Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4)

by Brandt Legg

  Now it seemed the answers were surfacing, and many of them might already be known by Booker’s UQP project.

  —O—

  The Judge sat, three thousand miles away, listening to the private conversation between Savina and her assistants. He tinkered with a robotic sleeve that could be worn by quadriplegics, giving them back the use of their arms. It wasn’t quite ready, but the technology had come from the Sphere. It would work soon.

  The conversation concerned the Judge. Savina might have assumed the lab was bugged, but she obviously hadn’t guessed that the Foundation’s invasion went as far as her car, and that was only the start. The Judge could listen to her while she showered, hear her talking to the carrots growing in her vegetable garden, and knew more about Savina’s routines and habits than she herself did. The Foundation could take no chances with their Sphere and those who handled it, and her words confirmed what he already suspected. The Sphere had seduced her.

  With so much at stake, he would have to think through his next move very carefully. There were others who could take her place, although Booker had most of the best. Even if she were irreplaceable, with Gaines back in the world, each moment held the potential to crash the Phoenix Initiative, taking with it humanity’s best chance for survival. No, somehow he needed to keep her on board.

  The Judge continued to listen in on his three employees in Savina’s Acura.

  “Gaines has been working on the Sphere for seven years!” one of them said. “Seven long years. And do you think he’s had access to Booker’s UQP resources?”

  “It’s hard to imagine Booker allowing scientists to see the Sphere, or to even know it still exists,” the other assistant said.

  “But the Foundation allows us to see ours,” Savina countered. “And they’ve kept it secret. We haven’t said anything to anyone. Booker could do the same. Through bribery, legal intimidation, even threats of death.”

  “Would it take that much?” one of them asked. “Once a scientist spends a little time with the Sphere, he would do anything to continue. It’s the most important scientific discovery ever! Look at us. What could compare to the work we’re doing? Would you want to do anything else? I mean, if the Foundation cut your pay in half, wouldn’t you still stay? Wouldn’t you do this work for free?”

  They all agreed.

  “So Booker has how many scientists in his UQP program?” one of them asked.

  “No one knows for sure,” Savina replied, “but it could be hundreds. And it’s not just quantity. He has the best.”

  “What do you think they’ve discovered?”

  “Maybe the same as us. It’s not like we have a manual for the thing.”

  Savina and her team had never seen Crying Man. During their four years on the project, they’d seen remarkable scientific data, including information relating to the origin of the universe and the recent history of humanity, but they’d concentrated much of their efforts on the future. It’s what the Foundation wanted. Technology was the other push. The Judge had ordered them to pursue every sign of engineering. Savina assumed that was an effort to keep up with Booker and to develop machines which could help the Foundation win the future.

  In all that time, they had not seen anything to explain who built the Eysen and why. Each of them had wondered, but even if it had been their assignment, the Eysen was not cooperating. Sometimes days had been spent unable to get the Sphere to get off the growth and molecular structure of a single flower, or the formation of one of Jupiter’s moons.

  It had not all been minutia though. They had gleaned incredible plans for solar power plants, levitating vehicles, aerospace design, and many other technological advancements. A host of those discoveries had already been put into production, or were in some form of development. Still more, some of the most important and fantastical technologies, were being secretly held by the Foundation to be used or introduced years, even decades, into the future. The Sphere was like a trillion-dollar research and development department.

  “What are we going to do when we get back to the lab?” one of them asked.

  “We have no choice,” Savina responded, deep in thought. “We have to go farther. We have to let the Sphere show us its secrets. I don’t know what risks we may face . . . ” She paused, thinking back on how the lab had been consumed, how they were all floating in some unknown realm, untethered from anything they knew. “But we must press on. Before we find Gaines again, we have to find someone else inside the Sphere.”

  “Who?”

  “The Cosegans.”

  Chapter 30

  Taz handled the Fiji hospital operation from his INU as he was driven toward the university. He wished he could have been there, but it was satisfying to know he’d been right. Gale Asher and Booker’s people had not moved the little girl. He tried to imagine how difficult it had been for Gale to leave her daughter, knowing she would almost certainly be captured.

  The leader of the Foundation’s mercenary unit had been relaying a play-by-play until they were able to get a video to connect via a satellite link. Technology made it almost unnecessary for Taz to be in Fiji anyway, but still he believed in “smelling the air,” and “tasting the blood,” as he put it.

  “Taz, we’re linking to an INU inside the hospital room,” the mercenary leader said. “We’re about to get live images.”

  And then, suddenly, there was the prize; the bandaged little daughter of Asher and Gaines. A few feet away stood a tough-looking woman whom Taz recalled from the files. Hammer or Harson or something, he thought. She worked for Booker Lipton, proof of what they already knew. Booker had been hiding them all these years, and if Asher and Gaines had survived, then so had the Eysen-Sphere. Only a matter of time.

  “Take the room,” Taz ordered. “But be extremely careful. I want both of them alive. And don’t touch the girl. No need to risk her vision until we have to.”

  Taz knew that soon enough the competition would arrive in Fiji to claim the girl for themselves. The NSA and CIA were going to find out. They always did. He might have to move Cira, but in the meantime he would get Harmer—he finally remembered her name—on a plane to Hawaii. He wanted to talk to her in person. Gaines and Asher had trusted the woman with their daughter’s life. She had to know where they were.

  Taz had already sent another team to Fiji, but they were still a few hours away. Would the parents really have left their precious daughter behind? Alone? He contemplated doubts and logic, which had often opposed one another in this case.

  “There are three-hundred-thirty-some odd islands they could be hiding on without even leaving the country,” Taz told Stellard. “You know as much as I do about Asher and Gaines. Would they abandon their wounded little girl?”

  Stellard didn’t think so either, and now that they knew their daughter hadn’t really been on the plane that crashed, it was very possible that Gale Asher had also not been on board. “I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance that Asher is still somewhere in Fiji.”

  “Yeah, and I’m stuck in Hawaii following the cold trail of Gaines, who’s probably a thousand miles from here now.”

  “But we have a contact,” Stellard said. “This guy, Dabnowski, has worked on Booker’s UQP team for years. He’s probably seen the Sphere, and may well have been with Gaines over the past few days.”

  “I know,” Taz said, not as excited as his boss about the prospect of grilling a nerdy scientist when his real targets, Gaines and Asher, were so close. “I’ll work him over. Why won’t he talk to me on the phone?”

  “He doesn’t trust the NSA,” Stellard replied.

  “Who does?” Taz asked as he saw the shabby concrete sign for Kamanele Park. Old metal jungle gyms and rusty swing sets gave the small area between busy neighborhood streets a dated feel. It was only the giant shade trees and palms swaying in the warm breeze that came close to making it a worthwhile “park.” His contact had chosen it for the meeting, no doubt due to its proximity to the university, and the fact that no one impo
rtant would ever bother with the place.

  Taz promised Stellard a full update as he signed off and wandered over to one of the worn benches. He was a few minutes early, but twenty minutes later, when no one had shown up, he was ready to leave. Taz had almost reached his car when his driver pointed to the trees bordering the opposite end of the park.

  A man in his early thirties, wearing glasses and carrying a beat-up, old-fashioned leather briefcase, stumbled over the exposed roots of a nearby tree, then quickly looked back as if someone might have shoved him. Taz headed toward the man.

  “Are you Dabnowski?” Taz asked once he was close enough.

  He nodded and checked behind him again. “Taz?”

  “That’s me,” Taz said. “Thanks for coming.” He wanted to scold him for being late, for wasting his time, but the guy already looked as if he’d been chewed out a few times that day. Taz, believing he was a thousand miles from the action, needed to catch a break.

  Actually, Taz thought, he looks wildly nervous. Scared even.

  Taz pointed back to his bench. “Should we sit?”

  Dabnowski looked around again, scanning the whole area. “This one’s better,” he said, pointing to another bench nestled in a cluster of trees. Once they were sitting down, Dabnowski, dressed in a rumpled cotton suit with no tie, asked, “So you’re with the Foundation?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are agents all over the university, you know?” he asked, fumbling with one of the plastic buttons on his shirt. Taz noticed a light stain, maybe coffee.

  “I know,” Taz said. “Have they talked to you?”

  “No. I’ve been staying out of the way. They, the NSA, interviewed me a long time ago. I was friends with Snowden.” His voice was strained, as if he was constantly suffering from indigestion.

  “Really?” Taz said with a combination of respect and nervousness as he too scanned the area.

  “We were neighbors. Met when he first moved to Hawaii.” Dabnowski looked out through the trees again. “I told them I didn’t know him well, but we were close.”

  “Wasn’t he only here a year?”

  “Fifteen months. Fifteen very serious months.”

  Taz nodded. Although curious about the Snowden connection, he didn’t have the luxury of digging around in history. He needed information about current events, namely Gaines. “Did you work with Gaines?”

  “Yeah, I knew him. I mean, we met a couple of times, but I mostly worked on the project when he was gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know where he went when he wasn’t here. He wasn’t here much, but we kept working.”

  “What did you work on?”

  Dabnowski stood up and paced. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “Then why are you here? Why are you meeting with us?”

  “Because the Foundation is the best chance we have to change things. Well, the Inner Movement might be able to . . . ” Dabnowski looked off into the near distance, but it was as if he was seeing something a million miles away. “Anyway, the Foundation is working against the NSA on this.”

  “And how do you know that exactly?”

  “I’ve done work for Sky Race.”

  “Right.” Taz recalled Stellard telling him about that, but he’d been distracted with the Fiji hospital raid. Sky Race, Inc., a huge corporation involved in space technologies, controlled by a Foundation member, was an extremely influential company. “It must have been more than work, if you know all that.”

  “Look, Taz, I can see you’d rather be somewhere else, and you may think I’m some loser-nerd, but you’re the weak player at this meeting. I know enough to be scared because I don’t want to die, but there are things in life that we’re obligated to do. I’m an astrophysicist, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in earthly affairs.” He glared at Taz, as if annoyed at needing to explain his qualifications and motivations. “It’s exactly because of my interest in space that I’m so concerned about this planet.”

  “Okay, okay. Relax,” Taz said.

  “It’s impossible to relax when the Sphere is in danger of falling into the hands of the US government.”

  “Who should have it?”

  “Gaines.”

  Taz gave him a quizzical look.

  “I know the Foundation is seeking it for its own purposes, and that’s a distant second to Gaines keeping it, but a heck of a lot better than the NSA giving it to HITE.”

  Taz didn’t know who or what HITE was, but they’d wasted enough time. “What did you do with the Eysen?”

  “I was on the Mauna Kea team.”

  From a bar bet he’d lost in college, Taz knew that a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii called Mauna Kea, measured from base to summit, stood nearly a mile taller than Mt. Everest. He was also vaguely aware that it housed some “telescopes,” but that was the extent of his knowledge. “What’s the Mauna Kea team?”

  “We work at the observatories,” Dabnowski said. “There are thirteen telescopes, the most advanced in the world, funded by eleven countries. It’s the largest astronomical observation facility on Earth—electromagnetic spectrum, infrared, visible light, submillimeter, radio . . .”

  “Must be like Disneyland for you,” Taz said. “But what are you doing with the Eysen-Sphere up there?”

  Dabnowski looked at him as if he’d just asked what color the sky was. “Do you know anything about the object you’re looking for?”

  Taz suddenly felt self-conscious. “I know what I need to know.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dabnowski said. “You have no idea what the Sphere is.” Then he paused and looked directly into Taz’s sunglasses until Taz took them off. “You don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”

  Chapter 31

  Rip stumbled away from his INU. Cira, their innocent child, was now in the hands of one of his mortal enemies. There had been no choice.

  There’s always a choice, he thought. At least she’s alive. Gale will be destroyed.

  Booker had said he’d contact people in the Foundation to plead for Cira. “Just keep her stable. Save her eyesight,” he’d tell them. “Gale and Rip might make a deal, but not until the girl is healed. They couldn’t possibly do one now while it was unsafe to move Cira.”

  It might work. The Eysen-Sphere was a huge bargaining chip. However, Rip had absolutely no doubt that the secretive trillionaire would never trade the Sphere, even to save his own child.

  There was a strange glow emanating from the Sphere, the kind the full moon had on foggy winter nights. He’d never seen it look quite like that. Then the room filled with blue mist. Not just projected light, but actual cool, moist air. Rip lost the Sphere in the fog. For a moment, he wasn’t sure it was safe to breathe in the mist, but then he had to, and it entered his lungs through an involuntary inhale.

  Everything went strange. He couldn’t tell where the floor was, or even where up was, lost in an avalanche of thick, colored, now purple, fog, having passed through deep shades of teal, indigo, and finally, violet. Then the rush of sound began, like a volcano, or as if ocean waves were crashing all around the skyroom. Rip had no idea where he was, no logical explanation for what was happening.

  Minutes passed, maybe even hours. Explaining the event later, he would say that if he’d come out of that fog days later, it would not have surprised him. When absolute quiet overtook the roar of volcanic waves, he realized the mist had become black. It terrified him for an instant as he considered the vacuum in which he found himself. All that had happened must have been his death. Seeing Cira captured was too much for me. In my overwhelming grief and stress, I had a heart attack and died. Damn it… I let my family down.

  Then he saw a face. She was lovely, but the image before him did not belong to Gale or Cira. He did not recognize her; young, thin, with intelligent eyes. As she came more fully into his view, all that he could see was the woman and where she stood in a dark room, filled with stars and a large glowing planet. />
  But, that’s no planet, he thought. It’s the Eysen-Sphere! Who is she? How did she get the Sphere? Is this a dream?

  Rip was agitated. Nothing like this had ever happened. He knew the Sphere was able to show the future. He’d even been projected into the future, and the past, as a holographic figure. Those episodes had allowed him to interact with people of the time where he’d “gone.” The era’s inhabitants had mostly been startled, even afraid of him, but a few, on specific occasions, in both the past and future, had almost expected him.

  But this didn’t feel like those situations. It feels like now, immediate in the breath I just took, he thought, alarmed, unable to see the Sphere through the fog. On those other “trips” he’d been completely immersed, able to see every detail as if he were a current resident of where and when he had found himself.

  Pushing through the black mist, Rip tried to walk to the Sphere, but there was nothing firm under his feet. He dropped onto his hands and knees to what he believed was the floor, but he really wasn’t sure. It felt more like standing on a waterbed covered with silk and sand. Trying to crawl, then attempting to swim, to the Sphere proved futile. All the while the young woman stared into the Sphere in front of her as if seeing the most amazing images.

  “It is now?” Rip shouted. He didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. And she isn’t here on El Perdido. She has another Eysen-Sphere. Is it Clastier’s? Or Malachy’s? He didn’t know, but he knew where it had come from.

  The Vatican. Booker had tried, ever since the Church collapsed, to locate and acquire artifacts related to Cosega and other items from their secret archives with little success. The Church had long seen the end coming and had prepared well: secrets hidden, treasures buried, waiting until the “second coming,” when the force of the Vatican’s concealed collections could empower those who would resurrect Catholicism. Rip knew too much about the next hundred years to know that was not going to happen, but beyond that . . . it was hard to say.