“You risk war,” Gamay said. “Enough to engulf the whole world, you included.”
“More likely, just a bidding war.”
He relished the moment. In little over twenty-four hours he’d crushed his enemies, both internal and external. He’d proven his brilliance and now he would reap the rewards. Money would pour in from China and new partners he’d take on in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Counteroffers from India and other lands would follow and the bidding would rise.
“They’ll still come after you and your vile creation,” Paul said.
“Of course they will,” Jinn replied. “But they will never find me, and they will prove to be no more capable of destroying what I have built than they are of eradicating the world’s insects or bacteria. So they kill millions of the horde. The trillions that remain will continue to reproduce. It will be a simple matter for the microbots to take the remnants of their dead and use the same materials to build new ones. That’s what they do. That’s what Marchetti designed them to do.”
Marchetti looked away, shaking his head in anguished regret.
“And there will be consequences if anyone challenges me,” Jinn added. “The horde will spread to the far corners of the world. The seven seas will soon be under my control. If any nation is foolish enough to defy me or simply refuses to pay the tribute I will demand, they will suffer. Their fishing grounds will be destroyed, their food sources consumed before their very eyes, their ports will be overrun and blockaded, their ships attacked in transit.”
“They’ll come after you in person,” snapped Paul. “You’re the snake, all they have to do is cut off your head.”
“They will be well advised to leave the snake alone,” Jinn insisted. “For I have already programmed a doomsday code into the horde. Should I die or be forced to activate it for other reasons, the horde will go from a weapon wielded with precision to a scourge of unimaginable proportions, consuming and growing and attacking everything in its path. Like the locusts of the desert, it will leave nothing but death behind it.”
The two Americans looked at each other. If Jinn measured the look right, it was one of defeat. The silence that followed confirmed this for him.
He wiped his brow. He was beginning to sweat as the air temperature around the island began to rise with all the reflected energy. A breeze began to blow across the deck, the first one in days, but it wasn’t cool and refreshing. It was a hot wind caused by the differential heating. It marked the beginning of the storm.
CHAPTER 41
AFTER SEVERAL HOURS OF FLOATING, LUCK HAD SHOWN Kurt nothing but contempt.
The sun beat down on them, blocked only by the makeshift tarp of the parachutes. The rear air chamber was so far down now that it made little sense trying to keep it from deflating further. The boat was tilted over, awash in that right rear corner like a car with a flat tire. And despite Ishmael’s valiant effort, the right front cylinder was looking weaker all the time.
Kurt gazed out through a small gash in the parachute the way a child might look through holes cut in the bedsheet of a ghost’s costume.
“Anything?” Leilani asked.
“No,” he said. The word came out hoarsely. Despite the water he’d guzzled on the airplane, his throat was getting dry once again.
“Maybe we should start the engine,” Leilani said. “We must not be in the shipping lanes.”
Kurt knew for certain that they weren’t. Few ships passed across the dead center of the Indian Ocean. His hope had been to get close enough to Africa to reach a north-south route from the Red Sea or a tanker route from the Gulf, plowed by ships too big to pass through the Suez and making their way for the Horn of Africa.
They’d fallen well short of those goals. By at least a hundred miles.
“We can’t get there on the gas we have left.”
“But we can’t just stay here,” she said.
“We have one gallon of fuel,” he said. “We’re not wasting it and then wishing we had it.”
Leilani stared at him, her eyes filled with fear. She was trembling. “I don’t want to die.”
“Neither do I,” Kurt said. “Neither does Ishmael. Right, Ishmael?”
“Right,” Ishmael said. “Not ready for that. Not ready to die, big-time.”
“And we’re not going to die,” Kurt said. “Just stay calm.”
She nodded, still near the aft section, trying to keep the cylinder from completely deflating.
“Might as well move up front,” he said. “That one’s had it.”
Leilani let go of the rubber fabric and moved to the front of the boat on the port side. With her weight up front, the rear corner rose a fraction and the boat wallowed a bit less.
Kurt looked out from under the makeshift tent again. From the position of the sun he guessed it was three o’clock or so. He was waiting for nightfall. Once the stars came out, he could determine more exactly where they were and they could make their plans accordingly.
Kurt let his gaze fall to the horizon and watched as a strange effect took hold. It was something like the shimmer of a mirage on an open road in the desert. He blinked twice as if his eyes were deceiving him, but the effect only intensified.
Without a sound the sea began to shimmer. It wasn’t the dappled sun on the water that every mariner and amateur painter knows so well but an almost effervescent appearance.
It was brightest to the west, in line with the afternoon sun, but he could see the same thing looking to the east, north and south as well.
“Kurt!” Leilani shouted.
He looked back under the tarp.
“You’re sparkling.”
Kurt would have looked at himself, but he was too entranced by what he saw on her. She looked as if she’d been spritzed with stardust.
Ishmael wore a similar coating, but Leilani was covered the worst. It was as if they’d been coated with a fine spray of reflective highway paint.
“What is it?” she asked.
Kurt looked at his palms, rubbing his fingers across it. The reflective dust spread like wet powder, some of it coming off. The glittering effect was plainly visible, but no matter how hard he squinted the cause was impossible to see. Nor could he feel it, even when trying to rub it between his fingers. All of which meant one thing.
“Jinn’s microbots,” he said.
He explained what they were and pointed out how the sea was filled with them. Looking straight down, he saw that the concentration was like a spoonful of sugar thrown onto a black dinner plate. He felt the heat reflecting off it. He explained that some of the little machines had been found on the catamaran.
“Are they harmful to us?” Leilani asked.
“I don’t think so,” Kurt said. He left out the part about them consuming organic matter. Fortunately, the ones on their skin didn’t appear to be in eating mode like the ones in Marchetti’s lab. “All the same, I wouldn’t mind stumbling across a boat with a good shower right about now.”
Leilani tried to smile.
Kurt had no way of knowing that they were near the edge of Jinn’s horde and that the concentration he was seeing and the reflective effect they were witnessing was nothing compared to what Paul, Gamay and Marchetti had seen from the balcony of Aqua-Terra’s control room. Still, he found it hard to take his eyes off the sparkling sea.
As he stared, a breeze tugged at his sleeve and ruffled the parachute tarp. Without moving, Kurt looked toward the bow and watched as the tarp rose up, settled softly and then rose again.
The breeze grew stronger, and Kurt had to grab the lines to keep the big chute from billowing out. He turned to Leilani. “Tie this chute to those handles on the right and get the other one out.”
Leilani was already moving, not even questioning him. The breeze was blowing in from behind them and slightly north. It was a hot wind like the Santa Anas of California or the siroccos of the Sahara. It felt like a hair dryer on his back, but Kurt didn’t care.
He and Leilani worked rapidly. The b
oat was equipped with a half dozen separate handholds and a pair of cleat handles up front. In a minute, the lines of both parachutes were tied off to these eight points and were snapping taut as the chutes billowed out in front of the boat.
They filled like sails, and the boat began to move, pulled along by the two parachutes as if they were a pair of magical horses. As the chutes caught more and more wind, the boat picked up some speed. The deflated parts of the boat kept it from moving as fast as it had with the outboard running, but at least it was going.
Kurt had no idea where a wind in these doldrums had appeared from, but he didn’t care. They were moving again and moving was better than sitting any day.
Gusts blew in, the lines snapped and strained, yanking the boat forward.
“Hang on!” Kurt shouted for at least the third or fourth time that day. “I have a feeling this is going to be a wild ride.”
CHAPTER 42
AQUA-TERRA’S BRIG SAT ON THE LOWEST LEVEL OF THE island that was above the waterline. Now back in their luxury cell, Paul, Gamay and Marchetti were similarly at their absolute lowest. For exactly fifty-three minutes Jinn had kept them cuffed to the rail out in the blazing solar reflection, the swirling gusts and the heat.
Paul Trout had never seen the inside of a tanning booth in his life, but it felt like the observation deck had been turned into just that, with heat and blinding light added for good measure.
It had been a surreal experience as reflections danced across Aqua-Terra in a dizzying, almost hypnotic display. Because the tiny mirrors moved independently on the water, the light they reflected also moved independently, making it impossible to really study the effect. Paul could only get a sense of it, like being in a swirling fog and yet knowing that it was made up of billions of independent molecules of water vapor as opposed to being a single thing.
And as hard as it was to look at the decks and structures around them, it was impossible to look at the ocean for any length of time. To protect his eyes, Paul had kept them shut tight for most of the fifty-three minutes. As a result, his main impression of the ocean’s surface was a glittering mass like an endless sea of diamonds. Low ripples ran through it, brought on by minor swells that hadn’t been present an hour before. Wind currents stirred up by the reflected heat swept across the shimmering surface, making it appear almost like a living thing. It was breathing, moving, waiting. In a way, it was as beautiful as it was terrifying.
Eventually the time expired and Jinn had given the order, turning the sea of diamonds gray once again. The bots quickly submerged and the ocean looked like any other throughout the world.
“I feel like I fell asleep on the beach,” Paul said, amazed at how taut and red his skin was.
Across from him, Marchetti paced and occasionally checked the view through the large windows while Gamay sat beside him and attempted to apply some sort of first-aid balm to his split lip and bloody tongue.
“At least we know how they’ve been able to tamper with the water temperature,” Marchetti said.
“Please hold still,” Gamay asked.
She held a swab and some antibacterial ointment from a first-aid kit at the ready, but each time she’d moved in Paul started to speak again.
“Fat lot of good it’ll do us,” he said.
“Paul.”
“I am holding still.”
“Not the part I’m trying to fix.”
Paul nodded and held his mouth open like a patient at the dentist.
Marchetti stopped his pacing. “The question is, what will happen now that they’ve put their plan into overdrive?”
Paul hesitated, waiting as long as he could. “I can tell you exactly what’s going to happen,” he said finally.
Gamay exhaled sharply and pulled back.
“They’re creating a massive column of cold water, with temperatures more at home in the North Atlantic than here in the middle of a tropical sea. Temperature gradients like that are known to intensify or even create storms and cyclones. Not just in the air but under the surface.”
“And once they stop radiating the heat back into the air, the cold water will start absorbing heat from the air above it again,” Marchetti said, “reversing the equation.”
“If this plan continues,” Paul added, “the ambient air temperature will drop rapidly, but only above the one area they’ve affected. The rest of the ocean will still be hot and humid. Have you ever seen what happens when hot and humid air combines with cold?”
“Storms,” Marchetti said.
Paul nodded. “I was in Oklahoma several years back when a cold front blew through after three days of humidity. They had a hundred tornadoes touch down over a three-day period. I’m guessing out here we’ll see one big storm: a tropical depression or a cyclone. We might see a hurricane form all around us.”
Gamay had given up trying to dab Paul’s lip. “But this is the dead zone,” she said. “The storms don’t usually form here. They form to the north and east, and they track toward India. That’s where the monsoons come from.”
Paul considering the implications. “We’re almost on the equator. A storm forming here will track west and get swept up toward Somalia, Ethiopia and Egypt,” he guessed.
“That’s already happening,” Marchetti said. “I read something about record rains in the Sudanese highlands and southern Egypt. The article said Lake Nasser had risen to a level not seen in thirty years.”
Paul remembered hearing something similar. “And that’s probably just the beginning.”
Marchetti was pacing, rubbing his chin with one hand and looking very shaky. “What happens once the air is destabilized into a storm?”
Paul looked off toward the windows, facing southwest. He was recalling lectures on storm generation and the factors that built them. “Hurricanes in the Gulf intensify over hot spots. Jinn’s storms will travel over nothing but that. They’ll steal the heat, moisture and the energy that usually goes into the monsoon. They’ll carry it off like thieves.”
“Leaving India and Southeast Asia unusually dry at this time of year,” Gamay said. “This madman has done what people have sought to do for all eternity: he’s taken control of the weather, turning it away from its normal pattern.”
Marchetti sat down awkwardly. He all but collapsed on the edge of the seat. “And he’s used my design to do it,” he said.
He looked over at them. The billionaire with overflowing confidence was gone, as was the proud designer with the bold ideas and even the rational engineer. All the different personas seemed to vanish before their eyes, leaving only a broken man behind.
“All those people,” he whispered. “A billion people waiting for a monsoon that’s never going to come. I’ll be the worst mass murderer in history.”
Gamay looked as if she were about to jump in and say something to buck Marchetti up. This was the moment when she usually did, but she couldn’t seem to find the words.
Paul gave it a try. “Your legacy isn’t written yet. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite and ran a company that built weapons and armaments, but nobody remembers him for that. And you still have a chance to change the direction of things.”
“But we’re alone,” Marchetti said. “Your friends are gone. No one even knows what’s happening out here.”
Paul looked at Gamay because he shared her grief for their friends and because he loved her and wanted her to feel something more than despair. He squeezed her hands and looked into her eyes. “I know all that,” he said to Marchetti. “But we’ll find a way. First we have to get out of here.”
Gamay smiled a bit. It was a hopeful look, not quite enough to replace all the doubt and pain, but it was a start.
“Any inkling as to how?” Marchetti asked.
Paul looked around. “I do have one idea,” he said. “I’m just not sure you’re going to like it much.”
“At this point,” Marchetti said, “we don’t have much of a choice.”
CHAPTER 43
THE SURPRISE WIND
THAT HAD PULLED KURT, LEILANI AND Ishmael along gusted for the better part of two hours. At times it threatened to lift the boat out of the water. Halfway through the ride, the strange reflective effect vanished as quickly as it had come, both from the water around them and from their bodies.
“Do you think they’re gone?” Leilani had asked.
“Doubt it,” Kurt said. “Whatever made them shine seems to have passed, but I’m guessing they’re still on us and in the sea.”
The wind began to taper over the next hour. Wherever it came from, it blew itself out an hour before dusk. The starboard side of the boat sagged further and the three of them had no choice but to hug the port bolsters to keep the boat from tipping. As it was, every little wave that came up washed over the slanted deck.
Kurt reeled the chutes in, wrung them out and stored them. He was almost done when a shout from Ishmael startled him.
“Land!” Ishmael shouted. “Land ahead!”
Kurt looked up. Low on the horizon was a greenish blur. In the failing light it could have been a cloud catching some weird reflection.
Kurt pulled the binoculars out, wiped the lenses and held them to his eyes.
“Please let it be land,” Leilani said, clasping her hands together. “Please.”
Kurt could see green and the tops of trees. “It’s land all right,” he said, slapping Ishmael on the shoulder. “It’s land, big-time.”
He put the binoculars away and moved to the tail end of the boat. He switched the fuel line to reserve and cranked up the outboard. It sputtered to life, and Kurt twisted the throttle.
With the prop going again, the half-deflated boat moved in a crablike fashion that soon had Kurt soaked to the bone in the surprisingly cold water.
After twenty minutes, he could see a central peak, maybe fifty feet high and covered in vegetation. Flat land ran out on both sides of it. He could see waves breaking on a reef that surrounded the island.
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