“It matches our weight-and-balance sheet,” she said, a little mystified.
“Shto tebye!” the Russian shouted. “Hey, Cap—smotri! Kid is stowaway! ”
Rock climbed forward with an indignant but unstruggling body tucked under his arm. He set the boy down behind the pilot’s seat.
Jonathan Madsen thumbed his stray blond hair behind his ears and stared defiantly at Cap.
“I’m not sorry,” the young man said. “I have a right to justice.”
“Really?” Cap said with a hint of a smile. “What right?”
“Revenge.” The stern look in Madsen’s eyes belied his age. “Dandridge killed my grandfather. I have a right to get even.”
Cap sighed, turning his attention away from the controls to let Leila take over for a moment.
“Johnny, vengeance is not justice. If killing Dandridge could bring your grandfather back, I’d be the first to pull the trigger. But the universe doesn’t work that way. A second killing won’t even the score, it will only drag it downward another point. We’re heading out to stop Dandridge from any further killing—”
“And you’d kill him if you had to, right?”
Cap put a strong hand on Johnny’s shoulder. “Yes, but only if there were no other way. Justice means making things right, and that’s the responsibility of the one who first caused the harm. If Dandridge dies, he wouldn’t be able to do anything to repair the harm he’s already done.”
“His staying alive won’t bring Julie back either.”
“True,” Cap said. “There are others, though, that could benefit from his talents if he chose to turn back toward good. That’s the only way he could make any sort of restitution.” He shifted his attention back to flying the jet, adding, “Reparation is preferable to revenge. It can actually improve the world. And it leaves the streets less bloody.”
The stowaway said nothing.
Uriah West, M.D., slouched in one of the seats that folded out of the fuselage wall and tried to doze. All the while, he mentally reviewed the operations he had performed during the last seven hours. All told, he and Cap—with Leila, Rock, Sun Ra, and several additional surgeons assisting—had spent those hours between their midnight meeting and this dawn flight performing brain surgery on one of the four zombie-like gunmen.
With the aid of the Institute’s computerized axial tomography equipment—basically a 3-dimensional X-ray machine—Tex had located the source of the problem in the patient: specialized microbots had attached themselves to nerves in the brain, cutting them with their microscopic scalpels and slipping a tiny silicon chip between the severed ends. Each chip, Cap discovered, possessed thousands of tiny holes, each ringed with an unbelievably small iridium electrode. The nerves had grown back through these holes, allowing the microbots not only to monitor nerve impulses, but to send their own signals to the gunmen’s
brains. In this way, Dandridge could order them to do anything he wanted them to do—including shooting at Captain Anger until they had exhausted all their ammo.
Dandridge—in his rush to escape—had left them on the equivalent of automatic pilot; they could make no decision for themselves and simply kept firing, following the programmed commands of the microbots even after the knockout gas robbed them of their consciousness.
Tex marveled at how Cap had removed one of the microbots from the first man’s brain and, with Flash, had analyzed it in the atomic force microscope, tracing its compact, three-dimensional circuits. With the aid of the supercomputer Cyclops, they developed in a few hours a different logic circuit and etched it onto a replacement microbot’s gallium-arsenide structure.
The new microbot would travel through the bloodstream in the brain, seeking out the other microbots and delicately sundering the connections between the machines and the patients’ nerves. The silicon chips would remain in the nerves— there was no quick way to remove them without causing massive brain damage—but the microbots would no longer be in control. Gradually, as the repair robot moved through the men’s brains, the effect of Dandridge’s mind control would be undone.
While Tex injected into a repair microbot the fourth and final patient, Sun Ra reported signs of voluntary motion in the first, recuperating patient.
Tex pondered the evil genius behind the microbot and the other genius that swiftly found a way to undo the evil. A chill ran through him as he recalled Cap’s first words after studying the device removed from the first man’s brain: “It seems Dr. Dandridge is not concerned with simply dismantling matter— he’s interested in dominating souls. That makes him more dangerously mad than I’d first thought.”
Tex saw the masseter muscles along Captain Anger’s jawline tighten up—a sure sign that he was formulating a plan to rid the world of Dr. William Arthur Dandridge.
A sudden, stomach-lurching drop interrupted Dr. West’s drowsy reverie as the Seamaster encountered an air pocket. When he opened his eyes,
Tex stared at a Cinerama view Pyotr Kompantzeff’s khaki-clad rump.
“I could do without the sight of your back forty,” Tex drawled, then added, “Make that yer back eighty, ya’ damn’ Roosski.”
“Sookihn sihn,” Rock said with a wide, sarcastic grin. “Your family tree
has your entire maternal branch still living in it eating bananas, and your horse-thief paternal ancestors were hanged from it.”
To say that Rock and Tex enjoyed baiting each other was to understate the case. West, a tenth generation American whose ancestors helped settle Texas, found the immigrant Kompantzeff to be an endless source of amusement, especially his thick Russian accent and foreign pattern of speech. For his part, Rock drew vast entertainment from observing the equally thickaccented Texan, in whom he saw astounding provinciality in his love of the Lone Star State and his small-town view of the world.
And it went without saying that the strong bond of friendship that held all of Captain Anger’s crew together belied the sometimes harsh and earthy banter between the two.
“Hell, boy,” Tex rumbled, “if your rear end were covered with grass, I could send a herd of twenty longhorns there on a winter graze.”
“And if your brains were petrol,” Rock growled, “you could not fill cigarette lighter.”
“Overpaid plumber!”
“Unindicted quack!”
They both grinned at Johnny, who had stumbled upon their exchange on the way to the back of the plane. He stared at the two warily, fully expecting for them to come to blows. Rock waved his thick hand dismissively.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Cowboy is too much afraid to call me out to showdown. Knows I would beat him to draw.”
The young man nodded, unsure about the burly rocket scientist’s degree of seriousness. “Captain Anger asked me to tell you that we’re about to descend toward Escollos Alijos.”
Rock and Tex exchanged glances. Both knew that they were about to face mortal danger. Both grinned.
Tex rolled one spur against the aircraft deck. “Well, pardner, let’s get ready to whump Dandridge’s donkey!”
Jonathan Madsen wondered what he was getting himself into.
Escollos Alijos comprised two small islands separated by a few miles of water. At least, that’s what they looked like on the Seamaster’s computerized map. From the air, though, something appeared terribly different.
In the glittering Pacific waters, the northern island revealed the summer colors of golden brown and dark green. The southern island, though, looked nothing like an ordinary island. It shimmered in the sunlight with the silvery glow of lifeless metal. Cap steered clear of the island, so they could not get close enough for a good view.
Cap brought the plane down in placid water off the shore of the northern island. The Seamaster gently approached the ocean as he reduced power to idle, lowered the flaps, and bled off airspeed until the smooth hull lightly skimmed the surface. Quickly the aircraft slowed, descending into the warm waters. The graceful wingtips touched simultaneously and the airplane coa
sted swiftly to a standstill. Only the rise and fall of the sea gave any motion to the jet now.
Rock immediately opened the side cargo door and wrangled a large black bundle out into the water. On contact, it inflated with a loud thwump, turning into an arrowhead-shaped boat.
Cap went through the water-landing shutdown routine for the Seamaster, then climbed to the cargo area, leaving Weir in charge of the airplane. He opened cabinets and secreted a few items in the hidden recesses of his vest and added a largish cylinder to his left cargo pocket. Strapping on his autopistol and several waterproof ammo pouches, he nodded to Rock, Sun Ra, and Tex. Rock and Sun Ra toted similar arms, though they wore khaki jumpsuits similar to Cap’s black one. Rock’s broad chest bore a crisscrossed pair of nylon-web straps, bandoliers securing a dozen handball-sized spheres. The hexagonal and pentagonal shapes on their surfaces made them look like miniature soccer balls. The traditional pin-and-spoon grenade fuses, however, made their function perfectly clear.
Tex removed his spurs in preparation for jumping into the inflatable raft. He tightened the straps on the camouflaged backpack he wore. It contained his medical kit, along with electronic equipment Cap had requested him to bring. Instead of a jumpsuit, he wore beige jeans and cavalry shirt made of the same bullet-resistant cloth as the rest of their wardrobe.
Sun Ra patted a walnut-hued hand on his own piece of equipment—a portable missile launcher designed by Rock to deliver a one-pound warhead packed with the most powerful chemical explosive he could devise. Only a nuclear warhead could provide more punch per pound.
The four jumped into the boat. Tex attached the jet motor and fired it up.
“What about me?” Jonathan shouted.
“Guard the plane,” Cap answered over the roar of the engine. “Leila will show you how the rail gun works.”
The reply failed to satisfy Madsen, who feared that he would miss not only all of the action, but also his chance to avenge his grandfather’s death.
Chapter Fourteen
The Fractal Island
The boat sped across the channel between the two islands with impressive speed. The water slapped and whapped beneath the membrane of high tensile strength aramid fabric and rubber that served as the flexible hull. The twin air cells that formed the sides of the boat merged at the prow. Captain Anger knelt there, binoculars to his eyes, gazing at the approaching southern island. What he saw caused his tanned brow to furrow into a frown.
The island no longer consisted of vegetation and rock. Argent columns rose hundreds of feet about the water, roughly conforming to the former topography of the island. Sunlight reflected off the strange objects with a maddening, actinic brightness.
Wind whipped through Cap’s dark red hair and beard, making it ripple as if it were aflame. He took a deep breath, smelling the salt sea air. There was no place he preferred to be than on a ship of any size, even a ten-foot long souped-up rowboat such as this. The sun shimmered on the ocean, breaking into a million images of itself, each one lasting only an instant before being replaced by another. Off to starboard, a marlin broke water and splashed back beneath the blue.
“Skipper?” Sun Ra’s voice shouted above the roar of the jet engine. “You’re not going to have us go ashore on that stuff, are you? I personally don’t want to turn into a puddle of goo.”
Cap shrugged, handing his binoculars to Sun Ra and pointing. “It doesn’t seem to be affecting the natives.”
Sun Ra gazed through the binoculars. Parallel to the metallic shore, a line of twenty Mexicans in tattered clothing carried crates and bundles.
They walked in a dazed, robotic manner toward a dark cavern gaping amid the shining island like a hole punched by a giant’s fist. Turning his gaze to the left, Sun Ra observed a landing strip constructed of one seamless piece of dark material. On the runway sat a small single-engine airplane and a pair of heavily armed military helicopters. He directed his captain’s attention toward the airstrip.
Cap nodded. “That’s the Cessna Dandridge flew out of Palo Alto.
Judging from the length of the runway, he may have larger aircraft. Keep an eye peeled for jet fighters.”
Cap took over the engine from Rock and navigated toward a smooth part of the mirror-like shoreline, down the coast a few hundred yards from the cave. He led the others in jumping into the waves and touched the metallic surface beneath the churning foam. Instead of slipping, his soles gripped the slope with the squeak of rubber on metal. Pulling the boat ashore above the high water line marked by seaweed and detritus, he motioned to the rest of the team to debark.
Sun Ra stepped out next and bent down for a closer look at the peculiar land on which he stood.
“Look at that weird pattern!” he said in a puzzled tone.
The rest of the crew gazed at their feet. The surface consisted of countless combinations of ridges, each of which formed a four-sided polygon that was shaped like either a fat diamond or a skinny diamond. They connected less like individual bricks and more like molded isogrids. Inside each of these quadrangles lay smaller versions of the same two shapes. Looking up at the artificial mountains rising before them, it was plain that the pattern repeated itself on a larger scale.
“What sort of design is this?” Rock wondered aloud.
“Penrose tiles,” Cap said, pulling videocam headsets from Tex’s pack. “A mathematician’s toy. If they were colored, you’d be able to tell that they make patterns that repeat but never in any regular manner. Dandridge has obviously programmed his microbots to turn this island into a temple for him. Using fractal construction, too. Every Penrose shape is composed of smaller Penrose shapes, probably right down to the molecular level.
This island is a gigantic quasi-crystal.” He slipped a headset on and handed the others to his crew. “Flash will be fascinated to see this—he’s always wanted the lab floor to have Penrose tiles.”
Cap switched on the headset and slipped in his earcomm. “Flash?”
The headset broadcast a signal to the nearest communication satellite
overhead, downlinking hundreds of miles away to the Anger Institute.
“Here, Cap, ” the voice in his ear replied.
“We’re on the island. Start recording.”
“Roger. Say—is that a Penrose tile pattern on the ground?”
Cap headed toward the cavern, the others walking alongside him. Outwardly, they acted like boaters picnicking on a vacation island. Tex and Sun Ra joked about the heat of the sunlight that reflected dazzlingly from every square inch of their surroundings. Rock whistled a merry Slavic folk song. Only Cap walked quietly, listening to the sounds carried by the warm ocean breeze. He to scan the upper reaches of the island with digital binoculars that sent stereoscopic images back to AI.
“He obviously set this place up for privacy,” Cap subvocalized to Flash, though The others also heard him over their earcomms. “No need for guards. Or maybe—”
He stopped in his tracks to stare at the entrance to the cave.
“Bozhe moi!” Rock cried out.
All along the entrance to the cavern stood an eerie phalanx of silver statues. Most of them looked like Mexican peasant men and women, though a pair of them wore the uniforms of Mexican federales. Nearby stood two men and a woman in lab coats. Several of the nearly lifelike statues appeared to be sneaking toward the cavern, though some faced in the opposite direction as if running away, their faces contorted with terror. The sculptures possessed incredibly fine detail, down to the weave of the fabric and pore patterns on the skin. Cap did not allow anyone to get close enough to see such detail, though.
“Dandridge has his own brand of security system,” Cap said.
“Microbots that can metal-plate a running man in mid-stride?” Sun Ra asked incredulously.
Cap shook his head. “More likely that Dandridge programmed these particular microbots to swarm over intruders and lock together into a sort of exoskeleton. They’re held in place to suffocate and left as decoration.
“Then how do the zombies get in and out?” Sun Ra asked.
“Probably have transmitters in their implants,” Flash said in their ears. “Broadcasts a signal telling the machines not to attack.”
Cap pointed to the first line of statues. “See that? That must be the outer perimeter. If we get any closer, the robots attack.”
“Why didn’t they just melt them?” Tex asked.
“A warning to others, perhaps. Something to scare away the curious.” Cap stepped perilously close to the first rank of statues.
“But there are so many,” Rock said.
“There’s always a few willing to test the odds,” Cap muttered.
“Someone’s coming,” Tex said.
From inside the dark cavern reverberated the sound of slow, methodical footfalls.
“Zombies,” Cap whispered. “Let’s watch.”
Ducking behind a ridge of fractal metal, the four peered out at the half-dozen men who shuffled slowly out of the cave. Wending their way through the forest of motionless victims, the six ragged workers trudged toward the airstrip with a listless yet mechanical determination.
“Look around their feet,” Cap whispered.
Where they walked, the metallic sheen grew dull and unreflective for several feet in all directions.
“The microbots withdraw when they come by. And far enough to prevent them from attacking any cargo the zombies carry.” Cap’s voice held a note of grim respect for Dandridge’s attention to detail. Then he smiled, the green in his eyes catching the sunlight in such a way that they glowed like a matched pair of emeralds in firelight. “There’s the weakness in the system. We’ll act like cargo!”
The four waited for the zombies to return, which they did in half an hour. Each carried a huge, burlap-wrapped bundle on either shoulder that would have tested the strength of most men. Their electronic masters, though, cared not an iota for such concerns as muscle pain or fatigue. Under their programmed commands, the men ignored any warnings their bodies might be giving them and hefted their burdens wordlessly.
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