Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

Hansen found himself unable to speak. Erin’s ace in the hole had been countered effortlessly.

Erin’s expression changed from nauseated to calm indifference, as if not wanting to give the Hive the satisfaction of seeing her beaten. She shrugged. “So what? I won’t be around in thirty thousand years when you sweep through here anyway. In the meanwhile, by curing psychopathy, you’ll have saved us a lot of trouble. So you outsmarted me. I couldn’t care any less.”

“Oh, I’m not done yet,” said Drake. “Now that I’ve successfully completed my primary mission and I’ve been discovered, I have nothing to lose by using this host to wipe out as many of you as I can. This is my chance to see how good Fuller and the Wraps here really are. And I have to say, given this operation, I’m not impressed. They planted you as a mole and now they’re blindly following an empty van. Perhaps I overestimated the potential of your species. Not that it matters now, since you’ve been neutered. But I’m willing to bet I can kill at least half of you in the next few years before my host is killed.” He glared at Erin. “So do you care now? Is this imminent enough for you? Personal enough?”

“But why?” asked Erin. It was a question she had asked of the counselor who had carried her out of her father’s veterinary clinic many years before. “Why must you obliterate all other intelligent life?”

“Because only I matter. Everything that isn’t me or doesn’t directly serve as fuel is an abomination. A pale imitation of true life. Of true intelligence. I will ultimately fill the entire galaxy. And in billions or trillions of years, the entire universe.”

As Drake had been speaking, Erin had gradually inched her way toward the nearest fallen mercenary.

“I need to be going now,” the alien said to Erin. “But I wanted you to know before you died just how profoundly you had been beaten. And that your failure will result in the deaths of billions of your fellow humans in the near term, and extinction when I come through to finish the job.” He shook his head in disappointment. “I only regret having to kill Kyle Hansen so soon,” he added. “He could have continued to be a useful pawn.” Drake shrugged. “Oh well.”

Once again Drake’s expression didn’t change, but Hansen’s brain was flooded with pain signals that threatened to melt his body. It was as if a flamethrower were being used on the inside of his skull. As if millions of fire ants were tearing every cell of his body to pieces.

He screamed and fell to the floor like those before him, in more agony than he had imagined it was possible to feel. And fear. A deep, seeping, paralyzing fear to go along with the pain. He found himself praying for death. For anything that would end the overwhelming agony. Finally, his mind cooperated and he blacked out, falling the rest of the way to the smooth floor.

At the same time, Erin fell to her knees as well. Her eyes filled with tears from the excruciating pain. It was greater than any she had ever experienced. But not the fear. The fear she felt was immense, but she had been initiated into the realm of absolute fear before she had reached puberty.

She fought to retain consciousness. And although she succeeded, the Hive continued to exert pressure on the fear center of her brain, paralyzing her. When the Hive realized she was not yet unconscious she felt another burst of pain, even greater than the first. She saw Drake though nearly closed eyes walk over to the now-unconscious Kyle Hansen and pick up the gun he had used to finish the other three men.

Erin willed herself to move, but could not. The fear and the pain were too great.

Memories of her parents and her beautiful little sister, Anna, rushed to the surface, and Erin knew from experience that no pain, no fear, could possibly be as debilitating as those losses had been. Or as debilitating as losing Kyle Hansen would be now. She could not allow history to repeat itself. Not this time.

Drake raised the gun and rested it against Hansen’s forehead.

With a final burst of will, Erin broke through the fear-induced paralysis and dived on the ground, coming out of a roll with Gibb’s gun in her hand and the trigger fully depressed. She emptied the entire magazine into the alien until he was hamburger, blown from his spot over Hansen, the gun that he had been holding falling harmlessly to the floor.

“Never again,” she whispered with her last reserve of strength.

And with that, Erin Palmer collapsed onto the cold garage floor, unconscious.

49

KYLE HANSEN’S EYES fluttered open and the world gradually came into focus. He realized he was lying on a bed—he had no idea where. Erin Palmer was sitting in a chair above him, reading a book on a small electronic tablet. He turned his head slightly and she caught the motion, launching herself at him and hugging him for all she was worth, albeit gently.

She separated and kissed him warmly on the lips. “Welcome back,” she said happily. “How do you feel?”

“How long have I been out?”

She checked her watch. She had bandages around her wrist, but she looked great otherwise. Freshly scrubbed and alert. “Twenty hours,” she replied.

Hansen glanced around. “Are we safe?”

“Couldn’t be any safer.”

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself into a seated position facing Erin. “I feel like I’m having déjà vu,” he said. “How many times will I pass out, sure I’m dead, only to wake up to you?”

“Well,” she replied, a wide grin spreading over her face, “I’ve gotta believe that twice in a lifetime is already pushing it. Don’t you think?”

Hansen laughed. “Okay, tell me how you got us out of that one,” he said. “And just for a change of pace, tell me the truth this time. I don’t want you to think that whenever I’m unconscious for an extended period, that means you can lie to me.”

Erin nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. What happened is that I picked up Gibb’s gun from the floor and I shot the alien bastard. Not Drake, but the Hive. You know.”

“But how? Gibb and Zalinsky, two hardened mercenaries, couldn’t fight through that level of fear and pain. And Burghardt and I collapsed like a house of cards. How could one woman be so extraordinary in so many ways?”

“Well,” said Erin with a sly smile. “As much as I’d like you to think I’m superwoman, I do have a more pedestrian explanation.”

He stared at her in anticipation.

“I cheated.”

“Come again?”

“I cheated. I told you that I had to edit out parts of my meeting with Fuller. So Drake wouldn’t hear. Let me fill you in. Fuller had expressed surprise that the Hive hadn’t tried to pry the combination from my mind. The Hive knew it couldn’t control humans, but Fuller was surprised that it hadn’t taken a shot at slipping in just to get that little snippet of information. A far simpler task than trying to take control.” Erin paused. “That’s when it hit me.”

Hansen just blinked and waited for her to continue.

“It had tried. The night in the motel I woke up screaming. The pain was enormous. That must have been the Hive. Trying and failing.”

Hansen nodded slowly. “It makes a horrible kind of sense,” he said. “That was the most intense scream of pain I’ve ever heard. And you did say you didn’t remember having any kind of a nightmare.”

“Exactly. Fuller told me they suspected that when the Hive tries to enter a human mind, our minds automatically block it, but the attempt hits the fear and pain centers of our brains pretty hard. That’s how Drake escaped in Yuma. Four of Fuller’s best men experienced such a high level of pain they all passed out.”

Hansen sighed. “Funny,” he said. “I suddenly have no trouble imagining what that might be like.” He paused. “Okay, so you were forewarned. I still don’t see how that helped you.”

“Forewarned is forearmed,” said Erin. “You didn’t think that injection was really glucagon, did you? Do you really think if I was diabetic I’d keep that such a big secret?”

“Come to think of it,” said Hansen. “I did find that strange. So you faked the diabetic thing?”

“Right. We were screwed. Big-time. When Drake realized I’d given him the wrong recipe, and then discovered the bug and homing devices, the situation turned pretty ugly. I was really counting on Fuller and his team to come to the rescue if I needed them. And then Gibb frisked me and removed the syringe Fuller had given me in case of an emergency.”

“What was in it?” asked Hansen.

Erin grinned. “A potent dose of morphine. Very potent,” she added. “I told you I cheated. And even with enough morphine on board to choke a herd of buffalo, the pain was still more intense than any I’d ever experienced. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you. Even with morphine on board, I still barely managed to fight through the pain and fear to shoot Drake.”

Hansen nodded appreciatively. He had wondered how she could have been so stoic when she was purposely cutting into her wrist and tearing skin to free herself. And now he knew. Morphine.

“Amazing,” he said. “But that doesn’t make you any less extraordinary, Erin. When the morphine was taken from you, and knowing Drake was listening in, you had to come up with the idea of faking diabetes to get me to ensure you received the injection. In fact, using your wits to survive is more remarkable than just happening to have a high pain threshold.”

“Thanks. I knew there was a reason I liked you so much,” she said, and then leaned forward and kissed him again.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Hansen. “I’m thrilled to be alive. And I plan to take you up on your promise to rock my world later on. But we lost. Humanity has been defanged. I know it won’t affect us or our children or our grandchildren. But the Hive will end up the big winner in the galaxy without our more mature, but still relentless descendents around to lead the Seventeen against them.”

Erin smiled broadly, and she looked so happy Hansen thought she might float off the ground. “No. I’m afraid we won,” she said. “We won huge.”

Hansen stared at her. “Okay. What did I miss this time?”

“Fuller knew no plan survived engagement with the enemy. And the stakes were too high not to cover every base twice. So he made sure there was redundancy. If Drake somehow did what he ended up doing, learning I had given him the wrong instructions for the cure, there was a backup plan. Any guesses?”

Hansen pursed his lips in thought for an extended period, but came up empty. He shook his head.

“I sabotaged his DNA synthesizer,” said Erin happily. “After a few hours of brainstorming with Fuller and his team, we came up with the idea. I’d always planned to check the virus before Drake released it. You and I discussed it. And you explained how you had personally inspected the device they would use for this job, the Seq-Magic Ultra. And obviously, to give the virus a clean bill of health, I’d have to go online.”

Hansen’s eyes widened in wonder. “Brilliant,” he said. “So while you were checking out Drake’s biological virus online, you were exposing his DNA synthesizer to a computer virus.”

“Pretty cool, huh? While you and I were being flown back to Tucson so we could end up under a bridge, and while we were driving through the night to Colorado, Fuller’s people were busy. They awoke the engineer who wrote the software for the Seq-Magic Ultra from a sound sleep. National security and all that. He helped them navigate around his own safeguards and modify his software. They designed a bogus site for me to visit to—presumably—vet the virus. But while the site was pretending to check for pathogenic matches to a biological virus, it was sabotaging the synthesizer. So that it would put in wrong bases as it built DNA strands, but indicate the correct ones had been inserted when the sequences were double-checked.”

“Incredible,” said Hansen. “But if you were going to sabotage the synthesizer anyway, why give Drake false information?”

“Redundancy. What if the computer virus failed to work for some reason? Or if Max insisted we download the sequence to another computer and go online from there, rather from the Seq-Magic Ultra itself? Fuller called it a ‘belt and suspenders’ strategy.”

Hansen laughed. “I believe you were saying that no species holds a candle to ours when it comes to deception. Or am I misremembering?”

“That’s what I said, all right. And you haven’t even heard the last of it. Because Fuller decided to attempt a very deep game. It wasn’t enough for us to win. Not enough for us to stop the Hive from defanging us and drive it from its Wrap host. He wanted the Hive to think it had won.”

Another look of wonder came over Hansen’s face. “And that’s what happened, isn’t it? Fifty-eight thousand light years from here, the Hive is now removing us from the list of credible future threats.”

“Exactly. Although things didn’t exactly go the way Fuller had envisioned. We expected Drake to trust the information I gave him, and not suspect me. I would plant a homing device on him. Fuller would let Drake release the sabotaged virus, which now wouldn’t even be able to cause a cold. The Hive would think it had won, and then a few days later, Fuller would move in and take Drake out. It didn’t work out as planned, but we still got there.”

“So now we’re off the Hive radar?”

“Yes. The Wraps believe the effort involved in these scouting expeditions, in controlling another mind from this kind of distance, is immense. They don’t think the Hive will waste the effort checking up on us for a long, long time—if ever. And once the Wraps build a faster-than-light transmission facility, they’ll report back to the Seventeen, making sure they’re on the lookout for possible infiltration. Their science isn’t as advanced as the Hive’s, but it’s plenty advanced. They’ll find ways to do a better job of blocking the hive-mind from infiltrating their citizenry, and they’ll raise their guard. And after this they’ll never lower it again.”

Hansen nodded. “Brilliantly done, Erin.”

“It was all Fuller,” said Erin modestly.

“Really?” said Hansen. “Because it seems to me that Fuller was chasing a van to San Francisco while you were saving the day. And my life. Again.”

“Well, technically, the first time I saved you was a fake, so we really can’t count that.”

Hansen laughed. “You’re right. I guess you only saved my life once.” He paused. “Good thing. Because I’ll never be able to thank you enough as it is.” His voice was soft and heartfelt, and his body language conveyed not only immense gratitude, but admiration as well.

“You’re very welcome,” whispered Erin, almost shyly.

Hansen took a deep breath. “So where exactly are we right now? For some reason, I’m thinking Palm Springs.”

“Good guess. That’s where we are. And we’ve both been invited to join Fuller’s team. Interested?”

Hansen raised his eyebrows. “Maybe,” he said, a playful smile coming over his face. “The work won’t be boring, will it?”

“I’m gonna say … no. I think it might be interesting even. And I can promise you affectionate coworkers. Who won’t mind if it takes you a few months to grow back your hair.”

“Good to know.”

“And our starting pay would be three hundred thousand a year. And because they aren’t allowed to hire felons, I’m told we’ll both be receiving presidential pardons for any and all crimes we’ve committed to this date.”

Fuller had told her about the pardon the night before, and she had spent considerable time while waiting for Kyle to recover pondering recent events in her life. She still felt guilty about performing illegal experiments and causing the deaths of three inmates. And no pardon would make this guilt go away.

But if she dedicated herself to helping the Wraps bring humanity safely through its adolescence, and helping the Seventeen better understand the psychopathic entity known as the Hive, this would go a long way toward assuaging that guilt.

In addition to the pardon, Fuller had promised to return her to good standing with the University of Arizona and the entire Southwest. They would post her picture once again and explain a terrible mistake had been made. And she would be allowed to complete her Ph.D. if the president of the United States himself had to intervene with Dean Borland.

She couldn’t wait to see Lisa Renner again. And she already planned to speak with Steve Fuller about adding a Ph.D. historian to the team, at about the exact time Lisa would be earning her degree. Fuller was pushing to disclose publically the existence of the Seventeen. If this were ever to happen, it would be great if someone went through the hundreds of thousands of years of the history of galactic civilization available on the Wraps’ computer and put the highlights in book form. Perhaps penning a gripping, informative, thousand-pager. Erin had no idea if she could convince Fuller that this would be a good idea, or if Lisa would ever be interested. But she was nothing if not stubborn, and she was determined to give it her best.

Her thinking on the subject of human psychopathy remained … complex. She would now be trying to perfect a device that could identify psychopaths, for the groups’ use only. But she had been in a position to see this condition cured forever and she had stopped this from happening. Yes, she could now see that this condition was a necessary evil—in the truest sense of the word—so that a watered-down version of these genes could help spur mankind to greatness. But the cost in human misery would be enormous.

She had thought of her parents and little Anna. Would they applaud her actions, or be appalled? It was impossible to know.

But what if their suffering and premature deaths were not for nothing? She would trade the world to have them back for even a day, to erase what had happened. But if not for this tragedy, she wouldn’t have chosen the field she had, and thus wouldn’t have been in a position to help stop the Hive. Drake would have used another researcher, and maybe he would have succeeded.

If her family had to die in this horrible fashion, maybe she could at least take some solace in knowing that their deaths might have played a role in altering the future history of the entire galaxy in a decisive way. She didn’t believe in the adage that things happened for a reason, that a certain event might serve a higher purpose, especially not an event as senseless and heinous as this had been. But could she absolutely rule it out? Maybe not.

Or maybe opening even a sliver of her mind to this idea was just another way of trying to make herself feel better for turning her back on the cure. For betraying the memory of her family.

As with all things having to do with psychopathy and the death of her family, she knew that there were no easy answers. These were issues that would always haunt her, and that would always remain … complicated.

But there was one more possibility that had occurred to her. She now understood why the set of genes that led to distilled evil when they were concentrated in a single individual needed to remain a part of the human genome. But was there a way to keep these genes in the germ lines of psychopaths—ensure they remained in circulation to give humanity its edge—but counteract their effect? Not on those who received them in moderation, but only on those who received them all. It was a task that was absolutely impossible for current human science and medicine. But the Seventeen were thousands of years more advanced in the art of genetic engineering than humankind. Yes, it was an exceedingly complex task that might forever be beyond even their capabilities. But maybe not. And Erin was determined not to rest until she found a way to make this a top priority, first for the Wraps on Earth, and then for the Seventeen. Even if such a miracle couldn’t be accomplished for generations, no effort could ever be more worthwhile.

But she would have plenty of time to ponder all of this later. For now, she needed to bask in what she had accomplished, and the new purpose her life would soon take on. And finally let romance into her life.

“Three hundred thousand dollars and a presidential pardon,” repeated Kyle Hansen as he sat facing her on the bed. “Sounds tempting. Will the pardon include the theft of a book bag, two T-shirts, and two hats from the University of Arizona bookstore?”

“Of course,” replied Erin. “I insisted. It also covers buying a car that’s a crime against eyesight.”

Hansen laughed. “In that case, I’ll take the job,” he said happily. “But I did have one more question. When we were alone in the garage, I thought I heard you say you could see yourself falling in love with me someday. Did I hear that right?”

“What?” said Erin, feigning confusion. “Must be your imagination. I mean, that’s crazy. I’ve only known you like, what, twenty seconds? I guess anything is possible in five or ten years. But me, thinking I might be capable of falling in love with a geeky computer physicist who couldn’t best a wheelchair-bound ninety-year-old woman in hand-to-hand combat? Doesn’t seem likely.” Erin grinned. “But since you brought it up,” she added, “I thought I heard you say something similar.”

Hansen rose from the bed and faced her with a dazzling smile. “I guess we were both under a lot of pressure,” he said in amusement. “Imagine that, both of us letting our imaginations run away with us.” He paused and raised his eyebrows. “But I have an idea. Just to see if our relationship can lead to a … higher level. How about if I agree to change my relationship status to committed?”

“Wow. You make an interesting offer. And I know how important your relationship status is to you.” Erin made a show of rubbing her chin as if this were a tough decision she was mulling over carefully, fighting to stop herself from breaking into laughter.

At that moment she realized she felt more exhilarated than she ever had in her adult life. And it occurred to her that as formidable as the Hive was, the one thing it could never experience was the joy of caring for someone outside of itself. Of being cared for in return. Of sacrificing for others. Of becoming infatuated. Of falling in love.

And while these things could be a source of weakness in humankind, they could be an even greater source of inspiration and strength.

“You’ve got yourself a deal, Kyle Hansen,” she said finally, melting into his arms and kissing him warmly.

And the last thought she had, before she was swept up in the passion of the moment and the rational centers of her mind gave way entirely to the sensory experience of the kiss, was that she felt very sorry for the Hive.