The God Peak

by Patrick Hemstreet

  “Daddy,” said Anton, obviously impressed, “you blew up a whole mountain!”

  “Yeah, I did. Who knew I could do that?”

  “I did,” said Chuck. “I think you can do anything you put your mind to. Anything.”

  The other man turned to look at him, a question in his dark eyes. Their gazes met and held, then Mike chuckled.

  “I gotta say, Doc, I think you got more faith in me than I got.”

  Chuck quoted softly: “‘For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’”

  “Jesus said that,” said Anton. “I learned that in Sunday school.”

  Chuck nodded. “Book of Matthew, chapter seventeen, I think.”

  Chuck fell silent as they moved forward again, finding himself in a moment of crystalline clarity. Faith—belief; that was the essential element in the formula Lorstad had demanded of him. Lanfen had put it into words some time ago, but he was now seeing the ramifications of that and realizing how faith undergirded every endeavor—even scientific ones. Faith was the way every human being organized their thoughts and feelings based on their assumptions about the universe, themselves—everything. It was not some elixir available only to the mystic; it was the basis of science, itself: in order to understand the workings of the human brain or the universe within and without, one had first to have faith that those things could be understood.

  Every scientific step forward depended on someone’s faith that a theory could be proven, or that a premise was sound, or that an experiment would yield logical results. Hell, it depended on faith that the entity seeking the proof or establishing the premise or performing the experiment had the capacity to do all of those things and understand the results.

  How did that translate to Lorstad’s quest for an evolutionary shortcut? Chuck wasn’t sure. The only thing he knew was that faith was unquantifiable. How much was enough to bridge the gap between current and potential abilities? He didn’t know. What he did know was that there was no formula, there was only the scientific process: hypothesize, experiment, assess results, adjust the hypothesis, rinse, and repeat—all with faith that the process would yield useful results.

  It was a wonderful—and daunting—revelation.

  The sound of an engine brought Chuck out of his reverie.

  “Hey, Doc,” Mike said. “Were you expecting a welcoming committee?”

  Chuck looked up to see a military Humvee break through the brush into the meadow. It was populated by three grim-faced soldiers. They were armed, of course, but held their weapons at rest. The ranking officer, who was riding shotgun, was a lieutenant Chuck recognized from Spiderweb. His name was Decker. He seemed composed enough, though his gaze roved uneasily over the robot entourage.

  The Humvee pulled to a stop eight or ten feet from Chuck and company and the officer gestured at the back seat. “Dr. Brenton, Admiral Hand sent us out to bring you in. Something’s happened over at Beta Camp, but no one’s reported in yet. You need to come with us.”

  Chuck glanced at Mike. “What about the bots?”

  “I’ll bring ’em in. You want them at Spiderweb or your base camp?”

  “Spiderweb makes the most sense, right?” Chuck looked to the officer, who nodded.

  “Lacey,” Decker said to the young private in the rear seat, “you will accompany Mr. Yenotov and the boy back to the unit.”

  “Sir.” The soldier bailed out of the Humvee and approached the robots cautiously.

  Mike gave him a wry smile. “You can trade places with Doc Brenton. Lem, there, is as safe as that Humvee.”

  Chuck was already out of the transport bot, Lem, and halfway to the army vehicle when he thought of Lanfen. He wanted to reach out to her, but he was afraid to—what if she didn’t respond? The thought was almost enough to bring him to his knees. He climbed into the Humvee. The driver—his name patch read “Wood”—turned it and headed back into the woods, cutting southeast toward Beta Camp.

  They had just slipped beneath the tree canopy when Chuck heard a strange, rhythmic whisper of sound overhead. Chuck looked up to see a helicopter coming in from the west, sweeping low over the treetops. He saw that Lieutenant Decker was watching the craft as well, a frown between his brows. The copter was long, lean, sleek, and a dull, light-sucking black. Stealth. It had four small rotors in a rectangular brace above the fuselage.

  “Is that one of yours?” Chuck asked.

  “Sir, I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

  “We don’t have any helicopters, Lieutenant. We have two SUVs and whatever Admiral Hand has brought to Spiderweb.”

  Decker turned to his driver. “Pick up the pace, Corporal. Do your best.”

  “Yessir.”

  The Humvee leapt forward and burrowed deeper beneath the trees.

  At first, Lanfen could not even see Eugene amid the thick blanket of tree boughs and the profusion of shattered branches. The air was thick with the perfume of crushed cedar, a scent that she’d always associated with pleasant hikes and balmy autumn days. Lanfen was certain that, after today, it would forever remind her of quaking terror. She was scared to death that she’d find Eugene crushed and lifeless beneath the broad tree trunk. She had waded through at least eight feet of detritus—pushing at it with hands and mind—when she saw the bright turquoise of his jacket on the opposite side of the trunk.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she levitated herself over that obstacle and alit gently, hip-deep in the foliage as close to Eugene as she could get. She called his name as she shifted branches and boughs out of the way or severed them from the tree. Even with her zeta abilities, it took several minutes of digging, during which she could hear bits and pieces of the battle taking place in the camp behind her. When the clearing fell silent, she almost panicked—torn between knowing what had happened to the others and getting to Eugene.

  She pulled her head back into her work. Euge needed her.

  She reached him at last and was beyond relieved to find that he was breathing and that his pulse was regular, if weak. He lay facedown, his head turned to one side, which gave her a clear view of the gash on his left temple. It was bleeding freely. She wondered if “thick” atoms could serve as a compression bandage. There was only one way to find out. She gathered atoms from the air, compacted them, and imagined them pressing down on Eugene’s wound.

  In a second or two, the bleeding slowed. She willed the pressure to remain in place—and told herself it would—then checked his arms and legs. Relief. Nothing was broken. When she gently turned him over—a maneuver that required both physical and zeta touch—she was dismayed to find that his ribs had not fared so well. He had landed on a three-inch-thick branch that had lacerated his rib cage and fractured at least two of his ribs.

  She needed to get him out of here. She was contemplating the best way of accomplishing that when she heard Dice shout her name.

  She looked up, trying to see past or through the cedar barrier. That was a fruitless task. “Here!” she called. “Euge is alive! Is it safe to bring him out that way?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Sara and Tim . . .” He trailed off and finished, “It’s clear.”

  Lanfen licked her lips. The last time she’d lifted someone using her zeta fu, she’d had Mini’s help. Silly. Of course she could do it. She just needed to pack atoms more densely beneath him, manipulate local gravity a shade. She lifted him free of the tree branches and levitated him carefully over the trunk and clear of the debris, feeling the textures and height of the surfaces over which he traveled and reacting with the same concentration she brought to kung fu. Brenda and Dice reached them just as she was lowering Eugene gently to the grassy ground.

  Dice knelt next to his friend’s still body and put fingers to his neck. He shook his head. “We need Chuck.”

  “We don’t have Chuck at the moment,” said Lanfen, refusing to think about why
that was, “and I’m not sure what to do.”

  “I think we should put Euge and Mini in a car,” Brenda said, gesturing toward the SUVs, “and get them over to Spiderweb. There’s a doctor there.”

  Lanfen followed the gesture and saw Mini lying in the open several yards beyond the vehicles.

  “Oh God. Is she all right?”

  “I think so,” Bren said. “Her pulse is strong. I think she just fainted from the effort of . . . that.” She glanced back over her opposite shoulder.

  Lanfen followed that movement as well, and immediately regretted it. Two misshapen forms lay on the ground near the door of the immersion cabin, looking more like bloody piles of discarded clothing than human beings.

  “M-Mini did that?”

  “Mini’s . . . golems did it,” said Dice, looking up from an examination of Eugene’s head wound. “Gargoyles, I guess you’d call them. We only caught the tail end of it. Saw them a spilt second before they disappeared and Mini passed out.”

  Lanfen couldn’t wrap any words around that, but only shook her head. “Where’s Joey? He was still in the immersion cabin when I left him.”

  “Oh, damn,” said Bren, who took off running for the modular, calling Joey’s name.

  Dice looked after her, then asked, “You need help getting Euge into the SUV?”

  “Open the rear hatch for me?”

  “You got it.”

  Dice rose and headed for the passenger side of the car. Lanfen lifted Eugene again and began “floating” him toward the SUV. She’d maneuvered him around to the tail of the vehicle and into the cargo area when she heard the strange, rhythmic rush of sound trembling the air and saw a shadow fall across the clearing. A sleek, black helicopter with a quartet of small rotors overflew the clearing, dropped to mere feet above the ground, and pivoted over the far end of the camp.

  “What the hell . . .” said Dice.

  Lanfen lowered Eugene carefully into the cargo bay, then turned to peer out from under the tree boughs toward the strange copter.

  “Is that military?” Dice asked. “Why aren’t they landing?”

  The bad feeling that Lanfen had been fighting since the moment she first saw the copter blossomed in her chest. “Let’s get Mini and Joey and get out of here.”

  Mini was beginning to stir now, rolling her head from side to side. Lanfen had started toward her when Lorstad winked into existence over her prone form. With a glance at Lanfen and Dice, he scooped Mini up in his arms and vanished.

  The copter began to lift.

  Lanfen’s instincts took complete control. She knew immediately where Mini had gone and whose stealth aircraft that was. She turned and sprinted directly at the copter, rushing like the wind. She thought of flinging herself into the air as Sara had done, but was sure of her own abilities only up to about thirty feet. The copter was already that high. So she stopped beneath the craft and extended her thoughts toward it, imagining two invisible, giant hands grasping it, fore and aft. The machine wobbled and bucked, but Lanfen simply had not developed the skills to perform what Mike might have done with ease. So she did the next-best thing: Lanfen knew engines. She reached into the workings of the copter’s motor and felt for a way to bring it down safely.

  Air.

  She thought a kink into a hose and the helicopter stuttered. It dropped half a dozen feet. So far so good. She kept the air supply sporadic and brought the copter closer and closer to the ground. When it was low enough, she’d jump.

  Kristian grasped a handhold as the helicopter dropped out from under his feet. It had barely stabilized when Mini moaned, pulling against the restraints he’d fastened to keep her safely secured to the fold-down cot. He grappled an infuser of sedative out of the med kit and applied it to her neck, then flung the empty infuser aside and headed forward. He was almost to the tiny cockpit when the aircraft lost altitude again and shivered like a wet dog.

  Alexis sat in the pilot’s seat, her hands in a white-knuckle death grip on the steering yoke.

  What’s happening? he asked her.

  She glanced up at him briefly. Take a look.

  He grabbed the back of her seat and peered out through the large slanted window. Lanfen stood in the clearing below, the wind of the copter’s rotors whipping around her, her gaze riveted to the craft and her fists clenched at her sides.

  What’s she doing?

  Alexis shook her head. I don’t know. But she’ll bring this damn thing down if we don’t do something and do it fast. Take the controls.

  She slid sidewise out of the seat, her fist still closed on the steering yoke. He had no choice but to slide in from the opposite side.

  Don’t kill her, Alexis.

  I may not have a choice.

  You always have a choice.

  Alexis gave him an unreadable look, then crouched by the pilot’s seat, peering from the window at the woman below. Lorstad knew what she could do—she could reverse the polarity of synaptic potentials in the motor strip of the other woman’s neocortex. She could shut down voluntary processes in a subject’s brain. Depending on what she did, the effect could be merely incapacitating or dangerous.

  He wasn’t sure what she did now, but with the copter mere feet from the ground, Chen Lanfen went completely limp and tumbled like a marionette whose strings had been cut. The copter bobbed upward and Lorstad pivoted it up and away from the Beta Camp.

  There, Alexis thought at him. I didn’t kill her. Happy? She’s watching us fly away wondering why she can’t move. She’ll wonder that for approximately five minutes, then she’ll be fine. She made a gesture that meant “move” and he relinquished the controls back into her capable hands. I just hope your little artist is as great a creator as you think she is and that what she can do can be controlled and taught. I’d hate to think we’ve exposed ourselves to this degree for nothing.

  Kristian muzzled his own thoughts. He hoped for the same thing but wasn’t prepared to have Alexis know how uncertain he was about the possibility. He was certain only that Minerva Mause represented—more than any other zeta talent—the next step in human evolution. The others might stretch physical and mental abilities to previously impossible lengths, manipulate atoms, or create clever projections, but only Mini could create what might be an emergent form of life. With more focus and the addition of immersion entrainment, he hoped that capacity might be brought to flower.

  There was more to it than that, of course. A human capacity could not be deemed truly evolutionary until it could be encoded into the DNA. That was beyond Kristian Lorstad’s abilities. That was a task for the Learned geneticists.

  He gazed down into Mini’s face. He stymied a reflex to stroke her cheek. He bit his tongue rather than whisper don’t worry. He did not envy her the next several months of her life, but he was hopeful that in the end, she would realize what a great gift she had been given and what a great destiny might await her.

  And, perhaps, appreciate who had given it to her.

  The military Humvee broke through the perimeter woods into the Beta base camp just as the stealth copter bobbed skyward and pivoted in the air high above the camp. Corporal Wood brought the vehicle to a sliding halt next to the immersion modular. Lieutenant Decker had already raised his assault rifle and was taking aim.

  A piercing dart of thought that felt like Dice caused Chuck to reach out reflexively to keep Decker from firing. The lieutenant grunted in surprise at his sudden inability to fire his rifle.

  “No more deaths,” Chuck said, and released his zeta hold on the man’s reflexes.

  He leapt from the vehicle and gazed up at the aircraft. He could do nothing to the mechanics of the thing, but he might be able to reach its human crew. He reached out with every ounce of zeta capacity he had and felt the three life signatures aboard the copter as if they were standing right next to him. Each was unique, recognizable. He knew Mini was unconscious, that Lorstad was fearful, and that Alexis piloted the craft and that her heart was racing.

  He focused
on that heart. He knew that he could slow it, even stop it. For a moment—a measure of his own heartbeats—he thought that he might. If he simply caused the involuntary contractions to stop . . .

  Alexis’s heart beat one, two, three times before Chuck shook himself free of the mesmerizing rhythm and let the copter go. They would not harm Mini and he would not harm her captors—the Hippocratic fine print would not be executed today. The aircraft pivoted and soared upward and westward. Chuck knew where it was going.

  He turned his attention to his team. Lanfen lay on the ground in the clearing, unmoving. He started in her direction, calling her name, but a strong, sharp thought from her stopped him.

  Eugene. The blue SUV.

  He turned and ran to the SUV, where Dice beckoned. The engineer was already gesturing into the open hatch. “Sara dropped a tree on Euge. He has a nasty head wound and a couple of broken ribs. Maybe more than that.”

  Chuck climbed into the back of the SUV and knelt over Eugene’s body. He gave the wounds a cursory check, then looked out at Dice. “Go help the others. The two guys who brought me here—”

  “Yeah,” Dice said and headed for the center of camp.

  Chuck took a deep breath, put one hand on Eugene’s head and another on his ribs, and dived. There were three broken ribs—none threatened any major organs. The head injury was more worrisome. The gash went nearly to the bone; the skull beneath it was cracked; the brain was swelling.

  Chuck had seen such injuries in the OR at Johns Hopkins. He knew in what order things required doing. Seal bone, reduce swelling, knit flesh. He caused, in essence, a localized zone in which bone remodeling and tissue regeneration were greatly accelerated. He mended the cracked bone, soothed the swollen tissue, reduced pressure, sealed bleeders. He worked on the ribs next, gently massaging them, moving them, smoothing surfaces—having done this with Joey the first time, that went much more smoothly. He repeated the steps to increase blood flow, accelerate remodeling, and wick away excess blood.

  When he finished—cold, sweating, and lightheaded—he knew that Eugene would remain unconscious for several hours and would take time to recover. But he would recover. From this. Losing Mini—even for the time it took to find her—would be harder.