Jeffry suddenly convulsed, and tore the leads away from his forehead. "God damn That is a serious trip. But it's all coming too fast."
Aubry looked at the band. "Let me." He placed it around his forehead, and Jeffry helped him place the leads in position. "Now just relax, Aubry. You'll get images, and sensations. It will adjust to your mental predicates., OK?"
Aubry slumped down on the floor, and had barely relaxed when a flood of images flowed into his mind. Places and people were pictures, and he was suddenly plunging through a twisting world of facts and feelings, and Aubry was overwhelmed, exulted with the flood of knowledge.
The facts and numbers and faces and images were like an infinitely branching network of tunnels, of waterways, and he controlled them with his mind, sweeping down at first one, and then the other, and another, exhilarated, drunken with information.
Why, why had he ever been afraid? Why had he held so strongly to his body, punished and stunted the growth of his mind?
All of the names and faces of the equations flared in his mind, and he chased them down all at the same time, in a bizarre variant of his ability to move his body in two directions at the same time. He laughed and laughed, names for all of the things that he had only had feelings for racing into his mind, and, and—
There was a flash of light, and Aubry screamed, the brightness searing away all images, all feelings, and leaving only pure, pure pain—
"Aubry?"
The voice was as distant as the stars.
Slowly Aubry rose from a world of light, readmitted darkness to his world, allowed images to form again.
Bloodeagle's face, lean, scarred, still bandaged, was above him.
Aubry reached out to him, and grabbed Bloodeagle roughly around the neck, crushed him to him. "Miles. Miles. God damn, man. I can't tell you what happened. What I saw."
Bloodeagle disengaged himself, peering into Aubry's eyes, somewhat embarrassed. "Aubry. We thought we'd lost you."
"No. No way. What happened?"
"They dumped the computer core. You were hooked into it with that damned learning device. Jeffry says it should have burned your goddamned brain out."
He shook his head. "No. But I saw some things, Miles. Learned some things . . ." He shook his head. "I'll tell you later." Aubry shakily pushed himself to his feet. "What's happened here?"
One of the Gorgons returned to the room, dragging two prisoners. "It was a small group, responding to what they thought was a medical distress signal from McMartin." He threw one of them to the ground. "Do you know this?"
Aubry stared into the face of Marcel Killinger, and he grinned. "Marcel. Well well. Long time no see. He belongs to McMartin."
"Then he's in on it too."
"Has to be."
Aubry slammed Killinger into the wall, felt his arms and elbow joints. "Cyborg. Left arm isn't real. Give me a climbing spike."
Bloodeagle handed it to Aubry. Aubry weighed it carefully in his hand, then slammed it down, into, and through the synthetic hand.
Pain sensors flared, and Killinger's body heaved with agony, white fluid oozing from the wound. "Hello, Marcel," Aubry said conversationally. "Understand you've been looking for me."
He took a second spike, and felt Killinger's legs, found the one he wanted, and rammed the spike down, pinning it to the ground. Killinger's body arched, and he screamed in a high, thin voice.
"You want to kill DeLacourte. Why?" Killinger spat at them.
"You don't understand. Maybe we're not interested in stopping you. Maybe we're on your side."
Killinger twisted, and writhed, right hand and left foot nailed to the ground.
"Well, we're out of artificial limbs now. I suppose we could start on the real ones."
"No," he said frantically. "I . . . DeLacourte was a joke. He was a powerful man who we could manipulate."
"How?"
"He's addicted to the rejuvenation process."
"Then how did you decide to kill him? Why?"
"He has a chance," Killinger said, his voice growing softer, as if with exhaustion. "He might make it to the White House." His eyes, mad with pain now, raced from one of them to the others, as if thinking at Mach speed. "He would have destroyed us. We have to destroy him first.'
Bloodeagle slapped Killinger with brutal strength and speed. "Who is your contact in Gorgon?"
Aubry twisted the climbing spike. Killinger screamed his body arching.
Jeffry turned and vomited.
"All right! All right! It's Ibumi! He's . . . he's from Cameroon. We set him up with a phony identity, got him into Gorgon, helped him control Quint with Cyloxibin ar other mood drugs."
"Shit," Aubry said in disgust. "I should have known. This bastard worked for Wu. He'd know about that, and every other way to crack someone's head open."
Jeffry looked from one of them to the other. "Wei could Wu—"
Killinger exploded from the floor, the pins ripping from his hands. The point of his elbow smashed into Bloodeagle forehead. A quarter second later he had his hands on the AT-14, and death was in the computer room.
Bloodeagle and Aubry had moved almost instantly. Aubi hit Jeffry at the waist, and knocked him behind the cage ; the bullets tore through the paneling and into the wall behind. One of the Gorgons was cut in half by the hail of bullet He screamed once, briefly, the sound mingled with an ugly burst of sound from the AT-14. Then there was silence.
Then another burst of sound as the computers were torn to pieces.
"To hell with you. To hell with all of you—"
Bloodeagle twisted the nose of a grenade and performed a perfect bankshot as Aubry screamed, "No—!"
It bounced off the wall, around the corner, and landed Killinger's lap. Killinger had enough time to scream once before the explosion tore him apart.
Aubry rose, and forced himself to examine the room, wasn't pleasant. In an enclosed area, a fragmentation gr nade does ugly things to a human body.
Jeffry examined the bank of shattered electronics.
"We're not going to get any more information here."
They traveled the rest of the corridor, carrying Jeffry. They came to a bank of elevators. Keeping a careful watch, Bloodeagle triggered the elevator button, frowned when nothing happened. He ripped open the box and checked the data lines, and toyed with them for a few moments. The elevator began to hum.
"Come on." They piled in, and Aubry suddenly felt terribly uncomfortable.
There was something wrong here. . . .
The lift sank, and sank, and went down two levels. Then the gate opened again.
"Cryogenic storage." The hall was terribly silent, the vibration of the machines barely noticeable beneath their feet. Plastic cases surrounded them. Everywhere they looked were the storage facility for thousands and thousands of frozen fetuses.
"Can you get any information out of these?"
Jeffry shook his head. "The central processor is dead. These substations won't function without it . . ." He frowned. "Unless they have separate volatile memories. If there's a unit that has been used and not shut off, there might still be something in Vol that we could tap." They carried him down the line, peering into one after another. Most of the terminals were off, but at the far end, near a bank of tables, one was still on.
"Huh." Jeffry slipped the induction band around his forehead, and a tiny holographic data simulacrum blossomed in the air. He sank back into his trance, and began to manipulate the color and depth fields. "There's been work in here. I have the listings, but I can't tell you who, or why. I'm sorry."
He stripped the helmet off.
Aubry turned to Bloodeagle. "Leave two men with McMartin. And let's get out of here."
Chapter Thirty-One
Independence Day
2:27 p.m. Tuesday, July 4
Marina's smile was pure artifice, something that she kept in place for fear that the alternative might be a kind of leering, synthetic grimace.
The Los Angeles Convention
Center was packed, with the delegates and the nominees, the interested electorate and their assistants. And the press, oh yes, the press.
Because this was the time, this was the place. Within hours, a man would be nominated for the highest office in the land.
And somewhere in the crowd was a three-year-old assassin. Where—there? There was a child, a young child with a fresh face, who seemed blissfully unaware of its surroundings. Could that child . . . ? But it was over weight, plump as a piglet, her mother used to say. All of Project Medusa's spawn were incredibly fit.
So her eyes kept moving, and as she watched the events and the speeches, the pomp and ceremony, she began to feel cold, colder than she ever had in her life.
There was a tiny transceiver built into her recorder, and at a signal from her button, she would be capable of broadcasting her discovery to anyone listening. Aubry Knight and the Scavengers would be listening.
But so far there was nothing to be said. Nothing to be seen, and her fear expanded within her like a living thing.
She pushed her way through the crowd, listened to a thousand snatches of conversation. Her heart thundered in her chest, the sound growing louder and louder, as if she had no control over her own emotions, her own viscera.
Fiercely, she narrowed her concentration and brought her self back to the moment. Where? Where was it ... ?
The limousine cruised up the La Cienega Compway, switching onto the Presidential Network, a constantly monitored electronic/optical hotline. There were three police motorcycles accompanying the black car, and Jack Hands let his hands slide lightly over the wheel.
He turned to the federal agent in the front seat next to him, and smiled.
"I'm glad that you guys are here—I don't trust this city. Too many whackos."
The Secret Service man smiled bleakly. "Nothing to worry about." He turned his shoulder to Hands, and spoke rapidly into a hand-held microphone. "Station One?"
"Secure."
"Station Two?"
"Secure. ETA, Jack?"
"On sched, Winston. Station Three . . . ?"
In the back seat, Sterling DeLacourte sat with his wife and son. He held their hands with intensity, and smiled.
Gretchen looked at him somewhat apprehensively. "Are you all right, darling? You seem a bit peaked."
"No. This is just a moment that I have waited for for more years than I can remember."
"And the President has agreed to meet you on the platform?"
"To receive my blessing."
She moved in closer to him. "Does it hurt?"
"This is his last term. I can consolidate power today that will snowball for the next four years. The long view, Gretchen." He sighed, and rested one large hand on her leg. When he spoke again, his voice was husky with emotion. "They said that I haven't suffered enough."
"What?"
He didn't answer her. "The long view. Always take the long view."
She leaned her head against his shoulder, and looked up at him, eyes wide.
"There's something wrong," she said at last. "You're hiding something from me. I know you. I've been married to you for twenty years. I know."
"Gretchen . . ." he began, and she shushed him.
"I also know that you're not going to tell me. I just want to look at you. Is it the death threats? Have you received more of them?"
DeLacourte stared straight ahead, his face immobile. Suddenly he hugged Conley to him, and his voice was husky. "I love you. Both of you, and I swear it. If anything happens . . . please, please try to understand. Sometimes a man makes the choices that he has to, rather than the ones he wants."
Conley hugged his father back, and then pulled back into the corner of the limo, watching and thinking and feeling, suddenly, unaccountably, frightened.
At Station Two, Winston Kyle Terrace snapped his communication into its folding position, and replaced it in the pocket of his dark blue blazer.
"Dull day," he said to his partner, a big New Mexican named Shelly Olajade. Nobody called Shelly "Shelly." It was "Mr. Olajade," or "Rocky," with "Rocky" recommended by nine out of ten orthodontists.
They were situated in the basement of the convention center, near a complex of freight elevators and ventilation ducts. Rocky sat quietly, his considerable bulk balanced on an improbably tiny folding chair. His police and executive band radio earphone was snugly in place, and his eyes scanned the flatscreen monitor giving them their view of the convention floor.
Winston paced. "Helluva duty we drew, Rocky. 'Important but Non-Critical.' "
Rocky's reply represented, Winston mused, the very height of his temporary partner's ratiocinative capacities. "LAPD ain't Secret Service." He picked something green from between his teeth with a fingernail. "Ya want glamour? Join the Feds."
Roughly translated this meant that all access to this area was sealed, and that the elevators themselves were rendered non-operational for the remainder of the day. There were no direct routes from here onto the convention floor. Metal detectors and magnetic field sensors were in place all over the building.
It was likely to be a dull day. . . .
Winston whipped his head around at the sound of approaching footsteps, and his hand immediately went inside his jacket.
"Chill, Winston." Rocky's voice snapped in command.
He narrowed his eyes in shocked surprise.
It was two children, a young boy and a young girl. Perhaps eight years old, and holding hands. Their faces were slender heart shapes, cheeks red with exertion, eyes wide with fear.
"Mister?" the girl said. Her voice was high and sweet. "Do you know how we can get out of here?"
Rocky pulled his bulk out of the chair a section at a time.
"How the . . . how did ya get here, kid?"
The boy spoke up. His speech had a kind of military school precision that mixed with the preadolescent softness made Winston smile. He must have sounded a hell of a lot like that, himself. "We were looking for the restroom, sir. I guess we got lost. There was a stairway, and a sort of garbage door thing. I crawled through and opened it from the other side. I thought we could get back to the convention."
"Shit," Rocky said, his shoulders relaxing. "Ain't that just like—"
The kids had walked closer, and one of them was crying, tiny jewellike teardrops glistening on a pink cheek. The little girl held out her hand to Rocky. With a craggy, fatherly smile, Rocky extended his own in return.
It was a minor relay, Gomez mused, but today was important. Even a secondary communications switchbox might be valuable. If the primaries failed, the backups had to switch online instantly, or the country would miss its minimum daily requirement of prime political bullshit. Thus deprived, the symptoms of feces deficiency would set in immediately: clear heads, clear eyes, and increased difficulty swallowing new tax increases.
Long before the patient became critical, Dr. Gomez was on the job. He wandered down the narrow corridors back to the core of the communications complex, turning sideways sometimes—his girth had expanded regrettably in the past eight years, although Maria did not seem to mind at all. In fact, he wondered if his ever more prominent profile actually comforted her. Her own outline had become more sundial than hourglass with each successive child.
Gomez stopped, eyes widening at the sight before him. The panels had been dismantled, and a device of some kind, a piece of electronic apparatus, added to the transformer. His hand went for the beeper in his pocket, but froze when he caught a glimpse of movement behind him.
A child. A slender, beautiful, smiling boy, his skin so smooth and beautiful that in the dim light it seemed translucent.
"Mister," the boy said, his voice soft, as soft as a baby's kiss. "Can you help me?"
"Station Three. Secure?"
There was a pause as tiny fingers wrested a transceiver from hands which strove, futilely, to fulfill duty even after death.
"Station Three. Do you copy?"
The slender, childish throat trembled, vocal
cords making the adjustments necessary to produce the deeper, fuller sound of an adult male.
"We copy. What is your ETA?"
"On sched. Over."
"Over."
The conduits above the ceiling were impossibly small, inaccessible to anything much larger than a big rat. Leslie slowed his breathing to a crawl—the air was very bad here. He was surviving on bare spoonfuls of air. But his
body was so firmly under his control that he barely noticed the discomfort.
Keeping his mind remote, he began the process of dislocating his joints. The pain was excruciating, had always been, but it was an invaluable skill when getting into places too small for anything human.
The ancient ninjas of Japan had perfected this art. From childhood they practiced manipulating their joints, stretching ligaments systematically, scientifically, until arms and legs could move from shoulder and hip joints, and the human body became phenomenally malleable.
The trick was keeping your mind away from your body when you did it. And Leslie was far away, lost in a puzzle that clouded his mind, and that was dangerous.
A puzzle. Who were Mother and Father? What difference does/did it make? And had he been lied to? If Quint had lied . . . Then what else might have been lies? How many other lies had been included in his training? What other lies . . . In the darkness, Leslie crawled toward his goal. Just ahead now. A mental map guided him as he squeezed through the last of the obstructions. His breathing changed, and over the next five minutes he performed the quasi-yogic movements that slipped his bones back into their proper places. There was no way to distract his mind during this part of it, and the pain was horrendous.
Clamp the mind down, with the skill that had never ; failed him. He knew. He had been taught. Still, tears ran down his cheeks, and he trembled. There was only the job. Only the task.
He should be able to seal away any doubt, any fears, any concerns other than the mission at hand.
But he couldn't. He couldn't forget Aubry Knight, the man who was his father. Who had not abandoned him. Had not deserted him. Had come for him, and refused to leave him even when his own life was at stake.
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