Maze Master

by Kathleen O'Neal Gear

  Asher walked forward so gracefully it was unsettling. As she leaned over the pages and began to sort through the sequence, her eyes progressively widened. For five minutes straight, Anna Asher didn’t move at all. Her gaze darted from one symbol to the next, processing data.

  In a barely audible voice, she said, “Pentagons and hexagons, but where’s the key that makes sense of it all? It has to be right there in front of me. Why can’t I under—”

  “What do you mean?”

  Asher continued to study the printouts as though frozen in time.

  Zandra couldn’t stand the tension. She turned and walked away to breathe. Just breathe.

  Finally, Asher straightened up and stared at the stone wall as though studying the flame shadows. “Major, I need to see Maris Bowen.”

  “No one is allowed to see her.”

  “I’m more than willing to be placed inside the monitoring tent with her. That way no one has to take responsibility if something happens to me.”

  Zandra gaped at her. Asher’s face might have been cut from dark brown marble. The angles were sharp and unpleasing. “That’s insane.”

  “This is urgent, Major.”

  “Why? What do you see here?”

  “A chemical formula written in geometric shapes. But they’re out of order. Jumbled up. They’re nonsensical.”

  “Explain.”

  Asher walked to stand less than two feet from Zandra and stared at her as though everything outside the room had ceased to exist. Her eyes resembled green jewels. “Please believe me when I tell you that I cannot explain. My knowledge of this matter was classified by the president himself.”

  The candle flame flickered, as though the air currents in the room had shifted. The pressure was probably dropping as the storm intensified outside.

  Zandra said, “First, I thought you’d left the military. Second, the world is dying. What difference could telling me possibly make now? What does the code do?”

  “Major…” She seemed to bite back the words, appeared to be considering her answer. “All right, I’m going to answer that question. But if you repeat my answer, they will know without a doubt that you’ve been conspiring with a traitor.”

  Which means I’ll be condemning myself to death. Great. “I understand. Go ahead.”

  “I’m sure the code is a DNA formula for curing the plague. But I don’t fully understand it. I’m hoping Maris will. That’s why it is vital that you get it to her. If I can’t get in to see her, can you?”

  “I—I don’t know. I might be able to—”

  “Do it. Give her those pages and tell her what I said. Then tell General Cozeba I want to see him.”

  Zandra tried to discern what angle the woman was working. She had been declared a traitor. Was she trying to clear herself? “What if he refuses?”

  Asher reached over and tore off the bottom of one of the sheets, then wrote a message and handed it to her. “As a last resort, give him this.”

  Zandra read it: Maze Master. “What does it mean?”

  “He’ll know.”

  “If I give him this, he’ll assume I’ve been talking to you, won’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Zandra massaged the knotted muscles at the back of her neck. “Okay. Right. I’m doomed either way.”

  One by one, Zandra collected her pages, assembling them in the proper order, clutched them against her chest, and headed for the door.

  Just before she turned the knob, Asher softly said, “Cozeba confiscated and analyzed the contents of the ossuary from the cave, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Please, tell me what you discovered. It can’t possibly hurt for me to know. I am, after all, a prisoner. I couldn’t—”

  “Actually, it’s not a secret. The Maryam ossuary contained the bones of a woman who died around 1330 BC, and a Neandertal or Denisovan boy who died thirty-four thousand years ago. Both contained lesions very similar to those of LucentB. Second, LucentB is a retrovirus that seems to spring from a fossil retrovirus, the HERV-K virus, which I’m told is a Denisovan virus incorporated into our genome from interbreeding.”

  Asher’s deeply tanned face seemed to pale. “What triggered the virus to replicate?”

  She braced her knees. Exhausted, she’d give anything to be able to sleep for three days straight. “There are three hypotheses: One speculates that the virus was switched on by an environmental trigger like climate change. The second hypothesizes that a new virus, something we haven’t identified, filled in the missing sections of the retrovirus’s DNA, which caused replication. The third speculates that it may have been a perfectly naturally evolution of the virus.”

  Asher remained silent as though too stunned to speak. Finally, she whispered, “He said it was an inevitable consequence of planetary warming.”

  “You’re still not going to tell me who ‘he’ is? Even after all I told you?”

  “I can’t.”

  She reached for the doorknob.

  As she pulled it open, Asher said, “Major, light is an image of the Divine Word that will stop the ravishment. Think about that.”

  “What does that mean? What’s the ravishment?”

  “The End of the World.”

  A tortured emptiness entered her eyes, as though she had the ability to see far into the future, and it appeared even bleaker than Zandra thought possible.

  Zandra walked out and closed the door behind her. Private Wesson quickly stepped up and locked it. She heard the tumblers click over. Wesson kept glancing at her. He’d obviously heard the exchange about light and the ravishment and was wondering about it. He was a black kid from Detroit, and his street accent always made her long for America.

  “Private, when was the last time you ate?”

  Wesson crisply replied, “Been a while, sir.”

  Zandra nodded. “I’m going send someone to relieve you so you can grab some chow.”

  “Is there anyone left to relieve me, sir?”

  It brought home to Zandra how many people they’d lost in just the past couple of days. Was there anyone anywhere who could be spared to relieve Wesson?

  “If I can’t find someone, I’ll be back in forty-five minutes and relieve you myself.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He saluted.

  CHAPTER 50

  1300 HOURS.

  Zandra grabbed her black rain slicker from her room and took a few moments to forge an authorization, then she grabbed the printouts and strode for the exit to Fort Saint Elmo. In all likelihood, she was going to die anyway. What difference did it make if she was shot by Cozeba, or died of the plague? The former would certainly be faster.

  She worked her way through the long corridors, until the guard came into view. He stood at ease before the massive wooden doors that led to the stormy world outside. There were so few soldiers assigned to the interior of the fort that she knew almost all of them by name. She had her chin up, and her gaze riveted upon Sergeant Armstrong.

  He came to attention as she approached.

  Zandra returned his salute. “Sergeant, at the general’s request, I will be conducting interrogations of personnel confined to the monitoring tent.”

  Armstrong stiffened. He seemed unsure of himself. “Sir, I can’t allow anyone to exit the fort without written orders from General Cozeba.”

  “Oh, sorry. My mind is on other things.” Zandra reached beneath her slicker and produced written orders. Of course, she’d written them herself, but how many men here knew the general’s signature? And she could proudly say it pretty much looked like Cozeba’s illegible scrawl. Besides, discipline had gone to Hades. As the world disintegrated before their eyes, most soldiers viewed “orders” as more of a guideline than mandatory behavior. “Now open the door, Sergeant. I will return shortly. Please be prepared to facilitate my immediate reentry.”

  Armstrong nervously licked his lips as he scanned the authorization. He glanced at Zandra, then down at the handwriting again.


  She gave him a grim smile. “Keep in mind, if that authorization is false, you don’t have to let me back in.”

  Armstrong thought about it for a few moments. “I guess it would be a death sentence either way, wouldn’t it?”

  “It would.”

  He handed the authorization back and produced the keys from his pocket. He opened one of the doors wide enough to allow her to exit into a raging storm.

  As she flipped up her black plastic hood, Zandra said, “I won’t be long, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Zandra stepped out into the downpour. The sloping limestone pathway that led to the Garden resembled a rushing waterfall. As she slogged through it, the current tried several times to sweep her off her feet. When she made it to within twenty paces of the monitoring tent just outside the Garden, the armed guard gave her an evil look, and walked out to meet her.

  “Sir, may I help you?”

  In her best command voice, Zandra said, “I have orders to interrogate Captain Bowen, Lieutenant.” She handed him her authorization. “However, I cannot allow myself to come in contact with anything associated with the Garden. What do you suggest?”

  He read the authorization, handed it back, and replied, “There’s a canopy over the western entrance to the monitoring tent, Major. If we tie back one of the flaps, you should be relatively dry while you speak with Captain Bowen.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant. Lead the way.”

  The man pivoted perfectly and marched toward the tent. As they passed along the perimeter fence of the quarantine camp, Zandra searched the dying soldiers for the faces of Colonel Logan or Private Madison. She didn’t see either. The blankets that wrapped the dying had soaked up so much rain they appeared black instead of green. They must be freezing, though it wouldn’t matter for long.

  Zandra wondered who the new priest was and where he’d come from. As he walked between the rows of bodies, he held his crucifix out like a warrior’s shield. His black robe hung about him in drenched folds. His deep resonant voice rang out above the sound of the storm.

  They rounded the corner of the fence just as a fierce gust buffeted the canvas walls of the monitoring tent, and rain sheeted from the roof. Zandra examined the tent. The canopy extended over an area about six feet long and four feet wide. With the gusting wind, the ground wasn’t dry beneath the canopy. That would pose a small problem.

  “Let me tie back the flap, Major.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  The young officer trotted forward and worked at the knots, then he drew back one flap and tied it open.

  As he rose to his feet, he said, “Is this adequate, Major?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant. Thank you. Return to your duties.”

  “Yes, sir.” He saluted and walked away.

  When she stood beneath the canopy, Zandra flipped her hood back. Wind buffeted her blond hair around her face as she examined the interior of the tent. MRE crates were stacked four high on either side of the flaps. Two people inhabited the tent, or that’s all she could see.

  Zandra called, “Maris? May I speak with you?”

  Aluminum chair legs rattled. A few seconds later, Maris appeared in the door. Such joy filled her face that it made Zandra smile in return.

  “Zandra, I’m glad to see you, but how did you—”

  “No time to explain.” She cast a glance over her shoulder to make certain of the positions of the guards. “I need you to look at this, but I can’t let you touch it.”

  “What is it?” Maris moved to very edge of the door, and looked at the pages in Zandra’s hand.

  “Hold on.” Zandra grimaced at the wet ground. She tucked the pages under her arm while she pulled her slicker over her head, turned it inside out, and spread the dry side right in front of the door. Zandra sank to the ground and held the edges of the slicker down with her feet to prevent the wind from carrying it away. As she laid out the pages, she held them down with her fingers. “This is a fragment of the sequence you saw running across my screen last night. I want you to look at it closely.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “I talked with Asher about it, and she—”

  “You saw Anna?” she asked desperately. “Is she all right? What did—”

  “No time for pleasantries, Maris. Asher told me you had to look at this sequence. She said that she saw hexagons and pentagons and that this is the key to the cure.”

  “Hexagons and pentagons?” Maris bent over and her short black hair fell around her eyes as she studied the pages. Rain drummed the ground all around the edges of the canopy, and a fine mist sifted over the pages. Maris’s cheeks were flushed, probably from the cold. “You mean she thinks the fundamental structure of the code is purines and pyrimidines?”

  Zandra’s head jerked up. “I don’t know what that means.”

  Wind tried to rip the pages from beneath Zandra’s fingers. The edges of the sheets flapped as she struggled to keep them in place.

  Maris spread her hands. “Life. The four building blocks of everything. Purines are formed from by a hexagon and a pentagon. Pyrimidines are a single hexagon. Which means the purines, adenine and guanine, are larger than the pyrimidines, cytosine and thymine.”

  Heat surged through Zandra’s body. “She said she thought it was a DNA vaccine. She was hoping you’d understand it.”

  Maris frowned at the pages. She’d gotten so involved that at one point she reached out to take a sheet, then jerked her hand back when she realized she couldn’t touch it without contaminating it. “Sorry. Listen, Zandra. I think this particular part of the message represents one full cycle of the double helix spiral. Which equals phi.”

  “Phi?”

  “Yeah, here, look.” She tried to point out the part of the sequence by suspending her hand over the key elements. “The DNA molecule measures 34 angstroms long by 21 angstroms wide for each full cycle of its double helix spiral, which closely approximates phi, at about 1.618. They’re all Fibonacci numbers.”

  “So … so the designer is writing a cipher in photons to reference a particular segment of the genome? Or using the genome as the architectural template to design a photonic cipher? Or both? You’d have to be a fucking genius with a quantum computer.” Rain had begun to seep through her pants where she sat on the ground. Her legs and butt were getting soaked.

  Maris shoved the flap open wider to stare out at the fluttering pages. When she lifted her gaze to Zandra, she frowned. “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost. Are you all right?”

  She stammered, “I—I don’t think I’m good enough to do this, Maris.”

  “Do what?”

  “Figure it out. I’m no genius. It’s easy enough to define information as an ordered sequence of symbols like numbers, but that definition crumbles when the symbols become quantum in nature. There is no ordered sequence. There isn’t even a way to know what an absence of order would look like. I mean I’m an expert at algorithmic randomness. I can manipulate sequences of bits from a binary expansion of pi until the cows come home, but without the quantum key code, the code necessary to decrypt the message—”

  “For the moment, forget about trying to decipher it. Think about why it was created.”

  “To cure the plague. Asher told me that.”

  Maris sat down on the floor inside the tent, less than three feet from Zandra, and smoothed her short black hair away from her face. “Well, if you believe in a creator, DNA must be the language of God. God built life by adding sugar and phosphate to a repetition of four nitrogenous bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. So, maybe this sequence is like a gateway that leads to the Garden of Eden, where there’s no disease or death.”

  Zandra’s mouth quirked. “That really does not help me, Maris.”

  Maris smiled in genuine amusement. “Sorry. I’m an agnostic Catholic microbiologist. That’s the best I can do. But listen to me, I believe in you, Zandra. I know that together you and Anna will figure this out and find the cure.” />
  Zandra’s throat went tight as emotion rose to choke her. Images of her daughter’s sweet face flashed through her mind. She swallowed to keep the emotion down. She wasn’t even certain she’d be allowed to see Asher again, let alone be granted enough time to figure out anything meaningful. If anything meaningful could be figured out given the limited tools at Zandra’s disposal.

  “Thank you, Maris.”

  Zandra scooped up her pages, and rose to her feet. As she picked up her slicker, she shook off the rain, and slipped it over her head.

  Before she turned to leave she reached her hand toward Maris. Maris reached back to within a couple of inches of Zandra’s fingers. It was like a “virtual” touch. “If I can come back, I will, but—”

  “You’ll be back,” Maris said with certainty and rose to her feet. She still had her arms folded and was shivering badly.

  Zandra gave her friend a firm nod. “I’ll be back.” She flipped up her hood. “Maris, before I go, tell me how you’re feeling?”

  “Fine. So far so good.”

  “No symptoms.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Thank God.”

  Zandra backed away, then ran out into the storm, heading for the fort. Her next task was to find a way to convince Cozeba to see Asher—and do it without giving him Anna’s note.

  * * *

  Maris watched her trot away through the pouring rain, then staggered back to her cot and collapsed onto the sweat-drenched sheets. The last time she’d checked, her fever had been around 104 degrees.

  From where he crouched in front of the tent flap staring out at Ben Adam wandering the Garden, Admiral Latham said, “You’re quite an actress, Bowen.”

  “Thanks.” Her teeth had started to chatter.

  She couldn’t have the plague. Who would take care of Jeremiah? He was an old dog. If he were taken to the pound, no one would adopt him. Were there any pounds left?

  From the depths of her memories, his beautiful Lab eyes stared up at her filled with love. She had to get home. He needed her to come home …

  CHAPTER 51