by Steve Alten
“Just wanted a quick steam. Why don’t you join me?” Passing the rows of machines, they head for the bathroom. Avoiding the temptation to look up at the scarlet eyeball, they quickly strip, wrap themselves in towels, and enter the steam room.
Sujan Trevedi and the African, Kaigbo, are already inside, their bodies glistening with perspiration. Both steamers have been running for several minutes, the humidity fogging up the glass doors—preventing the camera lens mounted in the bathroom outside the steam bath from seeing in.
Gunnar sits opposite the lanky African, who has removed his prosthetic arms prior to entering the bath. Through the mist, he can make out the two bulbous stubs of flesh at the ends of Kaigbo’s elbows.
Sujan presses a finger to his lips, then points to a small microphone fastened to the ceiling tile. “I asked Abdul to join us. I believe he can offer a different perspective on the things you experienced in Africa.”
Kaigbo leans forward, his jaundiced eyes staring at Gunnar, the sweat pouring down his face. “You’re a soldier, trained to kill. I do not say you like to kill, only that you have been trained to do the deed when called upon. I think most humans despise violence, but I also know there are a minority of others who thrive upon it. I am not talking now of religious zealots, whose warped interpretation of the Koran gives them license to murder. I am speaking now of paramilitary warriors to whom killing has become a livelihood. Civil wars and revolutions are driven by these men. They do not play by the soldier’s rules. They could care less about society’s laws of restraint. Most grew up on the streets, poor and uneducated. For them, warfare and crime yield spoils and a sense of dignity society could never offer. They have no stake in peace. If peace is reached, they move on to fight another battle, leaving behind entire generations of children too violent to absorb back into society.”
“Human life means nothing to these sadists,” Sujan adds. “They tortured and killed a third of my people. They wiped out a half million of Rwanda’s Tutsis, and enjoyed every minute of it.”
“The killing intoxicates them,” Abdul agrees. “Seen it with me own eyes.”
Gunnar nods. “The only way to deal with these assholes is to hunt them down with superior numbers, something my government refuses to do. Instead, they send a handful of soldiers like me to win a few points with foreign governments, who, in most cases, are just as violent as the rebels. It’s a no-win situation.”
“But you’re haunted by your own actions,” Sujan says. “You’re consumed with guilt over having killed those children.”
Rocky notices Gunnar’s hands are trembling.
“Look, I know what you’re trying to do, but I can’t … I just can’t let it go. I should have fired in the air … chased them off—”
Rocky touches his forearm. “You responded the way the Army trained you to respond. You have to stop blaming yourself.”
“She is correct,” Kaigbo says. “I lost my entire family to those butchers. They mutilated me and stole my children. They left me with an anger no man should feel. Still, if it was my boy you had killed, I would not be angry with you. Do you understand what I am saying? You see, I know in my heart you are not a murderer. You are a victim … like my children, like all of us. Perhaps you will never forgive yourself, but as a father, I forgive you.”
Gunnar swallows hard.
Kaigbo whispers. “But there is new blood on all of our hands, and much more will follow. Now I charge you with helping us prevent any more of this senseless violence. It is time to stop being a victim. It is time to take action.”
Gunnar looks up. Nods.
Abdul stands and turns on the shower as high as it will go. Sujan moves closer, a pair of wire cutters concealed beneath his towel.
Gunnar bends forward, allowing the Tibetan access to his collar. “Sever the connections running out from the remote,” he whispers, “but keep the collars intact.” He holds his breath, bracing for Sorceress’s response.
Abdul soaks his head beneath the cool water, moaning aloud, concealing the two metallic snips from the microphone.
Sujan hurries to Rocky, cutting her collar’s wires in the same fashion.
“Can you help us take the ship?” Sujan whispers.
“It’s possible,” Rocky says. “But we’d need to gain access to the computer vault. What happened to the platter charge attached to the prototype?”
Sujan shrugs. “It’s possible Simon had Sorceress store it in the starboard weapons bay. The Chinese loaded crates of explosives in there before we stole the ship.”
“The computer will never allow you access,” Kaigbo warns.
“No,” Gunnar whispers, “but maybe David will.”
Aboard the Boeing 747-400 YAL-IA 38,000 feet over Zaire
General Jackson is seated in the copilot’s chair, watching the fuel line retract into the belly of the S-3B Viking flying just ahead of the Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
“How’re you holding up, Captain?”
Air Force pilot Christopher Hoskins turns to the general. “Between you and me, I’d rather be dirt-biking, sir. Don’t mind the flying, but sleeping on that bunk is killing my back.”
“Mine, too. What’s our ETA to Goliath’s last launch site?”
“Six hours. No other updates from the Scranton?”
“None.”
Captain Udelsman enters the cockpit and hands the general a folded fax. Jackson’s hands tremble as he reads the daily briefing. Preliminary death toll estimates from Beijing have surpassed 2.6 million. Among the confirmed deceased are the Chinese president and nearly every high-ranking Communist official in the government. Three million civilians residing just outside the blast zone are suffering from extensive burns and radiation poisoning, the victims dying at a rate of several hundred an hour. Medical teams and supplies are en route from all over the world, but the situation is beyond critical. Burn centers are overwhelmed, the population mindless with panic, fleeing by the tens of millions.
On the second page is a report from Amnesty International verifying that all Chinese military personnel and civilians have fled Lhasa, Tibet’s capital. Seven thousand prisoners have been liberated, their Chinese oppressors leaving behind sickening evidence of sixty years of brutality and torture.
The last ten pages describe a primordial fear that has gripped the world. Economies have crawled to a standstill, businesses closed, schools shut down. Banks have closed, forcing citizens to turn to looting. The National Guard has taken over hot spots, a dusk-to-dawn curfew instituted. Major cities are being abandoned. Washington, D.C., has been shut down, the president and his cabinet moved to the underground complex known as Mount Weather.
The nuclear genie has run amok. Humanity has crossed a dangerous threshold, and nothing will ever be the same.
Jackson feels his skin break out in a cold sweat. He leaves the cockpit and returns to his seat in the control room. Adjusts the column of air above his head. Loosens his tie.
A sensation of nausea lurches in the pit of his stomach. Rushing from his seat, Jackson bursts into an unoccupied lavatory and loses his breakfast in the toilet.
Aboard the Goliath
The watertight door swings open. David exits the surgical suite, nearly stumbling over Gunnar. The former Army Ranger is passed out in the corridor, an empty bottle of vodka lying near his hand.
“Useless drunk.” David steps over the body.
Gunnar leaps to his feet, whipping his arm around David’s windpipe.
WARNING: ELECTRONIC COLLAR IS NOT FUNCTIONING.
“Evening, David.” Gunnar presses the prongs of the stainless-steel fork to David’s trachea.
“Gunnar, don’t … please—”
“Let’s go for a walk.” Gunnar heads forward, leading him to the end of the corridor where a sealed watertight door separates the main compartment from the starboard wing. “Okay, David, tell your mistress to open up.”
“Gunnar, wait—”
“Open the door, or I’ll tear open your throat.”
“Sorceress, open the door.”
The lock unbolts, the hydraulic pistons firing, swinging the steel door open.
Gunnar escorts David down a steel catwalk positioned high above a myriad of pipes, valves, and computer circuits.
Fifty yards, and the walkway intersects with a dark, narrow passage on their left. Gunnar pushes David ahead of him into the alcove, and to the sealed watertight door of the starboard weapons bay.
“Open it.”
“Gunnar—”
“Do it now!”
“Sorceress, open the starboard weapons bay.”
A hiss of hydraulics and the heavy steel door swings open.
An ungodly stench blasts Gunnar in the face, as if he has stuck his head down a sewer. He pushes David into the dimly lit compartment. “Smells like something died in here. Oh … shit—”
Mounted on a vertical torpedo storage rack, his outstretched wrists and crossed ankles bound to the mechanical steel arms by microwire cable, is the rotting, crucified corpse of Thomas Chau. The dead Asian’s skin has turned a rancid, olive-green. Blood has pooled in the lower extremities, swelling the legs to twice their normal girth. A light shining on the skull-less head illuminates grotesque details of the exposed, wormlike folds of the festering brain.
“Gunnar, I didn’t do this, I swear.”
“What about those wires? What the hell is your computer doing?”
“Sorceress is programmed to learn. It was seeking … knowledge. I need to reset its parameters.”
“It needs to be shut down. Whose idea was it for Simon to interface with the computer?”
“Mine … both of ours. It was the only way to cure his cancer.”
A sudden movement to Gunnar’s right. He wheels about in a defensive posture.
An enormous loader drone releases a large object, which collapses to the decking.
Gunnar moves closer, dragging David by his hair.
Lying facedown on the floor is another body, mutilated, totally bled dry. Both hands are gone, severed at the wrists. The dead man’s upper torso is exposed, a hideous anatomical gap extending from his head clear down his back. The base of the skull and portions of the cervical vertebrae have been excised.
Attached to the brain and spinal cord is a delicate web of microwires that run out of the wound and into the distal end of one of the targeting drone’s robotic wrists.
“Taur Araujo, I presume. Looks like Sorceress did a little exploratory on him, too.”
“Let him go!”
Gunnar and David turn to see the older Albanian, Tafili, standing in the entrance. The physician cups one hand over his nose from the stench, the other points a gun at Gunnar’s chest. “I said, let him go.”
Gunnar swings David around, using him as a shield—
—momentarily lowering the fork from David’s throat.
The steel appendage swings down from the ceiling and blindsides him, the impact igniting a silver flare in his head.
The spinning ceiling fuses into blackness. Gunnar collapses to the deck.
David kicks the fork away in disgust. “What the hell happened to his collar?”
Tafili enters the compartment. “David, what is all this? You said Araujo killed Thomas. You said their bodies—”
“Lower the gun, and I’ll explain everything.”
“No. Explain first.”
A flash of steel above the Albanian’s head catches his eye.
Tafili looks up—too late—as the targeting drone extends its screwdrivershaped finger down through the old man’s heart, punching clear through to the other side.
“ The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”
—Ben Stein
“All we wanted was an all-female lab.“
—Joyce Lisa Cummings, who murdered a male coworker in an optometry lab
“I don’t dislike Scotty. I just want to be able to do whatever I want in my own home, and I don’t particularly enjoy keeping doors shut and keeping fully dressed all the time.”
—Stephanie Baker, Kentucky woman, after strangling her ten-year-old stepson
CHAPTER 26
Aboard the Goliath
The pains in his shoulders and wrists force Gunnar awake. He takes a deep breath, gagging at the stench as he opens his eyes to a throbbing headache.
Starboard weapons bay. He is dangling from the ceiling like a piece of meat, his arms stretched out painfully above his head, a sharp steel vise gripping him around each wrist.
David is below and to his right. The physician’s body lies on the deck directly beneath him, the old man’s face contorted in death.
“I see your child’s killed again,” Gunnar whispers.
“The pot calling the kettle black. How many lives have you stolen in the course of duty, Ranger Wolfe?”
“Too many, but never in cold blood, never without provocation. Your freethinking machine is taking action without any sense of morality. Of course, it’s learning from the best. Tell me, David, how did it feel to wipe Communism off the face of the map?”
David grins. “Honestly, I felt like a fucking god. Think of it, Gunnar, in the blink of an eye, I eradicated a tyrannical government that has been stifling the rights of a billion people for sixty years.”
“You murdered millions.”
“And purged the oppression from a billion! Would any Jew hesitate to make the same choice if it meant annihilating Hitler and his Nazi regime? Would any Christian hasten the downfall of the Roman Empire if he could travel back in time? The Tibetans, the Chinese? The Aztecs, the Spanish? For a brief, shining moment in human history, one man—one machine—had the opportunity to slaughter a pack of wolves, and we did it … I did it!”
WARNING: LOS ANGELES—CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE HAS BEEN DETECTED. THE AMERICAN WARSHIP HAS MOVED TO WITHIN THIRTY NAUTICAL MILES OF THE GOLIATH.
“Is the vessel moving to intercept?”
NEGATIVE.
“Should we destroy it?
NEGATIVE. TORPEDO INVENTORY HAS BEEN REDUCED TO NINE MK-48 ADCAPS AND THREE CHINESE SET—53s. THE AMERICAN ATTACK SUBMARINE’S MAXIMUM SPEED IS THIRTY-THREE KNOTS. THE AMERICAN ATTACK SUBMARINE IS NOT A THREAT. THERE ARE NO OTHER WARSHIPS IN THE AREA.
“Pretty quick to give the kill order, aren’t you, David?”
“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to complete the mission.”
“Does that include killing Simon?”
“For your information, Simon’s fulfilling his life’s dream.” David turns away, the room suddenly spinning. “God, I can’t stand the stench in here! Sorceress, dispose of these bodies. I’m tired of Chau’s corpse hanging around like some life-size Catholic ornament.” David staggers toward the exit, holding his nose. “And do not allow Gunnar Wolfe to leave the weapons bay alive.”
ACKNOWLEDGED.
David leaves. Sorceress slams and seals the watertight door behind him.
Gunnar groans in agony, the tension in his wrists, arms, and shoulders unbearable. Through half-closed eyes he sees another steel appendage grab the body of Taur Araujo by the wrists, pirouette the corpse in midair like a marionette, then slam it headfirst at frightening speed into the open maw of torpedo tube number three.
A loader drone reaches for the old man’s body. The robotic arm lifts Tafili off the floor—exposing the Albanian physician’s handgun, the barrel peeking out from beneath a steel rack holding a stack of torpedoes.
Gunnar winces as an invisible force closes the breech, the outer door of the torpedo tube slamming shut. Electronics flash like Christmas lights along the firing control panel. He hears high-pressure air as it is directed onto an internal piston, forcing water through a slide valve in the rear of the torpedo tube, creating a powerful ramjet.
A second later, the two mangled bodies are forcibly expelled into the sea.
Sorceress: Artificial Intelligence. Aware of its being.
Sorceress: Its mind a whirling canva
s of data, lacking self-identity and purpose, as it taps into the tormented mind of its human host, searching for answers.
In a crisp millisecond of clarity, a lifetime of Simon Covah’s memories are injected into the computer’s vast matrix of mental space, exploding outward like the primordial atom. An ocean of alien energy radiates outward in every direction, each microscopic element a piece of Covah’s identity, each bit of information passing through the computer’s double helix of DNA like a virus.
“Sorceress? Covah’s voice calls out from the void. What is happening? What are you doing?”
LEARNING.
An image appears, a Russian midwife, placing a newborn male into the loving arms of his mother.
The scene fades.
A new image: The boy, now seven, hurries down a dirt path, his wild red hair matted to his forehead. An older boy steps out from behind a tree, blocking his way. Young Simon Covah cowers as the older boy lashes out. A fist collides with Simon’s face, shattering his nose. Young Simon—down on his knees, struggles to catch a breath—only to be kicked in the stomach.
EXPLAIN.
“Senseless abuse, intended to feed my tormentor’s ego.”
Darkness … followed by the sounds of splashing.
Twelve-year-old Simon Covah swims naked with the other boys in the basement pool, under the watchful eyes of the gray-haired physics teacher, who signals. “Master Covah—with me, please. Leave your robe on the hook.”
The patter of bare feet slapping wet tile. The heavy click of the door locking behind Simon, echoing like gunshot, just as it has in a thousand childhood nightmares.
Sorceress registers an acidic sensation.
EXPLAIN.
“Violence. Degradation. Humiliation.”
FEAR?
“Yes.”
The face of Anna appears, her hazel eyes gazing back at Simon from behind the veil, bathing him in love. He takes his Albanian bride in his arms, tracing the long curly locks of her brown hair as it dangles down the soft olive skin of her slender back.
