The Eternal World

by Christopher Farnsworth

  Wrong answer. That was obvious from the look on Simon’s face. “Do you, now,” he said flatly.

  “You have to understand. Robinton didn’t let any of us into his work. Not very deep, anyway. We’re looking at most of this for the first time. And sure, we can understand the basics, we can see where he started, but we’re having trouble making some of the leaps he did.”

  Simon stared at Reed for a long moment. “How long?”

  “It’s not a problem,” Reed said quickly. “We’re very close.”

  Someone else at the table muttered at that. Reed shot them a hard look. “We’re very close,” he said again. “You have to understand, we’ve got the bare bones here. But to get you a finished product, that’s going to take longer.”

  “Robinton had a finished product. I saw it. He showed it to me.”

  “Well, yes,” Reed admitted. “But we’ve only got the formula. Not the samples. He didn’t leave any samples.”

  “And the formula isn’t enough?” Simon’s voice was dangerously soft now.

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying,” Reed said. “We can do it from formula.”

  That seemed to be too much for another one of the white coats. A woman at the other end of the table spoke up. “Oh, bullshit, Quentin. You looked at his notes as long as we did, and you were just as confused.”

  “Shut up, Michele,” Reed snapped back.

  But the dam had broken now. The white coats were squabbling. “I’ve never even seen anything like that kind of synthesis.”

  “—fucking hydrogels? How are we supposed to—”

  “Do you know what would happen to a test subject if we got even one thing wrong? We’re talking an indictment, not a lawsuit—”

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Reed shouted.

  They all quieted down. Except the one called Michele.

  She looked right at Simon and Max. “Listen. Bottom line: this is frontier biotech, and we can barely read the map. We’re starting from where he left off. But we don’t know what he did to get where he went. What David Robinton did was out-of-the-ballpark, next-level stuff. He came up with three or four ideas that would have been enough to take us five years ahead of everyone else on the way to the finished product. As for the final result, I’ll admit it, even if Quentin won’t. There’s stuff in there I’ve never seen before. Even with instructions, we have to go back and learn how to do it all over again. And we’re making a lot of mistakes. It’s not like assembling an IKEA desk, either. This is more like learning how to repaint a Van Gogh.”

  Reed swore at her. “You’re being overly dramatic, Michele.”

  “Am I? Then show him your work, Quentin. Show us all how it’s done.”

  Simon ignored the bickering. “How long?” he asked again.

  “A year.”

  “A year?”

  “Minimum. If you don’t want to kill everyone who takes it.”

  Reed was still talking. “You just have to roll back the product launch, right? It’s not fatal, right?”

  Fatal. Max almost laughed at that. They still thought Simon was worried about release schedules and stock prices.

  “Let’s say it is fatal,” he said. “What would you say if I needed it inside six months? Life or death.”

  The white coats exchanged worried looks. No one spoke. Then Michele found the courage again.

  “Six months?”

  “Three would be better.”

  “Life or death?” she asked.

  Simon nodded.

  “We just can’t,” she said. “There’s no way. If three months is life or death, I’m sorry, sir. You’re dead.”

  SIMON WAS STILL GIVING Max the silent treatment as they rode the elevator down to the subbasement.

  It was time to refill the bottles. They had all used a lot of Water to heal from Shako’s attack. Peter still had a scar.

  “So, it’s going to take time,” Max said. “We still have the formula. We have time.”

  Simon didn’t respond.

  “I’m saying we still have options. There’s no reason to panic.”

  Again, nothing.

  Be that way, Max thought.

  Ordinarily, Simon refilled their flasks and bottles with the Water by himself. Max wondered exactly how this was meant to teach him a lesson, and Simon wasn’t saying anything more than necessary.

  When the elevator doors opened, the cold air hit Max in the face. The basement was always cold, even when it was scorching and humid outside.

  It had been difficult, digging into the swampy Florida ground all those years ago, and nearly a century of maintenance and upgrades had cost them as much as it would have to build a skyscraper. But this cellar was now better built than the White House’s fallout shelter. It had systems and pumps maintaining fresh air and perfectly balanced humidity. It was the storehouse of the greatest treasure the world had ever known.

  This was where they kept the last of the Water.

  Over the years, they had stored it in various places, at first in the wooden casks that they’d made themselves with the broken planks from their shipwrecked landing in Florida. Then they had transferred the water into barrels crafted by the best coopers they could find in Cuba and Mexico. Years later, the water was transferred again, like old wine into new bottles, or in this case, into airtight steel drums.

  When those began to rust, Simon had the Water drained into specially designed containers made of high-tech ceramics and million-year, non-degradable plastics. They could be dropped from a height of nine stories without breaking, and would not lose so much as a molecule to evaporation.

  Then he and Max moved them back into the Vault.

  Max, as Simon’s right hand, knew its location. It was a secret to the others. But only Simon knew the combination to the door. Simon usually handled the Water personally. Max tried not to take it as too great an insult that he was rarely allowed access to this holy of holies.

  Simon pressed the buttons, and the heavy steel slid back noiselessly into the walls.

  Max got his first look inside in several years.

  And felt like he was dying.

  It was almost empty. There was one barrel.

  “It’s only half-full,” Simon told him. Then he laughed. “Or half-empty, depending on how you look at it.”

  Max found he was having trouble breathing.

  “You were saying something about not panicking, Max?”

  Max swallowed. “How . . . how did this happen?”

  Simon laughed at him, genuinely amused. “It’s been a long time.”

  Max put a hand on the cold, metallic wall to steady himself. He was looking at death: not just the death of his dream of moving forward, of evolving past their current state, but true death. The end of a life that, he realized now, he had not ever really believed was capable of ending.

  He felt sick. He felt like he was about to fall to the floor.

  “Oh my God,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me, Simon?”

  “I’m telling you now,” Simon said. “Do you finally understand? We are out of options, Max. This is the reality. We either succeed with David or we die without him.”

  Max managed to pull himself together. He wiped the cold sweat off his forehead and stood up straight. “You’re right, of course,” he said.

  Inside, however, he couldn’t stop his mind from spinning as he looked at Simon.

  How many times have I protected you and kept you from your own bad decisions? Too many to count. Still, through it all, I’ve always trusted you to find the right path.

  But now, for the first time in centuries, Max was filled with doubt.

  Maybe Max could not save Simon after all. At this point, he was wondering if he’d even be able to save himself.

  CHAPTER 27

  GULF COAST, FLO
RIDA

  NOW

  DAVID HAD ASSUMED they would be fleeing the country in disguises or hiding under the deck of a ship like smugglers.

  Instead, he found himself watching the sun reflect off the Gulf of Mexico from the passenger seat of a cherry-red Mustang convertible.

  “This doesn’t seem very smart,” he said again. “For a couple of people who are supposed to be hiding, we seem pretty conspicuous.”

  From behind the wheel, Shako laughed at him. Again. “You’ve got the same habits of mind as they do. People who are in hiding are supposed to hide. We’re supposed to be scared, scurrying beneath the floorboards. Fugitives aren’t supposed to be out in the open, enjoying themselves. So you could at least try to look happy to be here.”

  “Sorry. It’s hard not to imagine a big target on top of my head right now.”

  “The Council is powerful, David, but not omnipotent,” she said. “They cannot watch every airport and dock and pier and boat on both coasts of Florida, or every car on the road. They do not have access to spy satellites. And even if they did, they would need to know where to start looking. The world is still bigger than they are.”

  “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, and I know them pretty well,” she said. “Anyway, you’re probably still a little nervous from being shot.”

  David realized he was rubbing his chest underneath his shirt again, and stopped.

  She smiled at him, even more dazzling than the light from the Gulf. “Much better,” she said. “Try to enjoy the ride.”

  Easier said than done. His head was killing him. Ever since they’d left the hotel and started driving east along the Gulf, David had felt under assault from all his senses. Despite his black wraparound shades, the sun pierced his eyes. He could hear the stereos in the highway traffic, despite the wind and noise. He could taste the different hydrocarbons from the exhaust, each one a bitter flavor on his tongue.

  And when he was not in pain, he felt stupid and stoned. He didn’t like drugs, had never really done many of them in college, but now he found himself staring at things like a drooling hippie moron. He lost himself in the deep red of the car’s paint job for minutes while Shako packed the trunk. A breeze over the hairs of his arm set his whole body shivering with delight. He tracked a flock of gulls through the air, memorizing its route instantly, becoming lost in the intricacies of the swarmlike behavior as it flew.

  Shy—no, Shako, he reminded himself—noticed, and sympathized. “It’s not easy the first time,” she said. “The world becomes so much richer. So much sharper.”

  David looked at her. “This is what it’s like for you all the time?”

  She nodded. “Most of the time.”

  “How do you deal with it?”

  Her smile again. “Years of practice.”

  After waking in the hotel room, David had examined himself thoroughly under the bathroom lights and in the mirror. The first thing he noticed was that the front tooth he’d chipped in sixth grade—playing tetherball with a friend, the half-deflated ball caught him in the lip—was whole and perfect again. His hairline had edged down slightly, filling in the thinning patches. A jagged scar on his inner arm, a souvenir from falling under the cleats of another player in a college soccer game, had vanished.

  David knew that eventually the effects of the Water would wear off. He’d seen it in all the test subjects. At a certain point, aging began again.

  Right now, he wasn’t sure if he was anxious for that or dreading it.

  There was a question that kept nagging at him. “This is really how you’ve spent your whole life?”

  She eyed him sharply from behind her sunglasses. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’ve had literally hundreds of years, and you’ve spent them trying to kill six men.”

  “There were eight when I started.”

  David shrugged. “Not a real impressive score.”

  David was suddenly thrown against his seat belt as Shako hit the brakes and skidded across traffic. They came to rest on the shoulder, burned rubber and the wailing horns of other drivers in the air around them.

  Shako was very close to him, speaking very precisely.

  “You have no idea,” she said coldly. “You barely have any idea what a woman has to go through now. Then, I was considered something subhuman. Property at best. I was not allowed to hold money or a weapon or to reveal that I knew how to read or speak anything but my native tongue. I had only myself. They had the entire world, and the way it worked, to keep them safe. I used everything I had, including time. I knew the world would change, however slowly. Everything I built cost me, but I knew it would eventually be worth it.”

  David was still reeling from the adrenaline and the sudden stop. He knew the better thing to do would be to shut up. But part of him would not accept that this woman—who carried so much more than he could ever know, let alone understand—was not the same woman he’d spent the last half year with. So he said what he felt.

  “It seems like such a waste. That’s all.”

  For a split second, he thought she’d strike him. He wondered if she’d stop at just one blow.

  Then she seemed to physically take control of herself.

  “I told you what I had to watch,” Shako said at last. “What I had to endure. Imagine losing every single person you knew. Every member of your family, your extended family, your neighborhood, your city. All of them, murdered before your eyes, because of someone you thought you trusted. Because of your mistake. Can you honestly say that you would not spend eternity trying to make that right?”

  “You call this making it right?”

  “You don’t get to judge me, David.”

  “That’s not what I meant. You could have changed the world in any number of ways. All of you could have. But instead you’re locked into this cycle of revenge.”

  Shako looked at him with undisguised contempt. “You wouldn’t say that if it was your family. I know you, David. You lost your sister, and you’ve spent your whole life curled around that fact. Everything you’ve done has been for her. You’re not that different from me.”

  “I’ve worked to save people’s lives,” David said. “That’s different. Maybe I’d feel like you if Simon killed someone I know, but—”

  Shako laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Did you really think your father was driving drunk?”

  David listened to the cars flying past on the road, to the rush of displaced air, for a long moment.

  “What?”

  “Your father was working for a subsidiary of Conquest’s on a way to cure diseases like your sister’s. Simon and the Council saw some value in it. They allowed him to see some of their research on the Water. Your father was brilliant, David. Almost as smart as you. He began to put it together. He became a threat. So they arranged an accident for him and your mother.”

  “No,” David said flatly. “That’s too much of a coincidence. I don’t accept that. And I don’t need it. I’ve already told you, I’m with you against Simon, I don’t need you to make up some—”

  She cut him off. “I don’t need to make anything up. I wouldn’t make the effort. Max sent a cleaning crew who took your parents, put them in a car and soaked them with bourbon, and then ran that car off a cliff. That was how you initially came to their attention. They saw your test scores and decided to keep an eye on you, just in case, ever since.”

  David felt as though her words had actual physical force behind them. He kept seeing the closed caskets. Hardly enough to bury, one man at the funeral had said, not knowing or caring that David was close enough to overhear.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I know almost everything they’ve done in the last two hundred years. This is hardly the worst thing.”
/>
  “Why didn’t you warn them? Why didn’t you stop it?”

  “I was on the other side of the world at the time.”

  “But if you weren’t? If you’d been around?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “This is a war, David. People die.”

  David looked away from her.

  “Now it matters, doesn’t it?” she said. “When it’s the people you care about.”

  “Why did you tell me this?”

  “Because you need to face the truth,” she said. “Your sweet little girlfriend Shy does not exist. She never did. She was a mask I wore for a short time, like many others I’ve worn and forgotten. She was a tool—a means to an end—just like you are. Simon and his men make the world uglier every day as they fashion a little bit more of it into their own image. But even if they didn’t—even if they had spent every moment of every hour since they killed my people doing their best to build paradise—I would still kill them. They destroyed my life. They murdered my family. And they used me to do it. There is no forgiveness for that and no amount of redemption that will save them from me.”

  David didn’t respond.

  Shako put the car back into gear and rejoined the traffic, moving relentlessly down the highway once again.

  DAVID’S MIND WOULD NOT accept it. She was old. Impossibly old. In doing his research, David had spent many hours in nursing homes and hospitals with the elderly. There was a whole suite of specific odors and sounds he associated with the weight of years: the failing of bladders and body parts, the creaking and farting and sighing and groaning as all the pains and problems accumulated in bodies that could no longer keep from breaking down under the strain.

  But nothing about Shy—Shako, he kept reminding himself, Shako—hit those triggers in him. He looked at her and saw a woman younger than him, who moved with a fluid, athletic grace.

  The only place he glimpsed her age was in her eyes. There were times he caught her looking at him, as if from a great distance, and he felt like a small animal on the ground being hunted by a bird of prey.

  There was a ruthlessness there. He’d seen something similar when Simon had threatened the senator.