they knew would draw gawkers, not to mention emergency personnel, to the food court area. They had timed their assault right after classes had let out all over the university, when there was a dramatic upsurge in movement in and out. And they must have changed clothing and disguised themselves, blending in with the crowd.

After Brock explained to Fuller how they had escaped, he added, “I know she’s supposed to be an amateur, but she seems to be a natural. Or else she’s had training of which we weren’t aware.”

“She hasn’t,” said Fuller simply.

“How can you be absolutely sure?”

“Haven’t you been listening? This woman is now the most important woman in existence. I’ve pulled out all the stops in the past few days learning about her. I’ve climbed up her ass with a microscope. I know what fucking condiments she puts on her cheeseburger. Every movie she’s seen in the past twenty years. And I am absolutely certain that, while she has some martial arts training, she has absolutely zero experience.”

The conversation continued, with Brock outlining the steps he was taking to reacquire the targets. Just when it was nearing an end, the limo stopped and another man slid in beside Fuller. Brock recognized the newcomer as Robert Hernandez, an enigmatic member of Homeland Security, with a rank and responsibilities that were not entirely clear, at least not to Brock.

Hernandez acknowledged Brock, and Fuller asked the man from Homeland Security to hold tight until he and Brock had finished their discussion.

Five minutes later, when Brock had finished his briefing, Fuller put him on hold, and both video and audio went dark. It was infuriating. Whatever Fuller was discussing with Hernandez was apparently out of his pay grade. Which once again, only served to make his job harder. The less he knew about what was really going on, the more handicapped he became.

22

ONCE BROCK WAS on hold, Fuller filled his visitor in on recent events while Hernandez reached for several bottles on the bar and mixed himself a drink. The limo’s ride was so smooth it was hard to tell it was even moving much of the time.

“So your people missed everywhere?” said Hernandez, shaking his head in disbelief. “They missed at the university and they missed getting Drake in Yuma?”

Fuller nodded.

“I thought you had him dead to rights. I assumed you’d make sure to use overwhelming force.”

“He was very clever. He had booby traps we didn’t see coming. And the men he had, while they couldn’t stand up to our force for more than a token few minutes, bought him enough time to escape through a system of tunnels.”

“You’re positive it was him?”

“Yes. And we’re all but certain we’re not dealing with a squeamish, tree-hugging pacifist anymore who wouldn’t know sound military strategy from his asshole. Assuming he has one, of course. I’m not an exobiologist. But we’re now dealing with a different animal altogether. Plus he had access to a lot of money, and his preparations showed. And he only cared about his own escape. Didn’t seem to give a shit about the rest of his people at all.”

Fuller paused to sip from the glass he was holding. “Even with all of this, we still aren’t absolutely sure how he did it. He might have used advanced technology, but we don’t think so. We really only have a sketchy idea of what we’re up against. Even after he escaped, four members of the team picked up his trail. Three of the four are still unconscious—have been for hours. We think we’ll be able to revive them, but how long this will take is unclear. The thing is, they don’t appear to have been touched. We have no idea what happened to them. The good news is that one of them did come to about ten minutes ago, and I’m expecting a preliminary report any second.”

“Any guesses?”

“None. Maybe Drake used some kind of fucking Jedi mind trick. Anything is possible.”

“So where do we go from here?” said Hernandez.

Fuller was about to reply when he was interrupted by a call. He stayed on the phone for several minutes and then hung up. “That was my preliminary report,” he told Hernandez. “Right on schedule. The commando who regained consciousness said he was closing in on Drake when he was overcome by the most intense pain and fear he had ever felt; so intense that he passed out from it.”

“Must have been what happened to all of them.”

“Almost certainly,” agreed Fuller. “And these men are hardened soldiers with a tolerance for pain that is off the charts, not weak-kneed schoolgirls fainting when they see a needle. Intense must be an understatement.”

“Was any kind of device pointed at him?”

Fuller shook his head. “Not that he remembers. But he isn’t positive. We’ll learn more when the rest regain consciousness.” He paused. “Anyway, before the interruption, I believe you were asking me where we go from here.”

“That’s right.”

“The answer is that we pull out all the stops to reacquire Drake, Erin Palmer, and Kyle Hansen, that’s where. All the stops. We found Hansen’s phone. Drake had sent him a text message instructing him to bring Erin Palmer to a certain destination, and that Drake would contact them there.” Fuller checked his watch. “In a little over thirty-two hours from now.”

“Certain destination?”

“We think it might be Colorado, but we can’t be sure. CO could well be a code for something else. The good news is that Drake told them not to attempt to contact him until then.”

“Why is this good news? If they attempt to communicate, this gives us a better chance of finding them.”

“Because only Erin Palmer knows which treatment works. So we have thirty-two hours to find either Drake or her. As long as they’re isolated from each other, incommunicado, we have nothing to worry about. But if Drake gets the information he’s after, he’ll deploy the cure as soon as possible. We’re not sure exactly how, but our best guess is a genetically engineered virus. Probably the common cold.”

“So she and Drake are like binary liquid explosives,” said Hernandez. “As long as they don’t touch, they’re safe. Mix them together and you’ve got a problem.”

“Right. She knows which therapeutic mixture works, but has no means to spread it. We assume he has the virus ready to go—just needs to put on the finishing touches. So he has the means to spread it as soon as he learns the combination. Together—well, let’s just say we’re fucked.”

“And you have no doubt that this treatment will perform as advertised? And that the effect will be permanent?”

“None,” replied Fuller. “The inmates I had examined had normal brain physiology. And the repaired genome will maintain its integrity all the way into the germ line.”

“Any leads on Drake?”

“None. But I have a feeling this girl will be the easier target of the two.”

“Why?” asked the man from Homeland Security. “She’s done a great job of playing hard to get so far.”

“Just intuition. The other target has an alien mind—more alien than we can begin to imagine—and unclear capabilities. But we can make some educated guesses with respect to Erin Palmer’s behavior. Put ourselves in her shoes and try to predict her moves. But trying to think like an alien, or outguess one, is a fool’s errand.” Fuller paused. “But she is key to his plans. So if we catch her, he’ll have to come after her.”

“Just for the sake of argument, wouldn’t it be safer to kill her? Before she gives up what she knows? Then her knowledge dies with her.”

Fuller shook his head. “And then Drake goes to ground and we don’t know what he’ll do next. But it’s likely that he’ll just find another way to identify the right therapy. Without using a patsy this time.”

“No chance. Not when we’re alerted to this possibility.”

“He won’t use inmates,” said Fuller in a tone that suggested his patience was wearing thin. “He could just kidnap subjects off the street. From gangs, cartels, and other groups enriched for psychopaths. Separate out the true psychopaths from the pretenders, and test the shit out of them.”

“So you think if we acquire her and keep her alive, she’ll be bait he won’t be able to resist?”

“Exactly. He’s only days away from releasing this virus. If he has her information. Being this close, he’ll decide it’s worth the risk mounting a rescue attempt. And we’ll make sure we have some obvious weaknesses in our security—to make it even more tempting.”

Hernandez nodded. “You’re the boss. If you think keeping her alive at this point makes sense, we’ll keep her alive.”

A thoughtful expression came over Fuller’s face. “There’s also the potential for a much deeper game. Higher risk, but higher gain. Winning would be a good thing, don’t get me wrong.” He pursed his lips. “But we may be in a position to do more than just win.”

Hernandez nodded thoughtfully. “I’m listening,” he said.

23

THE HELICOPTER HAD landed, but Brock was still in his seat, feeling like an idiot. The pilot had already left the craft. Finally, five minutes after they were on the ground, the image in front of his eyes came to life. Fuller and Hernandez filled his world once again.

“Okay, Captain Brock,” said Fuller, still inside the limo. “I’ve decided to let you redeem yourself. First, you’re already in the inner circle, but you know how much I value secrecy. And I wanted the nature of the current situation to be on a need-to-know basis. Well, now that this simple operation has gone completely off the fucking tracks, I’ve decided you need to know.”

Finally, thought Brock. It was about time Fuller came to his senses.

Fuller spent the next twenty minutes bringing Brock fully up to speed, while Hernandez sat beside him in silence, nursing his drink. “So here’s the drill with Erin Palmer,” Fuller told Brock when his briefing was completed. “We’re going to make this girl radioactive. We’ll have the cops and everyone else in the Southwest turning over every last cacti to find her. We’ll put out a very public fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information as to her whereabouts. If this doesn’t force her to panic and make mistakes, nothing will.”

“Given her importance,” said Brock, finally understanding exactly how Erin Palmer fit into the scheme of things, “why only fifty thousand?”

“Any more and it would raise eyebrows. Fifty is the right amount. But here is the key. I want her captured, not killed. This hasn’t changed. So like before, make sure every man on your team has nonlethal weaponry. If one of your men shoots her by accident, I’ll shoot the bastard myself—on purpose. Have I made myself clear?”

“Perfectly.”

“Good. So we’ll make sure the cops have very clear instructions that their job is to help locate her. If they do, they act as spotters. You’re the hunter. Even if we told them not to kill her, if she starts resisting arrest, who knows what could happen. So they don’t move in under any circumstances. Robert here will use Homeland Security to make sure this gets the attention—and care—it deserves. Everyone will be told that you’re the point person from DHS, and not to take a piss without your say-so. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“And there is something else. Something that will require some skill on your end, but could be extremely important. It’ll make your job more challenging.” He went on to describe what he wanted. “You know how much is riding on this,” said Fuller. He leaned closer to the camera embedded in his laptop and spread his hands. “I’m a generous, forgiving man by nature,” he added with a humorless smile. “But don’t test me. This is your last chance. See that you don’t let me down again.”

24

KYLE HANSEN’S HEAD wouldn’t stop spinning. Everything was happening so fast. He hadn’t dated in years, ever since he had joined Drake’s efforts, knowing that certain sacrifices came with the privilege of working with an alien emissary, and also of staying off the grid. The most important of these involved giving up entanglements with other human beings—particularly those of the opposite sex. Unless, of course, he was able to develop a romantic connection with one of the women who were also part of the team, even though they wouldn’t be aware of Drake’s identity as an alien.

But talk about your small dating population. Hansen now knew how Adam and Eve’s kids must have felt. Lots of excitement to be a part of something new—in their case, the human race—but when the only people on the planet were in your immediate family, it couldn’t have been easy to find a date for the prom. So far only three women had been part of the team since he had begun to work with Drake, and he had had zero interest in any of them.

Erin would be the fourth. The odds of finding your perfect match in a population of four women were too long to bother calculating. Yet here she was. And here he was, having made love to her repeatedly, first ravenously and then tenderly. Both of them insatiable.

Yet his interest in her went far beyond the physical—which given her looks, was saying quite a lot. She was bright and had a sense of humor he hadn’t expected, given she spent most of her life inside a bleak prison, and given the trauma she had suffered at a young age. She truly was remarkable. But he still could be deluding himself. After all, they were in a tense situation, with adrenaline and emotions running high.

But if he was deluding himself, he decided, he never wanted the delusion to end.

They had slept soundly through the night, sometimes entwined in each other’s arms and sometimes on separate sides of the bed, neither clingy nor making it a point to show a need for space. Usually this was the point in a budding relationship when a couple—who really sensed an emotional and not just physical connection—would stay up for hours trading intimate stories about their lives, hopes, and aspirations. Getting to know each other on a deeper level. But this hadn’t happened. They had both been utterly spent after sex, physically and emotionally, and had quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

This was interrupted when Erin awoke at three thirty in the morning, shrieking as if someone were twisting a corkscrew into her eye. The screams had gone directly to the panic center of Hansen’s brain and he had jumped out of bed like he was shot from a cannon.

He had held her and tried to comfort her, telling her it was only a nightmare. He knew their long philosophical discussion on the ethics of curing psychopathy must have brought painful memories to the surface. He wasn’t surprised that the ultimate waking nightmare she had experienced as a child would escape from her subconscious once she was asleep, eager to haunt her yet again.

She had said he was right, and this had to be nothing more than a nightmare. But she also insisted that while she had had nightmares as a girl, she hadn’t had one in her adult life. And if it had been a dream, she couldn’t recall a single element of it.

“If I had any self-esteem issues,” he had joked, “the fact that I had sex with you and then you had the only nightmare of your adult life might be seen as a bad sign.”

She had laughed, kissed him gently on the lips, and told him the only nightmare she might have in connection with him was learning she had only imagined him, after which they slept through the night without any further incident.

They had awakened, made love yet again, this time more tenderly, and she was now getting ready for the day. He heard the shower running in the tiny bathroom next to the bed, and he had the small television turned on for background noise and to reestablish a connection to the real world. His shower would be next. He had thought to suggest they shower together, but he didn’t want to act like a horny eighteen-year-old, and they were running for their lives, so he decided to keep this thought to himself.

He was feeling too many conflicting emotions to keep track of. The fate of humanity depended on launching this virus, which might never happen if he and Erin, and separately Drake, couldn’t stay out of Fuller’s way. He was on the run facing a deadly and powerful adversary. And at the same time he felt euphoric at having found Erin. Physically his entire body was practically singing it was so satisfied. Given they had both been suffering through a long drought, the sex had been epic. In fact, the word epic didn’t even do justice to what it had been.

And interspersed with these other emotions was one of guilt. He hadn’t really been thinking ahead when he had given Erin an abbreviated version of what had happened, and of his knowledge of Steve Fuller. He hadn’t considered he might end up in an extended relationship with her—if they lived through the next twenty-four hours, that was. He could always go back and tell her the full story. She would understand that he had captured the essence of the situation even though he had skipped parts of the tale. Understand that they had not been long on time, and that he had doubted she trusted him completely—or at all, for that matter—so he had decided to cut corners; decided it was best to keep things simple and straightforward and not confuse the issue.

Still, he hated to think she might consider the abbreviated version of the story a deception, even if he had done it for the right reasons. How relevant were the parts he left out anyway? His mind drifted back to when it had all begun. He decided to replay what had actually happened in his mind and compare it to what he had told her.

Hansen’s eyes were fixed on the motel television, on which a morning show was being broadcast. A plump, cheerful woman was teaching the audience how to whip up healthy desserts. But his mind’s eye was seeing the inside of a small apartment, furnished with IKEA furniture—all the rage in the underfunded graduate school community—and a woman named Morgan Campbell, whom he had dated for many months, but with whom he had never reached the level of infatuation he already felt for a woman named Erin Palmer.