Nigel Findley
Page 33
She hears a sound — originating from nowhere, from everywhere. The slow, deep tolling of a great iron bell. The sound surrounds her, penetrates her, its vibrations quivering through her bones, through every cell and fiber of her being. With each stroke of the bell, the grey nothingness surrounding them seems to darken momentarily, then return to its original level. And with each continued stroke, the darkening effect becomes magnified. Soon, each time the bell sounds, there is a moment of blackness, of blindness.
What is the sound? she asks herself. The answer takes a fraction of a second—or a millennium — to emerge. It’s my own heart.
She feels the fluctuations of light and darkness, feels them right down to her core. She is linked to them somehow. The sensation intensifies. With each moment of darkness, she ceases to exist; when the light returns, she is recreated anew. But is the recreation perfect? She thinks not — with each turn of the cycle, there is a change, so subtle that she cannot identify it.
The wind intensifies around her, its uhdating wail synchronized with the light-dark creation-dissolution cycle. For a moment she wonders whether Peter and Black managed to escape the Reality Storm. But then she remembers that they don’t exist, they never existed.
For an instant she has forgotten Eichiro. Now she feels his presence, pressing down on her, wrenching at the fabric of her existence. She screams silently as something tears within her—not something physical, it’s much more complex than that. She feels as though part of herself — part of her individuality, part of what makes her Nikki Carlson — has been wrested from her. With the psychic pain comes fear — overwhelming terror. If he can tear azvay something of her very existence, why can’t he take all of it? What would be left? A soulless husk, a drone, going through its daily existence without any thought about the big picture. Images of the milling crowds of Tokyo fill her mind, a multitude of sararimen, of lemmings …
No! I will never become like that!
With all her energy, she lashes out at Eichiro, driving her outrage, her hatred into him in punishing psychic waves. You’ll never break me, you perversion/ She sees her foe reel backward, as though struck by a shotgun blast. For an instant she thinks he will be driven into the greyness that surrounds their pocket universe. But at the last instant he recovers.
He is at her again, she feels his taint as he rips at her sanity,at her grasp on reality. Butwithan intense effort she fights back.
She has him on the defensive now, she realizes. He tries to erect a barrier before her, anything to protect himself from her onslaught, but it is futile. Driven by the rage that burns in her core, she is unstoppable. She tears at him, peeling away layer after layer of his existence.
Images fill her mind once more. More hordes of faceless wageslaves, soulless, hopeless. Squalid tenements in a city that sprawls from horizon to horizon, millions of people packed into each square mile. For an instant she thinks this is Tokyo. But no, it’s somewhere else — somewhere that can’t exist, shouldn’t exist, but does. No!
She rips deeper into the corruption that is Agatamori Eichiro. She senses his paranoia, his ruthless drive. They soil her psyche as she claws deeper. It is like ripping layers from an onion, except that each layer is like armor. There seems to be no end to them — below each layer is nothing but another layer …
And then, suddenly, she is at the core. The armor is gone, the protection is gone. Naked, exposed, the truth that is Eichiro lies before her. Pathetic, she thinks for a moment. But then the anger returns, and she lashes out one final time.
She sees Eichiro’s physical body lurch backward again. This time there is nothing he can do to stop himself, and he plummets into the greyness.
And again reality fragments.
It is like a nightmare, a nightmare that never ends, as the Reality Storm — the Maelstrom — tears at her.
She is a child again, sitting on the back porch of her parents’ house. The sun is warm on her skin, the sweet smell of new-mown grass in her nostrils. A bird on the apple tree bursts into song.
Shift. -
The river current tugs at her clothing. A smell of vegetable decay fills her nostrils. Her body shivers, not with cold, but with anticipation of the upcoming assaidt. Keeping her gun clear of the water she swims on.
Shift.
The air is crisp, and the dry snow crunches under her skis. The Rocky Mountains rear around her. Shift.
O’Neil smiles at her as they lean against the deck rail of the freighter.
Shift.
With a jolt, the plane sets down at Narita Airport. Excitement tingles in her breast. Japan at last!
Shift.
Toshikazu smiles at her, his teeth red with blood. “Die with me, Nikki!”
Shift. Fresh-baked bread. Shift. Gunfire, screams.
Shift. An arm around her waist, a warm presence beside her.
Shift. Sergei’s empty eyes. Shift. Toshikazu’s smile. Shift.
O’Neil’s laugh. Shift. Shift. Shift.
Nothing.
*
She was … somewhere. A room, its walls lined with electronic devices. The air was cold on her skin. Where am I? Who am I? For an instant, she couldn’t decide whether she was Nikki Carlson or Agatamori Eichiro.
“Nikki?” A tentative voice from behind her.
Reality flooded back. She was in the computer room of the outpost. She looked around for the grey fog that had enveloped her, some remnant of the Reality Storm that had almost consumed her. But there was nothing.
Peter Hollingforth was at the door, staring at her in undisguised concern. “Nikki?” he asked again.
“I’m alright,” she told him, a quaver in her voice. “I’m alright.” She turned back to look at Eichiro.
The man was on the floor, slumped against one of the large computer tape drives. Physically, he looked unchanged. But to some other sense — something beyond the physical — the change was undeniable.
He looked up at Nikki, and she saw the change in his eyes, in his face. The harsh, cunning gleam was gone from those eyes, the stubborn set of the jaw subtly changed. For the first time, when she looked at him Nikki saw not a ruthless senior executive of a megacorporation, but a young man, not yet out of his thirties, little more than a decade her senior. Eichiro looked around him, blinked uncomprehendingly.
“Eichiro-san?” she asked quietly.
He looked up at her again. “Hai “ he responded.
“Yes?” She could see him struggling with his memory. “Sumimasen. Excuse me, but…”
“It’s alright,” she told him quietly. She turned away from the man who was — yet, in another way, wasn’t —Agatamori Eichiro, and smiled at Peter. “It’s alright,” she said again.
She walked to the door, while around her the computers began to shut down.
Epilogue
The flames from the burning lab buildings were rising into the sky, reflecting a shifting red light from the low-hanging clouds. Burn! Nikki thought fiercely, looking back over her shoulder as she led the remnants of team two through the jungle. Burn, all of it, right down to the ground, so there’s nothing left. Nothing at all.
The outpost was doomed, there was no doubt about it. The fires set by the other Storm Knights would definitely spread, until everything was consumed, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. Even as Nikki led Peter, Black, and the wounded Rundle back into the jungle, the surviving security guards were herding the scientists, technicians and others onto the riverines.
Where will they go? she found herself wondering. Can they call for help, or won’t the radios work any more? Will they ever make it back to Japan ? She didn’t know, and found she was just too tired to care.
What about Eichiro? She could imagine the security guards politely ushering the transformed young man aboard one of the riverines, with formal protocol that
he wouldn’t understand why he deserved. The image
was both amusing and a little pathetic.
*
They
reached the camp about dawn. The surviving Storm Knights and the Thai soldiers were already there when what was left of team two staggered into the clearing.
Losses had been heavy, Nikki saw. Of the dozen Thai regulars, only half had survived. From team one, Norman Leeds was dead, and both Ryan Davis and Sergeant MacHeath were seriously wounded. And then, of course, there were the casualties from team two: Dusty Rhodes, Sergei and Murphy all dead, and Rundle almost blinded. A heavy price to pay, Nikki thought. Was it worth it?
It was to the surviving Storm Knights. There was no celebration — too many friends had been lost for that — but there was an air of grim satisfaction, of an important job well done.
They think we’ve won, Nikki mused. Maybe we have, in a way. With the outpost gone, and Eichiro broken, the Special Projects initiative had suffered an incredible— possible insurmountable — setback. The contract between Nagara and Jean Malraux would go unfulfilled.
But Nagara still exists, she realizes, all the other megacorporations still exist. There’ll be more contracts, and more deaths, more Storm Knights doing what they can to turn things around. In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t any more a victory than the capture of a pawn early in a game of chess. The game goes on, and nobody knows until it’s over who’s won and who’s lost.
The surviving Storm Knights and the Thais gave themselves only a couple of hours’ rest before they started striking camp. When they were almost ready to move on, Lt. Dick Beames came over to talk to Nikki and Peter.
“Where are you heading now, Le/tenant?” she asked him.
He smiled tiredly. “To the coast,” he said, “then south to where we left our boats. Over to Singapore, then north and out of Orrorsh. Then another mission, I’m afraid.” He chuckled. “No rest for the wicked.” He paused. “And you? You know that you’re both more than welcome to accompany us. We’ll get you to Bangkok — that’s right on the edge of Orrorsh, so you can depend on the technology — and from there you can catch a plane to anywhere in the world. How about it?”
It was Peter who spoke first. “I thank you for your offer,” he said formally. “I have to admit to a real curiosity about the rest of this world. But we have a task to perform, Professor Black and I. Just like you do, Le/tenant. We can no more turn aside from that than you can from your duties.”
The soldier nodded in understanding.
Hollingforth turned to Nikki. “And your plans, Miss Carlson?”
She looked into his eyes. There was a question there that he couldn’t bring himself to ask. “I’m sorry,” she said, answering that unspoken question. “This isn’t my world. I belong elsewhere.”
Peter kept his expression carefully schooled, but still she could sense his sadness. She felt it too—he was an honorable man, a true friend, and somebody with the potential to become, with time, more than a friend. But he has his mission, she told herself, and it’s not mine.
But what is my mission?
She turned back to Beames. “After Bangkok, where are you going?”
He grinned wryly. “Back to Japan, I’m afraid. We’ve heard rumors of great advances by one of Kanawa’s weapons labs. It’s something we’ve got to check out.”
Back to Japan. Back to that bleak, depressing, paranoid culture …
Yes, but for the purpose of striking a blow against those that control it. That makes it all different, doesn’t it?
“And what about you, Ms. Carlson?” the Australian asked.
What about me? Return to the States? Go back to school? Use what she’d learned in Japan at some research lab? A normal life — a normal life at last, back in the safety of her own country …
How could she do that, knowing what she knew now? Knowing of the Storm Knights, struggling — and dying — to protect people who didn’t even comprehend their existence? No.
She looked up into Beames’ face with a smile. “Is there room for another on your team?” she asked.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue