The basilisk ignored him and oozed ever closer to Fiona and the others.
If it gets to her, we’re all finished. There was only one way he could think of to save Fiona.
He let the useless pistol fall, not even noticing as it was pulled away in the gravity storm, and cupped his hands around his mouth. “Fiona!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Stop!”
44
Through the earthquake, Fiona had managed to keep up the chant, but it seemed like all they were accomplishing was to really piss off the black hole. Now the basilisk was heading their way.
She concentrated on uttering the mantra, but fear stole her breath and she could only manage a few seconds of humming with each inhalation. Alexander’s hand gripped her arm, a forceful but silent exhortation to ignore the threat and stay focused, but she knew it wasn’t going to work. The basilisk was going to kill them all.
And then King’s voice reached out to her, telling her to stop.
She did.
“No Fiona,” Alexander rasped. “You must keep going. It’s the only way.”
Sara fell silent as well and then hugged Fiona protectively, as if silently encouraging her to trust her decision in the face of Alexander’s growing rage.
“You must keep going,” Alexander repeated urgently, “Or all will be lost.”
Fiona felt her heart torn in two. Alexander knew what he was talking about; he’d stopped the black hole once before. But she trusted King implicitly, and if he said to stop… But what if he was wrong?
The basilisk halted its advance, shadowy tentacles poised mere inches from where they sat. Fiona wanted to retreat from it, but her limbs were leaden and the ground was still shaking violently beneath her. She feared that any attempt to move might send her plunging into the crater.
King’s voice continued to reach out across the ominous grinding noise of the debris shifting into the black hole and the groan of the Louvre coming apart all around them, but he wasn’t talking to Fiona anymore. He held up a phone and waved it. “This is what you want, you bastard. Right here. Come and get it.”
Fiona wasn’t sure she could trust what she was seeing; the basilisk was moving away.
“Now,” Alexander roared. “It’s leaving. We must resume the mantra.”
“No.” The word was barely audible, a timid breath that seemed to falter before she could get it past her lips. She gathered her courage and tried again. “No. King said to stop. He knows what he’s doing.”
“He knows nothing!” Alexander’s rage was as overpowering as the black hole itself.
Fiona hugged Sara tighter, and when she spoke, her words were directed only at herself. “I believe in him.”
For a fleeting second, she thought Alexander’s anger might turn physical. But if such was ever his intent, he didn’t get a chance to act, for at that moment, a section of wall broke free behind them and sailed toward the black hole like a kite caught in a gale force wind. Fiona caught just a glimpse of it before it slammed into all three of them, sweeping them toward oblivion.
When the word ceased to be spoken, the speaker winked out of the entity’s awareness. Without the word to guide it, the manifestation halted, poised to act the instant the sound resumed and all the while aware of the close proximity of the remaining fragment of the consciousness.
The entity waited. Its consciousness, incomplete though it was, understood the causal nature of the world it now inhabited. It understood what would happen if the word continued to be spoken, and it understood that the speaker of the word intended exactly that outcome.
Why then had the speaking stopped?
The entity could not comprehend this, and was, for a few brief nanoseconds, caught in an endless logic loop. Failing to find an explanation for the cessation of the word, the entity returned the manifestation to its original purpose. Perhaps all would be clear when the final piece of its consciousness was added.
The manifestation moved immediately for its original goal and reached out with a finger of its strange essence. It embraced the item that contained the last fragment without changing it, and immediately as it made contact, the entity’s sense of satisfaction multiplied. With the assimilation of the final piece, its mind was made complete.
Now, there remained but one final task for the manifestation: return the complete mind to the entity. The entity’s awesome power to change the very fabric of reality would be joined to the limitless possibilities of awareness…of thought.
Though it did not grasp that ancient villagers had once thought it to be a devil, the entity now understood that it had become what the insignificant inhabitants of this world would call a god.
45
King remained motionless in the face of the basilisk’s advance. It seemed to be moving faster now, but that was probably just an illusion caused by the fact that it was coming straight at him. Even if he had wanted to flee, it would have been impossible with the black hole’s gravity exerting an almost irresistible pull that threatened to send him tumbling down into the crater.
He watched as a tendril reached out for the satchel where he’d stashed the quantum phone. If Brown’s supposition about the importance of a connection to a human user was correct, then the basilisk would be coming for him next, but that was a sacrifice he was willing to make to give Fiona a chance to finish what she needed to do.
The quantum phone disappeared into the basilisk’s massive form, and then without a moment’s pause, it shifted course and descended into the pit, toward the accretion disk.
King waited, not daring to breathe. He had just given the black hole the one thing it wanted most; if this gamble failed, there was no telling what the consequences of that decision would be.
The basilisk reached the swirling rubble pile and then, as if it were no more substantial than smoke or shadow, seeped into the grinding rock mass.
Then something strange happened. There wasn’t a flash or an explosion or any other kind of display, but the change was just as instantaneous. The mass lurched a little, as if the accretion disk had hiccupped, and shimmered in the dim light as the swirling pieces of rubble and debris were pulverized into particles finer than sand. Then the entire mass appeared to implode, shrinking inward as if sucked through a straw into another dimension.
For a fleeting instant, King thought his plan had worked. When the basilisk had grabbed the satchel with the quantum phone, it had also taken about five pounds of Semtex, wired to a detonator which he’d set with a ten-second delay.
Suvorov had given him the idea. The Russian had observed the effect of bullets on the thing and had sacrificed himself in a futile effort to get explosives close enough to do some real damage. Unfortunately, the basilisk’s touch had altered the chemical nature of the plastique, rendering it completely inert.
But Suvorov’s idea had been a good one. King had gambled on the fact that within the monster’s impenetrable body, the quantum phones were still intact, and that it would add his phone to the collection, along with his ticking time bomb.
Beyond that, he hadn’t known what to expect. He didn’t know if the basilisk could be damaged; maybe it could absorb the energy and shrapnel as effectively as it absorbed bullets. He was hoping that, at the very least, the blast would completely destroy the quantum phones. When the basilisk had gone into the accretion disk, he had dared to hope that it might somehow be enough to destroy the black hole itself. Instead, the energy of the explosion, compressed and amplified by the black hole’s gravity, had liquefied the accretion disk, allowing the entire mass of debris to be instantly consumed by the singularity.
King wondered if he had just made things a hell of a lot worse. He could still feel the black hole’s gravity, stronger now than before. He couldn’t tell what was happening at the center of the pit; it roiled in his vision like convection waves off hot asphalt.
At least the basilisk seemed to be gone. Now it was up to Fiona to save the day. He turned away from the crater and searched for Fiona and the other
s…
His heart seized in his chest as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. A massive piece of rubble-a section of wall or ceiling-had crashed down right where they had been seated. Alexander was still there, his head and arms protruding out from beneath the slab and out over the edge of the pit. Fiona and Sara had both been swept over the edge. Alexander had caught them, but it was evident from the strain on his face that he couldn’t hold on much longer.
King started crawling toward them. He didn’t dare try to stand; if he raised his center of gravity, he would surely topple over and fall into the black hole. Even now, pressed flat against the ground, he felt like he was slipping sideways.
King was only about ten feet from Alexander when something slammed into his ribs. As he slid into the pit, King caught a glimpse of a gloating Graham Brown, staring down at him.
46
Once they’d discovered the black hole inside the Louvre, both King and the Russians had completely lost interest in Brown. He could have slipped away at any time, and several times, he almost did.
But what good would that have done?
This wasn’t the first time he’d lost big; nobody could climb as high as he had, without getting knocked back down a few times. He’d always come back, stronger than ever.
Not this time.
He couldn’t believe how badly he’d misjudged Pradesh. He was an excellent judge of character, and the Indian computer expert had never struck him as anything more than an opportunistic cyber-mercenary. He never would have believed that the man harbored apocalyptic delusions, much less the technical know-how to use the quantum computer to summon a black hole out of thin air.
But that was exactly what Pradesh, with Brown’s unwitting help, had done. Pradesh had started a wildfire that would devour everything, and there wasn’t a thing anyone could do to stop it.
So why bother trying to escape?
His only regret was that he wouldn’t be going out a winner, and when he spied King crawling along the edge of the crater, he saw a chance for one last victory. Again and again, this man had beaten him, thwarting his carefully laid plans. Now, it was time for payback.
His first kick caught King completely unaware, and sent him sliding toward the edge. Brown hugged the ground to avoid being dislodged from his own precarious position, then drew back his foot and kicked again, driving his heel toward King’s face.
He missed. King ducked away from the attack, and then threw one arm around the gambler’s outstretched foot. King’s weight stretched Brown’s leg like a hangman’s rope. The gambler grimaced in unexpected agony as his knee and hip joints hyper-extended with a sucking noise. King felt impossibly heavy. Brown clutched at the ground, but found nothing to grasp. The heels of his palms skidded futilely on the rough ground as he slid toward the crater, with King desperately trying to pull him down…
No, he realized. He’s trying to pull himself back up.
Through his agony, Brown felt a sudden thrill of understanding. Why was he fighting this? They were both dead men anyway; by struggling against his fate, he was really accomplishing nothing more than to give King another chance to beat him.
In fact, the probability was quite high that if he managed to endure this, King would survive-albeit temporarily-and exact his own retribution against Brown. The only way to win this game was to be in control at the very end, and so, with something almost like a smile, he stopped fighting and launched himself toward the pit.
One final time, King defied Brown’s expectations. Perhaps anticipating that Brown would opt for a pyrrhic victory, he had spent those desperate moments securing a handhold, and when Brown let go, so did King.
The black hole’s gravity caught Brown instantly. He slammed against the side of the crater and tumbled uncontrollably down the slope like someone being dragged behind a speeding car.
And then he stopped.
47
King pressed himself flat against the ground, trying to create as much friction as he could to keep from following Brown into the black hole. His legs and lower torso still dangled out over the precipice. He didn’t know whether the gambler had thrown himself in or simply fallen, but from the moment he’d managed to snare Brown’s leg, he’d known that his survival would depend on finding something else to hold onto.
In his peripheral vision, he’d glimpsed Brown’s arrival at the event horizon of the micro black hole. The gambler’s plunge seemed to slow as he neared the bottom of the crater, coming to an almost complete stop, suspended in mid air right above the roiling distortion that concealed the black hole. Brown’s agonized face gazed up from the pit, an expression of profound disappointment fixed there as if sculpted in bronze. His legs and lower torso, much closer to the center, appeared to stretch, as if made of taffy, and swirled into the nothingness.
King thought about what Pradesh had said earlier. You experience infinity…like being one with the mind of God.
I wonder what Brown’s infinity looks like.
He turned away, knowing that he was one wrong move away from sharing Brown’s fate. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any right moves. Then he felt a hand close on his outstretched arm.
It was Julia. Her face was a twisted mask of fear and exhaustion, but her grip on his wrist was fierce, determined. She certainly wasn’t strong enough to pull him back, nor did she weigh enough to anchor him, but he could see that she wasn’t about to let go. He gave her a nod of encouragement, and then, trusting in her resolve, he took a chance.
On his first try, he managed to scoot forward just an inch, but it was progress. He tried again and succeeded in getting his thighs up onto solid ground, and after that, he was able to extricate himself in short order. As soon as he was moving unaided, Julia shrank back, away from the edge, and pressed herself against a section of stone wall. King realized that he knew nothing about this woman that had just come to his aid; he wondered if he would ever get a chance to change that.
Fiona and Sara still dangled from Alexander’s outstretched arm. How long had they been there? A few seconds? Minutes? Alexander’s strength was literally the stuff of legend, but even demigods had their limitations. And if the mythic Hercules wasn’t strong enough to pull them back from the brink, what could he hope to accomplish? The simple truth was that pulling his loved ones from danger was beyond his ability. So what did that leave?
He was moving again before he had an answer, crawling to where Alexander still lay pinned and almost completely spent, but he did not stop there. Instead, he kept going, out over the edge. He moved with the practiced caution of a veteran climber, picking out handholds, wedging hands and feet into cracks. His limbs felt like molten lead, and every maneuver required an extraordinary exertion, but his destination was close.
“Sara!” He called out, and then, “Fiona! I’m here.”
48
Fiona, wide-eyed with fear, looked at him and opened her mouth. The black hole’s gravity was making it impossible for her to breathe. She tried to shout back at him, a plea for help, but what came out was a barely audible squeak.
King held her gaze. “Fi. Remember what you were trying to do? The mother tongue? Singing this thing a lullaby? You have to keep doing it. You’re the only one who can.”
She gave her head a quick shake, fearful that any movement might dislodge her from her precarious position and send her plummeting into the black hole. “Can’t,” she mouthed.
“Yes, you can.”
“I don’t know what to say.” This time, she got words out in a hoarse whisper.
“You do know,” King insisted. “You just don’t know that you know. Start talking, start singing. It will come to you.”
“He’s right, Fi,” Sara said, whispering into her ear. “The words don’t even matter…”
Despite her own looming death, Fiona could not help but smile as she finished Sara’s statement: “It’s the thought that counts.”
But wasn’t that the truth? Alexander’s recordings had used the c
orrect word, the precise frequency that should have prevented the black hole from reawakening, but it hadn’t worked because the words weren’t coupled to a specific intention.
She thought back to the words she had spoken to stop Richard Ridley’s golem; words in the ancient mother tongue, the language of creation, and wondered if her intention at that moment had been a source of greater power than the words themselves?
Those words would be of little use now. So also, she realized, was Alexander’s Bhuddist mantra. That word was meaningless to her; how could she believe in the power of a word she didn’t even understand?
But there was a language that she did know intimately, a language that had its roots in the ancient mother tongue, a language of which she was now the sole living guardian.
Fiona sucked in a breath against the crush of gravity, then freed one hand and began clapping it against her thigh, beating out a steady, insistent rhythm. Then, she began to sing.
49
King didn’t understand a word of what Fiona was saying, but recognized that it had to be her native language-the nearly extinct tongue of the Siletz tribe. The noises didn’t even seem like words, just a string of vocalizations, but he could see the effect that they were having on the girl. The pain and fear had slipped from her face, replaced by a serene, almost confident expression.
King focused on what she was saying, and began to distinguish certain words that were repeated every few seconds like a refrain. He began to anticipate when she would utter the phrase, and gradually, haltingly at first, but then with more gusto, added his voice. He became aware that Sara was trying to harmonize as well.
“This is wrong,” Alexander rasped from above. The words had to fight their way past clenched teeth. “You cannot control it this way. You must speak the word I taught you.”
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