“Sorry,” Finelli replied. “He sleeps with one ear open. That’s one guy you don’t want to piss off.”
Jane gulped. What makes a person so loyal if it wasn’t love, unless it was fear? It occurred to her that just very possibly they were in the company of the one person they should fear. And they had no choice but to let their guard down. Cronos wasn’t the only one who needed to rest up. The nanites in her body were telling her to do the same in their own inimical way; her body was wracked with pain and twitching even more violently than Michael’s was earlier. But then, she was less infatuated by him than he was by her right now.
TWENTY-FOUR
Finelli had been trying to shake Cronos awake for the last five minutes. “Maybe one of you next generation on line should try it.”
Cronos opened an eye. “Relax, Finelli. I swear, you’re so excitable.” He yawned, stretched his arms out to either side, and farted at the same time. “Oops, sorry.”
“The Russians are nearly on us,” Finelli said breathlessly.
Cronos waved him off dismissively. “The Russians are not the problem. Sure, they’re relentless, but a bit unimaginative. First they’ll throw their tanks at you. Honestly, it’s the best way to get some makeshift roads into a place this remote and desolate. Then they’ll try carpet bombing you into oblivion. The holes make for great ponds for the fishes, not that you’re in short supply of those around here. But it does admittedly constitute a form of designer landscaping.”
Finelli paced and stuffed cupcakes in his mouth, one after the other. He washed them down with a pitcher of milk that didn’t entirely make it into his mouth. Gasping, he said, “Usually, I feel rather safe around you, Cronos. But you’re taking things a bit too casually for my tastes, even for you.”
“You have Mike and Jane, Nano Man and Nano Woman, respectively, to protect you now as well. What more could you want?”
Mike and Jane regarded one another. “Oh yeah, he knows about Jane,” Finelli said, reading their expressions. “Don’t ask me how he figured it out.”
“Well, it was simple, really,” Cronos said. “I pored over the files Finelli dug up for me on Jane. It was pretty clear her own conscience wouldn’t let her try a nanococktail on someone she hadn’t first tried on herself.”
“What else have you figured out?” Jane said.
“You’ll notice that you’re both, well, you, only more so,” Cronos said.
Mike and Jane exchanged glances. “What of it?” Jane asked.
Cronos sighed, as if trying not to lose patience with young children. “Makes sense the nano would want to make you all you can be. If they’re not fighting your base desires, then they’re not fighting you every step of the way, and they can conserve more energy for themselves.”
“God, even I didn’t see that,” Jane said, “and I designed the damned things, at least I didn’t think it in so many words. I supposed I always figured as much deep down, based on what I was seeing.” After a brief retreat into her own mind, she met Cronos’s eyes. “So why has it just made me immortal, and not much else?”
Cronos shrugged. “Maybe deep down you want to live long enough to see if the world you help bring about is worth bringing about, and if not, maybe you want to be around to turn back the clock.”
“Possible, I suppose,” she said, turning her attention inwards again.
“Don’t mean to spoil the party, but I’m with Finelli here,” Mike said, “time to start thinking more about what to do about the Russians. We can philosophize about the fate of the world later, if we live long enough.”
“Put them out of your mind and have a seat,” Cronos said, putting his feet up on the coffee table. The explosions from the carpet bombing had started outside. Again Cronos waved dismissively. “They have no idea what they’re aiming at, just hoping to get lucky. They’ll run out of bombs before they blow up a deer. This place is so cold, no one wants anything to do with it, not even the animals rated for subzero temperatures. I could see a few Japanese gold fish breeders making a bid for all the new ponds in the area once they’re done remodeling, but…”
Michael took Jane by the arm and seated the two of them down opposite Cronos. “Why are you listening to him?” she said to Michael.
“When things get this insane, the most insane man in the room deserves your respect,” Michael replied.
Cronos laughed. “There’s a method to my madness, trust me. Now, you two, tell me what’s really bothering you. And I don’t mean about what’s out there,” he said, gesturing to the flashing lights and loud noises beyond the window. “Once, you couldn’t help falling in love despite having the most self-serving motives that had nothing to do with one another, and now, no matter how hard you try to sacrifice yourselves for the other person, you can’t fall in love to save your lives. Help me out here.”
Michael leaped off the chair and paced. “So much for giving the lead to the craziest man in the room. Finelli, do you have any more intel on what’s going on outside?”
Finelli brushed his hands of the latest cupcake crumbs and hammered away at his keyboard. “At the risk of spewing clichés, they have us surrounded.”
Michael added shaking his head and whistling to his pacing.
“You sure about that?” Cronos said, smiling. He picked up the chips-and-dip platter and sampled a bit of it.
Michael’s head went to the window at the sounds of screaming, then to Finelli, who was keying away furiously at his keyboard, looking for an explanation himself.
“The soldiers are dropping like flies—sorry, another cliché. I guess when I’m overly stressed I start spewing clichés, like Holy Shit! Hold on, I need to get a better zoom on this satellite cam.” Finelli picked up the tempo of his fingers, sending them flying across the keyboard. “God, why does anyone want to live where there are no hidden cameras in the trees? You couldn’t think of putting some up as part of a security perimeter, super soldier?” He glared at Michael accusingly before plastering his eyes back on the laptop monitor. “Yeah, yeah, I can see it now. It’s like some flesh eating bacteria on fast-forward.” He looked up from the screen at Michael. “Did you leave some nano out there?”
“Yeah, but… honestly, I forgot all about it.”
Cronos cackled, spitting out some of the potato chip in his mouth. “God I love those little guys. I swear they’re more imaginative than the Russians.”
“How did you know?” Jane said.
Cronos shrugged. “I didn’t really. I was curious more than anything. Figured Michael here would forget to shut them down in a mad panic to escape his attackers.”
“It wasn’t a mad panic,” Michael said defensively. “It was more of a well-considered, entirely appropriate run for our lives response.”
“Anyway,” Cronos said, dipping another chip in the spread, “the impressive part is their proliferation in such a short time, especially outside of the host bodies, wouldn’t you say, Jane?”
Jane thought about it. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Let me ask you,” Cronos set down the chips and dip platter, “do you love the wild frontier?”
She glanced over at Michael. “We were just talking about the ones I go for. The rugged outdoorsy types. Spend all my life in a lab. Stands to reason I became a bit of a nature lover along the way to compensate.”
“I agree, makes perfect sense,” Cronos said.
“But…” Jane trailed off in thought.
“If you’re not in love with Michael,” Cronos said, “How…? Simple. Those love starved little buggers just tapped what love they could find. God, I feel like I’m really bonding with the little guys. I’m no different. Look at me, been getting in trouble since I was a small kid. Only way to get my parents’ attention, really. My father took a perverse pleasure in hearing me tell of the most outrageous crimes and capers I could pull off from the age of seven. It’s the only time I remember us ever laughing together or spending any kind of quality time. Well, I couldn’t very well grow into an adult version o
f that. Not much of a future in it when you think it through. Besides, much harder to go after people like me on the wrong side of the law; they usually have so much more going for them, including a bigger budget. So these days, I wile away my time telling my colleagues in law enforcement about my insane exploits just to hear them laugh and cheer. Amazing how the most sophisticated of us boil down to the simplest motivations and drives.”
“Well, the flesh eating thing pretty much took care of the Russians,” Finelli said.
“Not all, Finelli, not all,” Cronos said dipping into the spinach spread again with a baby carrot.
“Well, no one’s moving, so I guess according to you a couple are playing possum.”
“The nanites would have left some fun for Dick and Jane here, sorry, I mean Michael and Jane. After all, they want to coax her out of hiding so she can enjoy the great outdoors. They’re not happy if she’s not happy,” he said cackling.
“You may be right,” Finelli said. “Switched to thermal imaging. There are some bodies refusing to go cold out there.”
“We gonna go out and get them?” Michael asked.
“I swear, you kids… it pays to know when to be fashionably late to the party. Let’s give the other guests a chance to arrive before introducing the hosts. Finelli, how are they doing on their timing?”
“The Chinese are arriving.”
“How do you know it’s the Chinese?” Mike asked.
“Let’s just say they have a fighting style all their own,” Finelli said.
Cronos whistled. “Now, the Chinese, they have some major street cred with the whole ‘Bring on the end of the world in a biblical fashion’ thing. They’re my favorites. To think that before we outsourced our entire economy to them they were just some remote backwater, like this place, most of their people starving. Now they lead the world in almost every profession, or are soon to. You have to admire that kind of chutzpa, coming up against the giants of the global economy as the Davids they once were… I tell you, it’s a truly inspiring story.”
“What are they likely to throw at us?” Michael asked, looking up, noticing that the carpet bombing had stopped. In the resulting quiet, he realized he couldn’t hear the tanks anymore either, not the sounds of their engines or the sounds of trees falling over in their wake.
“Focus, kids,” Cronos said. “Forget about the thriller happening out there. I want to hear more about the love story happening in here.”
“Damn it, Cronos!” Michael shouted.
“No, he’s right,” Jane said. He glared at her. “Can’t you see he’s trying to help us find our way to one another’s hearts again? Otherwise we can’t come up against whatever’s out there. And neither can he.”
“I see who the brains of this operation is,” Cronos said, tilting his head like a shrug of acknowledgement, “even at half power.”
Michael, realizing they were both right and the stakes were high enough to get over his natural inclinations to flee or fight, forced himself to relax and slipped onto the sofa. “No matter how hard I try to love her, I can’t stop doing it from the perspective of the whipped teenager. It’s like as soon as I have to prove myself, I’m that insecure teen all over again that my parents turned me into, and that the army found such the perfect invitation to rebuild me better than before, with all their psy-ops games.”
“That’s a tough one,” Cronos said. “I just got done admitting myself that, put me in certain situations, and push the right buttons, and look out. Jane, rescue us here, because I got nothing.”
“I’ve been working on not being critical,” she said, “even when he’s driving me out of my skull. I figure the more supportive I am, the more I build him up, the sooner he’ll snap out of it.”
“Worked for the army,” Cronos said. “I like it. So what’s the hold up?”
Jane hesitated, eying Michael guiltily. “I guess I must not be that good of an actress. He must be picking up on the irritation even when I try to hide it.”
“Yeah, bad acting will get you ousted from corporations faster than anything, the military and special ops branches of the government too,” Cronos said. “No one can tell you’re faking it, or you’re done for. Requires total non-attachment to your own base desires and motivations. The whole thing is very Zen when you think of it. Don’t they carry on about letting go of all your attachments and aversions? Of course they do, and they’re right to. Who’d have thought you’d have to go to hell to get to heaven, huh? Those corporations might be our best allies now in turning the Titanic of this global economy around before it hits the iceberg. Of course, I’m a bit of a romantic about these things. Could just as easily bring about Armageddon with the wrong people at the helm. Sorry, I go off on tangents at times. One of those ‘everything connects to everything else’ minds, I’m afraid.”
“Must have gone off the deep end for a reason,” Mike said.
“Thanks for the segue, kid. My reasoning is this, maybe you should have more respect for one another’s methods. Mike works from the outside in, he needs to fake it until he makes it. He needs the gestures, the costumes, the situations, to pull him into the moment. Jane, you’re more of a ‘works from the inside out’ kind of gal. You get in touch with the feelings first, then the gestures, actions and situations arise naturally. You two are always at cross purposes because you just have no respect for how the other person operates. You distrust what seems so foreign to you. But they’re both valid methods for finding your way into the moment.”
Everyone studied one another in silence. Jane and Michael ogled one another most of all. Mike could be wrong, but he got the feeling that something just clicked into place between him and Jane with Cronos’s latest bombshell revelation.
“Come on,” Cronos said, rising from the couch, “let’s go face those Chinese and what’s left of the Russians, and whoever else is out there.”
“Now? Why now? I think we’re making progress,” Michael said, looking at Jane.
“She can’t act worth a damn, that much is never going to change, so it’s down to plan B. Time to go play Wilderness Survival Hero, Michael. It’s one of her major turn-ons. Probably why she dragged you out here in the first place. Once you feel all that infatuation and admiration coming your way from her, you’ll be back in form in no time.”
“We tried that,” he said. “Only took us so far.”
“The adventure was over before it began!” Cronos said. “That’s why we needed the entire Russian government and the Chinese and whoever else…”
“The Arabs,” Finelli said, checking the latest intel on his laptop.
“The Arabs?” Cronos said, pursing his lips. “A desert people in this ice world. That should be interesting. Anyway, like I was saying, that’s why we needed all these guys to prolong things long enough for you two to get into character better. I figure a good couple weeks of endless war games and surviving off of an increasingly ragged land, and you’ll be right as rain.”
“Couple of weeks!” Michael shouted.
“Don’t know what you’re complaining about. I’m the one who has to catch my ass in the cold,” Cronos said, fighting with the zipper on his parka. “Not like the two of you have to feel any of that. And Finelli, poor bastard, he has to keep his electronics from freezing up. It’s we who deserve your pity, not you.”
Finally losing it, Michael shouted, “How do the Russians, the Chinese, and the Arabs invade American airspace without us retaliating!”
“They’ve been using the remote regions out here for their war games for a while now. Long before you came along, though with similar objectives, to stay technologically one step ahead of the other guy.” Gesturing to aid his explanation, Cronos said, “One of their cybers hacks the radar stations, makes the cargo carrying drone C-130s carrying the drone tanks and whatever else disappear. Then they get counter-hacked, and back and forth it goes. The ice melting north of us and clearing a passage across the top of the world doesn’t help. Now everyone feels invited to th
e party.”
“And why would they want to kill us versus capturing us to advance their own aims?” Michael said, gesturing, the frustration scarring his voice.
“Oh, they’re not here to kill you,” Cronos explained. “The drone wars are a secondary effect of each side getting the bright idea to use them to stop the other one’s agents from getting to you before theirs can. It’s the agents who survive the drones and the other agents you have to worry about.”
“Then what triggered the Russian carpet bombing before the other parties even arrived?”
“That was targeted against the Americans, of course. When it comes to drone warfare, the Americans are big on being first on the scene.”
“If you boys finally have everything sorted,” Jane interjected, “it’s time for my hero to get on with seeing I have the adventure of a lifetime despite whatever else is going on.”
Mike wanted to scream at her over the insanity of what she was proposing, but he had to wheedle his way into her heart, not her mind; the latter alone was responsive to logic.
TWENTY-FIVE
Totos sat with his feet up on the ottoman, staring into the fire. The magnificent stone fireplace was large enough to accommodate the lodge’s central lounging area. Or at least, he remembered it being so once upon a time. Now that he was an old man, even the supplemental electrical heat, reducing the fire before him to mere decoration, wasn’t cutting it. Nor was his red and black checkered flannel shirt. The whiskey helped some, probably just because it was deadening his nerves enough that they could no longer relay the feelings of cold to his brain.
This was their Camp David, where the real power players met these days, not the old school ones who imagined they still ran the world, the oil and gas, steel, and automotive interests. This was where the players of tomorrow gathered, folks who’d made their fortunes in electronics, computer chips, robotics and software. Hell, DARPA had two-thirds of their projects outsourced to one or another of the companies represented by the men gathered together in this room. Strangely, they were still mostly men. He had expected that much to change, but so far at least, it hadn’t. They were mostly young men; that much had changed. And a strange woman from the People’s Republic of China. All her concerns were American businesses since expatriating to America and declaring asylum there. So far she hadn’t done the least questionable thing. They’d been monitoring her closely to see about information leaking back to China. But if she had intentions to steal cutting edge tech to give her own country the edge, so far she’d proven smarter than their best snoops. He knew for a fact that every business leader in this room had her under close surveillance. Of course, it wouldn’t be that hard to believe she was that much smarter than the rest of them and more than two steps ahead of them. The best minds at this game were the most paranoid minds, and those tended to be best cultivated in still largely autocratic and repressive regimes like China. Maybe he was giving her too much credit. China had loosened the reins over the years as America had tightened them; there was probably less separating their two countries than ever. Besides, which of them felt beholden to any country? It was countries that felt beholden to them, as was part of the plan.
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