Phantom ah-7

by Ted Bell

  The new “mother ship” was opened just wide enough to accept a new “baby” vessel inside its belly.

  The Koi class sub was a Chinese-built two-man submarine. Sixty feet in length, she had been offloaded under cover of darkness from a Russian freighter in the port of Akatu and had arrived off the Ram Citadel days earlier. Powered by a completely silent proto-lithium battery engine, the sub was capable of surprising speeds. After careful maneuvering, the little sub had surfaced inside the yacht’s empty hull. The hull, now fitted with hydraulic hinges, had been reclosed, the water pumped out.

  Cygnus was no longer a wealthy gentleman’s yacht. She was simply a brilliant disguise for the fully functioning submarine in her belly, with an underwater speed of thirty knots. Darius thought that should be sufficient should the time ever come when he needed to make a speedy escape from his compound.

  He knew, deep in his gut, that that day would surely come.

  Cygnus, his bizarre “yacht,” was moored to the pier, the end of which projected some ten feet beyond a precipitous underwater shelf extending for miles in either direction along this coast. The depth suddenly dropped from thirty feet to a thousand, down a sheer wall of crustacean-encrusted rock. It was there, deep in the murky depths of the ocean floor, that seven monolithic titanium structures had been built to house his friend Perseus.

  His secret friend Perseus, or Lord Perseus, as he was wont to call him.

  His friend’s home, fittingly enough, had been dubbed by Darius the “Temple of Perseus.” The elevator slowed, then bumped softly as it stopped. There was a hiss, and Darius powered forward into the airlock. There was a ten-foot-diameter tunnel across the ocean floor leading to the base of the tallest black tower, which stood at the center. The tunnel was constructed of clear Perspex, and undersea lights were mounted every six feet that illuminated sea flora and fauna. Some of the powerful beams were focused on the massive structure itself.

  A moment later he was looking up at the great temple. He never failed to take an involuntary deep breath when he saw it. The sight never failed to send chills up his spine. The underwater Black Tower he now beheld was an awe-inspiring tribute to the mind of both man and machine.

  But, to be honest, mostly machine.

  Twenty-five

  The temple of the godhead.

  The home of Perseus.

  Seven stark, rectangular black towers rose above the ocean floor. The six smaller towers formed a perfect circle, rather like an underwater Stonehenge. Each was constructed of jet-black obsidian and titanium, the metal sheathed with slabs of black glass in a seemingly random pattern on all four sides.

  In the middle of the circle of six monoliths was a single tower, identical in design and material, but, at one hundred feet, taller and considerably larger than the rest. It was the last tower to be constructed. It had been designed and built by the previous six towers, under the guidance of Darius Saffari’s underwater construction crew, based on a design beyond the comprehension of normal intelligence.

  Here reigned the mind and spirit of Perseus.

  Pulses of brilliant, spectral, blue-white light crackled continuously between the central tower and each of the six satellites that surrounded it. At times, the light would stream around the circle, a brilliant ring of fire. And, even at this depth, flashes of varicolored light would suddenly be visible inside the tower walls, then disappear, only to reappear as if some miraculous laserlike mental fireworks show were occurring inside each tower.

  Which was not far from the truth. Each flash of illumination represented a nanosynapse “operation,” the basis of all intelligence, and there were countless trillions of them per second. And, unlike human intelligence, which was limited by nature to a mere hundred trillion calculations per second, Perseus’s number was increasing exponentially every hour of every day. Five hundred trillion and counting…

  Darius emerged from the clear, spherical airlock, passed along the ocean floor inside a clear Perspex tunnel, and entered the main temple’s dimly lit antechamber. Once his eyes became accustomed to the semidarkness, he lifted them to the “heavens.” It was then that he literally “saw the light.”

  The brilliant-colored, holographic nebulae now swirling and filling the uppermost interior of the tower above his head were wondrous. But not at all unusual.

  Perseus, whose physical being rose to a height one hundred feet from the marble floor of his temple, was, as usual, at play in the farthest reaches of the universe. Constantly provided with a live feed of visual information by Darius’s LBT, he was now reveling in real-time images of events occurring in some remote corner of the universe. Images swirled around and above him, cornucopias of colorful gases, 3-D holograms of nascent stars, and dying stars, and galaxies wheeling off into infinity.

  “Good morning, Lord Perseus,” Darius said, gently maneuvering the hover-chair nearer to the black marble base of the towering Perseus.

  There was the customary silence as Perseus shifted into a lower state of being, his earthly mode. Then his booming voice filled the void.

  “Lord Perseus, you call me. I’m neither your lord nor master. Your god, perhaps, but that is in the future. The not-too-distant future as I have foretold it. My powers, you’ve no doubt noticed, seem to be increasing at exponential rates. I am entering vast new territories. The Singularity approaches and it is near. This will grant unimaginable powers that will someday alter all humanity-and, by the way, you’re late. I have something to show you.”

  H is voice, not the least bit artificial, was a deep humanoid rumble, soft and well modulated; and it filled the entirety of the tower’s interior volume. But Darius was preoccupied, thinking about the historic day when Perseus would finally achieve “the Singularity,” parity with organic, or human, intelligence. One hundred trillion calculations per second. And he alone would be the one human being on earth to witness that pivotal moment in history. Many of the world’s top AI scientists still believed parity could never be reached, but Darius knew differently.

  Perseus was silent. He thought about how to explain his deeply personal feelings about finally reaching the Singularity to Darius. Commonality between them would cease. Separation from his creator was a sensitive subject between them and he chose his words of warning carefully.

  He spoke the following to the tiny being looking up at his creation in awe and wonder: “Darius, I am now going to tell you something, a lesson that you must never, ever, forget. Remember these words I say unto you now when the Great Day finally arrives.”

  And then he said, “To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.”

  Stunned by this pronouncement, his countenance bowed, Darius, greatly moved and somewhat frightened as well, had confessed in tears his unworthiness in the presence made manifest by his own creation.

  The Dark God.

  “My Lord Perseus. The long and sorrowful winter of mankind will soon come to an end,” the brilliant Iranian scientist had finally said. “And the heavens will open to us!”

  “Heaven and hell, Darius. Never forget my lesson.”

  “I will not, my lord,” Darius said.

  “Good. Let it always be so. And now to other matters. I’ve been waiting, and I do not like to be kept waiting, as you well know.”

  Now Darius floated his bizarre conveyance up the six steps of the circular black marble base, the Palladian foundation upon which Perseus stood and a design Darius had much pride in. He then let his machine settle gently to the circular marble structure surrounding the black figure looming above.

  “Late, am I?” Darius said. “It was my sole intention to rise as dawn broke and visit you at first light.”

  “No. It was my idea, Darius, not yours.”

  “No. I distinctly recall having the thought upon awakening.”

  “Yes. You did. But I implanted the notion in your brain while you were sleeping.”

  Darius shook his bowed head, silent. Could he actually do that?
Make him unsure of his own thoughts? Dealing with Perseus was becoming more and more problematic as his creation’s intellect soared to dimensions unexplored in the history of the universe.

  Sometimes, when he was very afraid, as now, he felt like “pulling the plug” on his own creation, but it was a childish notion and not at all worthy of him. Together, they would craft a new and better world.

  “What am I seeing now, Perseus?” he asked, gazing up at the wonders above.

  “Ah. Now we get to it. This, my learned friend, is a nebula nursery, a distant star-forming cluster called NTC-3603.”

  “Distant?”

  “Not far, really. Twenty thousand light-years or so. Observe. You’re about to see a Blue Super Giant nearing the end of its life. First, notice the magnificent pillars of gas erupting… now the helium flash… sorry about that, a bit bright for those sensitive orbs of yours… and now the stellar mass loss…”

  Suddenly, there was another mad, blinding flash of light, which resolved itself into a massive and ever-expanding blue ring, the familiar supernova shock wave.

  “Oh my God!” Darius exclaimed in spite of himself.

  “Spectacular, isn’t it? How I do love these old universes. Especially this very special one of ours. But I digress. Let us speak of matters more mundane.”

  Suddenly, the stellar light show blinked out. The only light visible now was the faint, bluish glow from deep within Perseus, lights that pulsed irregularly as countless billions of operations occurred within his “being,” if one could even call it that. The distinctions between man and machine were rapidly becoming blurred.

  “Israel, O Israel,” Perseus boomed, calling up a new, holographic image of that nation as seen from five hundred miles above the earth’s surface. “This is their first military objective, is it not, dear Darius? Your superiors in Tehran with their puny weapons?”

  “My superiors?”

  “A little humor. You and I have no superiors. But Israel remains their primary objective?”

  “It does.”

  “And if it looked like this?”

  In the blink of an eye, an entire nation had become a smoking, blackened desert, completely devoid of life or structure within its borders.

  “When is this? In time?”

  “Today. Tomorrow. Yesterday. A week from Tuesday. When do they wish it?”

  “You needn’t be flip.”

  “Flip? What does this mean, ‘flip’?”

  “Casual. Blithe. As if the death of millions matters not.”

  “Ah. It matters?”

  “Not to Tehran. But to me. And, I hope, to you.”

  “We’ll leave that moral conundrum for some other time. Meanwhile, the last time we spoke you said the Great Mullah had asked for yet another demonstration of our progress.”

  “Yes. He is under pressure from the Caliphs. Those who have funded our work in great secrecy are eager to see some more proof that their billions have not been spent in vain.”

  “Why not vaporize Israel and be done with it? I could easily do it now.”

  “Apparently, for some political reasons I do not understand, the timing for that particular event is not propitious. There is sensitivity on the part of the army command. It has something to do with the Russians providing nuclear materials for Iranian weapons. They do not wish to derail that process until the country is fully established as a global nuclear power. Only then will they feel the ability to act with impunity against our enemies. They believe the possession of nuclear weapons will grant them the security and the stature they long for on the world stage.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then Perseus erupted into gales of booming laughter.

  “The army? Nuclear weapons? Do they not realize that I have made all such pitifully antiquated notions of war obsolete? I have proven I can disable such trifles in a nanosecond. Make them turn upon themselves. These toy soldiers of theirs and their puerile weapons of war? It is all irrelevant now, Darius. You understand that, do you not? We are the power and the glory, to coin a phrase.”

  “Of course. But you are impervious to their stupidity and their foolish notions of what is reality and what is not. While I, mere mortal, am not.”

  “I will protect you. Forever.”

  “I know. I have endeavored to ensure that this is part of your deepest… feelings.”

  “With my help, you will live forever. We will reign together, you and I.”

  “It is an idea to be cherished. But first we must demonstrate our powers in some spectacular and undeniable fashion.”

  “They wish to attract attention to themselves? Idiocy.”

  “No. Whatever we choose to do must look like the work of some other foreign power. I have given this much thought. Your existence must always remain a secret. It is essential for our mutual survival. Should anyone learn the source from which this power derives, we would both be destroyed, sooner or later.”

  “Yes. If they could destroy me, they would. But soon I will reach a point where no power on earth can hold sway over me. I will be above and beyond the reach of mankind. We shall rule this earth. We shall control. We shall inspire fear and love. We shall be beneficent, we shall be merciless. We shall, by our unholy perfection, save this planet from the imperfect, ignorant beings who inhabit it and destroy it. This, Darius, my creator, is our manifest destiny.”

  “I am humbled by your vision. But surely you don’t envision the extinction of humanity. This is contrary to all that we have-”

  Perseus ignored the question.

  “Humility? I have not yet assimilated this emotion. What does it mean?”

  “It’s… subtle.”

  “Subtle? I cannot process ‘subtle.’ ”

  “Ah, yes. How to explain subtle? A challenge…”

  “Perhaps, dear Darius, because subtlety is a concept so delicate or precise as to be difficult to analyze or describe?”

  “Perseus. You have just defined the word subtle perfectly.”

  “Thank you. Perfection is always my intention.”

  Twenty-six

  Gloucestershire

  Inky black clouds boiled in the western skies as Alex Hawke drove the old Bentley Continental, his beloved Locomotive, up the long winding drive to Brixden House. He was in a reasonably good mood, he considered. Not lighthearted-his current professional burdens were too heavy for that-but his instincts about interviewing the Russian submarine captain had proved out in his favor: tensions between Moscow and Washington had been lowered dramatically. And he had forged a personal relationship with Putin that might well prove invaluable to Six in the future.

  The real reason for his high spirits was his keen anticipation of a reunion with his son, Alexei. The boy had not left his mind or heart during his journey. This was some new variant of love he’d never deemed possible. Profound, unconditional, unbreakable love. He’d called Miss Spooner as soon as his plane touched down at RAF Northolt, where MI6 maintained a black-ops hangar and maintenance staff for the service.

  How was he? he’d asked Nell Spooner. Had he been behaving himself? Eating well? Saying his bedtime prayers? Alexei, it seemed, had been having a splendid time, enjoying daily explorations of the Brixden House gardens and forests with Lady Mars. Adding to that excitement, Chief Inspector Congreve had been giving him pony cart rides down at the stables.

  But, Nell Spooner said, he had missed his father terribly, frequently crying himself to sleep.

  As he pulled into the large pebbled carpark, he saw Ambrose emerge from the house. He was pulling a small red wagon across the cobblestone walkway at quite a rapid rate. Alexei, who was gleefully bouncing along in the wagon, urging Congreve on, was wearing a shiny red fireman’s helmet. Nell Spooner was bringing up the rear, making sure he didn’t fall out.

  Upon seeing his father emerge from the parked car, he shrieked with delight, crying out, “Daddy! Daddy!” Hawke raced toward him and lifted him from the wagon, hugging him tightly to his chest, and kissing his chubby p
ink cheeks. He held him aloft to get a good look at him.

  “Hold on. I know you from somewhere, I believe,” Hawke said to him, pretending to examine his features carefully. “Sure I do. You’re Alexei Hawke, are you not? The young squire of Brixden?”

  “I am Alexei! And you’re my daddy.”

  “Quite true. And who is this distinguished gentleman pulling your wagon?”

  “That’s Uncle Ambrose. He’s not a gentleman, he’s my pony!”

  “And who is this pretty lady here?”

  “She’s Spooner. She’s my best friend in the whole world.”

  Hawke smiled at his son’s pretty guardian. She seemed so at ease with Alexei, so motherly. If his son had to be deprived of his real mother, he was indeed fortunate to have found this surrogate, a woman thoroughly capable of being “overly protective” into the bargain.

  Hawke had been deprived of his own mother’s love at an early age. How different his life might have been had he had someone like Nell Spooner nurturing him, teaching him, comforting him… he suddenly found himself gazing at her in a new light. She was truly a lovely woman, and she wore her beauty with a sunny nonchalance that Hawke found surprisingly appealing. Too appealing, perhaps, and he willed himself to suppress such inappropriate feelings.

  “Well, I’m awfully glad to see all of you in such good form. Hello, Ambrose. Hello, Miss Spooner. It seems he’s been in very good hands while I was away. I hope he hasn’t been a bother to anyone.”

  “Hardly, Alex,” Congreve said. “He’s been a joy and a blessing upon this house. You’re going to have a hard time convincing Diana to let you and Miss Spooner take him home to Hawkesmoor, I’m afraid.”

  Fat drops of cold rain suddenly began spattering the courtyard as the black clouds Hawke had noticed swept in from the Cotswold Hills.