A Better World (5 page)

CHAPTER 3

He was being the spider when the SUV finally stopped.

The truck was black. There were two men inside. It had been coasting to a halt for almost three minutes. It would be three more before the doors opened. Then five minutes to cross the half dozen paces to where he sat. He had plenty of time to be the spider. An ocean of time, massive, deep, crushing, and cold. Time like the Mariana Trench, thirty-six thousand feet deep. Time that weighed and warped.

The spider. Tan and black, an inch long. A wolf spider, he believed, although he was no great spider expert. He had been watching it for eleven hours. First had come revulsion, the primal skin-crawl. Eventually, the tracing of hair on her legs and abdomen—he had decided it was a female—came to look soft, almost inviting, like a stuffed animal. Eight eyes, shiny and complete. The fangs fascinated him. To bear your weaponry so blatantly before you, to move through the world as a nightmare. The spider regarded him, and he regarded the spider.

She was perfect. Stillness itself, until motion was called for. And then motion so fast and precise it could hardly be seen by the prey. Brutal and without remorse. For her the world was only food and threat. Were there vegetarian spiders? He didn’t think so.

No, she was a killer.

From his position he could see both the spider and the SUV; he shifted focus to the vehicle. His eyes didn’t move, of course; they were locked in the glacial pace of muscles, of flesh and blood.
But he had long ago learned to move his attention even while his body lagged behind. It was a simple thing to focus on the SUV and the two men inside it. The driver was speaking. It took twenty seconds for him to frame six words, and his lips were easily read.

Inside the SUV, the driver asked, “So who is this guy, anyway?”

“His name is Soren Johansen. He’s the most dangerous person I’ve ever met.” John Smith smiled through the windshield. “And my oldest friend.”

Hello, John. I’ve missed you.

It was hardest with people.

There was a reason he was alone. In retreat, like a Buddhist monk on a mountaintop. And like the monk, he had been striving not for knowledge or wisdom but for nothingness. Not the idea of nothingness, not the exercise of it, thoughts sent drifting down the river as they intruded on his meditation. No, his comfort had come, when it did, in true moments of nothingness. Moments when he did not exist. Only in them did the relentless dragging of time not overwhelm.

When he couldn’t be nothing, which was often, he became something else. Something simple and pure. Like the spider.

People, though, were neither simple nor pure. It was agony watching them move through life like they were fighting through wet cement. Every motion endless, every word taking an eternity, and for what? Motions without purpose or grace, words that wandered and drifted.

Therefore it surprised him to realize that he had missed John. But of all the gifted—and no one else was worth considering—John was most similar to himself. John lived in a multilayered view of the future, plans within plans, eventualities a year away set in motion by a conversation today. It was different than Soren’s
own perspective, but it provided a frame of reference, a means of understanding.

Like now, the way John jogged the fifteen feet to him, rather than making him suffer through the walk. The way he spoke in their old way, “Howareyou?”

Not a pleasantry, Soren knew. A question on multiple levels. John asking if he was holding together.

A flash of memory, vivid as tri-d: John Smith at eleven, talking to him on the playground of Hawkesdown Academy. Passing him a Kleenex for his bleeding nose, broken by one of the older boys. Saying, “It’s better if I talk fast, isn’t it?”

Saying, “You’resmartbutyou’renotthinking.”

Saying, “Makeityourstrength.”

Saying, “Andnoonewilleverhityouagain.”

Teaching him about meditation, how to put aside the dizzying maelstrom of the future and exist only in the now. Teaching him that if he could control himself, he could use his terrible curse to do anything, use it against all the petty little ones who tried to hurt him. John understanding that the boy everyone thought broken was merely overwhelmed, knocked flat by every second.

People thought that time was a constant, because that was what their mind told them. But time was water. The stillest water vibrated and buzzed with energy.

John had taught him, and the next time the older boys came for Soren, he remembered. He became nothing but the moment. He did not plan. Did not anticipate. He merely watched them move in slow motion, and lazily, with a stolen scalpel, he cut the throat of the biggest one.

No one had ever come for him again. “I have more nothingness than ever.”

Smith understood. “That’sgood.”

“You need me.”

“Yes.”

“Out in the world.”

“I’msorry. Yes.”

“It’s important?”

“Crucial.” A pause. “Soren. It’stime.”

He stopped being the spider then and became the man again. For a moment, the future threatened to swamp him, the terrifying infinity of it, like being alone in the Pacific in the middle of a starless night, all that water and time around and below him, the deepest hole in the planet sucking him down into darkness.

Be nothing. Be not the spider nor the man nor the future nor the past. Be the moment. Be nothing.
Just like John had taught him.

Soren would rise and go with his friend into the world. He would do . . .

“Anything.”

PERSONALS > CASUAL ENCOUNTERS > NORM/ABNORM

Treat Me Like the Filthy Twist I Am

18 yr old T4 male, slender, shaved. My father kicked me out—be my new daddy?

Norm Couple Seeking Abnorm Housegirl

We are: mid-40s, professional, fit, successful. You are: Tier 2 or 3 Reader. If you’re who we want, you already know what we want.

Married Abnorm Looking for NSA Fun

There’s a reason they call us gifted. Let’s get twist-ed.

Lonely at the Top

T1 physicist seeking other Tier Ones for conversation, friendship, more if we’re both feeling it. Age, race, gender unimportant.

Groupie Seeks Hot Abnorm Action

I know it’s wrong, and I don’t care. Must bring Treffert-Down test results and/or Academy diploma. I can host.

Knock Me Up

Attractive norm woman, 37, seeking T1 for night of passionate procreation. No condoms, no strings. Just drop your jeans and gimme those genes.

CHAPTER 4

Cooper wasn’t used to it. Not one little bit.

It’d been three weeks since he’d taken that unscheduled limousine ride. Twenty-one days as a special advisor to the president of the United States, all of them work days—he had a feeling that weekends would soon be a distant memory—spent in meetings and conferences, poring over reports and sitting in the Situation Room.

The Situation Room, for Christ’s sake. Twenty-one days wasn’t near long enough to get used to it. Cooper waved his pass at the guard hut on Pennsylvania, waited for the buzz of the door.

“Morning, Mr. Cooper.”

“Morning, Chet. I told you, it’s just Cooper.” He slipped off his jacket, set it atop his briefcase on the X-ray belt, then swiped his pass and typed his ID code into the machine. “How was your night?”

“Lost twenty dollars on the ’Skins to my son-in-law. Arms up, please.”

Cooper raised his arms as Chet ran a wand up and down his body, searching for traces of explosives and weaponized biologicals. The wand was newtech, developed in response to the public outcry over delays at airport security. Best Cooper could tell, it hadn’t sped anything up. “Bad enough he marries your little girl, he takes your money too?”

“Tell me.” The guard smiled, gestured to the opposite end of the X-ray machine. “You have a good day, Mr. Cooper.”

And just like that, he was through the fence and on the White House grounds. A long, curving driveway wound past the tri-d cameras at Pebble Beach, where the newsies waited day in and day out. Cooper put his jacket back on and walked, drinking in the building, the reality of it. The people’s house, the symbol of the best the nation could stand for, the epicenter of global power—his office.

Well, sort of.
In actuality, his office was in the OEOB, the office building across the street. But he’d barely seen it; his working hours had been spent almost entirely in the West Wing.

A marine in dress uniform executed a precise right-face and held the door for Cooper. In the lobby, he checked his phone and saw he was on time, a few minutes shy of seven. He passed the Roosevelt Room, stepping aside for a general and two aides. The carpet was thick and soft, and everything glistened, the furniture freshly polished. He’d never put a lot of thought into pondering what the air in the White House might smell like, but even so he’d been surprised by the answer: flowers. It smelled like flowers, from the fresh arrangements brought in every day.

A right turn took him past the Cabinet Room—
the Cabinet Room!—
and a handful of paces later, he was stepping into the president’s outer office. Two assistants typed at keyboards projected onto antique desks, and their screens were polarized monoglass so thin that from the side, they vanished entirely. A funny juxtaposition of the old and the new.

Press Secretary Holden Archer was locked in conversation with Marla Keevers, the chief of staff looking smart and vicious in a gray suit. Both were seasoned politicians and gave little away, but to Cooper’s eyes, the subtle stiffening at his arrival spoke volumes.

Relax, guys. I’m not after your job.

Cooper put his hands in his pocket and turned his attention to a gilt-framed painting, the Statue of Liberty draped in impressionistic fog. Nice enough, he supposed, though if he’d seen it at a street fair, he wouldn’t have paid any attention.

“Mr. Cooper.”

He turned. “Mr. Secretary. Good morning.”

Though now the secretary of defense, Owen Leahy had come up through intelligence, and it showed. His posture suggested that not only would he not comment on the quality of the morning, he would neither confirm nor deny that it was in fact the a.m. There weren’t many people who gave off so little to Cooper’s eyes.

“Anything new on the Children of Darwin?” Cooper asked.

Leahy made a noncommittal face. “Have they found you an office yet?”

“Across the street.”

“Ah.” A tiny smile at that; Cooper had noticed people here put a lot of stock in the location of their office. Leahy continued, “And how are you enjoying working here? All these meetings must seem dull after the DAR.”

“Oh, it’s not that different,” Cooper said. “Less gunplay, but still plenty of fatalities.”

Leahy gave an
aren’t-you-droll
chuckle. Cooper could see the SecDef preparing another veiled insult, but before he could fire it, a curved door in the southwest wall opened. President Lionel Clay stuck his head out, said to his assistant, “Push everything nonessential,” then turned and walked back inside, gesturing over his shoulder for them to follow.

In the flood of morning sun, the Oval Office glowed, light bouncing off every polished surface. Keevers, Leahy, and Archer walked in comfortably, like it was any other room. Cooper squared his shoulders and tried to do the same, still hearing the same gentle roar in his ears he experienced every time.

“Owen, what’s our status on the Children of Darwin?”

“We’re getting a more complete picture, sir, but slowly.” The secretary of defense began to brief the president, but it was clear that there had been no significant progress made.

Cooper had become something of an expert on the terrorist organization since joining Clay’s administration. He’d devoured
every memo on the Children, met with the DAR and the FBI and the NSA, spent hours staring at photographs of truckers burned alive. Yet for all the time he’d spent, he still didn’t know very much. The terrorist organization seemed to have sprung to life full-formed. No one knew how large it was, where it was based, how it was funded, if it had centralized leadership or was just a loose network of terror cells.