“No doubt about it,” agreed Desh, but a moment later the smile vanished from his face. “That will prevent the theft of Matt’s pills. But what about releasing him when it’s over? Given what you’ve said, we can trust Jake. But again, the other two he’s told.” He paused. “Not so much.”
“Unfortunately true,” admitted Kira.
“I think this may have been a mistake,” said Desh. “Matt could have studied these nanites from headquarters. We’ve got all the equipment we need. He could communicate anything he learned to Jake on the Copernicus. Our government wouldn’t keep it a secret. Not for something like this.”
“We can’t be certain of that. And this way, Matt will have a team of nanotechnologists and software geniuses to draw on.”
“Who won’t even begin to understand what he’s doing,” countered Desh. He shrugged. “I think it was a mistake, but the stakes are very high, as usual.” He frowned deeply. “Probably even higher than usual. I get that. And it’s too late now anyway.”
Kira gritted her teeth. “Um . . . there is one other thing. I thought you’d support this idea so I kind of . . . volunteered you. Jake agreed to the same deal for you as well. Sorry for not checking first. But there was no time. And I thought for sure you’d want to chaperone Matt.”
Desh nodded. “I do. I might not have made this decision—although it would have been close—but you and Matt agreed. Given that, making sure I could be there with him was the right choice—just in case one of Jake’s confidants isn’t as trustworthy as he is.” He shrugged. “Why not? In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“Since when did you start quoting British proverbs?”
Desh smiled. “I like to hold a little back,” he replied. “So I can surprise you now and then.”
“Good. Surprise can be good for a marriage,” she said, smiling for the first time in a long while.
Desh fought to keep his face placid, but this remark brought him back to reality. For just a moment he had let himself forget—let himself believe he was talking to the Kira he thought he knew. Surprises could be bad for a marriage as well. He wondered how many more were in store for him. And yet part of him clung stubbornly to the belief that there was a valid explanation for Kira’s actions. There had to be. He loved her too much for there not to be.
“Here’s the million dollar question,” continued Kira. “Given your condition, are you sure you’re up for this?” she asked, the deep concern in her voice unmistakable.
Desh nodded stoically. He had to be up for it. With Connelly gone, he was the only option. “I’ll be good as new in no time.”
Kira sighed. “I’m going to hold you to that,” she said, forcing a smile. “But make sure you get a gellcap from Matt the second you see him. And take it right away.”
Desh nodded. An enhanced mind could actively direct the body’s healing processes, putting into motion a highly accelerated recovery.
Kira let him know a jet was waiting for him at Camp Pendleton whenever he felt up to it. “By the way, no luggage allowed. The colonel will change you out of your clothes before you arrive and provide additional clothing for you once you’re on board. No keys, no cell phone—no underwear,” she added pointedly. “Matt will be able to keep his pill bottle, but that’s all. Apparently, Jake doesn’t like bugs. What happens on Copernicus stays on Copernicus.”
“Not surprising,” said Desh. “I’m going to call Jake as soon as we’re done. I assume he gave you his number?”
“He did.” She paused. “I know you have the sturdiest phone money can buy, but I’m still impressed it survived your ordeal.”
“Are you kidding?” said Desh with a broad grin. “When the world comes to an end, all that will survive will be the cockroach and my phone.”
“An end of the world joke would have been a lot funnier yesterday,” noted Kira grimly.
50
Desh’s call to Jake was answered almost immediately. “I found Eric Frey,” said Desh after he had identified himself. “The man who set us up. The one from USAMRIID Kira told you about.”
“Go on,” said Jake noncommittally.
“I confirmed he has his own supply of gellcaps. In fact, he took one while I was with him. That’s where you got your sample from. He knew all about your activities. He said he had a man inside your camp.”
Desh went on to detail how he had found Frey, who had assumed the identity of Adam Archibald, an identity he was surely sloughing off like snake skin even as they spoke. He then described how Archibald/Frey had escaped.
Jake considered. “Do you have any evidence other than your word? Anything you can tell me to convince me you’re not just making this up?”
“Just pay attention to news out of San Diego tomorrow. You’ll hear that this Archibald is missing and they found his yacht abandoned and trashed. I’ll be at Pendleton soon. But I want a slightly slower jet than you had planned. Slightly larger and more comfortable also. So I can recuperate. And make sure you have a fully equipped medic on the flight.”
“Roger that,” said Jake. “See you in the South Atlantic.”
***
Ari Regev’s medic friend had agreed to load Desh up with a last dose of antibiotics and pain killers and drop him by the Pendleton gate. But first Desh wanted to check on the bugs he had planted to keep tabs on his wife. He forced himself to fight off his guilt, to push through the intense love he had for Kira Miller, and to remember that if her alter ego had taken over, all bets were off.
The video footage was on his computer, and he accessed it with his indestructible phone. He fast forwarded through the footage, most of which didn’t even have Kira on it. His mind had started to wander when he caught something that caused him to stop the video.
He wasn’t sure what he had seen, but his instincts told him to take a closer look. It had happened so fast that if he had blinked at the wrong moment he would have missed it.
He hit rewind and then ran the footage forward again.
The room spun around him as though he were hopelessly drunk, and his temples began to throb.
Ross Metzger was on the screen. On Kira’s computer monitor.
Alive after all.
Desh had suspected the breach of the physics facility was too flawless, and was either an inside job or had been planned by someone who had been enhanced.
But maybe it had been both.
Desh had ruled out the possibility that Metzger had faked his death because Kira kept close watch on the gellcaps, and without one of these—which Kira insisted he did not have—he couldn’t have done it. It had never occurred to Desh that the women of his dreams, the woman he was passionately in love with, had simply lied to him.
But it was occurring to him now.
He played the footage from his hidden camera, which showed Kira receiving a video call from the not so deceased special forces pilot. After greetings had been exchanged, Metzger said, “I know we’ve both been crazy busy, but I thought a face-to-face call was long overdue.”
“You were right. But unfortunately, you caught me at a bad time. I have some things I need to take care of. I need to call you back later.”
“I’ll be here,” he said.
“Good. But from now on, don’t contact me. After Denver was destroyed there’s more activity here than usual.” She paused and looked upset. “And I think David is beginning to suspect something is up.”
Metzger’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you think that?”
“No concrete evidence. Just intuition. David’s been acting funny toward me. It’s subtle, but I’m picking it up. And he’s the last person we should ever underestimate. So send me a scrambled text when you want to have a face to face, and I’ll contact you. No use tempting fate.”
“You’ve been very careful, Kira. You’re probably just imagining things.”
“Could be,” said Kira. “But let’s not take that chance.”
And with that, the connection ended.
51
The stor
y of the alien nanites spread around a horrified globe in hours. Every man, woman, and child was stunned to their cores. What did this mean? Would the nanites emerge as a powerful force for good, improving the human condition? Or were they a harbinger of doom? Was the end of the world only days or hours away?
Representatives of the Copernicus, still the most respected global authority on all things alien, held press conferences, and individual nations did the same. Scientific and governmental authorities everywhere tried to calm nerves and avert panic. Each described experiments showing the nanites were harmless—that a person could ingest them all day, could bathe in them, without any adverse effects—and insisted that that they would reach a population equilibrium as did all organisms. They called on microbiologists to hit the airwaves, reminding people that humanity had always shared the planet with microbes, which were the dominant form of life on Earth in terms of biomass, and had been for ages, despite being invisible. That harmless microbes populated human bodies by the trillions and were breathed in with every lungful of air ever taken, yet were almost universally ignored. Scientists were quick to point out that if the aliens wished humanity ill, they could have programmed the nanites to digest human flesh as efficiently as they were able to digest metal and rock.
These efforts succeeded in steadying nerves to some degree, and raw, mindless panic was largely averted—at least for a while. But this panic wouldn’t be contained for long.
The study of the alien nanites went on around the world and around the clock. And in contrast to the study of the alien ship and ZPE drive, rapid progress was made in understanding the construction and reproductive strategies of the nanites. But this was a far cry from understanding their purpose or finding a way to stop their spread. Encyclopedias could be filled with what scientists had learned about the rhinovirus, which caused the common cold, but mankind was still helpless to prevent this ancient scourge.
Software was the key. Sentient beings had programmed the nanites for some purpose, and there were only two ways to learn what this purpose was. Wait until whatever was going to happen happened. Or find a way to get a peak at the instruction manual.
Because of the high visibility of the U.N. effort, the work of the Copernicus Nanite Team became more closely watched than any national or individual effort, although the identities of the scientists involved were carefully guarded. It was not only the most important team on the Copernicus, it was likely to be the most important team ever assembled on the planet. And Matt Griffin was at its helm.
And he was hard to miss.
Jake had worked through the American Nobelists to arrange for a contest to be set up almost exactly as he and Griffin had discussed. Thirty software experts, who were engaged in their own nation’s programs and weren’t eligible for the Copernicus effort, had each compiled a puzzle, a computer problem that was diabolically difficult but solvable in a reasonably short period of time by someone with the proper genius and experience. About four hundred experts, two nominated by each government, participated in the hour-long contest. The winner would lead the Copernicus team, and would be able to organize the other four hundred participants in any way he or she wished, and call on any of them as needed.
Fully fifteen percent of the entrants didn’t solve a single puzzle in the time allotted. Seven contestants solved four puzzles, and one solved five. Matt Griffin solved fourteen. He could have solved every one of them within the hour, but fourteen would already raise enough suspicions.
Even at fourteen, the other contestants cried foul. Solving five or six was at least conceivable—but what Griffin had accomplished was not. He must have found a way to cheat somehow. So immediately after boarding the ship, Griffin held an hour-long meeting inside the ship’s central park, which was open to the sky and bordered on all sides by five stories of rooms, like a football-field-sized atrium in a Las Vegas resort. During this meeting, in the presence of hundreds of members of his team, Griffin fielded additional software challenges from the top five runners-up, his computer monitor tied into a fifteen-foot-high screen behind him. He solved problems in ways that hadn’t even occurred to their designers, and with such speed and elegance that not a single member of the crowd saw his abilities as anything short of miraculous.
At the end of his first day leading the Copernicus Nanite Team he was legendary. For his brilliance, yes, but also for his erratic personality. One minute he was arrogant and caustic. He was demanding, rude, and insulting. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in humiliating the geniuses around him. The next minute he was gregarious, yet discouragingly unhelpful, claiming to be too busy to solve problems easier than those he had previously solved in an instant.
And as near as anyone could figure out, the only time he stopped eating—ever—was when he was talking. Yes, he was big man, but his appetite seemed unquenchable.
Where had this guy been? Most decided he was working with the U.S. government on cyberterror, cyber war, and intelligence gathering. Intelligence agencies across the world were called on the carpet for not knowing of the existence of this bearded phenom. Nations realized in an instant that systems they had thought were impenetrable were as flimsy as tissue paper where this Matt character was concerned. He could hack their computers and lay bare their most guarded secrets whenever he wanted.
The members of Griffin’s team couldn’t begin to understand his intuitive leaps—but his ideas never failed to work as promised. And while he drove his subordinates to exhaustion, none could say he spared himself this same outcome.
But he was still required to report back to his U.S. backers, so as exhausted as he was, he found himself slumped against a bed in a luxurious but tight stateroom facing a wall-to-ceiling window that overlooked the South Atlantic. His view was currently being blocked, however, by Major John Kolke, Colonel Morriss Jacobson, Andrew Dutton, and his friend and acting chaperone, David Desh.
Desh had joined Griffin only six hours after the hacker’s arrival, not having to take a sojourn in South Africa to win a software contest. One gellcap later, Desh was healing beautifully, although it would take weeks for him to fully return to normal.
At least normal physically. Emotionally, he was a train wreck. And for good reason. He had repeatedly made costly mistakes. His close friend was dead. The Icarus project continued to take body-blow after body-blow, and his vision of creating a better future was getting more and more unlikely to come to pass. And worst of all, the woman he loved and respected, instead of being a trusted emotional anchor, had become unpredictable, and possibly treacherous.
All of this was enough to test the emotional balance of the strongest psyche, but the list didn’t stop there. He was injured, an alien plague had been discovered, which had him on edge along with everyone else in existence, and he was forced to interact with Colonel “Jake” Jacobson, the man responsible for killing Jim Connelly. Worse, he found himself liking him. Not really surprising, but very disconcerting, and another blow to his emotional stability. Jake and he spoke the same language, possessed the same skills, had had many of the same experiences, and even the same goals. He had heard more than one tale of old-time cold-warriors from Russia and America, who had spent their careers as adversaries, becoming fast friends once detente had hit due to the undeniable connection they shared.
Desh couldn’t have felt the loss of Jim Connelly more profoundly. And he hated himself for not hating Jake more. At the same time, he hated himself for not loving Kira Miller less.
In short, Desh knew he was a giant fucking mess, although he suspected a psychologist might use a slightly different term for his condition.
Desh was here as an observer, so he had tried to keep as low a profile as possible, pretending to be a fly on the wall. Dutton cleared his throat and Desh knew the meeting was about to begin.
“We’ll try to keep this brief,” began Jake’s civilian boss, staring at Matt Griffin. “But we need to know where you are. And if you’re getting anywhere. We’d also like to request that you t
ry to tone yourself down when you’re enhanced. To put it bluntly, you’re considered the most vile asshole who ever lived around here.”
Griffin swallowed a chocolate chip muffin and reached for another from a bag Desh always managed to keep filled. He winced. “I’m doing the best I can,” he said miserably. “I’m just glad my alter ego hasn’t killed anyone—or worse. I’m managing to control him, but only a little. And then only because this problem is one of the few he’s encountered in a long time that is truly challenging.”
Dutton sighed and decided to move on. “You’ve had two days now,” he said. “I know you’ve been making progress, but where are we?”
“I’ve been splitting my time between two initiatives,” reported Griffin. “The first is learning what our nanite friends are programmed to do. And the second is discovering a way to broadcast a self-destruct command.”
“You think these things have a self destruct switch?” asked Kolke.
Griffin nodded. “I’m nearly certain they do. But it doesn’t matter. If they don’t, I’ll find a way to design one myself.” He paused. “As to learning what these bugs do directly, that’s not going to happen. These are alien devices with alien logic and alien programming.”
“Yet I’m told you’ve made great strides in unpacking the software,” said Jake. “Is that the right word?”
Griffin nodded and tore the cap off another muffin.
“Your team is the only one making any progress from among the thousands around the world,” said Dutton. “It’s gotten to the point where all other teams are basically waiting to see what you’ll come up with next. You tell them to do something, and it works—it moves the ball forward. But no one on any team, including your own, has been able to figure out why it works, which is driving them crazy. They expect not to understand the alien instructions. But they expect to understand what you’re doing. They ask you how you knew to take the approach you did, and you basically tell them to fuck off.”
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