by James Axler
Breath seizing in her throat, her vision clouded. She was only dimly aware of thrashing convulsively, her hands fitfully opening and closing on the arms of her wheelchair. Her consciousness felt as if it were sucked into a maelstrom, a whirlpool made of glittering, golden dust motes.
She heard the ragged sob of her labored respiration, the pounding of her own blood in her ears. Then slowly, comfortably, the spinning sensation ebbed away. Gulping in air, Erica felt perspiration sliding from the roots of her hair. She wiped it away, then stared dumbfounded and disbelieving at the hand with a dew of moisture glistening on the fingertips.
Wild elation lifted, engulfed her, scattering all rational thoughts like a flock of birds. She was no longer entombed in her own flesh; her body was no longer dead. She could not repress a cry as she held out her hands and stared at them. The prominent ropy veins of old age had sunk back into smooth, unlined flesh. She used her hands to touch the hard muscles of her legs, her flat belly and the firm swell of her breasts straining at the fabric of her coverall.
Up the unseamed throat the wondering, wandering fingers went, to caress smooth cheeks, lips without a dewlap. She realized her gums hurt and were swollen. With the tip of her tongue, she touched the tiny, hard teeth shoving through the flesh.
Erica patted the thick lustrous hair framing her face and explored the growth of bristles sprouting from her scalp where her hair had thinned. Her eyes darted to the tabletop, and in its polished surface she saw a face she had not seen in well over a century. It was a face of youth, beauty and vitality.
A sob broke from her, but it turned into a wail of joy. Erica fell from the wheelchair and embraced the boy, hugging him tight about the waist. The barons' faces were frozen masks of awe, their eyes rapt and shining.
Erica, her voice shaking with the intensity of her gratitude, her eyes blurred with tears, said, "Whoever you really are, whatever you are, anything you want of me, I'll give to you."
She heard herself saying it, and she meant every word. Her voice was no longer a dry, crackling rasp but was as full and melodic as it had been in her twenties.
Sam stroked her hair and said softly, "I only ask you make your font of knowledge available to me…"
"Yes!" Erica cried, embracing him even tighter.
"And that you seek out and contact one of your own, a man whose knowledge can always be of use to me."
Drawing in a breath, trying to steady her trembling limbs and slow the frantic pace of her heart, she asked, "One of my own? I don't understand. Who is he?"
Sam placed a gentle hand beneath her chin and lifted her face so he looked directly, lovingly into her eyes. "His name is Mohandas Lakesh Singh."
Chapter 20
The Cerberus redoubt had an officially designated briefing room on the third level, with a high ceiling, blue walls and ten rows of theater-type chairs facing a raised speaking dais, and a rear-projection screen.
It was never used except to watch old movies on DVD and laser disks in storage. The library was well-stocked and extremely eclectic, ranging from animated feature films such as Snow White to truly esoteric works like Wild Strawberries and Glen or Glenda.
The Cerberus personnel found most of the films fascinating, others simply silly, but by and large the overall reaction was one of confusion. Without a cultural touchstone, cinematic stories about the single life or supposed comedies about a British secret agent with bad teeth simply disturbed them.
Most of the briefings were instead held in the cafeteria on the second floor. The briefings rarely involved more than a handful of people, so it made more sense to convene them in the cafeteria. Lakesh, Brigid, Domi, Grant and Kane sat around a table, sharing a pot of coffee. Access to genuine coffee was one of the inarguable benefits of living as an exile in the redoubt. Real coffee had virtually vanished after the skydark, since all of the plantations in South and Central America had been destroyed.
An unsatisfactory, synthetic gruel known as "sub" replaced it. Cerberus had tons of freeze-dried packages of the authentic article in storage, as well as sugar and powdered milk.
Lakesh and Brigid sat together on one side of the table, while Grant and Domi occupied either end. Neither of them seemed particularly anxious to attend the briefing when they were apprised of it. Or, Kane reflected when he noted how they avoided eye contact, they were not anxious to be with each other. For once, Domi was modestly attired in a white bodysuit instead of her usual formfitting and abbreviated regalia.
Another first was how neither Brigid nor Lakesh arrived loaded down with sheaves of computer printout, maps, diagrams or other visual aids. No one sat beside Kane, and he wondered if it had something to do with the legend imprinted on his T-shirt.
"What are we here for?" Grant demanded gruffly. "You said you found where Pollard was supposed to transport the outlanders?"
"We found the most likely place," Brigid answered. "We won't be sure until we make a hands-on recce."
"Where the hell is it?"
Lakesh's face was deeply creased in consternation. "I shall give you the whole works verbally, since next to nothing is contained in the database about Area 51
except for very old and unhelpful aerial photographs."
"Area what?" Domi asked.
"Area-51," Lakesh replied. "Also known as Dreamland, the Ranch and the Skunk Works. Very little was known about it except for unsubstantiated rumors."
He peered over the rims of his spectacles first at Grant, then at Kane. "You may stop me if I dwell on anything you know already."
Idly stirring powdered creamer into his coffee, Kane said, "Count on it."
Lakesh's eyes flashed in momentary irritation. He stated, "Area 51 was, in the latter years of the twentieth century, a place as fabulous to Americans as Avalon had been to Britons a thousand years earlier. This particular Avalon, however, was very real and financed by the government. Located almost ninety miles northwest of Las Vegas, on the northern perimeter of the Nellis Air Force Base, it was the ideal location because of two concealing mountain ranges in the dry lake bed area, Groom Lake. There was only one, heavily guarded road into the area."
Sounding a little perplexed and annoyed because of it, Domi asked, "Ideal location for what? What was so special about this place?"
"It was an above-top-secret facility equipped with hangars half the size of small towns, enormous parabolic antennas and the world's longest runway across the dry lake bed."
"That still doesn't explain a hell of a lot," Kane commented.
Lakesh said patiently, "Area 51 was part of the Dreamland complex, where America's most advanced weaponry and aircraft were under development. Some of America's most top secret aircraft were rolled from the hidden hangars of the Area 51 complex, the Aurora being one of them…which I'm sure you and Brigid both remember."
Neither Kane nor Brigid responded, assuming La* kesh's comment to be strictly rhetorical. Kane didn't need Brigid's mnemonic powers to instantly recall the sequence of events that led them on a nightmarish foray into the Anthill complex in South Dakota. He, Lakesh and Brigid had been lured there by the mad Sindri as part of scheme to appropriate an Aurora stealth aircraft.
Although Grant had downed a small, prototypical version of the Aurora at the Archuleta Mesa site, a far larger and more deadly craft had been kept in deep storage beneath Mount Rushmore.
"The entire Dreamland complex was mainly underground to prevent any unauthorized observation from satellites," Lakesh continued, "or overflights, or individuals hiking in the surrounding mountains. It was guarded by a small army of military and intelligence services personnel, as well as a reputed hand-picked squad of ex-servicemen who served in the Navy's counterterrorism forces. Deadly force was authorized for use on any trespassers."
A rueful grin creased Lakesh's face. "Area 51 was often compared to a terrestrial black hole into which billions of tax dollars disappeared each day without a word of explanation from the military or the governm
ent."
Grant shifted in his chair impatiently, knitting his heavy brows. "What's that got to do with—?"
Lakesh raised a peremptory hand. "I'm getting to that, friend Grant. The Area 51 portion of the vast desert facility was where it was claimed mat the U.S. government examined all UFOs that had been either crash-landed or captured. These spacecraft and their occupants were said to have undergone intensive examination by top specialists in the medical, metallurgical and propulsion fields. And more pertinent to us, Area 51 was first coded Mission Snowbird."
All of them knew mat Mission Snowbird and Project Sigma, two subdivisions of the Totality Concept's Overproject Majestic, were the only ones that dealt directly with the so-called Archon Directorate and its technology.
"It is believed," Lakesh went on, "that Snowbird's main mission was to test-fly retro-engineered alien spacecraft. The Aurora, for example, was popularly believed to have employed alien technology. That was only one of the hundreds of rumors that abounded about the place, and how the aliens influenced it. Some reports had them actually living there as consultants in special compounds.
"They allegedly took a more hands-on approach after a disaster occurred when scientists attempted to cut into a spacecraft's power-plant reactor with a chain saw, and triggered some kind of nuclear or antimatter explosion.
"Later, diplomatic relations broke down between the human personnel of the base and the aliens, which resulted in an altercation between the two factions. A military policeman tried to take a firearm into the aliens' area, and he was wounded fatally. That incident turned into a pitched battle in which over sixty security people were killed."
Lakesh paused, then added, "Supposedly."
"When you say aliens, are we talking the Archons here?" Grant asked. "Balam's people?"
Lakesh shrugged his knobby shoulders. "Who can say with any degree of certainty? Most of what I told you is nothing but unsupported rumor. It could be completely true or it could be overblown fable."
"The Aurora was real enough," Brigid pointed out.
"If the aliens referred to were Balam's people," Lakesh declared, "then the medical facilities that may exist in Area 51 would be of great use to the barons. They would already be designed for their metabolisms. Baron Cobalt could reactivate them, turn them into a processing and treatment center without having to rebuild from scratch. He could have transferred the medical personnel from the Dulce facility."
"How would Baron Cobalt learn about it in the first place?" Kane asked, fixing his gaze on Lakesh.
"A little while ago you said something about 'my fault.' Actually, you said it twice."
Lakesh's lips pursed as if he tasted something exceptionally sour. He did not squirm in discomfort beneath Kane's stare, but he fidgeted. "As you know, I took advantage of my position as senior archivist in the Historical Division to compile as much information as I could pertaining to military or other sites that could have potential use to me. Although most of the data I copied to disk and brought here, some of it remained accessible on my computer in Cobaltville.
"A couple of months before I was forced to leave the ville, I'd been researching all documents that mentioned Area 51, but since the information was so spotty, so fragmented, so fanciful, I didn't make it a priority to encrypt it or delete it from my machine's memory. That's what I meant about it being my fault."
Kane grinned. "I won't hold that one against you, old man."
Lakesh threw him a fleeting, appreciative smile. "That would be a welcome change in attitude."
Lakesh tended to blame himself for many things, and for a long time, Kane gleefully helped him do so. As a project overseer for the Totality Concept, then as an adviser and even something of an architect of the unification program, Lakesh had helped to bring about the tyranny of the barons.
Much later, far too late as far as Kane was concerned, he turned against the hybrids, betraying them and even stealing from them to build his resistance movement. Lakesh found no true sin in betraying betrayers or stealing from thieves. He could not think of the hybrid barons in any other way, despite their own preference for the term new human.
Lakesh then tried his hand at creating his own new humans. Some forty years before, when he first decided to resist the baronies, he rifled the genetic records on file to find the qualifications he deemed the most desirable. He used the unification program's own fixation with genetic purity against them. By his own confession, he was a physicist cast in the role of an archivist, pretending to be a geneticist, manipulating a political system that was still in a state of flux.
Kane was one such example of that political and genetic manipulation, and when he learned about Lakesh's involvement in his birth, he had very nearly killed him.
"In the months following your disappearance," Brigid remarked, "the baron searched for any clues to your whereabouts, including your computer files." Her eyes narrowed as a sudden thought occurred to her. "How did he find out a mat-trans unit was there, not to mention its destination-lock codes?"
Lakesh knuckled his deeply furrowed forehead. "I can only postulate, but it's reasonable to assume the baron picked up the Area 51 reference and followed its thread to other files, ones that very well might have contained that information—-not just about aircraft but about the medical facilities perhaps used to treat Ar-chons."
"If that's what the son of a bitch did," Grant growled, "it seems pretty apparent he's concerned only for himself, or he wouldn't be raiding Baron Snakefish's territory for merchandise."
Lakesh regarded him stonily. "Does that make any difference?"
"It makes a big one to me. Sounds like Baron Cobalt is willing to let the other barons sicken and die, or he wouldn't be sneaking around. He's doing our job for us."
Tugging at his long nose, Lakesh said severely, "You're too inclined to view things in black and white, friend Grant. Our war against the baronies is like a monster game of chess, and we're always trying to think nine moves ahead—or eight since the demise of Baron Ragnar. One would think that by now you'd understand the real reason for any move by the barons, Cobalt in particular, is never what it appears to be on the surface."
Domi, her head propped up on a fist, grinned wolf-ishly at Lakesh's admonishment. Ignoring her, Grant intoned in a low, deadly voice, "We don't know if the destination codes are for a gateway in this Area 51 place or in East Asshole, Slovenia."
"Yes," Lakesh agreed, "it's still only conjecture. That's why we'll try them out and see where they take us."
"'Us'?" Grant repeated darkly. "You're going, too?"
Before Lakesh could respond, Brigid broke in. "If the codes do lead to Area 51, and if Baron Cobalt has reactivated the medical wing, the place will be crawling with sec forces."
"More than likely," Kane agreed uneasily. "In which case, we can't afford to make a scouting jump, a recce. We should go there under the assumption that we'll find exactly what we think we may find."
"And," Grant questioned, "bringing everything we need to light the place up?"
Lakesh's eyes widened in alarm. "Let us not make these rushes to judgment, gentlemen. It could be the site will be of more use to us than the barons."
Domi straightened in her chair, saying vehemently, "If fuckin' barons are there, if fuckin' hybrids are there, we chill 'em! They'd do the same to us. We got blamed for chillin' Baron Ragnar even though we didn't. We're owed a baron chillin'!"
The bloodthirsty blaze in the girl's eyes caused Kane's belly to turn a cold flip-flop. Lakesh, who was extremely fond of her, stared at her in dismay. Haltingly, he said, "Darlingest Domi, simply executing the barons as we find them won't solve the larger problem. It's not that I'm against such a tactic, mind you, but there are other considerations—"
"'Other considerations,'" Domi mimicked in disgust, imitating his lilting East Indian accent. "For a year now, that's all we hear. You jabber and blow about this being a war for human survival, but whenever we can do so
mething to shorten the war, mebbe even end it, you turn pussy-hearted."
Domi surveyed the people at the table with a crimson, challenging stare. She fastened her gaze on Grant's face and between clenched teeth hissed, "Tired of this. Sick of this shit. If we're not in a war to win it, then it's not a war."
Grant met her steady glare with brow-shadowed eyes. She did not avert her face or appear to be in the least intimidated. In the past, all that was required to quell one of Domi's outbursts was either a stern look or stern word from Grant. Whatever influence he had exerted on the girl was now a thing of the past.
Regardless of its true motivation, Domi's blunt, straightforward diatribe contained more than a few nuggets of truth. No one at the table could deny that, even if they cared to do so.
Kane exhaled a long breath. "Domi has a point. When we destroyed the Archuleta Mesa complex, we pretty much destroyed the hybrids' ability to reproduce and to keep themselves healthy. It would be absolutely the most idiotic tactic to allow the barons to pick up and start over somewhere else. To use your chess-game analogy, Lakesh, a strategy like that isn't even a competition, much less a war."
Lakesh opened his mouth, but Brigid interposed hastily, "As much as I don't want to, I must agree with Domi and Kane. We simply don't have the personnel to take Area 51 from the barons and occupy it ourselves. Our only option is to make it useless to them in much the same way we did the Dulce installation. And if that option makes it useless to us, as well—" she shrugged "—c'est le guerre."
Even Kane knew she meant "fortunes of war."
After a contemplative moment, Lakesh murmured in sad resignation, "You're right. But allow me to contribute something to the strategy. If the four of you intend to jump there, I suggest you do so in pairs and at staggered intervals. The gateway unit could very well be heavily guarded, and there is no reason for all of you to be captured—or worse—in one fell swoop."
Kane exchanged swift, questioning glances with Domi, Brigid and Grant. When none of them voiced an objection, he announced, "Agreed. I volunteer to be on the first tour group. Who wants to go with me?"
