by John Farris
On the other hand, the Neurological Engineering people actively recruited subjects with useful skills who had no cognitive impairments but were not psychologically adaptable to ordinary communal life. Many of them were recent parolees from civilian and military prisons.
CHAPTER 5
MAY 30 • 5:46 P.M. MDT
Victor Wilding had acquired the Director of Neurological, Marcus Woolwine, from the CIA by giving him vastly more money and latitude in his research and by promising there would be no oversight committee to meddle in the doctor's business. Woolwine reported directly to Wilding, when he felt like it.
Wilding disliked traveling far from his headquarters at the Chasseriau Hotel in Washington, but at least three times a year he found it necessary to visit Plenty Coups. Marcus Woolwine met his plane. They were driven to the facility under armed escort.
Woolwine was a small, tanned, hairless man approaching eighty years of age. He still played a lot of tennis, and in spite of the fact that they were long out of style, he wore mirror sunglasses in and out of doors.
"I've studied all of the videotapes your agents obtained at the crash site of TRANSPAC 1850. The graduation exercise in the stadium. Eden Waring is on many of the tapes, of course. Is it true that she has no siblings?"
"None that we know of."
"Then she may be capable of a remarkable feat. On one of the tapes, where the clarity of image is excellent, there are two Eden Warings. They appear simultaneously, but fifty yards apart."
"Someone in her graduating class might resemble her."
"We did the usual enhancements and measurements. The likenesses are too close to be coincidental."
"Proving what?"
"That Eden Waring can produce her doppelganger. We know that Kelane Cheng could do the same. On a tape of not particularly good quality, shot from a distance, a figure that may have been Cheng's dpg is momentarily visible, walking away from the flaming wreckage of the DC-10."
"May have been."
"One could speculate that in her dying moments Cheng released her doppelganger to make contact with Eden Waring. The implications intrigue me. When can I meet her?"
"We don't know where she is. The Bureau was sitting on Eden's adoptive mother, Betts Waring, at the Innisfall Medical Center. But someone with a lot of clout, Katharine Bellaver probably, had her removed to a private hospital, where she would have been admitted under another name. All of the law enforcement agencies we control in California are checking the admissions records of institutions in their jurisdictions. Also, the body of Riley Waring was transferred yesterday to a funeral home in Riley's hometown. Burial's Tuesday morning. We'll be covering it, but we don't look for Eden to risk showing up."
"Too bad. The girl may be immensely valuable. The godlike interface between our world and all levels of extrasensory perception. Not to mention the possibility that she is key to Robin Sandza's continuing survival."
Victor Wilding quelled the familiar dreadful sensation of hanging by a thread over a void. "We'll find Eden Waring. There's other business."
Woolwine, said after a few moments, "So you're proceeding with Babycakes."
"There's never been any doubt of that."
"But you're no longer willing to entrust the ... the project to a team from your so-called Elite Force."
"No."
Woolwine smiled slightly, a tidy satisfied smile.
"I did warn you, sir. No matter how intensively they are trained, how well motivated with quasi-religious or political fantasies—programmed, if you will—all terrorists, our own or those of another nation, attract attention to themselves. They leave a distinctive spoor in the air. The World Trade Center, the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the Convention Center in Portland—those perpetrators subconsciously gave themselves away. They wanted to be caught and revealed to the world in all of their holy infamy. So they made deliberately careless mistakes that subsequently led to arrests and the publicity they craved. Briar Rose might have ended in the same way. There were some highly accurate sketches of the Briar Rose team in all the media within days following the event."
"Yes, I know."
"This happened because the horrible nature of nuclear destruction was weighing on the subconscious minds of those men before they reached Portland to plant and activate the device. Thus when they needed to be anonymous, just faces in the crowd, they imparted a telemagical warning to the more prescient who happened to notice their presence near ground zero on the day before the blast. You were wise to take my advice and have the team ... professionally neutralized and their ashes scattered to the four winds soon after they completed their assignment. But I can't help wondering, Victor, why—"
"Babycakes will be the last one, let me assure you of that."
"Gracious, I hope so. Of course it's not my business, forgive my little indiscretion. Obviously there are those political matters that can best be resolved by boldly seizing an initiative, however pointless it may seem in the beginning. I'm not political. You have asked me to provide a team of utmost reliability. Expert, efficient, psychologically up to the task of incinerating several thousand of their fellow human beings without a qualm."
"Sounds as if you're describing homicidal maniacs."
"Oh, no. No no no. You might as well have one of those walking around wearing a sign. 'I'm here to nuke Paducah.' Even the best of nature's psychopaths, nicer people you never hope to meet, have their flaws and lethal idiosyncrasies. Randy and Herb, on the other hand, are without a single human flaw."
"Then they aren't actually human."
Woolwine said with his neat inoffensive smile, "Well, that could be a matter for debate."
The Plenty Coups facility had three workout complexes, two for employees, one for executives. Randy and Herb were playing racquetball in the executives' gym.
The two men appeared to be in their middle twenties. They had a sweaty glow of good health. Randy was dark and compact, with the speed and pounce of a hunting cat; Herb was blond and lean, with long arms and deceptive quickness, effortlessly rifling back shots that had seemed out of his reach. Randy had dimpled round scars on his upper torso and on one calf inches below the knee; Herb had tattoos: a sailing ship on one shoulder, the popular ghettoish barbed wire around a bicep. They played with relentless but good-humored competitiveness.
Woolwine and Wilding watched them from the gallery above the courts. "What makes them an ideal team?" Wilding asked the head of Neurological Engineering and Research.
"For one thing, they have complete physiological empathy while carrying out complex tasks in which the performance of one team member is dependent on the performance of the other. Neither Randy nor Herb is burdened with the human emotions that detract from efficient tasking. Love, hate, anger, fear, and, in particular, anxiety: all of these are detrimental to the working memory. By manipulation of various naturally occurring brain chemicals such as the catecholamines and the opioids, we have programmed these emotions out of their limbic circuitry, while heightening the motivators such as self-confidence and enthusiasm. These motivators, in turn, expedite access to that ecstatic state which my esteemed colleague Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi named 'flow.' Athletes call it 'The Zone.' Peak performance effortlessly achieved. In such a state nothing detracts from achieving the goal. Potential distracters are . . . dealt with lethally but dispassionately."
"Bioengineered psychopaths."
"If you insist on the term. But your naturally occurring psychopaths, while they exist without empathy for other human beings, have their perverse fantasies and are, inevitably, inspired by the fear they arouse in others to commit atrocities. Randy and Herb have no capacity for fantasizing. Their infrequent dreams are colorless, mundane. They are, to simplify, the first of their kind: bioengineered solely for games and tasks, which are one and the same to them. They are intelligent, resourceful, and loyal. Competitive, but always controlled."
"Do they have their implants?"
"Oh, yes. They're ready. Randy a
nd Herb will be monitored every step of the way by the Watchbird communications team assigned to Babycakes."
"What about their sex drives?"
"Normal and healthy."
"That could be a problem. They get the urge for nookie; they want to pick up women. Call attention to themselves."
Woolwine nodded. "But rather than tamper with the sexual urge, which could affect their gamesmanship, it seemed a better solution to provide them with comely women agents from the Babycakes support team during their stay in—But of course I don't know the intended target. Would you like to meet Randy and Herb?"
"No."
"When will they be needed for—"
"The device is ready. They can leave tomorrow. I have a few minutes. I want to visit RS while I'm here."
"Certainly."
"Any change for the better?"
"I'm afraid not."
"If you can do all that you've done with Randy and Herb, why can't you at least stabilize Robin Sandza? His body is physically sound. Brain-damaged or not, he should live to be fifty, sixty years old at the least."
Woolwine, who was oblivious of the circumstances behind Wilding's anxiety, said, "There are intangibles in his case. And we have yet to isolate the chemicals, or the mechanism, that supports the will to live in the primitive brain. It may be a matter of 'affective blindness.' Or, if one gives credence to the existence of a 'soul,' which simply may be an etheric 'second self' like the doppelganger—"
Wilding flinched, then shook his head in annoyance.
"Just don't let him slip away from us. His daughter may be the answer. I'll get her here. Whatever it takes."
CHAPTER 6
FLAMING RIVER RANCH • JUNE 1 • 9:30 P.M. PDT
Bertie Nkambe flew Kirk and Wendell in from New York, at her expense, to do the makeover. Kirk was the hairstylist, Wendell the makeup artist she used on most of her photo shoots. They each earned three thousand dollars a day.
"Worth it," Bertie had said cheerfully when she approached Eden with the idea. "Believe me; I can wake up looking like old fish some mornings, with a cover for Elle overdue. I depend on Kirk and Wendell to make me lethal again."
"Why do I need a new me?" Eden said skeptically, quoting Bertie.
"Because the old you is on the cover of People this week. Front page of yesterday's USA Today above the fold. You're hotter than a rock star. Extrasensory perception is the big media buzz."
"Bertie's right," Tom Sherard said. "A different look is a sensible precaution."
"Well—then I could go to the funeral, and not be hassled, right? Betts still isn't strong enough to be there. He's—Riley's the only father I've ever known."
"Let's think about that," Sherard hedged.
"Meaning no?" Eden flared. "Sorry, Tom. I've known you for two days and I understand where you're coming from. My mother died an awful death, but that has nothing to do with who I am. I'm almost twenty-two and nobody runs my life for me."
"I'm only asking that you not make an emotional decision that could put your life at risk."
Eden stared speculatively at Bertie. "So that's you in all the head shots you showed me? Kirk and Wendell, they did those different looks with scissors and paint?"
"They're geniuses. You won't know yourself."
For a few moments the strain she'd been under returned to dull Eden's eyes. Then she smiled. "I don't anyway. So what the hell. We go for it."
Buck Hannafin, newly barbered and well shod, arrived back at the ranch at nine-thirty from the office in Ivanhoe where he'd spent much of his day on the phone or video-conferencing, preparing for committee meetings, his return to Washington imminent. The others, except for Bertie, had gathered in Hannafin's game room, where there were tables for billiards, backgammon, and poker. Tiffany lampshades. Racked sporting guns, some of them more than a hundred years old but well cared for. Trophy heads—grizzly, stag, Dall sheep—lined the knotty paneled walls with their mellow luster. There was whiskey and plenty of it in bold decanters. That air of yesteryear, strong booted men with impressive whiskers establishing dominion, creating empires out of range and timberland. Women seemed an impertinence in a room like this one. The lights were low.
As Bertie had requested, a large cut-crystal bowl had been placed in the center of the pool table, which was covered in rust-red baize. The bowl measured two feet in diameter. In the bottom of the bowl there was a white votive candle.
Buck looked twice at Eden when he came in, the second time with a perplexed smile. Only when she smiled back and he recognized a telltale dimple did he realize whom he was looking at.
"Scrape me off the sidewalk and call me sticky! With your poker face on, don't think I ever would've known you, Eden."
Eden had to laugh. Buck put his arm around her, looked at the crystal bowl on his pool table, looked at the other faces.
"So what are we up to here? Where's Miss Bertie?"
She came in with Portia Darkfeather's Persian cat cradled in her arms. Warhol, in spite of some patches where the vet had shaved away singed hair and treated burns, was looking fit. He was wearing a new rhinestone collar Bertie had bought for him.
"Sorry I'm late. Had to be sure Warhol was up for this."
"What do you have in mind? Some kind of psychic stuff, all of us gathered around the table here? Like a, what do you call it, a see-ance? I don't think I'll be much good at it, because I don't believe—"
"It's just an experiment," Bertie said blithely. "Because Warhol may not be at his best, I thought we could use a boost in the mental energy in the room. Okay, Danny and Chien-Chi, why don't you stand about at the middle of the table on my left, Tom and Buck on my right, and Eden, you'll be opposite me at that end. Can we lower the lights a little more? Good. Don't you just love the drama?" She looked at Danny Cheng. "Not to worry. Nothing spooky is going to jump out at you. We hope. Why don't you take your shades off, Danny? They inhibit the empathy we're aiming for. Tom, light the candle please."
"What do you want me to do?" Eden asked with a game smile.
"You and I will concentrate on Warhol. And Warhol—well, he just may go to sleep, who knows? End of experiment, we'll play poker instead." She touched Warhol lightly on the top of his head with two fingers. Warhol's eyes narrowed peaceably. The candle flame in the crystal bowl was steady. The others watched it without having been told to watch. Above their heads the artificial eyes of bodiless animals acquired an interior glint of flame and menace.
They breathed. They watched. They were silent. Warhol's eyes widened. In the silence his purring had a motorized monotony, a sound of journey. Eyes widening, narrowing. Danny Cheng's weak eyes watered, and he rubbed them. Chien-Chi's face was a mask of noble serenity. Tom Sherard felt a certain weightlessness, a sense of transport. He saw through the candle flame to other fires, lonely, in places where he had been to hunt as a boy and would never return to. Buck Hannafin's stomach growled. His eyelids were heavy, as if he had gone to sleep on his feet.
Looking at the placid cat, Eden felt a mild wind in her face and smelled prairie on the wind, a scent of sage and sun-warmed grassland. The small flame rose between her and Warhol, growing in the shape of a pillar, but a twister of a pillar filling her conscious mind like a firestorm. Fascinated, Eden lost awareness of everyone around her. The cunning blue eyes of the Persian cat were like a magnetic center of the whirling, unearthly beautiful pillar. She felt as if she could fall headlong into the melding pupils of those attractive eyes, fall unscathed through surrounding fire, fall like a hawk with folded wings, wind rushing in a torrent around her, into bottomless blue. Her body was jolted. Her lungs emptied, a long sigh ending in plummeting weightless tranquility, an abiding sense of peace. Then there was another slight jolt. Eden looked up, startled, as if she had been given a poke in the midst of forty winks.
Hot where she now is. Very hot. The racy wind tugging at her newly-styled moussed hair. A scent of horses on the wind. She looks out from a modest hilltop at limitless prairie, sun-crisped ra
zory graze. No roads up here, to this place. Some small dusted-over trees, not enough of them to be called a grove. Hot fly-specked horses whipping their tails across twitching flanks in scarce shade. In the distance, old mountains, creased and pale as faded denim, with a single heavenly dark cloud above.
Stones like a dry riverbed surround the burial plot, gleam of mica in newly shoveled earth. The open grave, sun striking deeply into the ground where the new, varnished coffin rests, hardware glinting, too hot to touch. There is no shade for this funeral. The shovel standing up with a westerner's tattered black hat hanging jaunty from the handle, a mock-mourner.
Eden hears someone singing: a high-pitched, staccato Indian death chant.
Portia Darkfeather is there, half hidden behind one of the horses, her stallion Dark Valiant. Having taken off her blouse, she is wringing out her sweat in streams as she continues her mourning song.
She drapes the wrung-out blouse across the saddle, reaches up to unpin her hair, letting it down like a dark river falls. The wind whips strands here and there, across her face. Hawklike nose, heavy brows, reddish-bronze skin tone, unmistakably the face of a Plains Indian woman. Her lonely lament ends abruptly. Eden has claimed her attention.
Darkfeather comes out from behind Dark Valiant, who gives her a nudge with his nose. Long-waisted, nude down to the silver-and-tooled-leather belt of her leggy Wranglers, she walks straight to Eden, giving her head a couple of flourishing aftershakes to facilitate the drying of that raven's wing of shimmering hair. Her gaze dense with the wild life, eyes as white as diamonds. She smiles.
"Hello. I'm Portia: I wasn't expecting anyone else. Sorry, but I don't have another shirt to put on."