Pushing Gordon away with a contemptuous gesture that indicated his status with Gregory West had deteriorated, Bruno shifted his attention to Blaise and back to Sergio before he made a twirling motion. Blaise felt the gun in the back of his belt and he knew without a doubt that Bruno would have him one way or another before he could get halfway to the pistol.
Moving slowly, he turned his back. Helen tried to press against him and he held her away with his hands. He felt his jacket lifted in back, the exultant intake of breath just as the gun was pulled from his belt.
“Don’t move, Cousin.”
Blaise turned and Sergio nodded toward the car. Sergio leaned toward Bruno, his arm companionably on Bruno’s meaty shoulder with the stubby little Bufalo pressed into Bruno’s ear.
Gordon was walking. Blaise grabbed the pistols in Bruno’s hands. They wouldn’t budge. Little eyes glared as Sergio said softly, “Bruno!”
Bruno’s hands opened slightly. Blaise pried the guns loose by the barrels. Bruno’s hands felt like rocks. They headed for the car. Two men trotted out of a yard next door. The street seemed a mile wide. Gordon stood by the car with both street doors open. Blaise slid past the wheel, Gordon following smoothly, slamming the door. Helen was already in back holding the armrest so tightly her hands were white. She looked out the open back door at Sergio.
“Damn!”
Blaise jerked his eyes around. It was not in Gordon’s nature to swear.
“No key!” Gordon stared at the dashboard on the driver’s side and the computer keypad and screen.
“It takes a code,” Blaise said.
Gordon stared helplessly.
Sergio sprang away from Bruno, running bent over. Two men were running, too, and Bruno, ponderously irresistible, was on Sergio’s heels so close the others couldn’t shoot.
Sergio dove head first into the car, slamming a door already set to lock. Lying on the back of the front seat, he reached past Gordon and punched in the car’s access code. The car rocked crazily as Bruno crashed into the side and tried to tear the door handle off.
Gordon revved the engine to a shrill whine and jerked into drive. Smoke squirted from tires and then acceleration pushed Blaise back. Bruno’s face was bright in the rear window, outlined by the sun for one frenetic moment, the plaster over his jaw masking emotions but not extinguishing them. Over the sights of Sergio’s Magnum Blaise watched Bruno’s black eyes recede.
“Here.” He handed the gun to Sergio.
Staring out the back window, Sergio stuck it in his holster. “You should have shot him.” His brown eyes met Blaise’s.
“You had a chance.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Neither could I.” Blaise looked at Helen. “Are you okay?” I, She laced her fingers in his. “Yes.”
Blaise tried to smile reassuringly. Bruno was a dot in the street behind them getting into another car that already had two men in the front seat. “You told him about the forty-five?”
“Of course.” Sergio smiled. “I had to prove I was telling the truth.”
“And if he’d gotten the gun without dropping his guard?”
“Che sera . . . Anyway, he didn’t.”
The car lurched as Gordon turned a corner a little tighter than the vehicle was designed to operate. Blaise banged his head against the door. “Go to Helen’s.” He directed Gordon to wind through streets that would confuse Bruno and lose him for a while, if not permanently. “We’ve got a phone call to make.”
Gordon’s face didn’t move as he nursed the heavy limo through intersection speed dips.
The street in front of Helen’s home was deserted. Gordon remembered the house from the last time they switched cars and pulled up in front. Sergio got in the driver’s seat.
“Where are you going?” Blaise waved the others toward the house but stopped himself.
“I have to dump the car.” Sergio rubbed his hand over the paint like it was a furry animal. “We can’t keep it.”
“Won’t Bruno stop when the heat starts on West?” Blaise realized he had forgotten something, that he had been expecting logic to prevail in a world of human feelings.
“I’ve shamed him. He’s no longer interested in the wishes of Mr. West. Capicia?”
“I understand.” Blaise studied Sergio and the car for a moment. “Leave it. Go in the house and take the bolts off the garage door and have the Buick idling.”
Sergio stared at Blaise, trying to read his thoughts, then slowly nodded. “Tu sei il duce, Doc. You’re the leader.”
“I’ll remember that.” Blaise slid behind the Chrysler’s wheel. He sat staring at the dashboard and the computer keyboard as he visualized the manual that came with the car and reviewed the programming instructions.
Helen met him at the door of the house. “What do you have Gordon and Sergio doing in the garage? Sergio’s singing the Volga boatman’s song in Russian and Gordon got grease on his suit.” She tried to smile. Blaise kissed her. He dialed the federal communicable diseases center in Atlanta, using a staff number that Alfie had provided.
“Dr. Renfeld, please,” Blaise said to the primly efficient voice on the phone. When the secretary replied that Dr. Renfeld was busy, Blaise said, “He’ll speak to Dr. Cunningham.”
Max Renfeld came on fast. Blaise explained some details he’d left off the messages Alfie had deposited in the computer.
“Fine, Dr. Cunningham,” Renfeld said, “but how do I stop your story from causing a national panic?”
Blaise paused, waiting until he was sure that the man on the other end of the line was ready to listen. When Renfeld stayed silent Blaise said, “When we hear on the radio and TV that Gregory West and Dr. Hemmett have been arrested or are being pursued, and that all Human Enhancement spas have been padlocked by order of the Federal Health Agency, I’ll call and tell you.”
“That’s unreasonable, Dr. Cunningham.” Renfeld’s voice, which had started out smooth and full of warmth, now rang a little ragged. “Tell us first. We’ll get to the other in time. What’s so urgent that you can’t prevent a nationwide panic?”
“Dr. Renfeld, if West isn’t picked up soon, he’s going to murder me and several other people.”
“You’re overdramatizing, Dr. Cunningham.”
“Am I? Well, you’re not on site to see the bullet holes.”
“I can’t promise.”
“And we’d have to be alive tomorrow to keep a promise made today, wouldn’t we, Dr. Renfeld?”
“Yes?” ‘
“I hope you’re taping this.”
Silence filled the line. Renfeld finally replied, “Yes.”
“Good.” Blaise hung up. For a long moment he sat staring at the instrument knowing Max Renfeld couldn’t be trusted. Helen slid onto his lap. “I know this isn’t the time.”
“Why not?” Blaise kissed her like kissing a baby. “Blaise, I know Gordon thinks all three of us are going to die. But it’s worth whatever happens.”
Blaise held Helen tight, knowing he could never tell her about the thing in Dobie’s skull: the repulsive hairy body of an insect. She was talking about death as something natural. Not that. “We have to see what Sergio and Gordon are up to.”
He smelled Helen’s skin and hair as he let her go and tried not to think about what he had seen. Not holding her. Not while he was telling her he loved her.
If intelligence can be raised beyond existing limits, man will have achieved the impossible by doing something past his innate abilities—extending his reach even beyond natural law.
FROM A SEMINAR ON
THE CUNNINGHAM EQUATIONS
CHAPTER 32
Helen coughed when exhaust enveloped them. Even with the open window, the monoxides and dioxides of unburned gasoline flooded the garage. Gordon sat behind the wheel staring at the instrument panel while the engine roared in confinement. Sergio pressed his eye against the slot between garage door and the frame watching the street.
Blaise motioned Gordon in ba
ck. “I’ll drive,” he yelled.
Gordon changed places. “There’s not much gas.”
“It won’t matter.”
Helen started to get into the car with Gordon and Blaise caught her arm. “When we leave, go out the back door, over the fence into the next yard. Take a cab to the Greyhound depot in San Diego and buy a ticket to Los Angeles.”
She was shaking her head. “I won’t go.”
“Helen, you promised you’d do anything I asked.” He looked into her eyes, holding her so she couldn’t look away.
“Yes.” The answer was grudging.
“You then take a room in the Pickwick Hotel as Jean Ryder. Eat in the restaurant, then go up to your room and stay until I call. If I don’t call, use the ticket.”
She nodded.
“If somebody gets around to the backyard, sit inside the house on the floor against the wall by the back door for five minutes after we leave. Keep the door locked. You’ll hear us go, so don’t worry about the noise, okay?”
“Yes.”
“Give me a kiss.”
She shook her head, but kissed him all the same.
The open garage window and door to the yard were an invitation for Bruno’s crew to detour through the house, but they needed air. The garage was already foul.
Sergio waved and Blaise went to the front of the garage. The noise near the hood of the car was even louder.
“Bruno’s out there with two men.” Sergio moved aside to let Blaise look.
Through the crack, Blaise saw the car that had followed after them with Bruno in pursuit. It was parked across the street with the driver behind the wheel while Bruno and another man inspected the still-idling limousine with obvious curiosity.
“Let’s go.” Blaise got in the driver’s seat. Sergio sat on the passenger’s side. It seemed disquieting to Blaise to be staring across the hood of a car with no windshield. “I hope Bruno likes the road map.”
“He loves it. Hit the door hard. It’ll fall on top of us. After that . . .” Sergio shrugged.
Blaise studied himself in the mirror for a moment. He didn’t look like a hero. His hair was too blond, his face too ordinary. He didn’t look mean or muscular enough to yell Geronimo. Revving the motor, he jammed the. automatic transmission into low and sent the Buick smashing into the door.
The sound would have been no louder if the house had caved in. For a moment he saw the boards of the single-car door shattering. Then wind caught the upper edge and the car strained. The door smashed down on the car top.
During the instant of blindness the Buick veered off the cement apron and plowed over the grass. A front wheel missed the driveway and dropped to the street with a jolt that snapped Blaise’s head back against the backrest. The huge door fluttered off the crushed roof like a leaf in the wind.
Blaise fought for control and the Buick finally straightened out to sprint down the street. In the mirror Bruno and another man piled into Sergio’s limousine with Bruno at the wheel. Blaise made a hard right at the intersection.
The street was four tight lanes flanked by eucalyptus and five-needle pines. Built to lug a suburban housewife around with a carful of kids and groceries, the Buick protested with sluggish response and screaming machinery. The limousine gained on them.
Gordon looked out the missing back window, ducking to leave the mirror clear when Blaise yelled. Blaise’s eyes watered from squinting into the wind. He saw his road coming, only a break in the towering trees.
Standing on the brake, he slewed the car sideways and then ducked into a hard left turn that shot uphill for a moment. At the crest, Blaise went over the top, skidding to the right into a tight alleyway where they crashed sideways against a log berm. They were jolted, but the car stopped.
Bruno was still accelerating when the limousine topped the rise with its front wheels momentarily off the ground, spinning fullbore. Not for long. Bruno hadn’t a chance to slow before the Chrysler hit the barricade at the end of the fifty-foot-long street. Two tons of metal took out the white-painted four-by-six posts and metal guard rails thirty-five feet above the rocky beach. The second car had nothing to hit at all until it landed on Sergio’s already shattered Chrysler.
The Buick’s starter made raucous tinny noises until the hot engine caught. Blaise backed out of the alley. The front end swayed as if the suspension had torn loose and the steering wheel kicked in his hands. He nursed it down the street into a small corner repair garage. Sergio and Gordon didn’t say much. Gordon appeared ill. Before the cab arrived he went into the washroom to throw up.
“You changed the map,” Sergio said when they got out of the cab in front of the rental house.
“Like flopping a negative in the darkroom,” Blaise said. “I reprogrammed the computer to reverse east and west. Bruno thought he was turning onto a mile-long boulevard where he could run us down.” Blaise breathed deeply smelling the neatly clipped grass, the well-kept flowers. Nothing seemed changed. Even the beach with two smashed cars on the rocks had looked somehow normal. “All Bruno saw on the screen when he was chasing us was a long, straight street over that little hill. He didn’t have time to remember the ocean was on that side.”
“You remembered that from reading the manual?”
Blaise shook his head. “All I had to know was how to program the computer. The rest I already knew. I’m sorry about Bruno.” Blaise wondered if Sergio really understood. They might have run for safety, but Bruno would surely have gone back for Alfie. He shut his eyes. He couldn’t tell Sergio he had boobytrapped his cousin for a garbagecan full of silicon chips.
Sergio stared through the trees at the blue glint of ocean. “I’m glad it worked out this way. I should have shot him when I had the gun in his ear. I’d have had to eventually, or let him kill me.” He sat on the edge of the porch, leaning against the house, and said, “I think I’ll just sit in the sun awhile. I feel tired. Sometimes I wish I’d never started any of this.”
Blaise glanced at Gordon who only shook his head slightly. Quietly they walked past Sergio, Blaise going to check on Alfie and Gordon in the bathroom to wash away the taste of vomit.
“Nobody’s touched Alfie.” He sat on the couch next to Gordon, feeling as drained as Sergio must be feeling. “Was it worth it, Gordon?”
Gordon’s face revealed lines Blaise had never seen before. “Philosophy—or truth?”
“If I can’t stand the truth, I’ll stop you.”
“When I opened Dobie up it was too late for me. I had suspicions. Confirmation was worse.” Gordon’s twisted face exposed an indelible loathing. “You saw what my brain will ultimately become. If I let it.”
“You said that Helen . . .” Blaise let the question hang. He couldn’t phrase it in a way that didn’t freeze his mind into a tight little corner.
“For a while. Maybe for a long while, Blaise. What remains is foreign—alien.” Gordon spoke softly and Blaise strained to hear. “I am already dead. What I was is no longer what I am. And yet I exist—but different. If I who am already dead kill the thing I now am, perhaps I do an injustice to the new I who never asked to be condemned to life in this body.” He smiled weakly. “Fortunately that is no longer an issue.”
Blaise stared at Gordon.
“For you it is. And for Miss McIntyre. But Sergio has been altered longer than I, and I have been altered too long. The change has started. Physical changes that will make my brain irreversibly into a thing like you saw inside Dobie.”
Gordon stared at his hands, as if memorizing the fingerprints as the symbol of the unique individuality of a man. “You don’t see, yet. But you will.” Gordon slipped back into silence. Measuring what he was going to say.
“I told my wife not to expect me back. There is the insurance. I must make sure that she collects it.”
Blaise started to object and Gordon waved his words away. “What I am going to do is the right thing. Neither the I who was nor the I who is wants to turn into what Dobie was becoming.” Gordon put hi
s hand on the end table and absently started to arrange small odds and ends in neat patterns with his fingers.
He saw himself doing it and grinned wryly. “A surgeon has to keep his hands supple, with a brain in every fingertip.
I started this in medical school to make my left hand as educated as my right—and then my right better—and now I don’t know if I’m right- or left-handed.”
“You’re upset.”
“To put it mildly. I’m telling you this because of Miss McIntyre. She will, ultimately, experience the same thoughts but she won’t be able to tell you any more than I could tell my wife. Only she will have a choice.”
Blaise waited.
“The answer is in the computer. Alfie found it and I told him to guard it with his life.” Gordon made a rueful face. “That may not have been the thing to tell a machine, Blaise. After I typed the message lights flashed and Alfie started making more noise than the Holland Tunnel blowers.”
“You can stop the process?”
Gordon nodded. For an instant Blaise was afraid he was going to faint. “If the treatment is soon enough.”
“What’s soon enough, Gordon?”
“I wouldn’t wait past immediately.” Gordon looked at Blaise with an expression that mixed compassion and sorrow.
“Is there anything I can do for you, Gordon?”
“Thank you, Blaise. You may not appreciate it, but you’ve been a good friend. I appreciate that. I want you to know I do.”
“Sergio? . . .”
“We’ve worked out what we’re going to do. It’s better that you don’t know.”
Blaise nodded. “I think I’ll talk to Sergio for a minute.” I “He doesn’t have a choice, Blaise. The cells are trying to go dormant on him, to complete the biological change that has started. In a couple of days he’ll be as torpid as Dobie was.”
“It’s okay, Gordon. I just want to talk.”
The Cunningham Equations Page 29