by Jon Land
As Max watched, still trying to pry his feet free, the hooded, faceless figures seemed to dissolve, robes dropping in ruffled heaps to the floor. But in their place, a like number of black snakes joined the first in slithering about the beautiful young woman’s naked body, their paths crisscrossing, hissing as their tongues probed the air.
Suddenly the woman sat up on the pedestal and swung toward Max, shedding the snakes from her. She stepped down lightly, bare feet touching the floor amid the snakes circling about. Then she started toward him, seemingly carried by the winds that still swirled about the room, the snakes trailing her in matching S-patterns.
She stopped, close enough to Max for him to feel her breath through the mouth slit of the mask. His insides felt like jelly, the breath catching in his throat at her absolute perfection.
And then they were kissing, deeply and passionately.
West Houston, Texas
Dale Denton’s eyes flitted between CNN, playing on a computer screen now, and Beekman desperately pounding keys behind his computer linked to the control room below ground level.
“Professor!”
“It’s not working, nothing’s working!”
Denton thought he could feel, actually feel, the air lighten, the shrill siren wailing beyond seeming to ebb. The LED readout measuring the power output generated by the stone was steadily falling, just as fast as it had risen.
“You’ve done it, Professor! You’ve done it!”
But his relief was short-lived, his gaze drifting back to the technicians who’d crumpled to the floor, their limbs askew and twisted at inconceivable angles. Nothing other than a few twitches and spasms for movement. All of them dead now.
Over Canada
The touch of the masked woman’s lips felt somehow familiar to Max, even before she stepped slightly back. Still at arm’s distance …
“Sir! Sir!”
… when Max reached out to unzip her mask to reveal her face.
“Wake up, sir! Wake up!”
Max awoke with a jolt that snapped him forward in his seat, in full view of the other passengers in the first-class cabin. The flight attendant who’d been jostling him lurched back into the aisle.
“You were having a nightmare, a nasty one. I’m sorry, I didn’t know what else to do. I brought you some water.”
Max took the glass and guzzled it down, then gazed about the cabin apologetically. “I’m sorry,” he said, clearing his throat while still trying to clear the fog from his mind. “Sorry for all the commotion.” He forced a smile. “Guess I better have some coffee.”
The flight attendant forced a smile too, while looking just as anxious and frightened as the rest of the cabin’s passengers, unnerved by what she’d just witnessed. “I’ve got a fresh pot on.”
Max settled back in his seat, started to close his eyes but stopped for fear of drifting off to sleep again.
He realized the other passengers in the first-class cabin were still staring at him.
“It’s okay,” he said, trying to reassure them. “Everything’s okay.”
Even though he knew it wasn’t. Not even close.
PART 5
ORIGINS
I have never met any really wicked person before.
I am so afraid he will look just like everyone else.
—Oscar Wilde
FIFTY-TWO
New York City, 2008
“The news isn’t good, I’m afraid,” Dr. Franklin Kirsch told Ben Younger.
Ben had suspected as much as soon as Kirsch had closed the office door behind him, reluctant to meet Ben’s eyes until safely insulated behind his desk.
“How much do you know about DNA?”
“What I learned in high school, which means not much,” Ben said, his mouth gone suddenly dry.
“Well, the science has evolved quite a bit since then, but the basic fundamentals remain the same. The double helix, a visual depiction of what makes humans both different and the same. Human DNA consists of about three billion bases, and more than ninety-nine percent of those bases are identical across the board—that’s what makes us the same. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences—that’s what makes us different.”
Here, Kirsch’s expression sombered, his gaze suddenly furtive once more. When he finally met Ben’s gaze across the desk again, Ben was certain he detected something else he first mistook for confusion but now realized was fear.
“An important property of DNA,” Kirsch resumed, “is that it can replicate, or make copies of itself. Each strand in the double helix can serve as a pattern for duplicating the sequence of bases. This is critical when cells divide, because each new cell needs to have an exact copy of the DNA present in the old cell. That’s where the anomaly in your case, and the root of your illness I believe, lies.”
Ben had come to CyberGen for answers, for hope, after finally receiving a diagnosis for a baffling illness that had been plaguing him almost from the very day of his son Max’s birth nearly eighteen years before. The first symptom was a strange sensation in the mark on his palm left by grasping that scaly, crater-riddled rock the size of his hand in the cave down in the Yucatán. The mark had started to tingle, followed by a chilling numbness that made him feel like he was squeezing cotton.
“You don’t have a blood cancer,” Kirsch resumed. “The doctors you’ve seen are calling your affliction that, because they don’t know what else to call it. It’s only related to the blood, because it’s blood that carries cells, and your problem lies there. At the base genetic level. To put it plainly, the process of your cells dividing—the de facto definition of life—is slowing, has been slowing, and continues to slow. But there’s something else.”
Ben continued to listen.
“Your cells aren’t producing replicas, they’re producing hybrids, as if your body is rewriting its own genetic code from second to second. Never mind not being the same man you were yesterday or the week before; you’re not the same man you were since your last heartbeat.”
“So what can we do about that?” Ben heard himself ask, as if someone else were posing the question.
“Do?” Kirsch shrugged. “Truthfully, I’m not sure. My specialty is diagnoses aided by genetic analyses, not treatment. We’re dealing with an empirical mystery. The simplest, most basic answer to your question is, first and foremost, we find the source of the mutation that turned your genetic system haywire and try to reverse it.”
“Is that even possible?”
Kirsch shook his head. Slowly. “What you’re experiencing is utterly unprecedented in the annals of genetic science. I think we need to look outside of infections, viruses, autoimmune responses, and the other standard medical fodder.” Kirsch crossed his arms and tightened them across his chest, making his shoulders look very small. “I think we need to look toward the normally inexplicable.”
“And what would that entail?”
Kirsch looked away. “Not my area of expertise, I’m afraid.”
“No, Doctor,” said Ben, leaning forward with a start, “I’m the one who’s afraid. I’m paying you a fortune to learn what’s happening to me. So who else am I supposed to go to? Whose area of expertise is this exactly?”
Kirsch nodded and let out a deep breath. “Okay, as far as the inexplicable goes, my first thought would be your … condition was caused by exposure to some kind of foreign-based organism.”
“By foreign, I don’t suppose you mean something I caught on a business trip outside the country.”
“I’m talking about some sort of virus or pathogen not of this world.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning an unknown organism we can’t identify or quantify, much less come up with a predictive diagnosis,” Kirsch explained. “You need to understand that science is based as much on theory as fact. We can try to pass off the genetic mutation
you’re afflicted with as due to exposure to some especially rare and virulent pathogen, or we could simply accept it as an inexplicable genetic anomaly. But we must at least consider the possibility that your unprecedented affliction was caused by exposure to something similarly unprecedented, in the form of something not necessarily of this world.”
Ben looked down at his palm. “You’re referring to the rock I touched, the mark it left on my hand.”
Kirsch unfolded his arms and leaned forward. “That mark wasn’t burned into your skin like a brand. It wasn’t inked into your skin like a tattoo. And it wasn’t carved into your skin either. There’s no scar tissue, it doesn’t extend beyond the dermas. If you asked me what the mark most resembles, I’d tell you a child drawing on your palm with a red crayon. And yet you tell me all attempts at having it removed, including chemical peels, produced no effect whatsoever.”
“So you’re saying,” Ben started, and stopped just as quickly. “What are you saying?”
“Because we’re dealing with something utterly unprecedented, its origins must be similarly unprecedented. If you’d allow me to consult with some experts, share your—”
“I’m also paying for your confidentiality, Doctor,” Ben interrupted.
The experience deep down inside that cave in the Yucatán eighteen years earlier had scared Ben. But finding out he was sick with a deadly, incurable disease had scared him even more. And now this. Kirsch had said little, virtually nothing, Ben hadn’t considered himself at some point. Confirmation of his worst suspicions, though, added a grim finality to the picture. But he couldn’t let the truth get out at this point, not under any circumstances.
“I’m well aware of that, Mr. Younger, and I signed your nondisclosure agreements to that effect. But I’m hoping the circumstances call for an exception, so I can contact specialists who may be able to help where I’ve failed.”
“And turn me into a pincushion with tests and experiments? Spend my last days as a lab monkey?” Ben shook his head demonstrably. “I don’t think so, Doctor. And, besides, there’s something else I need to tell you,” he said to Kirsch.
FIFTY-THREE
New York City, 2008
“You disappoint me, Professor,” Dale Denton said to Orson Beekman, in his sprawling office on the sixtieth floor of the tower housing the New York headquarters of Western Energy Technologies.
“I wish I had better news.”
Denton rose from his desk and moved to a sun-drenched section of the floor-to-ceiling window glass that followed the office’s rounded edges. The illusion created was that it was a single, unbroken pane, as if blown into place from scratch to conform to the building’s odd shape, which wasn’t far from the truth. The sun was so hot and strong, it baked Denton’s skin, made him think he was out exploring an oil field somewhere years back when such things were important. When an especially solid yield seemed like all the money in the world, starting back in the Yucatán.
He turned from the glass, face flushed red from the burn and heat of the sun. “Eighteen years,” he said, shaking his head. “Eighteen years I’ve been giving you everything you’ve asked for. Never skimped when it came to filling your shopping list. And this is what I’ve got to show for it? Nothing. Nada. Shit.”
“You know the phrase a needle in a haystack?” Beekman said, defensively. “This is ten thousand times harder, because we can’t even find the haystack, not after that earthquake destroyed the cave system where Ben Younger first found the rock. And we need to consider something else.”
“What?”
“That maybe we can’t find the rock because it can’t be found, by us or anybody else, because it doesn’t want to be found, or isn’t supposed to be found.”
“That’s insane.”
“Is it?”
“It’s a rock, Professor.”
“If it was just a rock, you wouldn’t have spent all these years and all this money trying to find it.”
“Figure of speech,” Denton retorted. “And once we find it, I’m convinced we’ll be looking at that money as the most worthwhile investment Western Energy Technologies has ever made.”
“Or something we’ll be regretting for the rest of our lives. Theoretically,” Beekman qualified.
“Like there was theoretically oil in the Yucatán, the field that saved our collective asses, you mean? I’ve got a pretty good track record when it comes to such things. Risk equals reward, something I don’t expect you to understand, because you follow science, while I follow my gut. That’s what makes who we are.” Denton’s gaze bore into Beekman sententiously. “And who we’re not. Ben Younger touched that rock you can’t find, and all of a sudden oil blows into the air. He ends up more than a mile away, with no memory of how he got there. Then he goes home and his infertile wife gets pregnant, his son born with a mark identical to the one touching the rock left on his palm. I miss anything theoretical there?”
Denton waited for Beekman to answer, resumed when he didn’t.
“How many times have I asked you for a rational explanation to any of those things and how many times have you provided one? Zero, Professor, because they don’t exist. Remember what you said after your initial evaluation, weighing all the available data, the power it would take to force all the oil up through the ground, so much so fast?”
Beekman nodded. “Speaking hypothetically, I called the rock an immeasurable, but also inexplicable source of energy.”
“And I’ve never forgotten that original assessment. Give me instinct over knowledge any day, Professor, and on that day you were speaking from your gut, what you believed that rock had done and could do—that’s what I still believe, even if you don’t. And I’m going to tell you something else. We’re going to find that rock, no matter what it takes. And if you can’t get the job done, I’ll bring in somebody who can.”
Beekman looked chilled, even through the streaming rays of sunlight striking him. “It doesn’t matter who you bring in. The earthquake that struck the region a decade ago was a seven-point-three, spawning aftershocks more than powerful enough to bury that rock in a billion tons of rubble.”
Denton scowled, his face glowing in the sunlight. “We’re going to find that rock. You want to call that a fool’s errand based on greed, go ahead; I call it ambition.”
Denton was waiting for Beekman’s response when he heard the voice of Ben Younger instead.
“You mind giving us a minute, Professor?”
* * *
“Leave it alone, Dale,” Ben resumed, after Beekman had shuffled past him, taking his leave and closing the door.
Denton stepped away from the glass into a dark, shadowy patch between decorative pillars, the one spot in the office untouched by the gleaming light. “This isn’t your call, partner. You should read the nuts and bolts of our partnership agreement again.”
“I have and I’ve also been reading the balance sheets. And, you know what, they don’t add up. Whole bunch of money’s missing—tens of millions, maybe much more, siphoned off over a whole lot of years. Started when we were a private company, just you and me, but we’re not going to be private much longer and how do you think our shareholders would react to learning the IRS was coming to do a forensic audit?”
In the shadowy patch of his office, Denton’s face looked drained of color. “They aren’t.”
“They will be, if you don’t give up the hunt for that rock now, Dale. I can see the headlines in the Wall Street Journal: ‘Oil Tycoon Indicted on Fraud, Corruption, and Embezzlement Charges.’”
“It’s your company too, Ben, at least it was until your marbles deserted you. Is crazy something you can catch? Because your goddamn wife’s been singing loony tunes since your loser of a son was born, and now she must have you singing along. Why don’t you just stand back and smell the money? Jesus fucking Christ, we’re about to go public here and become richer than we ever imagined.”
“It’s not just me,” Ben said, leaving it there as he glanced at the mar
k on his hand. “And you misappropriated funds to keep this search going and keep the shareholders in the dark. In the corporate world, that’s called stealing. Think that might scare off an investor or two when we issue our IPO?”
“Is that a threat, partner?”
“Does it need to be?”
Denton shook his head, trying to chuckle. “You’d destroy everything we’ve built?”
“The rock you’re looking for, if found, could destroy a shitload more than that.”
“You can’t know that.”
“Yes, I can, and I do. I’ll spare you the details for now. That will change if you don’t pull up stakes and suspend the search, in which case all bets would be off.”
Denton took a few steps closer to him. “You really don’t look too good, Ben. You should go home, get some rest, and leave all this to me.”
“I think I’ll stay right here.”
“Suit yourself.” Denton stopped, his expression changing, as if he’d donned a different mask. “Maybe I was too generous.”
“Excuse me?”
“Remember what your initial investment was in us, in all this, in the Yucatán? Zero. You came to me with a plan to get rich without a single penny to your name. I’m sure I wasn’t the first. How many others turned you down, before you came to me and played the friendship card?”
“None,” Ben said, with no hesitation at all, his tone remaining surprisingly measured, “because you were the first. First and only. But that would never have happened, if I’d known where the money came from.”
“Not all of it, partner,” Denton said, advancing toward him and stopping just short of a wide swath of sunlight which now seemed to form a barrier between them. “I lost all my cash in securing the permits, the initial surveys, the crews, the equipment, the digging. And when that ran out, I went to the street, because that’s the only place I could get the kind of money we needed to finish the job.”
“What would’ve happened if we hadn’t found oil?”
“We would’ve been dead,” Denton told him bluntly. “Broke, failures, done, dead—I don’t really see the distinction. Who gives a fuck?”