“The survivors…” David said.
“Precisely.”
He turned to Julie. “There are two things I don’t get.” He shook his head. “Maybe more, but, well, start with just the two.”
“Go ahead.”
“First, how come we haven’t seen this before?”
“Sharif has a theory….”
Sharif nodded. “Yes, all the other samples had already passed through whatever phase this was. There must be a window where this…event…can happen. We’ve never seen it before because we always got the samples much too late.”
“And your other question?” Julie asked.
“I thought—we thought—that the bacteria had a symbiotic relationship with the tube worms. Hell, with the entire hydrothermal vent community. This…doesn’t look too symbiotic.”
“Right. So that must mean—” Sharif paused.
David could fill in the blank. “It may not be a symbiotic relationship at all?”
No one said anything for a moment. The whole thrust of the work in these labs was to explore the ecosystem and bio-modifications of the vent life to see how it might be adapted for human use—might even save humanity from disappearing from the planet. But if the entire foundation, the whole premise, of the experiments was wrong, what then?
“I also have a question, not that any of us has an answer,” Julie said, turning back to the live screen and the tanks, which now held only a fraction of the sea life they once contained. “And it’s about the bacteria. What’s happening now with them, inside these animals? Is it like some kind of infection, which has now passed, or—”
“Yeah. Or is it like the tube worms, and maybe not so symbiotic at all.”
“Exactly.”
David took a step closer, going right up to the glass, looking at the dull fish eyes as they looked back. “For now, let’s hold off playing with these guys. I want us to check all the data, look at the vid records again, check everything. I don’t want one of these animals taken out until we know for sure what happened.”
A moment of silence. Then Julie said, “Or what may happen.”
5
UNITED AEROSPACE CORPORATION GLOBAL HEADQUARTERS PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
IAN KELLIHER SHUT OFF THE VID DISPLAY floating over his desk. He liked David Rodriguez, but truth be told, the clock was ticking on the expensive and, so far, not very useful undersea lab.
Still, it had all been worth a shot. That’s why they called it research, after all. And Kelliher knew he had much bigger issues to deal with. In just thirty-six hours he would start getting some more important and credible reports from Mars, thanks to his sending Elliot Swann and Jack Campbell to Mars City. Both were totally loyal, and Campbell for one would let none of General Hayden’s or Dr. Malcolm Betruger’s bullshit get in his way.
Kelliher needed that information fast. The daily reports from his own labs, in the lower levels of the UAC campus, grew ever more confusing. Disturbing. His attempt to monitor Betruger by having his team here explore similar avenues of research hadn’t worked out too well.
Either Betruger was lying, or there was something specific about Mars that changed the experiments. Kelliher’s dreams of teleportation seemed further away than ever.
Then of course there was the case of the Ballard lab. That once shining ray of hope that so far had produced little, if anything. And now David Rodriguez was looking for more money, a new sub, just when Kelliher was thinking that he should close the whole thing down. Not that the lab constituted a majority of UAC’s financial resources—Mars City was UAC’s financial sump pump, sucking as much out of the company as it could.
Ian’s father would be mighty unhappy to see how low the company’s capital had fallen. And what of the experiments themselves, the promise of new revolutionary technology for the company? Old Tommy Kelliher had always acted on instinct, a maverick in everything he did and touched. He was the one person that Ian could talk to and get some feedback that—despite Tommy’s advanced age and a body held together by every medical breakthrough of the last half century—could still be sharp and incisive.
Kelliher pressed the side of the button-sized microphone on his jacket lapel. “Sharon, tell Sam I’m ready to go. And no escort, please. I don’t want a lot of attention.”
“Yes, Mr.—”
Ian touched the button again, cutting her off, and then he got his collection of images and charts together. Tommy Kelliher was old-school—if he looked at anything, he wanted to hold it in his hands, not see it floating before him like, as he put it, “some goddamn smoke in the goddamn wind.”
Ian Kelliher hurried out of the office and down to the indoor car park.
A voice came from behind him. “Sir, I do wish that you’d allow—”
Ian nodded. Sam had been his driver for ten years, right out of the military, a decorated lieutenant who didn’t mind this extravagantly well-paid job of chauffeur. Of course, that role was also amplified by the fact that Ian Kelliher required someone who was completely comfortable around weapons.
“Yeah, I know—you want me to have an escort. But then everyone knows my business, Sam. Everyone sees the boss heading out, chattering about where I might be going and why. Rumors, Sam—I don’t need them.”
“It’s safety that I’m concerned about, sir.”
“Yeah, well, they haven’t invented the bullet that can penetrate the glass and body of this car.”
Sam looked back, “There are bombs, sir, a well-placed thermo-charge as we drive over and—”
Ian laughed. “Just don’t drive over any, okay?” Besides the armored body of the car, there was a small arsenal up front available to Sam. If anyone was foolish enough to try to stop the vehicle, they’d face some of the best counterterrorism training that the USA and UAC could provide.
Ian turned and looked back at the sleek, castle-like profile of the main UAC building. Only two stories or so above ground, the heart of the headquarters, but a maze of labs lay unseen below, surrounded by a protective shell of bedrock.
The massive gate ahead opened, picking up the ID of the vehicle and actually scanning the passengers.
In minutes, they entered what was left of the California highway system. The interstate highways were hardly maintained at all anymore. Costs rendered that impossible, and troubles with a basic fuel supply meant that fewer people actually had need of them. Most of the other vehicles on the road here either had access to a private fuel supply, or—like Ian’s own car—sported what was essentially an earthbound version of the ion engine. Unbelievably expensive, rendering it really useless for ordinary travel, the engine required no fossil fuels, no water, but instead used the constant energy exchange of charges between ions to run a modified microrocket engine. Totally impractical for anyone who didn’t have more money than God. Which I do, Ian thought. There might have been a few other prototype ion vehicles on the road. Anyone who had one disguised it to look like a standard car. Best not call too much attention to what one was driving…
“Fewer and fewer…” Sam said.
“Hm?”
“Cars. Every time we come out here, there are fewer cars. Someday, maybe there’ll be none.”
“It’s a changing world, Sam.” Then, almost to himself: “And cars are the least of it….”
Sam avoided a massive hole in the lane he was in; it looked like a bomb had landed on the road. Then he cut right, heading to the off ramp, into what was once wine country and now was as dry as a desert.
His father’s compound was ten minutes away, and Ian reviewed what he was going to talk to his father about, the hard questions he needed help with….
Ian Kelliher’s car passed through the security gate while a bank of scanners scrutinized it for anything out of the ordinary. Ian could remember when he was a kid, his father would pull him aside, lecturing him about how they could only “get” you if you didn’t think of everything. “You have to want yourself alive more than they want you dead, hmm?” Then he’d la
ugh as if it were some kind of joke, repeated over and over. But it was no joke for Tommy Kelliher. He believed that there was a legion of people who’d want him gone, permanently, not just deposed as head of the all-powerful UAC.
And here Tommy was, retired, safely ensconced in a fortress, still protected by an array of programmed defenses and a small army of guards, both on the grounds and inside the mansion, whose loyalty to the Kelliher family and the UAC was unshakable.
“Do you want the underground, sir?”
Ian shook his head. Below the main mansion sat a parking lot that could accommodate over fifty cars. But today was a halfway decent day, some sun, not too much pollution in the air. Why not walk up to the front door like a real human?
“We’ll just park it in front, Sam.”
His driver nodded as the vehicle slowed. The modified ion engines began to shut down, switching over to the battery power that was more suited for slow speeds. The car stopped.
Sam hopped out first, took a look around. Two guards at either side of the door nodded. It’s like visiting a small country, Ian thought. Some crazed dictatorship with unlimited amounts of money and power and paranoia.
Ian got out of the car and hurried up the stone steps. The massive twin oak doors opened, and for a moment he felt like he was five years old again.
Ian sat in the house’s boardroom, so curiously old-fashioned with high-backed chairs, a wooden table carved from a single tree, cut from someplace where trees this large still existed. He didn’t have to wait long for his father to arrive, rolling in on a chair that had all the medical monitoring instruments of a small ICU. A pair of nurses trailed behind.
“Dad.”
The word sounded odd. Tommy Kelliher had always been an amazing character, a genius, a ruthless businessman, someone who had become more important and powerful than the president. Although he didn’t look too powerful now, sitting almost curled up in the chair, tubes and wires everywhere. Still, if you looked carefully at the old man’s eyes, there was still something there. Something that gave even Ian Kelliher pause.
The man’s lips opened, and the word was barely audible. “Ian.”
Ian gave a nod to one of the nurses, and she touched the back of Ian’s chair, raising the volume. The man struggled to get the word out. “To what do I…owe…this great…pleasure?”
Funny, Ian thought. I’m his son, and yet he’s viewing me almost like an opponent, another corporate bug to be crushed—if he had the strength.
His father’s hand were wrapped clawlike around the arms of the chair.
“Questions, Dad.”
Tommy Kelliher’s eyes squinted. Never exactly comfortable in the role of “Dad.”
“Advice.”
Tommy’s lips opened. A slight delay before the words came out. “You have advisers. You pay people…to do that already.”
Did he detect some scorn in those words? Ian had taken the UAC in bold new directions, and often merely kept his father in the loop these days. But it was Tommy Kelliher who had built the UAC, who had spearheaded the ion engine project, who had established the teams that would someday begin the early work on true molecular teleportation, the great secret work of the UAC.
Ian gave his father a smile. “But I want your advice. You might say I need your advice. Advisers or not.”
His father’s right hand opened and closed again over the chair’s arm, and the chair slid a few feet closer. Right into a pool of light. The man was alive—no doubt about that—but there were probably cadavers that looked better.
“Then ask…your…questions…” A big pause. “Son.”
Ian took a breath and began, hoping that the light in his father’s eyes would be matched with insight that, for some reason, Ian Kelliher felt was required.
6
IAN KELLIHER LOOKED AT HIS FATHER’S two nurses, which Tommy immediately noticed. “Don’t…worry. They know all my secrets anyway.” The women remained just behind the chair, as if they were an imperial guard for their ancient patient.
“Okay. And I don’t want to stay long. I know how all this…must tire you.”
Tommy Kelliher didn’t say anything, but just fixed his son with his eyes, the filmy pools now locked on. If there was one thing his father had, it was good instincts. Ian thought, He’ll know just how concerned I am.
“Mars City. Everything—on paper—looks fine. The reports on the work being done, the teleportation experiments, the progress, the setbacks. But—”
The old man’s tongue snaked out of his mouth. “But…not true?”
“Precisely. I have someone there, in the lab, working with Dr. Betruger.”
Tommy Kelliher’s eyes narrowed. Though Ian knew that Betruger had been essential to the ion engine project—in fact, it was probably impossible without him—his father didn’t like the scientist. Early on, his father had told Ian, “You need to watch him. That man could be very dangerous.”
At the time, Ian thought that he could control Betruger. In fact, he thought that he could control anyone. Now? Nothing but uncertainty.
“And…what does your mole…tell you?”
Ian turned to the wooden desk, ready to bring up a holo-screen. “I can show you what—”
The old man sputtered. “No, tell me. I can’t see…for shit. Use words, damn it. Remember words?”
Ian nodded. Though it looked as though his father’s eyes could see just fine, he started to tell his father everything. About the reports Betruger sent, the breakthroughs in transmitting living matter across space, the small setbacks, the overall tone so optimistic. The images that Dr. Kellyn MacDonald secretly sent back to Earth showed something far more horrific than some small setbacks. Using just…words, Ian described some of the still-living monstrosities that appeared in the lab, the limbs sprouting from all parts of the bodies, the elongated jaws, mutated almost to the point of being another creature.
Then Ian stopped. His father hadn’t moved during Ian’s monologue. And now he waited for his father to say something.
“Who else…knows?”
“Not many. The scientists in the lab, but they are all carefully monitored. Any communication they have with Earth is carefully screened. For security reasons, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And I have a few trusted members on the Palo Alto team who have seen the images.”
A slight nod from the old man. One of the nurses leaned forward slightly, looking at something at the back of the chair. Perhaps a slight increase in blood pressure? A bit of an uptick in heart rate?
“How are you handling…the situation?”
“Well, shutting down Betruger would be no easy thing to do. Even with my own team at the Palo Alto labs already getting some of the same results down here, he—”
His father’s eyes widened. The voice, almost taking on some of its former power, became louder. “You’ve been doing those experiments here?”
“Some. Only to double-check Betruger. But not on the scale he’s using; we’ve done nothing with human subjects, and we won’t—”
The old man’s eyes drifted away. “Anything else? Have you done anything else?”
“I’ve sent Campbell up to Mars, with full authority. Along with the UAC lead counsel, Elliot Swann. They’re there now and will report directly back to me, then I will decide. But”—Ian took a breath—“as you say…I have a lot of advisers. But it’s your advice I need.”
His father still hadn’t looked back, his watery eyes still gazing off into the distance. A slight grunt, an attempt to clear his throat, and then the man turned his head back. And damned if he didn’t look worried. The same look Ian saw in the mirror every morning.
The one person that Ian Kelliher could trust completely began to talk. “You know…that you are playing God, right, Ian?”
Ian shook his head. “God? Why? I mean, this is research that your people started, that you initially approved, and I’m just—”
“Just—what? Finishing what I star
ted? I—I voiced my concerns about this Mars City, even with the government paying—” The old man’s voice rose, almost sounding strong, the Tommy Kelliher of years past. But then he began to cough, sputtering, as a nurse came around to see if there was anything she could do.
She glanced back at Ian as if to say, Do you really have to have this conversation with your father now?
Too bad. “Mars City was always part of the UAC vision.”
Tommy Kelliher nodded, taking care now. “For defense, for a community, but as a mammoth secret lab?” He shook his head. “No, that was all you.”
“The team felt that the full range of experiments couldn’t be done on Earth.”
“Couldn’t—or shouldn’t? And now, you don’t know what Betruger has done—or is still doing—up there. Even your mole may only know half of it.” He paused. “I never got into a situation where I wasn’t in control, where I didn’t know everything. But you have.”
“And the dangers?”
Ian’s father smiled a bit at that. “For me, not much. How long do I have, even with all this—” He waved a hand at the back of his mobile medical center. “But this planet, the people? Despite everything, the UAC was never just about profit or power. It was about doing something for humanity. But…what is this? What is it you’re doing? What are the dangers, you ask?”
“Yes.”
“You, my son, are trifling with forces that even our best scientists don’t understand. Our most brilliant physicists…they’re like babies, playing with these things. And it could be…could be… there are some doors that you open, that won’t close again.”
At that moment, Ian knew that his father—for all his age, for all his talk of being so close to death—had his own network of loyal spies who had shared everything that Ian had seen.
Ian licked his lips. “So—what should I do?”
His father looked away again, as if some ghost in the corner might have an answer. Then he started talking without looking back. “You’ve gone there yourself?”
Doom 3™: Maelstrom Page 3