True to her word, Heather leaned over until her head rested on Mark’s shoulder and closed her eyes. Long before they reached Santa Fe, she was sound asleep. For the next several hours, the pressure of her head slowly put Mark’s shoulder and right arm to sleep as well, but he ignored it. God’s archangel Michael could come down and smite him for all he cared, but he’d be damned if he’d make a move to wake her.
Her head rested on his shoulder. If Mark could have made the moment last for eternity, he would have. And, just so, they passed through Santa Fe, then Albuquerque, then Gallup, as the stars rose higher in the sky and the moon sank toward the west.
Jennifer was out there somewhere to the west–northwest. What she was trying to do, he had no idea. Mark just knew that he wanted his sister back, wanted the three of them back to what they used to be. But that wasn’t likely. Jennifer was a runaway, and he and Heather were now car thieves, all of them pulled forward by forces well beyond their control.
Mark’s thoughts went back to the day when he had found the Second Ship, when they had first tried on the alien headsets. If he had known then what he knew now, how they would be augmented, how it would change their lives so drastically, would he have even tried the damn thing on? Would he have even ventured near the alien starship?
The answer struck at his heart. Yes. God help him. Given everything he had learned, everything they had suffered to this point, he would still do exactly the same thing.
As the white lines that divided the lanes of I-40 swept by beneath him, Mark looked up at the sinking full moon. If he could have bayed like a werewolf, he would have.
105
Heather yawned and stretched, wiping the sleep from her eyes. It was morning. At least the sun was thinking about rising above the eastern horizon, a peachy glow having lit the skyline outside the car window.
“Good morning.” Mark’s voice brought her head around. He leaned in the open driver’s side car door.
But he had aged at least ten years. What the hell? Had she slipped into one of her visions while she slept?
Seeing the shock in her expression, Mark straightened, the age lines melting from his face as he did, leaving the boy that she knew.
“Sorry I startled you. Just wanted to try out my new look.”
Heather opened her car door and stepped out into the brisk morning air. “What just happened?”
Mark shrugged. “I had been driving all night, just thinking about things as the car rolled along, stopping for gas here and there while you slept. I got to wondering how we would get by without being discovered. I mean two kids our age. We’d stick out like a sore thumb. Then, just about an hour ago, it hit me. Our age.”
“Our age? What do you mean?”
“Think about it. What does it mean to look older? Mostly it has to do with the age lines in people’s faces.”
Something clicked in Heather’s head. Of course.
Mark nodded. “So I stopped the car and started working on it in the mirror. If you scrunch your face, you get a ton of wrinkles. Then I just started relaxing a single muscle here and there, changing the look gradually until it matched a picture of some thirty-something people in the magazines. Once I had a look I liked, I memorized its feel. With our kind of neuromuscular control, we just have to recall the feeling to get that look back.”
“Show me.”
Mark’s face moved, the slight age lines in his forehead and at the corners of his eyes and mouth producing a remarkable transformation. It was like looking at a different person.
“Wow!”
Heather’s heart hammered in her chest. Moving to the car mirror, she tilted it outward. Then repeating the technique Mark had described, she scrunched her cheeks and forehead, feeling all the muscles tense, forming lines across her face. Then, one by one, she let them relax, retightening some as she worked the age look to match the facial lines on a woman she had seen in People Magazine.
Although it probably took her a bit longer than it had taken Mark, within thirty minutes Heather had mastered the lines of that look. She was sure she could pass for a woman in her early thirties.
As she demonstrated the finished product for Mark, he clapped his hands. “Hello, Mrs. Robinson. I don’t know if a young man like me should be seen with you. People will talk.”
“You know what this means?” Heather asked.
“What?”
“We’re going to need new fake IDs.”
Mark slid back into the driver’s seat, reaching across to open the door for Heather. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
Starting the car, Mark took the access road toward the freeway onramp. On the radio, Rod Stewart began crooning “Maggie Mae.” When he reached the verse about the morning sun really showing her age, Heather glanced at Mark and, together, they began to laugh. As the sun peeked over the distant mountains, they kept laughing, while the tears rolled down their cheeks.
106
It was late and Raul was tired, something that he hadn’t experienced for a long, long time. The harder he worked, the more the Rho Ship responded to his efforts. Even Stephenson seemed impressed. Not that he gave a shit what Stephenson liked. Raul found himself thinking of Heather again. In the end all his work to repair the ship centered on the same thing. He was lost without her, constantly trying to picture her face in his mind, to recall the sound of her voice.
Every new power cell he brought online brought him closer to his dream, closer to the reunion that was destined to be. And just as he was becoming a god, she would become his goddess.
Raul glanced down at his legless body. As much as he loved the look of Heather’s long legs, as much as he loved to picture them wrapped around him, they would have to be removed. It was only right that the two of them should float here in this room, legless, but with a power that would shake this world. Once he had cut her lovely legs from her body, there would be no running away from him, ever. Not that she’d want to. How could she?
The latest of the subspace probes worried him. The Enemy was still out there, and somehow they had found his ship. At first, Raul had thought that the subspace probe must have come from the dead ship in the Bandelier cave, but a scan of all Rho Project data on that ship indicated that it showed no signs of activity, no energy fields whatsoever. Dr. Stephenson checked on it periodically but showed no active interest in the ship or its technology. As much as Raul hated the man, he had to admit that the deputy director was a brilliant scientist. If there was anything that warranted concern, Stephenson would be all over it.
But tonight was not about Stephenson, or the probe, or even the ship. Tonight was the first night in a long time that he would indulge his fondest desires. It had been so long since he had taken any time for self-pleasure that he could barely contain his excitement. And that excitement swept away the fatigue his round-the-clock work had inflicted upon him.
Pooling the ship’s new power, Raul felt himself floating upward in the stasis field until he stilled at the exact center of the chamber, drawing upon the nexus that would form the strongest and most stable worm fiber he had yet constructed, one that would let him follow Heather through the hours of the evening, from undressing in her bedroom to her bath and back again. Perhaps he might even be able to pass a breath through the fiber to ripple the fabric of her nightgown, a soft lover’s touch that would tickle her with excitement.
He smiled. It’s all right, my lover. It’s okay to want without yet knowing who it is that you want.
The worm fiber formed in the air before him, the gravitational improbability swirling as he brought the incredible power of the Rho Ship to bear on it, stabilizing the instability, directing it according to his will.
The parlor inside the McFarland house swam into his vision, empty and dark, except for a small light from the kitchen. Moving his viewpoint into the kitchen, he found it empty, the light coming from the illuminated time display on the microwave oven. 7:14 p.m.
Odd. It wasn’t that late. The McFarlands should
be at dinner. Where was everyone?
Raul moved the fiber upward until it passed through the ceiling into Heather’s room. Empty. The bed perfectly made. No sign of after-school activities, no tossed aside backpack, no books scattered on the desk. No clothes scattered about. What the hell?
Raul moved down the hallway to the bathroom. Nothing. No naked girl in the shower. Nothing.
In growing desperation, he swept into the master bedroom. On the bed, fully clothed, Mr. McFarland held his wife, who sobbed inconsolably on his shoulder, his face a mask of despair. The combination of the Heather’s empty bedroom and the looks of loss on her parents’ faces could only mean one thing.
The stunning realization hit Raul in the chest like a sledgehammer. Heather was gone.
The worm fiber collapsed. Hanging in the air of the Rho Ship’s inner chamber, Raul screamed. And as he screamed, the electrical energy built in the air around him until it arced outward, connecting the walls to his fingertips in one undying arc of lightning that failed to diffuse the shock of loss that drained his soul.
107
Without taking a break for lunch, Jennifer sat at the keyboard, working her magic. Five million dollars. That was the amount she had transferred from three Swiss bank accounts controlled by the Espeñosa drug cartel into a handful of separate Cayman Island bank accounts. If it had simply been direct transfers, Jennifer would have been finished long ago, but that would be stupid. Instead, she had moved the money through a web of transactions around the world, all recorded over the last week, deals that included arms purchases in the Middle East to commodities options on the Chicago Board of Trade.
She was a time walker. At least, Jennifer could make her data trail walk back through time, searching out all records of transactions and inserting new ones, careful to trace the entire audit trail. When in doubt that she had tracked down all the related computer records, she inserted a virus, corrupting records in a way that would make a trace of her activities almost impossible.
The Espeñosa Cartel was just the first of many such thieves’ dens she planned on inflicting financial pain upon in her need to establish a financial empire. A growing dread forced her to hurry. The new president had pledged to release the nanite formula for distribution to Africa on Friday, announcing that millions of doses were already on navy ships headed in that direction. He had chosen Africa because it, of all continents, was the most desperately afflicted by the scourge of disease, especially AIDS. It had also been the most ignored by past US administrations. Now it was to become the model for American humanitarian efforts.
Jennifer shuddered. Those poor people. So desperately willing to take any risk in order to survive. But what choice did they have? In their situation, she would probably do exactly the same thing.
Not all addictions were chemically based. How many people could get by without their cars or air conditioning or refrigeration or electricity? The truth was that mankind was addicted to technology. What Dr. Stephenson and the president offered was only the next logical step in that addiction. But it was a step that horrified Jennifer beyond words.
Hearing a knock, Jennifer pressed the key sequence that locked out her computer, then walked to the door.
“What is it?” she called out.
“Complimentary turndown service,” came the woman’s voice from the other side of the closed door.
“No, thank you.”
“Hello?”
“No, thank you,” Jennifer said again.
The key turned in the door. As it opened, Jennifer stopped it with her foot.
“I said, no, thank you!”
“Perdón, señorita,” the maid said, bowing her head. But when she raised it again, a spray of mist squirted into Jennifer’s face.
Before she could grasp what was happening, Jennifer felt her legs buckle. As everything faded around her, a redheaded man stepped forward to catch her.
“Hello, young lady. You have a lot of explaining to do. But first you are going on a little trip.”
Jennifer felt herself stuffed into the bottom of the maid’s cart. Then, as it rolled back out into the hallway, everything went black.
108
Janet slipped the end of the key device into the car ignition switch, pressing a button on the side that engaged the tumblers. With a twist of her wrist, the lock turned, sending the engine of the Ford Explorer rumbling to life. God she loved civilization, if you could call Santa Fe, New Mexico, civilization. The place felt like she had been swept back in time five hundred years, the narrow streets of old town Santa Fe certainly never designed for the modern automobile, much less two lanes of traffic.
She was tired, more tired than she had been in weeks. But Jack needed her and so sleep would have to wait. Her first priority was to get herself to a safe spot where she could establish an Internet connection. Then she could uplink the information that would give Jack what he needed to know. After that, well, she would think about that when she got to it.
The baby kicked in her belly. Her baby. Jack’s baby. Janet rubbed her abdomen and smiled. Life had certainly gotten more interesting. What sort of mama would she be? What sort of baby would she have?
There were certainly plenty of people out there trying to make certain that she failed to live to answer those questions. Her hand moved to her hairpin, the narrow spike spinning in her fingers, coming to a stop in her clenched fist, its razor tip glittering in the early evening sunlight.
Fine. She would be ready for them.
109
Jennifer coughed, opened her eyes, then closed them again as pain pounded her skull. The headache made it difficult to think. She just wanted to roll over, pull her covers up around her, and go back to sleep. Then she remembered.
Once again her eyes popped open and this time she kept them open. For several seconds her disorientation made the sights and sounds confronting her unintelligible. She was on some kind of couch, an uncomfortably narrow couch, and there was a loud thrumming in her ears, along with a babble of nearby voices, mostly speaking Spanish. As the fog in her brain cleared, she understood.
She was on an airplane—some sort of small jet. From the spacious layout, it seemed to be some sort of corporate aircraft, certainly different from the personal space afforded by a B-group ticket on Southwest Airlines. Jesus. What had happened to her?
Gently moving her wrists, Jennifer was surprised to find that she was not tied up. A quick personal inventory revealed that, aside from her throbbing head, she had suffered no apparent bodily injury. Indeed, someone had taken the trouble to cover her with a thin blanket.
Jennifer struggled to a sitting position. Seeing her looking around, the redheaded man she had seen as she passed out rose from his seat and moved to sit across from her. His intelligent blue eyes appraised her, simultaneously cold and curious.
“Can I have a drink?” Jennifer asked, her voice coming out as a hoarse croak she barely recognized.
“Certainly,” the man replied, signaling to a young woman who immediately brought a bottle of ice-cold water.
Jennifer drank deeply, finishing the small bottle in several long swallows. When she looked up again, she had managed to establish at least a small degree of calm.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?”
The redheaded man’s eyes narrowed. “My name is not important. Your next stop is Medellín, but we won’t be landing at the José María Córdova International Airport.”
Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Colombia?”
The redheaded man smiled. “Good girl. So unusual for a girl your age to know her geography. But then you’re a very unusual girl, aren’t you?”
Jennifer worked to get her bearings, but her thoughts were foggy, her senses dulled.
“I don’t understand.”
“Maybe not now, but you will. Señor Espeñosa is very anxious to meet you.” The man smiled, but his lips held no mirth.
Jennifer felt her throat constrict as a growing terror gripped her. Dear God. Wha
t had she gotten herself into?
110
Heather and Mark stepped out of the FedEx Kinko’s twenty-four-hour copy center in Las Vegas with their new IDs in hand. With the right person creating the digital images, the right materials, and a good enough laser printer, it was amazing what you could create. And Heather was the right person. Add an empty copy center and a clerk weighed down with 3:00 a.m. sleepiness and she could work miracles.
Once outside, Mark looked at the driver’s licenses in the light of the bright neon signage. He had to admit that they were good enough to fool anyone who didn’t actually work at the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles. Robert Foley, age twenty-nine, and his wife Rebecca Foley, age twenty-eight, from Tempe, Arizona.
“Not bad, Mrs. Foley.” Mark grinned, handing the Rebecca Foley ID to Heather. When he looked in her face, it was like looking at an older woman, something that he found strangely erotic. Well, come to think of it, it wasn’t all that strange or unusual.
“Thanks, Robby,” Heather smiled back at him, opening the passenger side door and sliding into the seat.
Mark climbed in and started the car. They had agreed that he would do the driving, since they needed Heather to do her white-eyed savant thing from time to time, an activity that tired her so that she needed sleep. It struck Mark as a little odd, since he no longer needed or desired to waste time in an unconscious state.
“How about that?” Mark asked, pointing to the Super 8 Motel down the block.
Heather nodded. “Looks good to me.”
Mark pulled to a stop under the overhang. “I’ll check us in.”
Although it took several rings on the bell to wake the sleeping desk clerk, he completed the check-in process with no difficulty. Once they had parked and carried their bags to the room, Heather flipped on the light, then paused in the doorway.
“A king-sized bed?”
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