Fatal Error

by F. Paul Wilson

  The group—Jack had started calling it the Ally’s Gang of Four—was now complete. They’d been meeting a couple of times a month, sometimes more often, to discuss the goings-on in the world and which of those might be related to Rasalom or those doing his bidding. And also to learn what Weezy had gleaned from her ongoing study of the Compendium.

  But that was all they did: Talk. And it was driving Jack nuts.

  The meeting place was always the same: the Lady’s apartment in the building on Central Park West owned by Glaeken, who had adopted the identity of Gaston Veilleur and insisted on being addressed as “Veilleur.” As usual, he sat at one end of the heavy oblong table, the Lady at the other. Jack and Weezy occupied the flanks.

  Jack shook his head. The Gang of Four . . . a former immortal, a woman who wasn’t really a woman—or even human—and a pair of thirty-something humans . . . all that stood between humanity and the Otherness.

  Pretty pathetic. A kind of cosmic joke. But the cosmic shadow war raging behind the scenes was anything but a joke. Two nameless, unimaginable forces vying for control of the sentient realities across the multiverse. Earth was one of those. Just one of many. Not the golden prize, simply another marble in the pouch. But only the sentient marbles were valuable; the non-sentient were brushed aside.

  Earth was currently the possession of a force people had come to call the Ally—not really an ally, and in no way benign; more like indifferent. The Otherness, however, was unquestionably inimical, and had been vying for millennia to make Earth its own. Rasalom led its forces here. Veilleur, as Glaeken, used to lead the Ally’s, but had been released and allowed to age. He was now as mortal as Jack and Weezy.

  “Then what is their target?” Weezy said.

  The Lady waited for her to take her seat opposite Jack before speaking.

  “I am.”

  “Because the Internet feeds the noosphere?” Veilleur said in his rumbling voice. A broad-shouldered man with a scarred face, a gray beard, and a dominating presence—not unexpected, considering he’d been born thousands of years ago in the First Age.

  The Lady nodded. “And the noosphere feeds me.”

  The noosphere again. Jack had first heard the term last summer; Weezy had bandied it around a lot back then, but not much since. He hadn’t quite grasped it then, and most of what he’d learned had slipped away over the ensuing months. He’d had other things on his mind.

  “Can you give me a refresher on that?”

  Weezy said, “Where are you fuzzy?”

  “Around the edges . . . and all through the middle.”

  She smiled. “Okay. Capsule version: Back in the nineteenth century a Jesuit named Pierre Teilhard de Chardin had a theory that the growth of human numbers and interactions would create a separate consciousness called the noosphere. Turned out he was right. It’s real, and it’s fed by every thought, every interaction between every sentient being on the planet. It’s not cyberspace, though cyberspace adds to it. Every email, every Twitter tweet, every MySpace or Facebook add or app or comment, every chat-room quip, every blog entry or comment, every text message or eBay bid—billions upon billions of interactions every hour, all between sentient beings, and all adding to the noosphere.”

  “I should have been destroyed by the Fhinntmanchca,” the Lady said. “The noosphere suffered devastating damage and, under different circumstances, would not have been able to support my existence. In fact, for a few heartbeats, I ceased to exist . . . was, in fact, dead. Again.”

  “Again?” Weezy said.

  “The first death occurred in Florida. The Fhinntmanchca caused the second. A third time and I will be gone.”

  Weezy looked shocked. “Where does it say that?”

  The Lady gestured toward the Compendium. “You will find it somewhere in your book. After the third death I will be resorbed into the noosphere.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “I will eventually reemerge, but as a child. And in the interval, my beacon will be extinguished. That nearly happened this time, but because the Internet has made the noosphere so much stronger than the One or anyone else realized, I was able to return almost immediately, albeit without my companion.”

  Yeah. Her dog . . . Jack kind of missed him.

  “I think it was more than just the noosphere,” Veilleur said.

  Weezy turned to him. “You think the Ally stepped in?”

  He shook his head. “No. The Ally has minimal presence in this sphere. I sense that something else was involved in bringing you back. By all tradition, the Fhinntmanchca should have completely crippled the noosphere and blasted you into nothingness.”

  Weezy said, “Another player? Please don’t tell me you think there’s a fourth force at work here.”

  Jack didn’t want another player either, but . . .

  “Fourth?”

  “We’ve got three now.” She ticked off on her fingers. “The Ally, the Otherness, us.”

  “Us? I could see you saying the noosphere, but—”

  “The noosphere is us—humanity. We created it, and it can’t exist without us. It’s not fighting for us, it’s humanity fighting for itself.” She looked at Veilleur. “You’re not suggesting divine intervention or anything like that, are you?”

  He shook his head. “Of course not. I think the Lady herself might have had something to do with her own return.”

  She frowned. “I don’t see how that is possible. I am no one. I am simply a projection, an avatar of the noosphere.”

  That might be true, but Jack couldn’t help thinking of the Lady as a person. She was all that stood between humanity and a takeover by the Otherness. She was a beacon, announcing to the multiverse that this place was inhabited by sentient beings. If she were snuffed out, the Ally would discard the Earth as worthless, leaving the Otherness to reshape this reality to its liking—a hell for humanity.

  “No one?” Veilleur smiled. “No, my dear, I think you are someone. I think you are more than you realize.”

  She shook her head. “I know what I am and am not. I am no one. Without a healthy noosphere, I cannot exist.”

  “But the noosphere isn’t healthy. You expected to be getting back to your old self by now, but that hasn’t happened.”

  “True. It is taking more time than I anticipated for the noosphere to heal itself. Imagine the noosphere as a mountain lake, fed by many streams. It has had a sidewall blown away and much of its water has flowed downhill—and will continue to leak away until the breach is repaired. The Internet is one of the lake’s major feeder tributaries.”

  Jack said, “So the One’s crew must think if they bring down the Net, they’ll empty the noosphere to a point where it won’t be able to sustain you.”

  She nodded. “If the Internet is cut off before the breach is healed, the noosphere will dry up . . . and I with it.”

  “If that’s really their purpose,” Weezy said, “I don’t think we have much to worry about. The Internet’s infrastructure is too spread out and too redundant.”

  “What about a huge EMP?” Jack said.

  She blinked. “You mean a high-altitude nuke? If they had that, they wouldn’t be messing around with portable EMP generators in data centers. And even if they detonated one over the U.S., high enough to take out the whole country, there’s still the rest of the world up and running.”

  “Maybe they’ve got a bunch of nukes.”

  She shook her head. “The Kickers and Dormentalists like to tell the world that they’re everywhere, but they’re not. They’re all over, yes, but not everywhere. They can’t launch nukes all over the world to knock out the entire Net. They simply can’t.”

  Jack wished he could be so confident.

  “Hank Thompson isn’t stupid, Weezy, and he’s hooked up with Drexler, who’s definitely not stupid. They’re all working together. And that tells me that last night’s attack on that data center means something. They didn’t build EMP guns and go to all that trouble for nothing. They’ve targete
d the Internet.”

  Weezy leaned back and tapped her fingers on the table. “Maybe it’s just Thompson. He could be acting on his own. You know he’s got a thing against the Internet. He was very up front about that in his book.”

  Jack banged a fist on the table—not too hard, just enough to vent some frustration. “Too bad I’m not inside anymore. Might be able to pick up something. At least I was doing something then.”

  But Jack had managed to make himself persona non grata at the Lodge, both with and without a beard.

  “We have Eddie inside the Order.”

  “But he’s like a social member, with no access to the inner circles and their agenda. And besides, you aren’t talking to him.”

  “He called me yesterday.”

  Weezy told him about Eddie’s call and how he was going to “look into” the Order’s renewed search for her. The news sent bolts of alarm through Jack.

  “Did you tell him not to?”

  She looked offended. “Of course I did, but he wasn’t having any of it. I’m worried about him.”

  “So am I. I’ll give him a call and warn him off. Eddie’s not cut out for that kind of stuff.”

  As a kid he’d always been the loose lip of their trio, the one most likely to blow a secret.

  “So . . . what are we going to do about this Internet plot?”

  Veilleur shrugged. “What else can we do besides watchful waiting until—”

  “Damn!” Jack said. “That’s all we do! Watch and wait. Which is the equivalent of doing nothing. Why do we even bother with these meetings? To find more things we can’t or won’t do anything about?”

  He saw Weezy roll her eyes.

  “Don’t do that, Weez.”

  She shrugged. “Sorry. But we seem to be having this argument every time we meet lately.”

  Frustration burned in Jack’s gut. “Because all we do is sit around and talk and let the One and his toadies do whatever the hell they want. I’m sick of it.”

  “But your alternative is too risky.”

  “I disagree.”

  Veilleur spoke up. “Remember your promise.”

  “I remember. I want you to release me from it.”

  Veilleur shook his head. “I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Why the hell not? The One is human, right? Flesh and blood like you and me, right?”

  “Not quite like us. He has tremendous healing ability.” He sighed. “Like I used to have.”

  “So you’ve said, and a few other tricks that make him something more than human. But he’s not invulnerable and invincible, right?”

  “No. Not either.”

  “That means he can be taken down.”

  “Only with an enormous amount of deadly force.”

  “I can bring that. Cut me loose.”

  Veilleur shook his head again. “You might never find him.”

  “At least I’d be doing something.”

  The constant passivity of waiting for the other side to make a move . . . that lay at the heart of Jack’s frustration. Defense wasn’t how he solved problems.

  “And even if you did find him, and even if you brought this deadly force to bear, what if you failed?”

  “Then I’d try again.”

  “But then he’d be on to you. He pays no attention to you now. But he would then. And through you he’d find me. And then he’d know that I’m simply an old man who is no longer a threat to him. He must never learn that. The consequences would be catastrophic.”

  Veilleur had presented this argument to Jack last year. It had made sense then, but less and less sense since. He bitterly regretted his promise then to keep away from Rasalom.

  “As I’ve said before and I’ll say again: I think the potential benefit outweighs the risk.”

  He caught Weezy staring at him with that look. He wasn’t sure what “that look” meant, but he’d glanced up and seen it often enough when she’d been staying at his place. She seemed to be looking through his skin, seeing his core. It made him a bit uncomfortable.

  He checked his watch. Almost one o’clock. Where did the day go? He bottled his frustration. “Gotta run.”

  Nearing the time to pick up and Gia and Vicky and hustle them out to the airport.

  One more reason to hate LaGuardia.

  6

  Eddie hadn’t gleaned much from his eavesdropping—or would that be ventdropping? The sounds of conversation had been muffled and distorted. He’d picked up a word here and there, but nothing of any consequence except “jihad.” He’d caught it twice, and was pretty sure he had that right, but without context it was meaningless.

  He was back in his chair when Fournier returned.

  “Come,” he said, standing in the doorway. “The Actuator will see you now.”

  A few doorways down he was ushered into a high-ceilinged office where a man in a white suit sat behind a desk, scribbling in a notebook.

  “Mister Drexler,” Fournier said. “Brother Connell is here.”

  As the man looked up, Eddie froze in the doorway. His saliva vanished and he was suddenly a pudgy teenager again. Drexler’s slicked-back hair had streaks of gray in the black, and time had added a few wrinkles to his face, but the hawk nose, the cold blue eyes, and the white suit were the same.

  “Is something the matter?” he said in a lightly accented voice.

  Eddie struggled for words, found them. “Mister Drexler?”

  “Yes. Have we met?”

  “Y—” He would not stammer. “Yes. In Johnson, New Jersey, way back in the eighties.”

  “Ah, yes. The summer-fall of eighty-three. A problem at the local Lodge.” He frowned. “Connell . . . that does ring a bell.” He snapped his fingers. “I recall a rather impertinent girl with that name. She caused more than her share of trouble.”

  Eddie had to smile. “That would be Weezy.”

  Drexler pursed his lips. “An odd name.”

  “It’s from Louise.” From Eddie himself, really, who’d mispronounced her name so often as a toddler that it had stuck.

  “I recall a male friend who was equal trouble.”

  Another smile. “Yeah. That would be Jack.”

  Immediately he wished he hadn’t said anything, because the name seemed to spark something in Drexler.

  “Ah, yes. The Lodge’s groundskeeper for a while. What is Jack doing these days?”

  Eddie fought to maintain a neutral expression. According to Weezy, Jack had killed maybe half a dozen men who had been after her last summer. She swore they were members of the Order, but Eddie wasn’t convinced—yet. But if she was right . . .

  “I hear he’s some sort of repairman.”

  “Interesting. He did appear to like working with his hands, but I’d have expected more from him.” He steepled his fingers and fixed Eddie with his sharp blue gaze. “So then, you are telling us that the Louise Myers we seek is actually your sister, Louise Connell. Am I correct?”

  “If the drawing on the fax is accurate, yes.”

  “It is quite accurate. Brother Fournier says you are unaware of her whereabouts.”

  “As I told him, we haven’t been on the best terms since she learned I’m a member of the Order.”

  Drexler’s thin lips curved into a small, tight smile. “Does she still believe that we stole some petty artifact from her?”

  We both know you did, Eddie thought.

  But that wasn’t important.

  “Weezy never forgets. Anything.”

  “Be that as it may, I understand you are willing to help us find her.”

  Eddie took a breath. Now the hard part: defying the Order, setting conditions and laying them out for Drexler, of all people.

  “If I know why you’re looking for her.”

  Drexler leaned back. “I can’t answer that because I don’t know. Word came from . . . on high to locate her.”

  “I need to know that you mean her no harm.”

  Another thin smile. “The Order is not in the business
of hurting people.”

  Eddie wished he could be as sure of that now as he had been a year ago.

  “That doesn’t answer the question of why you’re looking for her. Get me a satisfactory answer to that, and I’ll help you find her. And I’m sure I can find her. If not, you’re on your own.”

  “But you’re a brother of the Order. You have an obligation—”

  “I’m a brother to my sister. I have a bigger obligation there.” Now for the ultimate defiance: He turned his back on Drexler and headed for the door. “I’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

  He hurried down the hall, through the foyer, and out to the steps. As the cold air hit him he realized he was drenched with sweat.

  7

  As soon as Connell left, Ernst signaled to Fournier.

  “Get Szeto.”

  A moment later Kristof Szeto stepped into the room. He was dark, with short black hair; he always appeared to have five-o’clock shadow, even when he’d just shaved, and he liked black leather. Szeto couldn’t be present during the meeting because he had already met Connell in the Myers woman’s hospital room last summer.

  “Did you hear?”

  Szeto nodded but said nothing.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Not a word,” he said in his accented English.

  Ernst leaned back. “Neither do I. But what’s his purpose, do you think?”

  Szeto shrugged. “Perhaps no more than he says: He receives fax with sister’s picture and wants to know why Order is looking for her.”

  “But there’s got to be more to it than that, don’t you think?”

  “Why? He had thorough backgrounding done before he was allowed in, and that showed nothing. Yesterday I go over his record in Order as soon as I receive his call, and it is completely ordinary: typical outer-circle member who pays dues on time and attends meetings.”

  “But his sister is the woman who caused us so much trouble last year, the one who stirred up all those nine/eleven groups.”