Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

44

ERIN’S EYEBROWS CAME together in confusion. “Intelligent?”

“Very much so,” replied Fermi. “I won’t explain the physics of it, but we detected strange quantum patterns coming from a region of space fifty-eight thousand light years away. Similar to the quantum pattern we expected to generate on the day we sent our emissaries out to a gifted but destructive civilization, if this day were ever to come. But far stronger. We soon realized what it was we were witnessing. A species was creating wormholes and holding them open as gates; gates allowing instantaneous travel between them. Using technology that we can’t begin to match.”

Fermi paused. “And now that we knew where to look,” he continued, “we discovered this species occupied much of the galaxy behind them and were working their way toward our neck of the galactic woods. And they were annihilating intelligent species along the way. Ruthless wasn’t even the right word. The species had as little regard for other intelligences as a raging wildfire would have for dry twigs in its path.”

“How fast are they coming?” asked Erin.

“Fast,” said Fermi. “They’ll be here in thirty-two thousand years.”

These Wraps were apparently more used to thinking in cosmological time scales than she was, thought Erin.

“And we knew we would have no chance when they arrived. They don’t want to dominate other species, they simply want to annihilate them. Destroy them utterly.”

“You said it was a form of life you hadn’t predicted,” said Erin. “What does that mean?”

“Are you familiar with insects on Earth you call army ants?” asked Fermi.

“Uh-oh,” said Erin worriedly. “That can’t be good.”

“It isn’t,” said Fermi. “Army ants have a genetic need to march. To constantly move and seek out new territory, obliterating everything in their path. Locusts are the only other life form on Earth to come close. Or maybe viruses, which use cells to create more copies of themselves and then destroy the cells and move on. But army ants kill everything they encounter. Everything. To not kill would be an impossible concept to them.”

“I’ve seen documentaries,” said Erin grimly.

“Imagine a planet in which army ants developed a collective intelligence,” said Fuller. “Maybe this conferred a selective advantage against other tribes of army ants.”

“That is not to say that they resemble ants physically,” added Fermi. “We have no idea as to their appearance. Just their behavior.” He paused. “We call this species the Hive. For obvious reasons.”

Erin nodded thoughtfully. “Okay,” she said. “So you’ve got intelligent army ants—who may not look anything like ants, but are just as destructive—who find a way off planet. Pretty horrible to contemplate.”

“Don’t worry,” said Steve Fuller. “It gets much worse.”

“Hard to imagine that.”

“I know,” said Fermi. “That’s why we never did. Imagine ants again for a moment. Each individual ant has some brain capacity, but not enough for sentience. But the colony could gain sentience, if each ant member were able to combine its brain capacity collectively into some sort of neural network. Call it a hive-mind. On a planet rife with individual ant colonies, vying for supremacy, if evolution conferred this adaptation on one of these millions of colonies, it would soon dominate all others. Not just other ant colonies but all other forms of life on the planet. Eventually this winner of the evolutionary lottery would range over its entire globe. Just like humans range over Earth and Wraps over Suran. And now, as I mentioned, this single colony is ranging over thousands of light years.” The alien leaned closer to Erin, his eyes locked on hers. “You’ve studied the human brain. Do you see any problem with that?”

“I’m not sure I understand the question.”

“Remember, the colony has become a superorganism. Again, every last individual member, although physically separate, is somehow connected to form a single mind. A hive-mind. Do you see why the Seventeen never imagined this as a real possibility for a space-faring race?”

Erin’s eyes widened. “Of course,” she said. “Because it’s impossible. Even over a single planet. If all the neurons in a human brain were spread out over the entire earth, you couldn’t get the brain to work. Even at the speed of light, the communication between neurons wouldn’t be fast enough. One of the reasons the brain is so compact is so signals can reach every last neuron as quickly as needed.”

“That’s right,” said Fermi. “That’s what I was getting at. The only way an abomination like this could exist is if the life form evolved the ability to send their equivalent of a neuronal firing faster than light. Instantaneously. If evolution provided the species with a way to take advantage of quantum entanglement.”

Erin blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what that is,” she said.

Fermi described how every particle in the universe was in some way connected with every other, and how the Seventeen had eventually learned how to make use of this entanglement to communicate instantaneously, whether the communication was next door or at the edge of the universe.

“So this is a species with an army ant nature and an intuitive sense of quantum mechanics,” said the alien. “Which explains the superiority of its technology based on this science.”

“You said its technology,” said Erin. “Not their technology.”

“The members of the hive make up a single individual,” said Fermi. “A single superorganism. You’re made up of trillions of individual cells, but when I speak of these trillion cells in the collective sense, I’m speaking about you in the singular.”

“But then how can it be a species?”

Fermi smiled. “Excellent question. The semantics are a little tricky. A species is defined as a group of organisms, so you are technically correct. The Hive began as separate individuals, with separate minds, limited though they must have been, but have become something else. But since this one superorganism has conquered thousands of light years of space, we consider it both an individual and an entire species.”

Erin decided to move on. She would have to ponder semantics at another time. “But since it’s intelligent,” she said, deciding to use the singular, “won’t it modify its behavior? I understand its possible unwillingness to stop killing nonintelligent life. Even very compassionate humans still eat meat, or chicken, or fish. And plant life is life as well. So for a human to give up taking any life would be suicide. But an intelligent colony of army ants could at least bring itself to draw the line at fellow intelligences.”

“One would think,” said Fermi. “But that’s not how it goes. Intelligent, nonintelligent, it’s all the same to the Hive.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because it’s been able to infiltrate some of our societies,” said Fermi simply.

45

THERE WAS A knock at the conference room door and a man brought in a tray of bottled water and cold soft drinks. There was a coffeemaker in the room, and Steve Fuller took the interruption as an excuse to pour himself a cup. Coffee was a drink for which Erin Palmer had never developed a taste, so she opened a bottle of the chilled water instead and poured it into a glass.

Fermi took a bottle of water as well, and Erin wondered if all members of the Seventeen had arisen from this liquid. She didn’t know much about this subject, but for some reason she had a feeling that they would all enjoy a cold glass of water.

When everyone had settled in once again, Erin turned her eyes back to Fermi and said, “What do you mean, infiltrate? I thought they wouldn’t get here for thirty-two thousand years. I mean it wouldn’t get here.”

“The infiltration wasn’t physical,” explained Fermi. “The physical members of the Hive can do short hops across space-time. But for longer ones the Hive needs to establish gates, which its physical members are building at an incredible pace. But fourteen hundred years ago, we discovered the Hive had another ability: it can enter a sentient mind from any distance, and suppress the mind of its host. Not easily. And, thankfully, not often.

“We soon discovered that twelve of the seventeen species had been infiltrated. The other five, for reasons which were not entirely clear, were resistant. When the few individuals who were being used as hosts were discovered, they were almost always killed by the portion of the hive mind that had controlled them. But a handful did survive. And this handful gained insight into the thought processes of the hive-mind.”

Erin looked on expectantly.

“So fourteen hundred years ago,” continued Fermi, “we discovered that the Hive was utterly selfish, utterly ruthless, and utterly without mercy, remorse, or compassion. It was a mentality that could not be understood. And although the hive-mind is one entity, it’s a highly splintered one. It has its mental tendrils in thousands or millions of places, so only a fraction of its attention is devoted in our direction. But it was sending out feelers. Scouting parties. It was using the principles of quantum entanglement, through a method we still don’t understand, to seize the minds of sentients to help prepare the way for its conquests, tens of thousands of years in the future.”

Erin thought of the scouts in an ant colony, the advance team, branching off from the main body. The army ant analogy was proving quite useful.

“Ultimately, we found foolproof means of identifying those few individuals controlled by the hive-mind in this way. And the twelve susceptible species found genetic countermeasures that they embedded in the DNA of their entire populations, making them resistant to this form of infiltration. When these genetic modifications had been completed, the Hive scouts were pushed out, never to return.”

“Okay,” said Erin. “So their last infiltration happened more than thirteen hundred years ago.”

“Actually,” said Fermi. “It took several hundred years to perfect and implement the countermeasures. So the Hive was fully blocked from entering any of the Seventeen’s minds only about eleven hundred years ago.” The alien frowned. “Not that it really mattered. We obviously couldn’t let it control individuals and gather intelligence. But even without the use of its scouts we knew we were ripe for the taking. Maybe ants would need good intel going against something that could mount a challenge to them. But we were like a few soft grub worms in the path of an entire colony of seething army ants, millions strong. No intel needed in our case.”

Fuller stared at Erin and raised his eyebrows. “I’m sure it didn’t fail to register with you,” he said, “that the description of the Hive’s behavior sounds extremely … psychopathic.”

“No. I got that,” she replied.

It all made a horrible sense to her. This superorganism would inevitably be without mercy or remorse. When the self, the seat of intellect, was so massive—spread out over trillions of individuals and thousands of light years—its selfishness would be equally immense.

Erin knew many scientists believed insect colonies on Earth were the ultimate embodiment of cooperation. But she realized now it was just the opposite. Sure, if you looked at army ants as individuals, they were cooperative—with each other. They made bridges with their bodies so their brethren could cross. They were willing to readily die for the cause. But if you looked at them as a superorganism, as cells of a single being that just happened to be able to move independently, the actions of individuals weren’t cooperative anymore. They were selfish. The cells in her own body displayed perfect cooperation, but they had a single purpose: preserving her as an individual.

The Hive would have the same relentless need to march as the army ant. And it would only care about its own needs, its own gratification. Anything outside of itself was for it to do with as it pleased. The hallmark of psychopathy.

In normals the words chair and torture would light up different areas of the brain; they were seen as being qualitatively distinct. But not to psychopaths. Similarly, to normal sentient species, sentient life and nonsentient life would be seen as being distinct. But not to a hive-mind.

“It seems to me that the Hive isn’t just psychopathic,” said Erin. “It’s the ultimate psychopath. The ultimate, violent, rampaging psychopath.”

“Right,” said Fermi. “Although none of the Seventeen had any concept of this condition, being the sheep that we are.”

“It doesn’t bother you to call yourself sheep?” said Erin.

“No. Maybe that’s what makes us sheep. We know that many humans would be irate if they were called this. But we know who we are. In the spectrum of societies, this is a fair analogy. And as I’ve said, wolves tear themselves to pieces before they become space-faring. Sheep don’t.”

Erin nodded. “Go on,” she said.

“Given all that we knew,” continued Fermi, “we resigned ourselves to our fate when the Hive arrived. We would be quickly exterminated.” His demeanor brightened. “But then we discovered you. It was a miracle. You fit the exact scenario we were long hoping for. We wanted to save a species like you from itself, and groom you to lead us. So we wouldn’t go extinct after millions of years of stagnation. But now this imperative had become far more urgent. So the four of us were chosen for the most important mission undertaken in the history of the Seventeen. To protect you so you could lead us against the Hive when they arrived. So we might have a chance of survival.”

Erin shook her head. “But our science and technology are thousands of years behind yours. And it sounds as though you’re thousands of years behind the Hive. I’m afraid we’ll be just as helpless as you are. We might be wolves, but wolves going up against tanks become just as dead as sheep.”

“No,” said the alien firmly. “The progress you’ve made just since your first signals reached us is ridiculous. Breathtaking. Your first radio broadcasts took place only about a hundred years ago, using vacuum tubes, and in a cosmological blink you’ve managed relativity, quantum mechanics, genetic engineering, cell phones, supersonic jets, and baby steps toward quantum computers. We were the fastest of the Seventeen to climb the technology ladder, and it took us four thousand years to make the progress you’ve made in a hundred. And your progress is accelerating. You have an insatiable curiosity. An endless drive. An itch you can never scratch. If you have a billion dollars you want a billion more. You’re never satisfied. If we can help you through this critical period, you may well be a threat even to the Hive. Even if you only had a thousand years to prepare instead of thirty-two thousand.”

There was silence in the room while Erin considered this. So the mission these four Wraps had been sent on had profound implications, not only for the future of their individual race, but for the future of the entire galaxy.

“So how were the four of you chosen to come here?” she asked Fermi. “You must have been pretty special.”

Fermi smiled. “Yes, but ironically, in a way that made us stand out in a negative way on Suran. After extensive testing, we four were found to be the most aggressive, competitive, and driven members of our species. The least sheep-like among the sheep. We’re still far to the left of the most pacifistic vegan on Earth, but we were rare individuals who might be able to handle the kind of onslaught of brutality we were sure to find here.”

Erin couldn’t help but smile. “No kidding?”

“No kidding,” repeated Fermi.

“Getting back on topic,” said Steve Fuller, “the Wraps only shared this information about the Hive with us recently. They didn’t want to spring such a wild story until they had earned our trust. And they have. The world will never know just how critical their contributions have been. But once they did disclose this situation, we began putting our minds to the best strategic steps to take going forward. A sheep, and even a sheep’s computer, can’t possibly strategize like a wolf.” Fuller raised his eyebrows. “This is where you enter the picture.”

“I have to say that I haven’t connected the dots to me yet at all.”

“We decided we had to accelerate the process,” said Fuller. “Add more humans to the team. Brainstorm. Analyze the enemy, starting now. The Wraps are nervous about giving us technology, so we don’t play with fire and burn ourselves.”

“We probably would, you know,” said Erin. “Not wise to give a loaded gun to the crazed teenage version of your future savior.”

“Regardless of whether it’s wise or not,” replied Fuller, “even without their technology, we can find better ways to accelerate our own development. My view is that if everyone knew the history of the galaxy and the Seventeen, and the leadership role we will be expected to play in this galactic community, along with the threat from the Hive in thirty-two thousand years, humanity would pull together. At least better than we are now.” He sighed. “But that’s a debate for another time. For now, we’re in a position to help the Seventeen understand the coming enemy. Their computer contains all the intel ever gathered on the Hive. When we realized that it behaved in many ways like the rare, Hannibal Lecter–type psychopathic killer, it occurred to us that an expert on psychopathy might come in handy.”

Of course, thought Erin. How could she have missed it?

“I saw the Wall Street Journal piece and did some background checks,” continued Fuller. “You were just what we were looking for. Brilliant. Single-minded in your goal of understanding psychopathy. Young. And your idea of finding remote ways to detect psychopathy could be helpful in what we’re trying to do to stop the most dangerous people here on Earth.”

“At last, your recruiting call begins to make sense,” noted Erin.

“The more I learned about you, the more perfect I thought you were for this job. I saw you as forming the nucleus of a team that would try to get inside the heads of our enemy. At least better than the Seventeen possibly could. Analyze everything known about Hive behavior.” He paused. “The larger team we plan to build will have exobiologists, of course. But we hoped you would be willing to lead a team of what we expect to call exopsychologists.”

Erin had to admit such a role sounded amazing. Challenging and important. Not as much fun as going into a prison every day …

“And as I mentioned,” continued Fuller. “I’m arguing that we should consider the possible effects of full disclosure to the world. Study if this is something we should do in five or ten years. So we would want top psychologists and psychiatrists to predict how people would handle learning of this. Would it bring our species closer together? Create widespread panic? Would this knowledge increase our resolve? Even though the enemy won’t be on the playing field for thirty thousand years?” He stared at Erin. “And I wanted you to be a part of this as well.”

Erin nodded. “It all suddenly makes sense. But to even begin to recruit me for this effort, you knew I needed to meet a Wrap. So I would believe what you told me. So you decided to fly me to your headquarters to initiate me.”

“Exactly. And we continued to vet you. Gather intel on you. We monitored your phone.” Fuller shook his head. “Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to listen to the recordings of your conversations until the day after I had set up the meeting with you. But you can’t even begin to imagine how startled I was when I did play the recordings and I heard Drake’s voice on the line.”

“I assume Drake wasn’t working with you anymore,” said Erin, “or you wouldn’t have been surprised. So what happened? Did he have a disagreement with the rest of the group?”

“No,” said Fuller, shaking his head. “He was incinerated in an explosion.”

46

KYLE HANSEN HAD been listening attentively to Erin’s tale of her meeting in Palm Springs with Steve Fuller and a very much alive alien named Fermi. She had been standing when she had begun, but five minutes earlier she had slid her hand down the steel strut to which it was attached to sit cross-legged on the cool garage floor. Soon after this she had begun to slump even farther and her voice had noticeably weakened.

Finally, she stopped altogether, and Hansen could tell she was struggling to keep her eyes open.

“Erin?” he said anxiously. “Erin, are you okay?”

“No,” she whispered, her voice barely audible. “I’m feeling … dizzy. Insulin shock,” she mumbled.

“You’re diabetic?” said Hansen in disbelief. How had Drake missed this? Even if it was adult-onset diabetes, this was something that should have been in her file.

“I keep it … secret. Don’t like … showing … weakness.”

Hansen couldn’t believe it. He knew she didn’t like to show weakness, but she hadn’t seemed the type to hide something like this.

Could this really be happening? On top of everything else? Just when Erin was revealing to him the rationale for her seemingly inexplicable behavior. And given what she had said already, the rest of her story was critically important. If there was a God, he didn’t appear to be a big fan of Kyle Hansen and Erin Palmer. What next, an earthquake?

But worse than her not finishing her story, her very life could be in danger. Hansen seemed to recall that insulin shock in diabetics could be fatal if not treated.

Erin pointed at the display case on which Zalinsky had set the items he had taken from her. A silver cylinder still rested there. “Glucagon injection,” she whispered faintly. “For emergencies. In the … thigh.” With that, her eyes slid shut again and she looked to be unconscious.

Hansen shouted at the top of his lungs and continued to do so until both Gibb and Zalinsky raced into the garage, guns drawn.

As soon as the door opened, Hansen stopped shouting.

The two mercenaries surveyed the room for hidden danger and to make sure their prisoners were still restrained. Seeing no reason for alarm, they lowered their weapons.

Hansen gestured toward Erin with his free hand. “She’s in insulin shock,” he said rapidly. “That cylinder you took from her is an emergency dose of … I think she said glucagon. But whatever it is, you have to inject her. Now!”

The two men glanced at each other as if uncertain what to do.

“You know Drake wants to interrogate her,” barked Hansen. “You think he’ll be patting you on the back and giving you a bonus when he gets back here and she’s dead? Come on! Every second counts.”

Gibb walked over to the steel cylinder and carried it gingerly to Hansen, as though it were booby-trapped and might explode at any second. “Open it,” he said.

Hansen gestured for Gibb to put it in his right hand, which was cuffed to the home gym. When Gibb did so, Hansen held the metal tube between his thumb and index finger and used his free hand to press a small metal dot extending out from one end, hoping this would open it. Sure enough, one half of the silver tube rolled back inside the other half, lengthwise, to reveal a glass syringe, filled with a colorless liquid.

“Take it,” said Hansen. “Carefully.”

Seeing that the cylinder contained exactly what Hansen had said it would seemed to galvanize Gibb, and he took it as instructed.

“Now jam it into her thigh,” ordered Hansen. “Quickly! And make sure she gets it all. Go!” he screamed.

Gibb pulled a combat knife from a sheath at his ankle and cut a seam in Erin’s pants at the thigh so he wouldn’t have to risk damage to the needle by stabbing through her clothing. He plunged the needle into her leg and emptied the entire contents of the syringe.

Hansen exhaled loudly. “Thank you,” he whispered.

Both Gibb and Zalinsky remained in the garage to see what would happen. Within minutes Erin’s eyes fluttered open.

She caught Hansen’s eye and smiled weakly. “Thanks,” she whispered. She noticed that Gibb still had an empty syringe in his hand. “And you too,” she said to him.

“Will you be okay?” asked Hansen.

Erin nodded. “Feeling much better already.”

After another few minutes of recovery, Erin rose from the floor and looked over at Gibb. “Thanks,” she said again. “But I’m okay now. No need to babysit any further.”

Gibb thought about this for a few seconds. Finally, reaching a decision, he turned to Zalinsky. “Let’s go,” he said. Seconds later they had exited back through the door into the mansion and were out of sight.

After they left, Hansen stared at Erin reproachfully. “I know you don’t want to show weakness, Erin. But keeping something like that a secret is dangerous.” He turned away. “Jesus, we could have lost you.”

“It was stupid of me,” admitted Erin. “And very bad timing. But let’s talk about the wisdom of this another time,” she continued, her voice regaining strength by the second. “Right now, I need to finish telling you what’s really going on here.”

Hansen nodded. “Go ahead,” he said, eager to hear the rest. But also wondering what other obstacles the fates might choose to throw at them next.