Cundieffe accessed CARNIVORE and put it onto a sweep for untranslatable encrypted files. CARNIVORE could crack PGP and other off-the-shelf systems with ease, but had to send tens of thousands of custom jobs to NSA, many of which took months to crack, and were stored until their priority became such that they got kicked up to the top of the waiting list. He forwarded a raft of such troublesome postings to the NSA's Bureau site. With luck, one of them would reflect Durban's fervent and smart, but now bitter, patriotic streak, and he would have his man.
Durban could be located because he was only a man—smarter and better-trained than most, but ultimately predictable. Paradoxically, the hundreds of missing people from the Radiant Dawn compound in Idaho were out of his reach, because their motives were inscrutable. What did Dr. Keogh want? Not to cure cancer, surely. He realized that was the bait that drew others to him. But cancer was not what human beings had come to believe it was, and Keogh knew it. He used cancer, as he used those who suffered from it, to affect some kind of change. But what did Keogh want? He saw himself not merely as an individual, but as a mutation, a macro-evolutionary event. A new species. What, then, did a new species want? To spread. To unify. To squeeze out all competition, and dominate.
The trees, spreading cancer. RADIANT pouring cancer out of the sky, but changing pre-existing cancer, not curing it, but growing it, changing it—into new flesh. The satellite was gone, but Keogh seemed unfazed.
We are one flesh, becoming one mind.
He used the trees to spread cancer. He would use the people the same way. The missing people were carriers. They would spread out to sow their disease, their message of change. But first, they would come together to become One—
A little bit more before he went to bed. How he wished he were in LA, and going home to his house. He punched in a batch of the e-mail addresses for the Radiant Dawn outpatients in San Diego, jimmying into them with barely perceptible effort by another program in his toolbox. He was sickened by all the junk mail that pinpointed the cancer patients' fateful demographic. Alternative cures, spiritual guidance, lucky charms, funeral insurance. But in a few of them, he found something unusual. Flight confirmations. London. Munich. Tokyo. Paid for on different credit cards, none of which belonged to the addressees. All departing from LAX tomorrow night.
Tomorrow. The e-mails had been sent only yesterday, days after RADIANT was shot down. It could mean only one thing. There had to be another mode of spreading the disease that was Keogh, and these people had been infected—absorbed. They were going to be One—
He rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch. Eleven thirty. Outside, sleet fell like tracer fire in the blackness. He looked around him, noticing for the first time that the office had emptied hours before. In the cavernous hush, his pulse throbbed in his ears. He jumped when his phone rang. "Agent Cundieffe—"
"Martin, please come into my office." It was AD Wyler.
Cundieffe peered out through the glass of his cubicle for a long moment before he stepped out into the open. He understood Durban a little better now, because how was his situation any different? He'd thought he was doing the right thing, and now he'd been caught. That was how he felt. Reasons and ideals that were burning in his mind blew out and away, so much ash raining down through his mind's eye as he crossed the vast room and stopped before AD Wyler's door.
He hadn't seen the Assistant Director come in, and he'd been hard at work since before sunrise this morning, leaving only once to eat and use the restroom. He only noticed how long he'd been standing before the door when Wyler's voice boomed from the other side. "Come in, Martin. Ms. McNulty has gone home for the day."
Nervously, he shuffled through the anteroom, eyeing Wyler's secretary's desk as if she might be lying in wait behind it. Wyler's office door stood ajar, with the buttery yellow light of his desk lamp creeping out across the brown-carpeted floor. Cundieffe peeked inside, then crept in and closed the door behind him.
Wyler looked as if he'd been living in the office in the same suit, sleeping under the desk, if at all. His eyes were drawn down by black-blue bags, and his wrinkles had deepened until the shadows made a jigsaw puzzle of it. His hands played over the keyboard of a laptop sitting on his desk beside his government-issue terminal. A SCSI cable connected the two computers with a sleek briefcase with blinking lights on it—some kind of huge storage drive. The monitors of both computers were shut off, but Cundieffe could hear the drives clattering frantically. He frowned, hiding his mouth behind his hand as he turned and found a seat opposite the desk. The Assistant Director was locally copying off the network— untraceably clearing out the FBI's internal files. Such a thing was unheard of, but AD Wyler made no moves to stop or hide the transaction. He looked hard at Cundieffe for a long time, as if he was sucking the truth out of Cundieffe's eyes. Finally, he said, "I've been away all this week preparing another domestic crisis management center in West Virginia. I've only came back to copy some files, but I'm gravely disappointed to find that I was needed here. You've been meddling in Counterintelligence business, Martin."
His palms dripped. He looked around the sparsely furnished office. Every glass surface, every picture on the wall, hid a camera. They watched. "I believed it was related to the larger Counterterrorism case I'm pursuing, sir. Lt. Durban was manipulated by parties unknown to steal classified communications intercepts from the NSA that pertain to the Mission. I think I'm close to locating him, sir."
"Stop looking."
"What, sir?"
"Brady Hoecker has strayed out of the consensus view on this situation. His faction is flirting with heterodoxy, and I don't want to see you dragged down with him."
Cundieffe played to the walls. "But sir, all he did was feed me information that's led me deeper into the investigation. He only wants the truth to be known."
"We know the truth. Do you? He's been forced to recruit probationary members like yourself, whose understanding of the bigger picture is still foggy. When you see the whole, only his paranoia explains the variance in analysis."
"What—what happens to those who—stray out of the consensus view?"
Wyler rolled his eyes. "When shown how their perception varies from orthodox policy, they recant and beg the pardon of the group."
"But the government—we—cover for Keogh."
"It could be misinterpreted that way, yes. But imagine how the situation would deteriorate if Keogh weren't contained, and it became public knowledge that he had a cure for cancer, albeit one with dangerous side effects?"
"And Keogh is at war with the Mission."
Wyler nodded.
"But Keogh—perhaps the real Keogh, founded the group that eventually became the Mission."
"Yes, it's all very complicated. The situation is coming to a head rather rapidly, and there's no room for multiple paths of action. Radiant Dawn is indeed a grave threat to our national security and our way of life, but it's also a means to an end which all, in the final analysis, would find desirable. We don't expect you to understand such paradoxes, but in the fullness of time, trust that you will see it."
Cundieffe blinked. This was what he'd hoped to hear, but now it only felt like pacification, like stroking. "What is Keogh? Is he just a terrorist, or is he a disease, or is he the cusp of an evolutionary leap, like us?"
Wyler scoffed, shuffled some printouts on his desk and shoved one of them across the desk at Cundieffe. His eyes felt like peeled potatoes in his head, but he squinted until he made out the type.
RADIANT DAWN SURVIVAL SEMINAR
Come participate in a unique one-day event that could change your life. Learn about a revolutionary new treatment modality that is giving hope and adding life to those suffering from terminal cancer. We know you've been approached by opportunists, seeking only profit, who exhaust your precious time and energy with claims that don't pan out. Radiant Dawn has been researching cancer survival strategies for sixteen years, and has discovered a breakthrough like no other. If you believe, as we do, that canc
er is not the end, and if you want to live, come and spend the day with us at this no-cost, no-obligation seminar.
Del Sol Amphitheatre
Wilmington Fairgrounds
2019 Industry Dr.
Wilmington, CA
Sunday, February 8, 2000
9AM to 1PM
Tomorrow.
"When this is over, you'll get clearance to review the Miskatonic Protocols, which will explain the whole thing. Suffice to say that Keogh is the earth's past come back to haunt us. We are the future. When we come into our kingdom, the world will never face such a threat again. Now go home and get some rest. You're going to need it."
Cundieffe retreated without another word and followed orders. He got his coat and went to the elevator, still chewing on what he'd seen in the Assistant Director's office. Absurdly, he was reminded of one of his Mule history lessons. As the custodians of civilization, his kind had on numerous occasions found itself charged with saving the works of civilization. When the Holy Roman Empire crumbled and the long night of the Middle Ages fell on Europe, it was Mule scholars who hoarded the knowledge of antiquity in abbeys and monasteries, while their gendered counterparts in the Catholic Church thought only of saving their own skins.
Wyler's new division had been working day and night to get the new Headquarters Domestic Management Center up and running, and Cundieffe knew there'd never been talk of an off-site center in West Virginia. Such a thing would only be conceivable if Washington itself was destroyed, or overrun by civil unrest—or a plague.
What's going to happen? he asked the fisheye security camera in the ceiling of the elevator. What are you going to let him do?
~33~
The passenger in 22A was being difficult.
The crew of the Island Air Boeing 707 had already disconnected his pager button and relocated seven of their sixty-two passengers out of earshot of the irritant, so that the only passengers left around him were the two Caucasian men who accompanied him when he embarked on Kiribati. Left to his own devices in the back of the cabin, adrift in two empty rows of bright orange seats, the difficult passenger still found ways to make his presence known.
"Excuse me, Miss?" he flagged down the stewardess. "You're of Polynesian descent, right? I was curious if you could tell me something, because I was reading your delightful in-flight magazine about the history of the South Pacific, and it seems there are some gaps you could fill in. D'you have any more of those macadamia nuts? I'm ravenous…thanks, so anyway—
"I've heard that you people evolved parallel to homo sapiens, but descended from, or at least crossbred with, a race of intelligent proto-humanoid fish that used to exist in these parts. You know, your ancestors in Ponape or wherever would stake out their virgin womenfolk on the beaches, and the Deep Ones would come rolling out and knock 'em up, and the offspring would appear human for about fifty years, but then they'd start to display amphibious traits—gills, webbed fingers and toes, and stuff, and finally return to the sea to perpetuate the cycle, which is why you people all look so well-preserved. And I read somewhere else that you people didn't acquire human traits at all until you ate Captain Cook…hey, don't go away, I'm talking to you—
"So anyway, all I'm wondering, and there's some cash money in it for you, so don't look at me like that, but all I'm wondering is, do they do this breeding thing all the time, or is it only at specific times of year, you know, when the stars are right? The Spawn of Dagon coming out of the sea to fuck your womenfolk, I mean? I assume it would be, but what I want to know is, is this something an outsider could come and watch? I mean, not just a regular tourist, but a discreet man of the world like myself. I assure you, money is no object—"
Just don't listen, the senior stewardesses warned the others, don't come within arm's reach, and for God's sake, don't try to turn off his computer. He was a regular passenger, and usually harmless if left alone. They had only to recount the story of the time an angry Samoan steward confiscated the passenger's laptop, and the cockpit was blasted with static, unholy electronic rhythms and the screams of porn until he got it back. They consoled themselves that he was not the worst American they had ever had to deal with.
When he'd scared all the stewardesses away, the passenger relaxed and settled into gazing out the window and listening to the mix disk he'd put together for this flight. Time for reflection, what his parents used to call realigning your chi. It was one of the few meaningful things they'd taught him to do, to still the chattering, excrement-hurling monkeys in his brain, and for a few moments every day, just be. It allowed him to formulate plans, redirect his energies, and build new identities. He took a moment to thank his parents for the gift. Without it, he probably would have killed them both a long time before he did.
Baron Angulo was always especially tense after coming back from Keogh. The trip itself was a royal pain in the ass–flying from Hawaii to Kiribati, then by boat or chopper out to the atoll, which he had to be lowered onto in a spacesuit because of the fucking sharks and the fucking radiation, not to mention fucking Keogh his own self. He spent the rest of his island vacation in the bunker, two hundred feet deep in Keogh's guts, writing code to be uploaded to RADIANT, updating Keogh's code as new consciousness models and protein strings were absorbed. Each trip stretched the limit of his patience, because commands could only be sent from the uplink node on the atoll, now that Idaho was down, and had to be routed through a labyrinth of relays and front nodes to their source, which was not even a proper computer, but a chunk of Keogh floating in space.
That Keogh needed him to come out to the most godforsaken ass-end of the world, just so he could be connected with a piece of his own fucking brain, defied every tenet of the information age. But the freaky old fucker didn't trust Baron, and, of course, Angulo didn't trust him. Even now, when he peeked just so through the gap in the seats, he saw the Keogh escort, staring through magazines at the back of his head.
Keogh had to watch him from outside, because he couldn't risk getting inside him, and trying to take the controls. Angulo's neural works were wired to a spec so far from the factory originals that his thinking could not be duplicated even by such an ingenious invader as Keogh, and Angulo had the keys to the computer system. He'd never figure that out without Angulo around, either. The source of Radiant Dawn's computing power was not in any one vulnerable mainframe, but in an ingenious distributed network of millions of computers all around the globe—PC's whose owners had invited him in via a smarmy chain e-mail more widely traveled than the St. Jude blessing letter. Whenever the system sprang into action, it accessed those computers left on and open to the net, but dormant, each of them a cell in a global neural network more powerful than any mainframe in existence or development. Keogh didn't understand it, but Angulo had no illusions about how long that would last. The motherfucker would, if he got his way, become a global neural network himself, and Angulo would have to find new ways to be useful.
He'd been secretly relieved when the Russians trashed RADIANT. It would slow the fucker down a bit. He'd still had to reroute the lion's share of the network, and Keogh was uncharacteristically apathetic about what to do with it. This trip would be the last for quite some time, and the next phase was what he'd been hungering for. A chance to strike at the real enemy…
His fists dug into his thighs, his eyes filmed over in visions. The music fed his rampaging brain-movies, phased, time-stretched jungle rhythms driving living juggernauts of purifying flame into the festering cancerous tumors of the secret power elite, the sky blackened for a thousand years with their ashes, all because of him—
Time to reflect. Shut up, monkeys.
He skipped ahead in the mix to a more sedate song. He let himself go limp and still and watched imperious golden clouds warring beneath his window. The UK Surf version of "Wave Of Mutilation" by the Pixies always soothed his nerves. Something about the languid, submarine guitars and the vaguely inhuman lyrics brought back the pure pleasure of just being alive. You think I'm dead,
but I sail away—
But true inner peace eluded him. All of a sudden, his stomach ached, inflating with gas, and his arms and legs tingled as if he'd been sleeping in a straitjacket. His head ached, his sinuses flared up, and he saw purple phosphene fireworks like fists were rubbing his eyes from the inside of his skull. It felt like some kind of Asian hyper-flu, or food poisoning, but no…it was like the time when he was ten, and his parents tried out a batch of acid on him that went south, and he first started to think about killing people.
He took responsibility for his actions, pride in them, even, but it was his parents who set him on this road. It wasn't the drugs or the free-love atmosphere that spoiled him, it was the way they loved him.
When he was small, he was a little godling, perfect and innocent, freshly returned from the Cosmic Source, or some such hippie shit, and they denied him nothing, punished him never. Then one day, he was suddenly just another dirty, clumsy stupid human being, and worse than most, when they were strung out. Any interest he showed in learning about the world outside the pot-fog of Santa Cruz was derided as flirting with the "death culture." The bad acid trip actually was the pivotal moment in his life, the rite of passage into a new kind of manhood. He saw, in the throes of a hellish peak when the sun tried to rape him, that his parents had never seen him, never tried to know him. What they had loved was the novelty and instinctual endorphin rush of the new child; what they hated was the reflection and denial of themselves that he represented for them in their more lucid moments. He discovered that no one actually saw him at all; he was invisible, unknowable, an eight-eyed super-genius in the kingdom of the blind idiots. He would teach them to see, if only for a moment, how much there was to the world, that they'd missed. Show them all. Even Keogh…
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