Chuck watched Lorstad make a final check of the immersion chambers before they made contact with the Alphas. The Learned intended to remain in hiding; Chuck feared what effect a stranger’s presence might have on the no-doubt-paranoid Alphas. Lorstad, he knew, had other concerns.
“Are you certain you will not reconsider sending Mini and Eugene back to the Center?” Kristian asked. “Eugene will certainly not be of any use to you without his computers, and Mini is an artist—I can’t imagine what tactical advantage she would give you.”
“That,” Chuck said mildly, “is one of the most disingenuous things you’ve ever said to me—and you’ve said a fair number of disingenuous things. I’m pretty sure you have a keen appreciation that Mini’s art is neither passive nor static. I expect it will give us both a strategic and tactical advantage. They both stay.”
Lorstad gave him a sharp look that made Chuck smile.
“Yes, I know—the mouse that roared. You’re not used to getting toothy comebacks from me. Get used to it. I’m not the same man I was when we came to you.”
Lorstad straightened from his inspection of a vital signs monitor, a half smile on his lips. “That much is certain. The equipment is functional. You may make contact with the Alphas as soon as you’re ready. I would like you to consider something, though. I’d like you to consider that, at least with Mikhail Yenotov, we have a potential for leverage.”
Chuck frowned. “Leverage? I don’t follow.”
“His family. Especially his children. If he chooses to be uncooperative, the presence of his son or daughter—”
While Chuck had considered Mike’s family as a way in, he never thought of them as leverage. The swell of anger in Chuck’s breast was swift and sudden. “Absolutely not. We can’t do that to them. That’s exactly what Howard did—he treated them like hostages. He tried to enslave them. We can’t do that to them,” he repeated. “Not just because it would be cruel, but because it would be counterproductive. In order for our plan to work, we need to actually gain their trust. Otherwise, we’re going to be flying by the seat of our pants.”
“I understand your reservations, Charles, but you’ve said yourself that Yenotov’s primary concern all along has been his family. He’s been separated from them for some time. It’s possible that he would respond to a plea from one of them that he wouldn’t listen to if it came from you. It may take a member of his family to reason with him.”
Chuck couldn’t argue the logic of that, but it still didn’t sit right with him. He shook his head. It was ironic: he was about to go tell his team to use their instincts; he was telling Lorstad not to use his.
The thing was, he trusted his team’s instincts.
“Let me try to get a sense of what’s going on up there before you set things in motion that can’t be undone.”
Lorstad inclined his head. “But I must monitor your situation. If things get out of control up on that mountain, I will act as I feel I must.”
Chuck took a deep breath and nodded, then slipped out of the building to meet with his team. They convened in the winter tent from which they could see the peak of “Olympus.” They went over their various roles, but mostly Chuck stressed the need to be intuitive and flexible.
“Trust your instincts,” he told them. “Sara and the guys are expecting us to befriend them, maybe even give them direction. I’ll know more after I’ve met with them, of course, but we all need to be tuned in to their emotions, ready to . . .” He hesitated.
“If it’s necessary,” Lanfen said, “I can take Tim on if he gets wild. I’ve watched every bit of footage of the Alphas. I think I have a pretty good grasp of his abilities and where they overlap with Sara’s and Mike’s. I’ve observed something about the way they work. Their talents mesh, but they don’t coordinate naturally. There are seams.”
Eugene had been watching the mountain through a set of military-grade field glasses. He glanced aside, his brow furrowed. “What’s that mean?”
“Well, watching the episodes in Kabul and Ciudad Juárez and the footage from the congressional meeting, it seems as if Sara has to cue the others to perform their parts in a scenario.”
“Visually,” said Mini, nodding. “I noticed that, too.”
“Yes,” Lanfen went on. “And in Kabul, Sara actually gave verbal cues. I think—”
“We’ll be quicker on the uptake,” said Mini.
“Right.” Lanfen turned to Chuck. “Are you sure you don’t want to take me with you when you go?” She nodded toward the mountain peak centered in the tent’s large window.
“No. I want to. But I’m not going to. Lorstad says he’ll be monitoring—whatever that means.”
“Check it out.” Eugene handed the field glasses to Chuck. “They’ve got some sort of observation deck up there.”
Chuck moved to the window and put the glasses up to his eyes. There was, indeed, an observation deck jutting out from the summit of Pine Ridge; Sara and Tim stood on it, side by side. They were both dressed in midnight blue coveralls with some sort of insignia on the breast. They looked like the Sara and Tim he had known back before the world went mad, yet somehow subtly different. Though the winds at the elevation of the deck bent the tops of the pine trees, Sara’s hair wasn’t windblown; it floated gently on a slow-motion Hollywood breeze. Her eyes and skin seemed to glow as she looked out over the slope, her face turned toward the Betas’ camp. Tim, meanwhile, looked as if he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. His curly hair stood on end and a bristling halo of energy danced among the strands and around his body.
Chuck frowned, handing the binoculars to Lanfen. Was that what they really looked like, he wondered, or was that the way they saw themselves? Did it require energy and even mental attention to keep up the projection, or were they, like Mini, capable of creating self-sustaining phenomena? He supposed there was no way to find out but to go up the mountain and ask.
“I’m going over to the Spiderweb,” Chuck said. “Let them know I’m ready to visit Olympus. Wish me luck.”
He started for the door of the tent, but Lanfen grasped his hand and pulled him back. She planted a quick, urgent kiss on his lips, then let him go. They exchanged a telling glance, then he left before he could change his mind about taking her with him.
Chapter 18
Best-Laid Plans
Sara’s reaction to Chuck’s hail was immediate and cordial. “Doc! It’s good to hear your voice. Can I get you to show yourself?”
Chuck looked at Admiral Hand; she was standing opposite him on the left side of the communications technician who had initiated the call and was recording it. “Can I?”
Hand signaled the tech to mute their end of the conversation, then asked, “Are you sure you want to? I know whenever I’ve chatted with them via video uplink it’s made me feel freakishly vulnerable. I’ve seen them literally reach out of a video display into the room.”
Chuck considered that. “I have to trust them, Admiral, if I’m going to get them to trust me.”
She studied him for a moment, then nodded at the tech. The large, flat cinema display that dominated the communications station came online. All three of the Alphas were there—Sara stood at the center; Tim leaned casually against a console next to her; Mike was seated in a swivel chair just behind and to her left. Chuck tried to read their faces: Sara smiled when she saw him—the expression reaching all the way to her eyes. Tim was grinning lopsidedly. Mike . . . Mike looked queasy or unhappy or maybe just plain scared.
Chuck maintained eye contact with him until Sara spoke.
“Chuck, you have no idea how good it is to see you. When I heard the president had asked you to come in, I was thrilled. You’re the only person I have any faith can help expedite this process.”
“The disarming of the world, you mean?” Chuck asked. “And it’s good to see you, too.”
“Beating swords into plowshares,” Sara said, smiling. “I know that’s something you’d like to see, too.”
“I wo
uld. I’d love to see it. It looks as if you’ve had a pretty powerful impact on the world scene. You’ve stopped half a dozen wars dead in their tracks. That’s an amazing feat.”
Sara’s smile deepened. “Why thank you, kind sir. I wish I could say that was enough, but it’s not. We still have holdouts—the U.S. government among them, until now. I understand you’ve talked the president into taking us seriously.”
“Oh, she’s always taken you seriously, Sara. She’s done everything in her power to”—he stopped himself from saying meet your demands and substituted—“honor your requests. She’s a good woman. A straight shooter. You can trust her.”
A fleeting spark of something like relief flickered in Sara’s eyes, then she asked, “Is she being straight about not being able to decommission the nuclear silos? She said it would be dangerous to abandon them.”
Chuck hadn’t spoken to President Ellis about nuclear missiles specifically, but he had discussed the various demands the Alphas were making with the Joint Chiefs and DHS. “Well, think about it, Sara. If the military pulls all of their staff out of those facilities, what’s to keep some other players from getting in and doing God knows what with the raw materials? Even if they shut down the facilities and take them off the grid entirely, the raw materials are still there to be abused.” He glanced at Admiral Hand, who nodded an affirmation.
Sara was nodding, too, her brow knit. Her need for reassurance reminded Chuck that, though she was powerful and knew how to manipulate reality, she hadn’t gained any godlike knowledge to go with her godlike abilities. That for all her understanding of global politics and military strategy, she was still just an architect playing this all by ear.
That was both comforting and daunting.
“That makes sense,” Sara said. “I suppose we’ll have to figure out some way of adequately protecting them until we can figure out a way to destroy the dangerous components. You need to make us a Zeta physicist, Doc. Someone who can turn their talents to unweaponizing the nuclear stuff.”
“That’s a great idea,” Chuck said in all sincerity. “We’ve been working with several new Zetas. None of them are physicists, exactly, but there is a—a potential adept who has a background in physics. He might be able to come up with some way of neutralizing the radioactive materials.”
Can Lorstad do something like that, he wondered, or is his ability specialized to quantum entanglement and some token atomic manipulation?
It was certainly an interesting avenue to explore—later.
“New Zetas?” Sara repeated, her eyes widening. “How many? What are their skill sets? Does this mean you were able to salvage some of the equipment? That you found a place to continue your work?”
“Yeah. Where did you go, Doc?” Mike asked before Chuck could even begin to answer Sara’s question. He leaned forward in his chair. “You just disappeared. What happened?”
Chuck took a deep breath. Here was an opportunity to present himself and his team as allies. “You probably know that Deep Shield was after us.”
Sara and Mike exchanged a glance. “Yeah,” said Mike. “Matt . . . Matt told us about that. He said they thought they had you and you just disappeared. Where’ve you been?”
“Out in the middle of nowhere,” Chuck answered, hyperconscious of Admiral Hand’s solid presence to his left. “We were taken to a facility on the Nevada-Idaho border that wasn’t much less secret than Deep Shield, if a lot less frightening.”
“By whom?” asked Sara, frowning. “The government?”
“No, not the government. By well-connected allies. People who realized what might happen to us if we fell into the wrong hands.”
“We fell into the wrong hands,” Sara said, her voice harsh.
“Yes, and that was my fault. I moved too slowly. I dithered. I wasn’t sure who to trust. I wanted to trust Matt, but he seemed to be in Howard’s pocket—”
Sara was shaking her head. “Don’t beat yourself up, Doc. We waited too late to move, too. We let them split the teams up. That was a mistake. Trusting Matt was a mistake.”
“A mistake we didn’t make twice,” added Tim.
The expression on his face—equal parts glee and remembered rage—turned Chuck’s blood to ice. “Sara, I have to ask: What happened with Matt? How did . . . why did he die?”
Mike, looking sicker than ever, turned his face away from the camera. Tim’s expression was all rage, and Sara’s matched it.
“You have to ask?” she snarled. “The bastard betrayed us again. He came in here promising he was trying to help. Telling us he was going to put us in solid contact with the government—with the president. He was wearing a wire. And he was a damned decoy. His handlers, whoever they were, tried to take us out with some sort of poison. He got what he deserved—nothing more and nothing less. I couldn’t see letting him betray us any further.”
Again, Chuck met Joan Hand’s dark gaze. They both knew that Matt had gone into the mountain in complete sympathy with the Alphas. “Sara,” he said as gently as he knew how, “that attack wasn’t Matt and it wasn’t the government—at least it wasn’t the Ellis administration. You know there are people trying to resurrect Deep Shield . . .”
She was shaking her head in denial. “They wouldn’t have tried to kill us. We were an asset—a weapon in their fantasy arsenal. Without us, those robots are just geeky hat racks.”
Hand shifted so that she would also appear in the Alphas’ video feed. “Ms. Crowell, we analyzed the canisters that were dropped on the mountain by those drones—which, by the way, were as big a surprise to us as they were to you. They didn’t contain poison. They contained a sedative. You would have been rendered unconscious and awakened with a horrific headache, but you wouldn’t have died. We have every reason to believe those drones were arranged for by the people behind the Deep Shield initiative. Specifically, Senator Roman Bluth.”
“That just means Matt was working with them—”
“No, ma’am, he was working with us. His goal was to extricate you from this . . . situation you’re in. He really was trying to help—same as Dr. Brenton here.”
Tim looked confused and Mike rose unsteadily and strode out of range of the camera. Sara was still shaking her head. “No. You’ve got it wrong. The timing was too perfect to be coincidental. Matt comes in here wearing a wire and someone tries to take us out—”
“Sara,” said Chuck, “why would they attack while Matt was in the mountain with you? That doesn’t make sense. He’d have been affected by the gas, too.”
“Sacrificial lamb. Either way, say you’re right about that part of it. That they didn’t want to kill us. It still means they wanted to incapacitate us so they could come in and extract us. They needed him in here with his wire and probably a positioning beacon so they knew where to drop the stuff and where to find us once they got inside. We are going to be no one’s slave labor again, dammit. Not ever again. In the big scheme of things, Matt was expendable—to his handlers and to us.”
Chuck realized, with a sick jolt, that he was foolish to think he’d be safe inside that mountain with Sara and Tim. Mike seemed to have deep regrets about what they’d done to Matt Streegman, but Sara and Tim had not an atom of remorse between the two of them.
“What about me, Sara?” Chuck asked quietly. “Am I expendable, too? Just a pawn in your chess game?”
“No!” Her face went white and her eyes glistened with sudden emotion. Chuck only wished he knew what that emotion was. “No! You’re not one of them, you’re one of us. You made us. I know you, Chuck. You wouldn’t do anything to harm us. It would be like . . . like harming your own child.”
She was dead right. It would be like harming his own child. But what if that child had become a cold-blooded serial killer? What then?
I made them.
“Matt made you, too, Sara. If I’m like a parent to your abilities, so was Matt.”
“Matt,” she said deliberately, “was a crass materialist. He was a lying, double-dealing, o
pportunistic snake, and it got him killed. His entire contribution to our making was a mathematical formula—a catalyst. A sperm cell, nothing more. You’re the real mother of invention, Chuck. The real wizard.”
“If he was a crass materialist,” argued Chuck, “he wouldn’t have bankrolled the venture. He put everything material and spiritual he had into Forward Kinetics—into you.”
She laughed. “He didn’t believe in the spiritual, Chuck. He was an atheist who didn’t even understand that to acknowledge the human intellect is to acknowledge the divine in all of us.”
“So, he had blind spots. We all do have blind spots.” Even me. Especially me. “So, what’s next, Sara? Where do we go from here?”
“You come visit Olympus,” said Tim brightly. “You’ll be abso-freakin’-lutely amazed at what we’ve done here. We could survive in here indefinitely. Did you know they even had an experimental hydroponics garden down here? It’s not experimental anymore. Mike got the filtration system working and figured out how they were bringing sunlight in from the surface, and I’ve got the whole shebang synced to a computer that regulates everything from water temp to aeration to positioning the sun-catchers. It’s ultracool. We could even tan—”
Sara cut him off. “Tim’s right. You need to see what we’ve done. Do you have Dice with you? And Lanfen? You should bring them. We’ll send down an escort. Mike can handle those robots as easily as if they were that stupid John Deere he loved so much. We’ll have him send—”
“No. No, Sara, I think I’ll pass on the tour of Olympus. I’m . . . claustrophobic, as it turns out. Underground spaces make me break out in a cold sweat and have panic attacks. But Dice and I do want to map your abilities and contrast and compare them to those of the other Zetas. What you’ve accomplished is remarkable. Can you give me a thumbnail sketch of what you’re able to do? The Kabul event—how did you pull that off?” He knew in a broad sense what had transpired during their virtual forays into the outside world, but he hoped for more details.
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