Two men dead—Ian, dead—and another man badly injured. And we don’t even have the man we came for.
Later, when he had rendezvoused with the surviving members of the team—the injured man had been left in the damaged boat—he held back because he was curious about his opponent’s movements. Brown’s rescuer had inexplicably turned back to the riverboat. That abrupt change of course had occurred right after the earthquake that had not only plunged the city into darkness, but also blanketed all the radio frequencies with impenetrable static. Suvorov didn’t know how the events were connected, but at least now his prey was in a fixed location and was evidently not going anywhere.
Suvorov signaled for his men to advance. He knew that this time, things were going to get ugly. With only the three of them, the mere threat of violence would not suffice to control the situation. They would have to take decisive action. They had removed the sound suppressors from the Uzis; there would be shooting, and this time, noise and chaos—not stealth—would be their greatest ally. Suvorov had made it clear that they weren’t to waste any ammunition on warning shots.
But before the team could make their presence known, all hell broke loose on the party deck. Suvorov halted the team as the silence was broken by a chorus of frantic screams, followed by noise of a rushing mob. An instant later, the deck leading along the side of the superstructure was filled with dozens of passengers, men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns, all running headlong from whatever had triggered the stampede. Suvorov’s team was completely exposed but none of the passengers seemed to give them even a second glance as they pushed past, seeking the forward section of the riverboat. Off to the side, splashes in the river’s surface indicated that some at the rear of the pack had chosen to simply jump overboard. Behind the frantic crowd, about fifty feet from where the Spetsnaz team stood frozen in place, the source of the panic came into view.
The thing defied description. It seemed at once both insubstantial, like a cloud of black smoke, and as solid as granite. Towering above the fleeing horde, at least ten feet high, its mass filled the narrow gap between the bulkheads of the superstructure and the deck railing. Long black tendrils squirmed out ahead of it, grasping the deck to draw it forward, yet the whole thing moved as smoothly as a bead of quicksilver.
What happened next left Suvorov almost paralyzed with disbelief. One of the tentacles abruptly shot forward, stretching out like a frog’s tongue snatching a fly out the air, and speared into the fleeing crowd. Several of the passengers—everyone in the path of the snaking protrusion—simply evaporated, vanishing from existence. Nothing remained; no shreds of clothing, no blood, not even ashes. It was as if every molecule of each person touched by the tentacle, had come apart in an instant.
But not all of them.
One man, who had almost reached the Spetsnaz team’s position, was caught by the tendril and instantly snatched back—alive and evidently unharmed—into the main body of the thing.
Then it happened a second time.
“Down!” Suvorov shouted, throwing himself flat.
A tentacle shot past, missing him by scant inches though he neither heard nor felt any disturbance. Two men and a woman, all of whom had already pushed past the commandos, vanished in a puff, and then the snake-thing reached through the space those victims had occupied, gripped another man who was climbing the railing in preparation to leap overboard, and yanked him back. Suvorov felt something brush his back, the unlucky man’s thrashing feet, and then he was gone, enveloped completely by the dark mass.
The thing continued to move forward. Thirty feet away… Twenty… It towered above them like a tornado. The advancing tendrils that drew it onward, each one as thick as a tree trunk, were only inches away.
A crescendo of gunfire erupted beside Suvorov. One of his men was firing his Uzi into the thing.
There was no sign of damage. The bullets vanished into it without any visible effect, but remarkably, the shape halted.
The gun fell silent as the magazine ran out.
And the monster moved again.
33.
Julia closed her eyes. This has to be a nightmare, she thought. When I open my eyes, I’ll be in my bed, and there will be an empty Häagen Dazs carton on the nightstand.
She knew better. Even in her wildest dreams, she never could have imagined miniature black holes coming to life, destroying the Louvre and turning people to stone. And when she opened her eyes again, nothing had changed.
Carutius was examining the petrified boy while Fiona and Sara stood a few steps away, hugging each other. The black shape was long gone, sliding noiselessly around the corner of the museum and headed to God only knew where.
“That thing…” Fiona shuddered. “It’s like a basilisk.”
Carutius glanced back quizzically, prompting her to add, “It’s from Harry Potter. A snake that can turn people into stone just by looking at them.”
“I’m familiar with the mythological creature,” he rumbled, with what almost sounded like approval. “In this case, our basilisk triggered a strange matter reaction. It changed the atomic mass of every particle in his body, and he was literally turned to stone. Mostly silicon if I’m not mistaken.”
“Why?” Julia asked. “I mean, this doesn’t make any sense. Black holes are just supposed to suck everything in. They’re not supposed to wander around turning people to stone.”
“Black holes don’t ‘suck,’” Carutius said. “They exert a gravitational influence that attracts matter and causes it to fall into the event horizon. But you are correct. Something else is going on here. Everything that we know, or rather think we know, about black holes is based on theories. It may be that there is some kind of consciousness at work here.”
“That thing is alive?” Julia said.
“Not in a conventional sense, but yes, it is conceivable.” He put a hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “And it might be that you can communicate with it.”
“Me?” Fiona squeaked, but then a look of understanding came over her. “You mean using the mother tongue.”
Julia gaped at them but withheld comment. Carutius and the girl both seemed to know a lot about what was going on, and that scared the hell out of her. Who are these people?
Fiona’s brow creased and she shook her head. “But I don’t know the mother tongue. I barely knew enough to stop the golem.”
“You know more than you realize. Remember what you told me before? How the artwork in the museum and the fragments of the Buddha statues spoke you? The knowledge is within you, and I believe that together, we can unlock that knowledge and use it to control this thing.”
“Control it,” Fiona murmured. “I could sing it to sleep again, like the monks did.”
Carutius seemed to frown but then nodded. “Yes. It will be difficult. You will have to trust me implicitly, and do exactly as I instruct.”
Sara shook her head. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and let you take her chasing after that thing.”
“Dr. Fogg, the fate of this world is in the balance, and Fiona might be the only person who can tip the balance in our favor.”
“We don’t even know where it is.”
As if to punctuate Sara’s reply, a loud crump echoed from the museum and reverberated through the ground beneath their feet. Carutius gazed back at the ruined building and raised a hand to silence further comment. He listened for a moment then turned back to them and said: “I don’t think we’ll have to go anywhere.”
The entity’s awareness of itself and the world in which it existed increased exponentially as the disparate fragments of its consciousness were assimilated. It had begun this process knowing nothing more than the impulsive need—an attraction as basic as magnetism or nuclear force—to bring those pieces together.
The manifestation had been drawn inexorably to those pieces, sensing that they were together in one physical location, even though the concept of location had no meaning to the entity, at least, not at the beginning. Obsta
cles lay in its path, an utterly alien environment of which it was not even truly aware, but like a bead of water following the path of least resistance, it moved around these, or when that did not suffice, changed them. The latter was no mean feat; there was a price to be paid for altering the substance of reality.
It comprehended all of this now. As the fragments of the consciousness—the mind—were gathered by the manifestation, its awareness of the environment and its grasp of causal relationships blossomed into existence. No longer was it driven purely by physical forces; no, now it guided the manifestation purposefully. The pieces of the mind lay scattered before it, moving to and fro in an effort to avoid assimilation, but the entity guided the manifestation intently, focusing on collecting each one in turn. The entity sensed another piece of the mind added, and its awareness leaped forward again. It was nearly complete. Only three more remained.
Now something different. The manifestation was encountering resistance—a storm of matter that it could not avoid. A threat! Surely nothing that could endanger the manifestation, but the relentless barrage of dense particles had halted its advance, forced it to change each of the incoming projectiles. Neutrons were stripped away in an instant, metals changed to insubstantial gaseous elements, but the entity felt its power waning.
This threat had to be neutralized.
To do that, it needed to feed.
34.
King grasped Brown by the collar and hauled him erect. The gambler might not have had any clue about Pradesh’s actual agenda, much less any ability to alter its outcome, and dragging him around was probably going to end up being more trouble than it was worth, but he’d gone through too much to take the bastard down. He wasn’t about to simply turn the man loose. A single bullet probably would have resolved the dilemma, but that wasn’t King’s style.
“Chesler! Grab him.” King pointed to Pradesh. As the Alpha Dog mercenary moved into the room, King thrust his captive into the corridor. He kept one hand on Brown’s collar and the other on the grip of the Uzi pressed against the base of the gambler’s spine, pre-empting any displays of resistance on the latter’s part. As he made his way back toward the casino, the noise of the disturbance outside grew more intense, though not quite loud enough to drown out Pradesh’s insane cackle.
A black hole, he thought. A black hole with a brain, no less. God damn it. Why can’t the crazies just stick to weaponized Ebola and suitcase nukes?
Five years ago, he probably would have dismissed Pradesh’s claim out of hand, but he’d seen a lot of impossible things since then—mythological monsters, Neanderthals, golem. He’d survived them all. Hell, he’d found a way to stop them all.
The screams had dwindled by the time he reached the casino, and when he threw open the door to the aft deck, he found it empty. Or rather, almost empty. Three human forms were visible, standing at the railing and seemingly gazing out at the dark water. But they didn’t move. The three appeared frozen in place, as still as statues. King resisted the urge to make a closer inspection; he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what had happened to them.
The distinctive crack of an unsilenced Uzi grabbed his attention and he instinctively drew back against the superstructure, looking for cover. The shots had originated along the port side of the riverboat. As far as he knew—and he had taken a crash course in physics as part of Deep Blue’s new intensive educational program for Chess Team—black holes didn’t use semi-automatic weapons. Something else was going on. He dragged Brown behind him toward the corner and peeked around it.
His first impression was that someone had blocked access to the deck with a black velvet curtain. Ten feet high, with shadowy protrusions spread out behind it, the thing didn’t look like any kind of black hole he’d ever read about.
Pradesh must have gotten bad information. It was impossible to see a black hole because their gravity was so strong that no light could reflect back to reach the human eye. Nor did this apparition appear to be causing any gravitational or relativistic disturbances. This thing, as weird as it was, could not be a black hole.
And if it’s not a black hole, maybe bullets can hurt it. He hefted his own Uzi and started to take aim, but something brushed past him before he could pull the trigger.
Pradesh.
The hacker had broken free from Chesler’s grip and dashed past King toward the dark shape. He spread his arms wide as he ran toward it, shouting: “I’m ready!”
As soon as he touched the thing, Pradesh stopped moving. King didn’t notice any other distinctive physical changes, but something was different. The hacker’s sudden silence and lack of movement was profoundly unnatural.
“Guess that ‘mind of God’ stuff didn’t work out for you,” King muttered. “So much for infinity and beyond.”
Suddenly, Pradesh disappeared. It was as if he were nothing more than a human shaped balloon popped by a needle; one instant he was there, and then nothing. King was still trying to digest this when he realized something had changed. The dark shape was moving. Toward him.
Tentacles snaked out along the deck, pulling the thing along with a smoothness that concealed just how fast it was moving. King barely had time to pull back from the corner before the writhing tendrils reached that spot.
He spun and aimed for the gangplank and the waiting Zodiac, heaving Brown ahead of him. A glance over his shoulder showed the thing creeping relentlessly onward, following him—or so it appeared—like a bloodhound. Then he saw Chesler, riveted in place and staring at the dark mass—not literally turned to stone, but petrified nonetheless. King almost called out to the Alpha Dog contractor, but he knew it was already too late.
He pitched Brown into the Zodiac and followed, shoving the rubber boat away from its mooring as he heaved himself over the inflatable gunwale. The black shape slid past Chesler, missing him by mere inches, and oozed onto the gangplank, just as King fired up the outboard.
The water around the riverboat was crowded with passengers who had sought escape from the dark shape by leaping overboard. Many of them were struggling to stay afloat, the cold water and their sodden clothes conspiring to sap their strength. Several heads turned in King’s direction in the instant that the outboard roared to life; frantic hands grasped the sides of the rubber boat. King felt a pang of guilt as he opened the throttle and pushed through their midst.
The shadow thing was right behind him, pulling itself across the surface of the Seine as if the water were no different from the solid deck of the riverboat. Its tentacle-like protrusions barely left a ripple as it reached out again and again to draw itself forward. The screws of the Zodiac’s motor were gradually propelling the craft faster than the shape appeared capable of moving, but if King stopped to help even a single beleaguered swimmer, the thing would catch him. Moreover, he knew that he wouldn’t be doing anyone a favor by performing a rescue; the creature, whatever it was, was coming after him, and King had a pretty good idea why.
The swimmers he’d already passed thrashed desperately to get out of the thing’s path, and for the most part, none felt its deadly touch. A few unlucky souls however lost the race and vanished in an instant as the tendrils brushed them. Then King saw something that all but confirmed his hypothesis.
A tendril snaked out to the shape’s left and plucked a man from the water. King only caught a glimpse of the man’s horrified face as he was pulled back, still very much alive, into the dark mass, but he nonetheless recognized the victim as one of the ten who had received a quantum phone from Brown earlier in the evening.
He recalled Pradesh’s words. I gave it a brain. The hacker had been only half-right about that. His quantum computer had awakened the black hole, or whatever it was, and evidently imparted some rudimentary degree of awareness to it, but it didn’t literally have its brain—the quantum computer network—and correcting that condition was its only priority. It was hunting down the quantum phone devices, collecting them together and integrating them physically into its being.
King kne
w less about quantum physics than he did about black holes, but he knew that one of the most difficult concepts for the novice physicist to grasp was the idea of quantum colocation. Experiments had proven that subatomic particles could literally be in two places at the same time. Pradesh’s quantum computer seemed to take advantage of this property; the hacker had said the device didn’t have a physical location, but what he had really meant was that it existed in ten different locations simultaneously; the ten quantum phones. The dark shape was evidently entangled with the quantum computer, linked to and benefiting from the artificial intelligence subroutine, but it needed more. It needed to be in physical contact with the computer. That was the sole reason it had come to the riverboat, where all ten recipients of the devices were clustered together like fish in a barrel. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to believe that with each assimilation, its intelligence multiplied.
How many has it already taken? Am I the last?
The quantum phone in his pocket suddenly felt very heavy. He felt an almost overwhelming urge to hurl it away or crush it out of existence, but what would that accomplish? At best, he would throw it off his scent and damage a tenth of the thing’s “brain” but there was no guarantee of even that. No, until he understood the threat better, hanging onto the device was imperative. Keeping the phone was probably his best chance at figuring out how to beat the dark shape, and as long as he kept it in his possession, he knew where the thing would go next. He’d just have to make sure he kept it at a safe distance.
Callsign: King - Book 3 - Blackout (A Jack Sigler - Chess Team Novella) Page 13
