Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Drake, you have to believe me,” said Hansen. “I had no idea about any of this. And I’m positive Erin has been framed somehow. She wouldn’t do this.”

“That’s very sweet,” said Drake. “And maybe you’re telling the truth about your own involvement, as deluded as you are about hers. But maybe not.” He shrugged. “I guess we’ll all find out in about two hours.”

40

ONCE THE ALIEN and the short genetic engineer left the garage, Gibb had the two prisoners move a good ten feet apart, after which Zalinsky approached Erin cautiously, giving her the respect she deserved. He ratcheted a single plastic bracelet around one of her wrists and then used a longer strip to connect this bracelet to a steel strut on the home gym, on the side facing the entrance to the main residence. This gave her a fair amount of freedom of motion, but ensured she wasn’t going anywhere.

This completed, Zalinsky repeated this process with Hansen, strapping him on the same side of the home gym as Erin, but about six feet apart from each other.

Hansen considered pleading his case with these men, but decided it wouldn’t get him anywhere.

When they were both chained by plastic to the immovable gym, Zalinsky returned to his partner’s side. “Feel free to get in a good workout if you’d like,” said the muscular mercenary with a sneer. “I recommend the leg press.”

Hansen considered a caustic reply but decided against it. “You do realize that this is a big mistake,” he said instead. “And it will get cleared up. And when it does, we’ll all be on the same side again. So please keep that in mind.”

“Could be,” said Gibb. “But for right now, our orders are very clear. In any case, we’ll be leaving you alone until Drake returns. But rest assured, we’ll be very close by.”

The two mercenaries walked to the door back into the mansion. Gibb paused to pocket the .45 Zalinsky had placed on top of the trophy case, and then they both exited, leaving Hansen alone in the room with Erin Palmer.

Hansen lowered his head, signaling to Erin he didn’t want to engage in conversation for the time being. He needed to organize his thoughts. To analyze all that was going on in an attempt to understand how any of it could possibly make sense.

But no matter what angle he tried, he came up completely empty. Not only did none of it make sense, he couldn’t imagine how it ever could.

Hansen finally lifted his head and locked his eyes on the woman who had come to mean so much to him in such a short time. “Erin,” he began. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. Drake has clearly had a nervous breakdown. Or the alien equivalent. I wish I knew how those electronics came to be … attached … to you. But you were obviously framed. And we need to figure out how and why.”

Erin let out a heavy sigh and shook her head. “I’m afraid I wasn’t framed, Kyle,” she said softly. “It turns out I am working with Steve Fuller.”

41

HANSEN’S STOMACH LURCHED and he thought he might vomit. He stared at Erin Palmer in horror. He had been so sure about her. But how could this even be? She must have been working with Fuller before she had even met him. But then what was the point of the last few days?

“Everything Drake said is accurate,” continued Erin. “I knew about the bug. Fuller did plant it. And I was trying to stall, hoping he would storm the place when he heard Drake was here. I had no idea Drake had blocked the bug’s transmission. And I was planning to plant a homing device on him. I was just feigning innocence in the hope of throwing him off and buying some time.”

“But why?” pleaded Hansen. “How?” He shook his head miserably. “I was actually thinking you were someone I could fall in love with someday,” he whispered, almost inaudibly.

His eyes showed a hurt beyond hurt, a betrayal beyond betrayal. How could he have been fooled so completely?

“I had no other choice,” said Erin. “It was necessary. And you have to admit, you withheld information from me as well.”

“Is that what this is about? You thought I betrayed you? That wasn’t it at all, I just—”

“Don’t misunderstand,” she interrupted. “I know why you did it. The details you left out weren’t absolutely necessary to give me the gist of what you thought was going on. That had nothing to do with my decision to join Fuller.” She paused. “I understand why you’re so hurt,” she said. “And I don’t blame you.”

She gazed into his eyes with a warmth and affection that sickened him. Was she still playing a game? Trying to draw him in, using his obvious attraction to her?

“You’re the last person I’d ever want to hurt,” said Erin, and she could not have looked more sincere. She paused, and then after a heavy sigh, added softly, “Because I can see myself falling in love with you someday as well.”

Hansen wasn’t sure how to react to this. Thirty minutes earlier he would have been on cloud nine. But now?

“Then why are you doing this?” he said.

“Because there’s a lot you don’t know.”

“Okay. Like what?”

“Remember when you were shot with a dart at the Saguaro Inn?”

Hansen nodded. It wasn’t something he was likely to ever forget.

“Well, the dose of tranquilizer in those darts only lasts for about an hour. Not ten or twelve.”

Hansen struggled to comprehend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that a lot happened after you lost consciousness. A lot more than I told you.”

“Was anything you told me after I woke up true?”

Erin winced. “Ah … not so much,” she admitted. “I did try to escape from the motel. But while I think I’m pretty good, no one is that good.”

Hansen stared at her with wide eyes, speechless.

“The good news,” she continued, “is that it looks like we have some time.” She gestured toward her cuffed hand. “And neither of us is going anywhere. So are you ready to learn what really happened between the time you were shot, and the time you woke up in a dry riverbed?”

Hansen was still reeling, but he managed to nod.

“Great,” she said. “I think you’ll find this extremely interesting.” She raised her eyebrows. “And then some.”

42

ERIN COULDN’T BELIEVE Kyle Hansen had just driven his newly acquired car into the middle of the fray outside of her motel room and was trying to use it as a weapon. The meek physicist who claimed he’d lose in hand-to-hand to a ninety-year-old woman in a wheelchair?

What courage. And what insanity, both.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Hansen taking out one of their attackers with the car, and then screeching to a halt and rolling from the car before it stopped. The car blocking her view of where Hansen had landed, but being able to make out a man on the other side of the car, crouching down and pointing a gun toward the ground.

He must be aiming at Kyle!

Erin shot frantically at the crouching man behind the car, but had little chance of hitting him. Her angle was bad, the car was blocking her out, and she had to make sure she aimed high or risk hitting Hansen herself. It was hopeless.

The man standing over Hansen pulled the trigger.

“Noooo!”

The long, hysterical scream filled the air, and Erin realized only after the fact that the scream had come from her own mouth.

She kept squeezing the trigger long after the magazine was empty. A part of her realized she was now out of ammunition, but she didn’t care. What did it matter? She hadn’t let herself truly care about anyone since she was eleven. But lately she had relented. She had begun to let people in. Lisa Renner. And now Kyle Hansen.

And now he was gone.

She was a curse. Whoever she cared for was taken away.

Reinforcements were suddenly coming from out of thin air and all of them were converging on her motel room. In seconds they realized she was out of ammo and broke down the door.

She decided not to even attempt to fight. What was the point?

Finally, one man, the man she had shot, entered the room, blood streaming from his arm, and Erin absently realized he was the same man they had Tasered at the student union. He looked relieved when she just stood there, showing no intent to demonstrate her impressive martial-arts skills.

“Hello again, Erin,” he said. “My name is Ryan. Ryan Brock.” He pointed a gun at her awkwardly with his left arm. “I need you to sit on the bed.”

Of all the things she imagined he might have said, this was not among them.

“Why?” she said simply, moving to the bed and sitting on its edge.

“I don’t want to take the chance that a fall might injure you,” he said. And, inexplicably, he sounded almost … friendly.

This was the last thought she had when, almost apologetically, Ryan Brock pulled the trigger and everything went black.

*   *   *

ERIN OPENED HER eyes with a start. How was she still alive?

Two men sat across from her at a magnificent mahogany conference table. Two men she had never seen before. Her hands were loosely cuffed together by long strips of plastic, giving her considerable freedom of movement.

“Sorry about the restraints, Miss Palmer,” said the taller of the two men. “But from what I understand, you could kick both of our asses without working up a sweat. And this is something we’d rather avoid.”

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“My name is Steve Fuller. I’m the man who called you on the phone and invited you to meet with me in Palm Springs.”

“I know who you are!” she hissed. Her eyes blazed with a fury, with a visceral hatred, that was stunning in its power. “I know all about you.”

Fuller leaned back in his chair, as if desperate to put additional distance between himself and her withering glare. He looked truly taken aback. “What could you know about me that would bring out this kind of hatred?”

“I know you’re an international arms dealer. I know you attacked Drake’s compound in Yuma, killing everyone there.” She lowered her eyes, which had suddenly become moist. “And I know you killed Kyle Hansen,” she whispered.

Fuller studied her for several seconds and threw a worried glance at his colleague. There was something about this other man that made Erin think he was more dangerous even than Steve Fuller, although she couldn’t put her finger on what that was. Another gut instinct.

“First of all,” said Fuller with a sigh. “We didn’t kill anyone in Yuma. We used nonlethal gas. And second of all, Kyle Hansen is alive and well. Just like you. He’s sleeping peacefully in the next room.”

“Bullshit. You know I’ve studied psychopaths like you for years. You know I’ve spent every day in the company of the world’s smoothest liars. I’m not impressed with your apparent sincerity. You’ll have to do better than that.”

Fuller sighed and rose from the chair. “Follow me and I’ll show you.”

Fuller led her from the room and down a hallway. Guards were stationed outside the door, but he gave them a stand-down signal with his eyes. He opened the door to another room, also with two guards outside.

Erin entered and then gasped. Sure enough, Kyle Hansen was sprawled out on a portable cot, his chest rising and falling steadily.

She rushed forward and examined him, bringing her cuffed hands to his face and stroking his cheek. He felt warm and looked to be uninjured.

“Believe me when I tell you,” came Fuller’s voice from behind her, “that you and Kyle are the last two people I would want harmed.”

Erin turned to face him. “Where are we?” she said.

“We’re in Palm Springs. At a very secure facility under the desert. The one I had hoped to meet you in when I called you.” He shook his head. “If only I hadn’t so grossly underestimated you, we could have all spared ourselves a lot of trouble. But I still say it was impossible to predict you’d be this gutsy and elusive.”

He stared at her grimly. “But much, or maybe even all, of what you think you know is wrong. And it’s more critical than you know that you learn the truth.” He motioned toward the door. “So if we could return to where we were, we have a lot of ground to cover. And the faster we can finish, the faster we can return Kyle Hansen to consciousness.”

43

THEY HAD RETURNED to the room Erin had been in when she had first come to, across from Steve Fuller and the strange man who had yet to be introduced. Fuller had freed her of her restraints, making sure she understood they were being watched through video monitors and she had no chance of escaping.

Erin’s head was spinning. Was there really even more to this story than she knew? Somehow, she felt there must be, or she and Hansen wouldn’t be alive. But what could it possibly be?

“So can I assume it was Kyle who told you I was an arms dealer?” said Fuller.

Erin nodded. She had considered remaining silent, not answering his questions, but decided to cooperate—to a point. As long as she was only telling him things that were fairly obvious.

Fuller leaned in and stared at her intently. “Did Kyle happen to mention anything wild? You know, maybe something having to do visitors from another planet?”

“Funny you should mention that. In fact, he did. Pretty crazy, huh?”

The man beside Fuller began to unbutton his shirt, although his fingers seemed clumsy. “Not as crazy as you might think,” said the man, as twelve whiplike tentacles shot out from his stomach area and undid the last few buttons on the shirt with inhuman speed and elegance.

Erin’s mouth dropped open and she didn’t speak for several seconds. No wonder she had felt so uneasy around this man. Hansen had warned her this would be the case. Finally, with her eyes wider than she guessed they could open, she croaked, “Drake?”

The man—or clearly, the alien—shook his head. “No. My name is Fermi.”

“I don’t understand. I thought there was only one of you. Did the Wraps mount another Mount Everest expedition to send you after Drake?”

Steve Fuller turned to Fermi and raised his eyebrows. “She knows to call you a Wrap,” he said. “And that it took a heroic effort by your people to get you here. Kyle seems to have told her quite a lot.”

The alien frowned. “Erin, did Kyle just fail to mention any Wraps other than Drake, and you just assumed there was only one here? Or did he explicitly say that Drake was the only one?”

“Explicitly,” said Erin, and even this word was hard to spit out. Why hadn’t Kyle Hansen told her there were other aliens? Was there no one she could trust?

But suddenly she realized she was jumping to conclusions. “Drake must not have told Kyle about these others,” she said. “That would explain it.”

Fermi shook his head. “Erin, Steve and I met Kyle in a room very much like this one years ago. There are four Wraps on your planet. And Kyle knew that for certain.”

Erin shrank back as though she had been slapped, the color draining from her face.

“Look, Miss Palmer,” said Fuller. “Erin. I know you’ve been through a lot and don’t know who to trust. But I think you would agree, clinging to a blind trust of events as told by Kyle Hansen would be a mistake. He told you only one Wrap was here. And clearly this isn’t true. So if you could tell us what he told you, exactly, this would help us set the record straight.”

Erin nodded, like a zombie. Why not? What harm could it do at this point?

She launched into everything Hansen had told her. A galactic community he called the Seventeen. Sixteen interstellar arks parked in each of seventeen different solar systems. Hansen’s work with Drake, and the alien’s insistence that ridding the species of psychopathy was the only way to prevent humanity’s self-destruction. And Hansen’s claim that Steve Fuller was an arms dealer, and his rationale for why such a man would want to eliminate Drake.

Fuller and his alien associate listened intently, raising eyebrows, shaking their heads, and glancing at each other knowingly on occasion, but saying very little.

When she had finished they informed her that everything Hansen had told her about the Wraps, the Seventeen, and how transit to Earth had been accomplished was accurate, as far as Hansen knew it, but his narrative veered off course when it came to the Wraps’ expedition to Earth. There had been four Wraps, not one. And they had not gone it largely alone after arrival, as Hansen had described, but had immediately made contact with the government of the United States, since it was the strongest nation militarily.

Fuller and Fermi repeated almost all of what they had told Kyle Hansen those many years earlier about how the organization was set up, with Steve Fuller in charge, and the purpose and extent of their activities. They explained how and why they had abducted Hansen from his apartment near Carnegie Mellon, and the promise the Wraps had seen in him with respect to extending the frontiers of quantum mechanics and computing on Earth.

When they were finished, they waited silently while Erin pondered all that they had said. So many conflicting thoughts and emotions were wrestling for prominence she thought her head might explode.

“So why would Kyle mislead me?” she asked Fuller. “And why would he say you were an arms dealer? And Drake is real. Unless you’re telling me he really wasn’t the man—the being—I was working with to cure psychopathy. Which I’m not sure I’m willing to believe at this point. Kyle has said that only a Wrap—with a quantum computer—could have found the cure, and I believe it. So were you part of this also? Of curing psychopathy?”

Fuller took a deep breath. “I’ll answer all of these questions, and more. But let me come about it in a more roundabout way. Let us first tell you some things we never shared with Kyle. This will put all of the rest into context. It’s the only way you’ll understand.”

Erin waved her right hand toward the two men across from her in a classic, you’ve-got-the-stage gesture.

“The Seventeen, as you call them,” began Fermi, “have been stagnant, ossified, for tens of thousands of years. Our societies, our science, is little different than it was thirty thousand years ago, when you and the Neanderthals were vying for supremacy on Earth. The early members of the Seventeen recognized an essential paradox hundreds of thousands of years ago. Imagine a species with the required drive, passion, and indomitable will to take the next step toward transcendence. A species refusing to take no from the laws of physics. A species who demands that the galaxy and the universe yield before them. Any such a species would be ultracompetitive and aggressive. Insatiably driven. Reckless. And would self-destruct. With absolute inevitability. The computer simulations show this in every case. Such a species would develop weapons of mass destruction, experience dramatic overpopulation, and its immaturity, aggression, and recklessness would lead to Armageddon. Every time.

“The Seventeen survived self-destruction because they are timid, slow-thinking sheep in the scheme of things, compared to the wolves that are required to tame the galaxy. But we realized long ago that it was only a matter of time before we became extinct as well. Our populations are shrinking every year. We’re old, in decline, tired. It may not happen for millions, or tens of millions of years. But our extinction is equally inevitable.”

The alien paused and raised his eyebrows. “Thus the paradox. Timid species like the Seventeen who can survive their adolescences don’t have the drive to colonize, the drive to blast through seemingly impenetrable scientific barriers through tenacity and force of will alone. Those that have the proper drive, like you, can’t survive their adolescences.”

Erin nodded, transfixed by the strange alien.

“We reasoned that the only chance for life in the long term was if we could find a ruthlessly competitive species and intervene in its natural development. Help it survive its adolescence. Nurture it.”

Erin nodded. “So this species can lead you to the next level,” she whispered. “So it can make advances and provide a shot of vitality into the Seventeen. And however many more intelligences you may encounter over millions of years of scientific growth and colonization.”

“Exactly,” said Fermi. “Being too satisfied, too comfortable, and not ambitious enough was the disease. And such a species would be the cure. This hypothetical species of wolves, if you will, would be like a hydrogen bomb on the cusp of detonation. If the Seventeen could defuse it in time, and then channel its explosive power into constructive pursuits, this enormous power could be harnessed to drive all of us forward.”

The alien held Erin’s gaze. “That’s not to say there was unanimity in this regard. A significant percentage worried that such a species unleashed upon the galaxy would accelerate our demise. That the cure would be worse than the disease. But they were voted down in favor of employing this strategy—if we were ever in a position to do so. But we weren’t sure we would ever be able to find such a species. And even if one did arise, and we were lucky enough to find it, we would have little chance of reaching them in time to intervene.

“So with the last bit of our collective drive, we endeavored to be prepared if the chance ever did arise. To find a way to at least send a few emissaries faster than light to protect such a species. No matter what it took. Our top scientists, from a galactic population of almost a hundred billion, worked on the problem for tens of thousands of years. Finally, a method was found to transport a small number of beings, along with a modest quantum computer, faster than light. The resources required were tremendous. Unthinkable. But if we ever found a species capable of driving the galaxy to a new level, with all the adolescent baggage that inevitably came with this drive, they would be our only chance.”

Incredible, thought Erin. It made a kind of bizarre sense. The yin and yang of human nature. The self-destructive qualities of humanity were the very qualities needed to grab the unconquerable laws of physics, the unconquerable galaxy, by the horns. A soft, unambitious species, kind and caring and gentle—everything humanity strived to be—could not. Only a species who was domineering, and arrogant, and competitive, and relentless, could hope to challenge the galaxy on its own terms.

“So I take it that we’re the species you were looking for,” said Erin.

Fermi sighed. “Yes. You are, indeed,” he said. “But, unfortunately, we found something else first. Something that made things even more complicated. A form of life we hadn’t predicted. One that would shorten the time we had to avoid extinction from millions of years to thousands.” He leaned forward. “A form of life that would make the most malevolent members of your species seem like harmless saints by comparison.”