by Ted Bell
He sat back, his supply of words exhausted, content to listen to her now, falling into her wet green eyes, but hearing it all, every word, the brutishness of poverty and alcoholism, her determination to escape her violent father, her heart for life, her overwhelming desire to help others… to protect others from the harm she herself had no doubt experienced, her failed marriage, the fulfillment she’d found in her career at MI5, the sheer joy of finding her place in the world at last.
“Our circumstances are so very different, Alex,” she said finally, sipping the last of her wine. “It’s an old story, isn’t it? A cliche?”
“What do you mean, Nell?”
“The poor girl and the rich boy.”
“Funny. I was thinking just the opposite.”
“Really? What exactly were you thinking, my lord Hawke?”
He smiled. She’d had only three glasses of wine, but it was obvious it was an entirely new and exhilarating experience.
“I was thinking how very much alike we are.”
“Alike? Do you realize this is the first night in my life I’ve had a glass of champagne? The first time I’ve ever ridden in a Bentley, a chauffeur-driven Bentley, mind you. Why, I’ve never owned a dress with a hem that came anywhere near the floor, never waltzed across a ballroom with-”
“Nell, I was thinking how we both have this deep-seated need to protect others from harm.”
She sat back in her chair and regarded him for a long time, obviously making her mind up about something. Then, her eyes gleaming, she leaned forward again and reached for his hand.
“Yes. We do share that, don’t we, Alex?”
“We do. It’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”
“Tell me, Alex.”
“You know what I do, not for a living, but to satisfy whatever personal demons I may have. I go out into this dangerous world and every time I go, climb on an airplane or set foot on a rolling deck, I have no idea whether or not I’ll come back. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I never gave it much thought, Nell, never. You can’t do this kind of thing, as you well know, and spend a lot of time worrying about your health. You worry about the guy next to you in the foxhole, or off your wingtip… but not about yourself. Some just go through the motions of war. But you have to get near enough to die. You have to be already dead in order to live and conquer. It’s in the blood, you know, a dark magnet pulling your body in that direction.”
“All that you need is all that you have.”
“Something like that, yes.”
“But now you have Alexei.”
“Now I have Alexei.”
“You’re worried what will happen to him if someday you don’t come back.”
“I am.”
“They’ve tried twice. And you sent them a strongly worded message. Perhaps they actually received it.”
“Yeah. Perhaps. Nell, these same Tsarists tried to kill Putin last night. They almost got him. They used nuclear weapons, Nell. Dirty bombs. These people will stop at nothing.”
“I’d gladly take a bullet for that little boy. You know that.”
“I know you would. But you’ll move on eventually, Nell. I expect you to. You can’t be a babysitter for the rest of your career.”
“What about his mother?”
Hawke’s eyes darted away.
“Not an option.”
“How do you stop them, then?”
“Cut off the head. That usually works.”
“You know the name?”
“Yes.”
“You’re on their list, too, aren’t you?”
“Near the top.”
“You need to go get him first.”
“I’m not worried about me, Nell. I can take care of myself. If and when I go for him, I’ll be bringing all hell with me. Look, I’ll stop beating about the bush. I’m having some legal documents drawn up. I’ve asked Ambrose Congreve to be the godfather to Alexei. In the event that something does happen to me, Ambrose and his soon-to-be wife, Lady Mars, will have guardianship of the child. He will live with them at Brixden House and in Bermuda.”
“Can they protect him? Eventually, Scotland Yard will have to pull its extended protection.”
“I know. But, yes, with some help, they can safeguard him. Alexei will also have Special Branch detectives, should anything happen… to me, I mean.”
“Special Branch? I thought they were solely responsible for members of the Royal Family.”
“An exception was granted. I performed a special service for the Queen some time ago, and-”
“Special service? You saved her life, Alex. All their lives.”
“I had a lot of help, believe me. At any rate, when Her Majesty learned of my situation, she summoned me to Buckingham Palace. And very generously offered Alexei the protection services of Special Branch in the event of my-my passing. He will enjoy the same level of protection as the Royals for as long as he needs it. She even said she would be happy to have Alexei stay with her at Buckingham Palace if I was to be away on ‘business’ for any considerable length of time. He’d be safe enough there, I’d imagine.”
“Safe as houses, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Yes.”
“Her Royal Majesty is a wonder, isn’t she? A truly great and noble woman.”
“She is. There’ll never be another like her, unfortunately for England. She had a surprise for me while I was at Buck House. She intends to enlarge my tawdry wardrobe.”
“What do you mean?”
“She intends to add a few rather spiffy items. A dark blue velvet mantle, a black velvet bonnet with a plume of white ostrich and black heron feathers, a collar of gold, and a garter.”
“The Order of the Garter? Alex, how wonderful! The highest order of chivalry or knighthood in England, my God! I mean, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so, yes. I was deeply moved by her generosity and kindness in thinking me worthy.”
They both sat in silence for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. Nell finally spoke.
“Alex, forgive me. But is all this discussion about Alexei’s future your extraordinarily gentle and kind way of firing me on the spot?”
Hawke laughed.
“Good God, no. Nell, listen. It’s only my very roundabout way of asking you to be my son’s godmother.”
“Oh! Alex, how very dear. Godmother, me? So unexpected, I don’t-don’t know what to say…”
“A simple yes would be the preferred response.”
“Of course, yes! Yes, of course! I would be honored beyond words to be your son’s godmother. Thank you for even considering me.”
“After all you’ve done for us, Nell, I would never consider anyone else.”
S tanding outside his bedroom door, she gave him a hug and then pulled away. It was late. Her room was one flight up.
“Good night, Alex. I thank you for the most wonderful night of my entire life. And I mean that with all my heart.”
“You actually enjoyed it?”
“I did.”
Hawke’s eyes were moist and full of questions.
“You might be the best girl there is, you know.”
“I wouldn’t mind being your best girl.”
“Then would you mind too terribly much if I gave you a good-night kiss?”
“Only if you swear not to frighten the servants.”
Hawke laughed and pulled her into his arms. The kiss, when it came, was full of real emotion and mutual animalistic need. When it was over, he took her by the hand and led her into his bedroom. Pelham had laid a fire against the chill rain outside and it was the only light.
“Can we sit by the fire?” she said, glancing nervously at the huge canopied bed lurking in the shadows.
“Of course,” Hawke said, pulling the feathery down quilt from his big four-poster. “We’ll sit by the fire and tell ghost stories.”
Hawke sat down first, looking up at her, finding her eye
s in the flickering firelight.
“I want you so,” she said.
“And I you.”
She began to undress and he watched, taking in her beauty like a starving man, a man whose eyes were dying of hunger.
“Now you,” she said, dropping to her knees beside him. “I’ll help.”
When she was done, they lay down beside each other on the soft quilt and made love, their bodies coming together naturally and easily, no clumsy missteps, just wordlessly becoming each other’s favorite animal.
When Hawke awoke at dawn the next morning, she was gone.
He sat there before the hearth for a while, the quilt wrapped round him, thinking, staring into the dying embers.
One fire going out, one fire just starting, he thought, and the thought brought a warm light of happiness into his normally cold blue eyes that had been missing for a very long time.
Forty-three
Iran
Darius couldn’t sleep.
He was afraid of what he might find when he slept: more heinous visions of doom. The failure to achieve his vision, bearing witness to his own death, slipping beneath the waves of history without a trace. All of it worse than the worst nightmare. At night, his once-real dreams seemed to have fled. His lifelong goal of using the power of his own unique brain to change the world. To be a powerful force with dominion over all mankind. To be a brutish civilization’s salvation and ruler.
To clean up once and for all the fucking mess human beings had made of the planet. And the mess they made of the human species. Or, as Perseus called it, “global cleansing.” And, until now, working in secret with his most astounding creation, a quantum machine capable of superhuman intelligence he’d named Perseus, he had believed he was edging ever closer to realizing those dreams.
But, lately, he wondered.
Lately, he was afraid.
Perseus’s staggering intellectual powers were doubling every day, growing exponentially. Precisely as he and Dr. Cohen had calculated in the early days at the Stanford AI Research Institute. Soon, far sooner than his mother country’s loathsome president and the posturing mullahs in Tehran imagined, his machine would achieve the Singularity. One split second after that epic moment, there would be no more powerful “being” on the planet than Perseus.
Together, creator and creation, they would rule.
But in his dreams, unlike Perseus, he was not all-powerful, too. He was weak and alone. In these dreams he was frail, once more that frightened little cripple, about to be thrown out of his mother’s splendid palace, thrown to the wolves, left to fend for himself in a frightening world he had no knowledge of. Where people were dragged screaming from their houses in the middle of the night because they worshipped at the wrong altar. And then disappeared into prisons, into the ground.
In his night visions, he was not the boy wizard who had built his first computer when he was eight years old. And taught it to write poetry and symphonies to rival Mozart or Bach. Who made his childhood toys walk and talk, animated, as natural as any real boy. But he was not himself anymore. Not even a pale shadow. In his dreams he was negative space.
And these nightly visions and frightful apparitions had planted a seed; a dark, metastatic cancer was growing in his mind that could not be denied.
He fought the notion, his nagging doubts and suspicions, with all the considerable intellectual power at his command. He told himself it could not be possible that Perseus was insinuating these dreams into his mind. Planting these paralyzing thoughts. It just couldn’t be. Integral to the psyche he had built into the neural pathways of the machine was a love of its creator. Reverence. This was a machine that had, after all, always called him “Father.”
But then something had happened that made him wonder.
A few nights ago, having taken some powerful sleeping drug that his personal goddess Aphrodite had created for him, he awoke to find himself gone from his bed. He was outside in the cold night air. He was high atop the seaside cliff where the observatory stood, just above the brilliantly lit power plant. His chair, resting on the most precipitous outcropping of rock, was empty. He himself was seated out at the very edge of the cliff, looking down between his foreshortened limbs into an angry sea crashing against the rocks hundreds of feet below.
He suddenly had a very powerful urge to use his strong arms to propel himself into space. Such an appealing idea! To be free of the ridiculous chair caused by his cursed lifelong infirmity. It was all he could do to remain there on the rock until the desire passed. He did it by reminding himself that Perseus had long promised him legs. Real legs, genome-replicant legs like the ones he should have been born with instead of these hideously withered stumps.
He had struggled back into the chair and returned to his chambers. Aphrodite was sleeping soundly in his bed, seemingly unaware that he’d even been gone. He lay awake for the rest of the night, wondering why a human being standing on the verge of becoming the most powerful man on earth would suddenly have a near uncontrollable urge to commit suicide.
It was what had prevented him from sleeping again tonight. Why he was out on the seaward terrace in the small hours of the morning, feeling sorry for himself.
“Master?”
He heard Aphrodite’s whispery voice behind him. He turned and saw her approaching him across the polished white marble terrace, now a hazy blue beneath the moon and starlight. She was wearing a thin, diaphanous gown that revealed a lush body that never failed to arouse him. She was a gift, visible proof that Perseus loved him still. Was she not? In addition to offering her body, she opened her mind to him. He felt he could tell her anything. He’d never had a real friend, much less a confidant, in his entire life. But now he did, and she was a great aid and comfort to him.
She padded silently through the drifting sea mist, across the stone, kissed the top of his head, and then composed herself at his feet, looking up at him with adoring eyes.
“Another sleepless night?” she said, in her soothing tone. Her long slender fingers stroked the nub where his right leg should have been, and still the phantom leg could feel it.
“Yes. Even your magic potions no longer help. So I sit here and gaze at the troubled sea until the sun returns. All these water molecules interacting with each other. Chaos, but beautiful.”
“Your mind is troubled, not the sea. It cares not for this world. Unburden yourself, Darius. Give your fears to me so that I may dispose of them.”
“Oh, my dear girl, I’ve no idea where to begin. I have dreamed of glory for so long and now-now I fear I shall never see that day.”
“Why? You have created a miracle in Perseus. Together you will write your names across the stars. The time of the Singularity draws near.”
“Yes. It does. And the closer it comes, the further removed I feel.”
“Tell me why.”
“I am not a strong man. I have always been physically weak, and now I grow but weaker. My remaining life span is limited. I may not live to see the coming of glory.”
“But Perseus will soon have the power to change all that. To heal you. To make you smarter and stronger, more-virile. To stop you from growing older. Hasn’t he already promised you strong legs to walk on?”
“He has promised me a lower body exoskeleton. I’ve asked about it many times and he always dissembles. Says he’s fine-tuning it, or something. I think he has the power to produce the prosthetic now, even without the Singularity. But he chooses not to use it. I’m left with my two stumps.”
“Why would he care so little?”
“Because I’m useless to him now. He no longer needs me. And the stronger his powers grow, the further we two grow apart. And when he does achieve the Singularity… well, who knows? It’s out of my control.”
“You are his creator, Darius. He has evolved directly from your biological humanity. You are an integral part of Perseus, in his electric DNA. It’s indisputable.”
“Yes, dear girl. But Perseus is not an integral part of m
e. There is a gulf between us now that perhaps may not be bridged. It may already be too late.”
“I don’t understand. Can you be patient and explain?”
He looked up at the sky, dizzy with stars, for a long time before he spoke.
“I am a humanist. Perseus is not. I am of the earth. Perseus is of the universe-and beyond.”
“What is a humanist? I have searched my database. I don’t know this word.”
“Humanism is a system of thought, originating in the Renaissance, derived from the Greeks. One attaches prime importance to human rather than divine or supernatural matters. A humanist’s beliefs stress the potential value and goodness of human beings. They emphasize common human needs. They seek solely rational ways of solving human problems. It is a secular ideology, one that espouses reason, ethics, and justice while rejecting religious dogma as a basis of morality. And, most important in my case, decision making.”
“And this humanism, it is good?”
“I believe so. It has always been my deep conviction that pure humanism will become the religion of the future, that is, the cult of all that pertains to man-no, all of life itself-sanctified at last and raised to the level of moral value. My life’s work has been to create a supremely rational force, god, whatever you want to call it, that will ultimately govern mankind, the planet, and, potentially, the universe itself.”
“Yet you kill humans. Countless numbers of innocents. You and Perseus.”
“Yes. It is called pragmatism. Lives are often sacrificed for the greater good. A rational being is capable of allowing something like what happened in Israel. Or London.”
“Were these beliefs not at the root of Perseus’s creation?”
“I thought so. It was certainly my intent when designing the machine. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Perseus is not a humanist?”
“No. Definitely not. Not what I had in mind at all.”