Текст книги "The Cure"

Автор книги: Douglas E. Richards

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

She couldn’t believe she was doing any of this. She was a graduate student. A scientist.

Yet somehow she felt able to channel strategy from some of the fictional characters she had read. She tended to gravitate toward thrillers in her reading, as long as they didn’t feature overtly psychopathic characters. It was true that many thriller villains were technically part of the psychopathic 1 percent, but this was okay as long as they were after money or power, and not serial killers or rapists out to torture and maim for the fun of it. This hit too close to home.

Good fiction tended to have considerable elements of truth in it, and while she had never experienced any situation remotely similar to the one she faced now, she had been introduced to countless such situations through novels and always found herself trying to think her way out of them along with the books’ heroes and heroines. As though she had been subconsciously preparing her mental faculties for this kind of trouble along with her physical ones.

So what was she forgetting? Was she making all of the right moves?

After a few seconds of intense thought, she realized she had forgotten something. If fiction had taught her anything, it was that credit cards could, and would, be traced by a group such as this. So hers would be useless.

She wasn’t a petty thief, but they had started this—whatever this was.

“Wait,” she said. “Before you call your colleagues, throw your wallet over to me.”

The man frowned but did as instructed. Other than a driver’s license, which identified him as Alan Smith, he had no credit cards or other forms of identification. She wasn’t surprised. She found a thick sheaf of twenties in his wallet and removed them. She tossed the wallet back to him. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Be sure to have your wealthy boss reimburse you.”

She rifled through his partner’s wallet as well and removed considerable additional cash, keeping the gun trained on Alan the entire time. Both men had been loaded, probably because they didn’t carry credit cards.

“Okay,” said Erin, nodding to the north. “Now call your buddies over there at the heliport and get them to leave.”

She slid the headphones for the parabolic listening device over her head, but only placed one of the two soft cups over an ear. The other ear she kept free. “I’ll be listening to both ends of the conversation,” she said. “So don’t try to get cute.”

The man glanced quickly from the headphones on her head to the large parabolic dish pointing toward the helipad. He nodded, almost approvingly, and the corners of his mouth turned up into the slightest of smiles. “I wouldn’t think of it,” he said evenly.

13

ERIN WAS BELTED in the backseat of the car so Alan wouldn’t think it was a good strategy to slam on the brakes, and made sure she was behind the passenger’s seat to maximize the distance between them. Alan’s partner had returned to consciousness, briefly, until she had shot him with a tranquilizer dart and left him in the church parking lot.

Alan had done a masterful job of getting the two men by the helicopter to leave in a hurry, but they wouldn’t be gone for long once they realized they had been misled. Fortunately, even taking winding roads they arrived at the heliport gate almost immediately. Erin crouched down even lower in the seat, the gun still pointed at the driver, as he entered the gate code on the metal keypad and the gate slid open.

Alan parked near the helicopter and motioned for the pilot, now standing outside of the aircraft, to walk over to the car. As he neared the driver’s side, Erin shot Alan in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and jumped out of the backseat, training the gun on the pilot as Alan slumped forward against the steering wheel.

The pilot raised his hands without being asked.

“Inside the helicopter,” she ordered. “Let’s go.”

The pilot glanced at his colleague slumped over in the seat, and nodded.

They entered the helicopter, which was as opulent as Erin had guessed. The passenger cabin was spacious and contained cushioned captain’s chairs, made of soft, ivory-colored leather, well spread out and with enough leg room to satisfy a seven-footer, along with a bar, cabinetry, and large-screen television. The pilot quickly made his way through the luxurious cabin on his way to the cockpit, with Erin maintaining a safe distance behind him.

“Get this thing in the air!” she demanded the instant he reached the cockpit. “Now!” Erin had so much adrenaline coursing through her body she wondered if she could rocket into the sky without the aircraft.

The pilot worked several switches and the blades on top of the helicopter began to turn, quickly picking up speed. Moments later the flying limousine left the confines of gravity behind and lifted gently into the air.

“Where to?” shouted the pilot. Neither one of them had bothered putting on headphones to facilitate conversation.

Good question, thought Erin. She knew she would have to be her sharpest to get out of whatever it was she had gotten herself into. While adrenaline muddled the thoughts of some, for her it had the opposite effect. When she was giving a presentation in front of a large crowd, the adrenaline would hit, and suddenly she was more articulate than she had ever been, constructing dazzling sentences during tough stretches of the talk that had tripped her up in rehearsal.

“Just gain altitude,” she shouted back to the pilot. “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

So where would she go? Could the chopper make it all the way from San Diego to Tucson? And if so, how long would this take?

She shook her head. Bad idea.

She considered ditching her cell phone so they couldn’t use it to track her, but her instincts told her to save it for later. After all, they had to be able to track their own helicopter, using a transponder, or whatever you called those things aircraft carried that broadcast their locations.

So knowing they would track her, what did that suggest?

First, she needed a short trip, so they wouldn’t have time to guess where she was going and plan a welcoming party, or send another helicopter after her. Second, since they would know exactly where she was, she needed to be able to get lost quickly after she landed. If she landed in the middle of a desert, she could never hide. But if she landed in the middle of a major city …

“Fly to downtown LA,” she shouted. “At best possible speed. I’ll tell you where to land.”

The pilot nodded, eyeing her gun warily. The helicopter banked and shot northwest.

“How long?” she shouted.

The pilot shrugged. “About thirty minutes.”

She knew he could land on top of a flat building or skyscraper, with or without a helipad. But after thinking it through she decided against it. Landing on an actual helipad might be the better play.

So where would you find a helipad in the middle of a busy city? After a few minutes, she had it.

They rode in silence, other than the steady beating of the blades, and Erin focused on staying alert and keeping the pilot in her sights. When downtown LA came into view off in the distance, she said, “Take us to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in West Hollywood. Land at their helipad.”

“You know I won’t have clearance,” shouted the pilot. “What if another helo is landing or taking off?”

“Then try not to hit it,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Five minutes later they landed at the helipad, a large circular expanse of concrete with a six-foot-wide yellow strip painted all around its circumference. The second the blades began to slow, Erin shot the pilot in the leg with a tranquilizer dart.

She still couldn’t believe she was doing any of this, but this was no time to be squeamish. The pilot would be just fine, which she wasn’t at all sure was true in her case. She opened a glossy, lacquered storage compartment, shoved the Sig Sauer and tranquilizer gun inside, and then exited the craft.

The helipad had a fantastic view of the Hollywood Hills, interrupted only by a large Macy’s next door, but she didn’t have time to enjoy the scenery. Fortunately, the helipad was currently deserted and she rushed through a door and into the hospital.

Minutes later she exited the facility and made a beeline for Macy’s. She quickly purchased an entirely new outfit, the least expensive clothing she could find, including socks, shoes, panties, and even a baseball cap, and changed, throwing her own clothing away.

She knew she was being ridiculously paranoid, but she had read too many books, and watched too many movies, in which the bad guys had managed to plant tracking devices on the hero’s clothing—which is exactly what she had planned for her meeting with Drake, an irony that wasn’t entirely lost on her. And the penalty for being too paranoid wasn’t nearly as high as the penalty for not being paranoid enough. Besides, even if they couldn’t track her clothing, if she kept it on it would help them identify her, whereas this new clothing might throw them off.

She was about to leave the store when she thought better of it. Instead, she bought an additional T-shirt and tied it into a ball around her phone as she exited onto the sidewalk. She scanned the busy streets around her, looking for both a taxi and a pickup truck. She spotted the pickup truck first and tossed the cotton shirt-ball, with her cell phone inside, into the open bed of the truck as it passed. As she had hoped, the shirt muffled the sound of this maneuver and of the phone sliding around in the back well enough that she doubted the driver would realize he was hauling extra cargo. With any luck, this pickup truck would draw pursuit away from her and buy her additional time.

Three minutes later she caught a cab. “Take me to the main bus terminal,” she said as she slid into the backseat.

The driver, a swarthy, unshaven man with a huge gut said, “You mean the Greyhound terminal?”

“Um … yeah. That’s the one,” she said.

As they drove, Erin thought about her next move. It could be that she had vastly overestimated the trouble she was in, the resources this organization had, and their interest in her. But then again, maybe she hadn’t. She felt she had no choice but to assume they would spare no effort to locate her—although she still couldn’t begin to hazard a guess as to why.

But if they were as capable as she feared, they would know she had landed in LA and would camp out at LAX. They also might be able to trace her if she tried to rent a car.

Which left a bus. She couldn’t imagine they would expect this move. No one took buses anymore. She was proud of herself for coming up with the idea. Even if they did guess she would take a bus, she hoped the last destination they would expect her to choose was the most obvious: Tucson, Arizona.

But this was where she would go, purchasing her ticket with cash.

After all, she had a date with the man who had called himself Hugh Raborn. And it was one she still intended to keep.

14

THE BUS DIDN’T arrive in Tucson until just after midnight. It was an agonizing trip. Erin only managed to sleep for two or three hours and felt naked without her phone. And these were the least of her worries.

She considered going to the police, but knew she couldn’t. Not until she had an idea of what she was dealing with. She had been responsible for the death of three men. This fact impacted her more now than it ever had. She had avoided thinking about this for some time, but she was a murderer. Plain and simple.

How had she let her life come to this? It was like a nightmare from which she couldn’t awaken. Had she become just as monstrous as the people she studied?

Maybe so.

And while she had been sure no one knew of her involvement with these deaths—other than Drake—she was now forced to question everything. Maybe others did know, after all. Which meant going to the police might be a very bad idea. Especially since she had been the one who had just assaulted two men, used a tranquilizer gun on these two and one other, and hijacked a helicopter.

This had all been in self-defense, but it would be her word against a wealthy organization, and she had no doubt whom the police would believe. Even so, she doubted Steve Fuller’s people would report what had happened to authorities. She imagined the helicopter pilot would invent a story to cover up his landing at Cedars-Sinai. An accident. Wrong coordinates. He felt dizzy and needed to land before he passed out. Something like that.

Upon arrival in Tucson, Erin took a cab to the Saguaro Inn on the outskirts of town and checked in under an assumed name, paying cash in advance for the room. The motel was a one-story structure in the shape of a large L, with a small lobby at one end and a rectangular parking lot offset twenty or thirty yards from the inn. It was fairly cheap, but not seedy. The rooms were good sized, didn’t smell of mildew as could happen at the bottom of the lodging food chain, and were otherwise clean.

The saguaro cactus, pronounced with a w—sa-whar-oh—was native to Tucson, and could grow to over seventy feet tall. True to the motel’s name, two impressive specimens of the cactus, which looked like green, prickly telephone poles with arms pointing skyward, abutted each end of the L, rising three stories into the sky.

Erin loved the giant saguaro, but on this night she was in no mind to notice them, or to care. The bed in her room was comfortable, but she still tossed and turned until three in the morning before finally managing to fall into a fitful sleep.

When she awoke she took a long, hot shower and tried to clear her head. Too much was going on and no matter how hard she tried to use her considerable powers of reason to solve the puzzle, the big picture continued to elude her. The small picture did, too, for that matter. She just didn’t know enough. But she decided not to mention anything about Steve Fuller to Drake until she knew more; her gut instincts, hit-or-miss as they had proven to be, guiding her once again.

She still had the GPS tracking device she had purchased in San Diego, but nothing else. She couldn’t risk returning to her apartment for her gun, and she couldn’t possibly complete the purchase of one before her meeting with Drake. She thought for a few minutes and then used the motel phone to call a few pawn shops. The second one she called had a Taser in stock. It wasn’t much, but she’d feel far less naked with this in her pocket—along with a phone.

She took a cab to the pawn shop and then to Walmart, where she bought a prepaid, disposable cell phone, before grabbing a bite to eat and returning to the motel. She told the desk clerk she would be staying for a second night, paid, and then set off in a cab for the university grounds to meet Drake.

The cab dropped her off on a circular road that abutted the University of Arizona Student Union, the absolute center of campus both physically, socially, and sustenance-wise, since the school had a large undergraduate population and no cafeterias. The union had a large food court, spread out over several stories, and teemed with students at all hours of the day and night, especially since most were on meal plans, paid for in advance by their parents, and every eating establishment in the union accepted a preloaded plastic CatCard, which could be debited for meals with a single swipe.

Erin stood outside the door to the bookstore, which was open to air but shaded from direct sunlight. It was nearing one thirty, the tail end of lunch hour, and the place was less a madhouse than it had been. Still, it was teeming with throngs of students carrying backpacks and wearing clothing of all types emblazoned with Wildcat logos and the familiar red and blue of the university.

She had only been waiting a minute or two when a man, about five eleven in height, broke from the crowd and approached her purposefully. She tensed and realized she had never had the chance to look at the photos of Drake he had sent over, and probably wasn’t in possession of her phone when he had. She couldn’t imagine whoever was after her could have tracked her here. Even so, she wasn’t prepared to let down her guard no matter what. It wasn’t as though she could trust Drake any more than she could trust Fuller.

The man approaching appeared to be about thirty years old and was handsome, not in a rugged way, but in a friendly, approachable sort of way. He had sandy hair and deep set, expressive blue eyes.

“Erin Palmer?” he said when he was within a few feet of her.

She was about to say something like, “You must be Drake,” when she realized with a start that this wasn’t him. The voice was all wrong—again. She tensed even more and examined him for weapons, although it was unlikely he would do anything that would attract attention with this many people around.

“Who are you?” she demanded in low tones.

“I’m Kyle Hansen,” he said matter-of-factly, just stopping short of adding, of course, as if his name was supposed to mean something to her. He looked confused by her blank stare.

“Drake couldn’t make it, so he sent me instead,” he added, as though reminding her of this rather than explaining it for the first time. At her continued blank stare he winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Drake told me he texted you about this several hours ago, and even sent my picture.”

Erin nodded. That would explain a lot. “Yeah, well … I had a little trouble with my phone,” she said, as her mind leaped ahead to try to assimilate this unexpected development.

What new game was this? Who was this Kyle Hansen and what could sending him to meet with her possibly accomplish?

The man she had known as Hugh Raborn had insisted he would explain his multiyear ruse to her. Since she and he were the only ones in existence who knew about the psychopathy cure and her work testing inmates—at least she continued to cling to this supposition—a surrogate would be useless.

“Sorry again,” replied Kyle Hansen earnestly. “We didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“Look, I’m sure you’re a very nice guy. And I’m sorry that you had to make the trip for nothing. But I came here to meet with, um … Drake. At his suggestion. He wanted to clear up a personal matter between the two of us. So sending a substitute isn’t going to cut it.”

“Just give me ten minutes,” said Hansen. “If at the end of ten minutes you still think meeting with me instead of Drake is a waste of your time, I’ll leave. But I really can clear up everything.” He sounded sincere and nonthreatening—although this could just be an act.

Erin took a deep breath and nodded. “Ten minutes,” she said.

“I’m told there’s a food court around here.”

Erin gestured to the long building that paralleled the bookstore across a twenty-foot-wide concrete walkway. “Closer than you think,” said Erin.

“Have you had lunch?”

She shook her head no.

“Then I’m buying,” he said in a friendly tone.

“Look, I’m leaving after ten minutes, so you might want to get our food to go,” she said pointedly.

He grinned, an easy, unself-conscious smile. “I’m willing to take that chance,” he said, and there was undeniable charm in the way he said it. “Look … Erin … Drake filled me in, and I know you’re confused. I also know he’s given you plenty of reason not to be trusting. But if you just give me the chance, I’ll explain everything to your satisfaction.”

“I doubt that. This is about a sensitive matter.”

Hansen pursed his lips and his face took on a more somber cast. “I know more than you think I do,” he said. “And I’m a friend. More than a friend, as I think you’ll soon discover. An ally. A comrade. I’ve been working with Drake even longer than you have.”

“Drake told you we were working together?” she asked, squinting in confusion, as though unable to fathom why Drake would lie about something like this.

“That’s right. And although I know you’ll see this as another betrayal, I know the exact nature of your collaboration. And that you’ve just made a major breakthrough.”

15

ERIN TOOK A long drink from a bottle of cold water and then bit into the turkey sandwich she had purchased, or Hansen had purchased for her, spending all of seven dollars. “Okay … Kyle,” she said. “Now that we’re settled in, I’m all ears.”

They were sitting at a small rectangular table and there was a cacophony of conversation from hundreds of locations in the massive open food court. There were several groups of students within earshot, but they were self-absorbed—laughing, debating, flirting, working on their Facebook accounts, playing or talking on their phones, or watching one of the many television screens that descended from the ceiling in a seemingly haphazard fashion, and Erin wasn’t worried in the slightest that anyone would listen in, or have any idea what they were hearing if they did.

So Drake had told this Kyle Hansen about work that could get her thrown in jail. After he had sworn he would never mention this to another soul. So what was another huge betrayal among friends? And this also begged the question, who else knew? Was there anyone who didn’t?

Hansen seemed famished, and had finished a large bag of chips while they were waiting in line and had almost finished half of his chicken-salad sandwich in the brief time they had been sitting. “There’s no easy way to start,” he said. “Let me just say that you won’t believe me at first. But I plan to prove everything I say. I’m not crazy. So if you could just pretend to believe me until the proof comes, that would be a big help.”

“Go on,” said Erin.

Hansen blew out a long breath. “Drake isn’t human,” he said simply, watching her face for a reaction as he did so.

Erin rolled her eyes. She must still be asleep in some kind of crazy, extended dream, she decided. Either she had entered the Twilight Zone, or she had used up her life’s quota of bizarre, surreal surprises in the past four days, during which her life had been turned upside down and twisted into a pretzel. “Come on, Kyle. I’m not in the mood.”

“Remember, I did tell you you wouldn’t believe me. Anyway, that’s why he didn’t come himself. He can pass as human for a time, but it’s a risk to do so for too long.”

“So what is he?” said Erin, deciding to play along. “An elf?”

Hansen actually laughed. “No. He’s from a planet about thirty-seven light years away from here he calls Suran.”

“Suran,” she repeated, as if testing the word out on her tongue. “What, like the wrap?” she said, rolling her eyes once again.

Hansen’s eyes widened. “Very good. Spelled with a u instead of an a, but it’s funny you should say that, Erin. Because that’s actually what I call Drake and his species. Wraps.” He grinned. “Beats the hell out of Suranians.”

Erin studied him for several long seconds, as if he were a science experiment, looking for some telltale sign that he had recently escaped from a mental institution. He returned her penetrating gaze with a relaxed patience, looking anything but crazy. Still, it was becoming obvious that he was, despite any appearances to the contrary. She looked at her wrist pointedly, even though she didn’t have a watch. “You know your ten minutes are about up.”

“I’m not wasting your time. And if you’d humor me as I asked, this would go a lot faster. I get it. This is crazy and you’re waiting for the curtain to fall. It isn’t, and it won’t. Humor me,” he repeated.

She tensed her muscles to rise from the chair and leave, but there was something about his eyes that stopped her. A confidence. An easy intelligence. A self-awareness of how insane he must sound to her, but also a deep courage of his convictions and a certainty that he would ultimately convince her. She blew out a long breath. “Okay, Kyle. It’s hard for me to imagine I’ll ever believe you, no matter what you tell me, but I’ll humor you just a little longer.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“So if Drake’s from this Suran, how can he pass for human for even a minute? All the aliens on Star Trek looked human, but that’s just because they didn’t have a big enough budget for more imaginative aliens.”

“Not entirely true. There is such a thing as convergent evolution. The Wraps are fairly close to us in appearance, yes. Close enough that the extensive plastic surgery and genetic engineering he underwent before he came here allows him to pass as human for a short time. But there are other alien species whose appearance couldn’t be any more, ah … alien … to us. Drake’s problem passing for human isn’t his appearance as much as his mannerisms. We’ve evolved to pick up on dozens of subtle cues regarding human expressions and appearance. That’s why it was such a challenge for Pixar and others in the early days to animate humans. If an animated animal is slightly off, it isn’t a problem. But make a human just a little bit wrong and we can sense this somehow, and it gets under our skin. Weirds us out. That’s one of the reasons he took the appearance of Hugh Raborn when you Skyped. That and to buy credibility when you Googled him.”

For the first time, Erin’s expression wasn’t one of complete skepticism, and Hansen seemed to pick up on this. “Drake told me when he explained how he had used software to transform his face into Raborn’s, you said it couldn’t be done. Not so convincingly, so seamlessly. Not in real time during a conversation. Well you’re right. It can’t be done. At least not with human technology.”

This gave Erin pause. It had been one hell of a magic trick, however he had pulled it off.

“When I’ve finished explaining everything,” continued Hansen, “I hope you’ll trust me enough to let me take you to Yuma to meet Drake in person. It’s the only way you’ll be absolutely convinced I’m telling you the truth. You’ll see for yourself he’s not human. A short time with him and you’ll have absolutely no doubt.”

Erin studied him once again. She was far from convinced he was telling the truth, but if his purpose had been to get her to come to Yuma with him, there were far simpler lies that could have done the trick. In fact, he had to have known that the approach he was taking was certain to make her more suspicious of him rather than less.

Hansen seemed to read the indecision in her eyes. “The ten minutes you agreed to give me are up. If you’d like, I’ll leave right now. Or you can. I won’t stop you. But I can’t believe that someone with your kind of curiosity, your passion for knowledge, would refuse to at least hear me out the rest of the way. Not unless you really think I’m certifiably insane. Which I don’t think you do.”

Erin sighed, realizing that he was right. “Go on,” she said in surrender.

“To be honest, Drake is trying to limit the number of people who know of his origins. For obvious reasons. And you weren’t supposed to be among them.”

“So why are you telling me this now?”

“He had no other choice. You saw the real Hugh Raborn and then, being understandably suspicious and feeling betrayed, you weren’t willing to give him the dosage combination for the cure. So he knew he had to come clean. He set up this meeting, knowing all along he was going to send me. Inviting you to Yuma to meet him and verify what I’m now telling you would have been the most direct route. But he knew you didn’t trust him enough to do that. You needed to be eased into what is an entirely new and earth-shattering reality for you. A two-step process, begun on your home turf, where you would feel reasonably comfortable.”

“Okay,” said Erin. “In the interest of humoring you some more, you mentioned other alien species. Are representatives of all of them on Earth?” She leaned toward him and raised her eyebrows. “You’re not a member of the Men in Black, are you?”

Hansen laughed. “No. Black isn’t my color. And I’m afraid Drake is it. Period. I’ll tell you why later on, but he’s the only nonhuman on the planet.”

“Uh-huh. Well somebody gave him bad directions to end up in Yuma. He does realize that Area 51 is to the west of him and Roswell is to the east, right?”

A warm, genuine smile flashed across Hansen’s face once again, revealing two rows of perfectly straight teeth, no doubt perfected after years of wearing metal in his mouth when he was young. “No aliens at either of those places, I’m afraid.”

Hansen paused as if searching for the best way to bring Erin up to speed. “Now that you’re willing to hear me out, let me start at the beginning. There are seventeen known intelligent species in our section of the galaxy. The level of their technology is all basically equivalent. The growth in our science and technology has been exponential, but you can’t maintain that forever. And any significant differences in the technology of these seventeen civilizations has been smoothed away over thousands of years of trade, so now it’s all perfectly homogeneous. Some arrived at this level thousands of years before others, but progress has slowed to a crawl now that they’re pressing up against the maximum capacity the universe will allow in many fields.”

Erin was fascinated despite herself. If it was a hoax, at least it was a well-thought-out hoax.

Hansen finished the last of his sandwich, washed it down with a long drink of Coke, and continued. “Recently—at least in the scheme of things—our closest intelligent neighbors caught our transmissions and began to relay them to the other sixteen known intelligences. Now they are all aware there is an eighteenth intelligence in the stellar neighborhood—which is a very big deal. A species which still has quite a ways to go before reaching the level of technology of galactic civilization. They’d like to welcome us into the galactic community. But they became alarmed upon viewing our transmissions.”

“They didn’t view any of our reality TV, did they?” said Erin with mock seriousness. “That would alarm any intelligence.”

Hansen laughed. “I sure hope not. The good news is that they do recognize fiction from nonfiction. Although I’m not sure how they would classify reality television. But anyway, even after factoring out the endless violence and destruction we tend to depict in fiction, we’re the most violent, troubled species they have yet run across. Capable of atrocities the other species can barely comprehend. Mass genocides, tortures, and unspeakable cruelty. They find us gifted, but brutal.”