Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (27 page)

Savina was exhausted and stressed after the battle at the Foundation labs, several transfers from helicopter to plane to car, then to another plane, another car, another helicopter, and finally to a secret underground building buried beneath a mountain in Mexico. The woman who’d commanded the BLAXERs raid on the lab had stayed with Savina the entire time. Now, she escorted her down a long, wide corridor that was filled with such beautiful “daylight” that Savina could scarcely believe they were fifty feet below the forest floor.

After showering and changing into fresh, perfectly fitting clothes that were waiting in her private room, Savina rejoined the BLAX-commander in a common waiting area where, finally, she was turned over to another woman.

The new woman, dressed as if she’d just returned from a mountain hike, led her back to an elevator, down a long hall, and past an indoor waterfall, which cascaded at least thirty feet. A glass room, with a stunning view of the falls, was visible up ahead, where she saw Booker Lipton waiting. He stood next to the silver case which had held the Foundation’s Sphere.

“Savina, thank you for coming,” Booker greeted, smiling. He steepled his hands and bowed slightly. “And for bringing such a lovely gift.”

“I didn’t know I had a choice,” Savina said, looking up at the high ceiling, which seemed to be a hole cut into the heavens. An incredibly dazzling section of the universe captivated her. It couldn’t be real, but it appeared so authentic that she gasped.

“I believe you asked for this meeting,” Booker continued, enjoying her reaction to his creation.

She nodded, thought of saying she hadn’t asked for her lab to be destroyed or all those people to be killed, but it was too late for that.

“Why haven’t you opened it?” she asked, motioning to the silver case. “Don’t you want to see your prize?”

“I thought you might do the honors, tell me what you’ve discovered in there.”

Savina could see the strength of the man before her. His dark eyes concealed a depth of knowledge, his charming smile adding to the powerful confidence he exuded, but she knew he wanted to stop the Phoenix Initiative. To her, at least before her discoveries of the past few days, Phoenix had seemed like the only hope for the future of the species. But now, maybe in the multiverse, maybe with the wrinkle of time-shifting, with the contact of the Cosegans, there just might be another way.

“Have you ever considered the possibility of the multiverse?” she asked.

“Yes, I have. In fact, I’ve lived my life in a constant state of considering the possibility of everything.”

“Can I show you something?” she asked, trying to reconcile the public image of Booker with the rumors she’d heard about him, UQP, and the Inner Movement.

“Of course,” he said, turning his palm to the silver case. “It’s your show.”

While they waited for the Cosega Sequence to complete, Savina began with the basics. “It wasn’t that long ago that people were certain that the Earth was flat, but it is round. People were also positive that the heavens revolved around the Earth, that humanity was the center of the universe, that the Sun, the other stars, and planets, circled us. Those theories also proved wrong,” Savina said, pointing up to the stunning stars filling the ceiling. “Once we knew of nothing beyond our solar system, yet we now know Earth is part of a solar system which is one of millions in a galaxy, and that galaxy, in turn, is one of billions in the universe. These ideas were once laughed at and controversial, but each one of them is now accepted as fact. All those things that were once just crazy theories all turned out to be true.”

“Yes,” Booker said, nodding, waiting for her revelation.

“The multiverse is real,” Savina blurted. “It’s being studied at MIT, Cambridge, Cal Tech, Oxford, Harvard.”

“And the University of Hawaii,” Booker added, smiling, “I know. You don’t have to convince me. I’ve looked into the Sphere. I’ve seen remarkable things far beyond my understanding, even past the point of reasonable description. Some people think the Inner Movement is some New Age cult, but it is nothing like that. IM is more about physics than psychics. The Inner Movement is after dreams, answers, what is possible, and what we have lost or forgotten across time. I have no doubt the multiverse is a part of that.”

“Then what are your reservations?”

“You’re aware of my little UQP project?”

“I’d hardly call more than a thousand of the brightest scientists in the world a ‘
little’
project.”

“Yes, but consider all the things we humans have wasted our time on. Do you realize we color our food to make it prettier? We make things that are disposable. All the waste, the plastic, fossil fuels, weapons . . . ” He stared off into the distance for a moment. “Anyway, it seems like a very tiny project compared to what it should be.”

“What have
you
discovered?” Savina asked.

“So many things which we can discuss at length, but first I have a question. It’s the same thing we’ve been asking since that hot, humid day in Virginia when the Eysen-Sphere and other artifacts were first unearthed. Who left them there, and why?”

She nodded.

“If these were stagnant, benign, pieces of pottery or bone, gold idols or bronze tools, that would be one thing,” Booker continued. “But the Spheres are the seeds of civilization. No,” he corrected, “they’re much more. They’re the memory of all of existence.”

“At least in this universe,” Savina said.

“Yes, but why?” Booker asked. “Why does such a thing exist? Why was it left there? And why did we find it?”

“And why was there more than one? How many were there? I have reason to believe there were nine, possibly more.”

Booker’s eyes brightened at the confirmation of his research. “I also have a theory that Jesus had one, and many other great thinkers across the ages. One can look back in human history and see great people or great achievements that seem so out of step with their times, it’s as if they knew somethin
g
‒
‒
”

“Or had seen something,” Savina finished, “that others of their day had not.”

“Right. Were the Pyramids constructed so perfectly because of ingenuity that radically exceeded the capabilities of the day or, did they have help?”

Savina smirked. “Some think it was aliens.”

“Maybe it was,” Booker said, “but not in how they think. Perhaps an Eysen-Sphere was present in ancient Egypt. It’s so advanced, even now, that to us it seems like an
alien
artifact. What if they only saw occasional glimpses?”

“Rip has had full access to an Eysen-Sphere for seven years, and during all that time, working constantly on decoding and dissecting it, how much of what he’s discovered have I found in the years I’ve been working on this one?” Savina asked. “They contain the infinite. I’m willing to bet we’ve crossed very little common ground.”

“Rip has a theory that the Spheres are able to personalize themselves to the viewer.”

“It is possible that they read DNA.”

“Without a blood or tissue sample?”

“We do touch them you know,” Savina said, looking down at her hands. “Their technology is light-years beyond ours. They could do it.”

“But why would they? And who are they?”

“We may never know.”

“We
have
to know,” Booker said, sounding almost desperate. “Don’t you understand? We have to know because that is what will save us!”

“Save us from what?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve worked with the Foundation for the past four years and you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I do,” she said quietly. “You mean save us from ourselves.”

“The Foundation is wrong in how they’re going about it, and they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.”

“To save humanity is wrong?”

“To enrich the elites even further? That’s what’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?
Somebody
has to fund it. The world can’t just save itself. And you have little room to talk about enriching yourself.”

“Savina, they’re using what they know of the future as an excuse. Sure, they want to save humanity because
they
don’t want to die, and they want their children, grandchildren, et cetera to survive. They want a legacy. They want heirs.”

“This isn’t about money,” she said, appalled.

“Yes, it is. The coming crisis may come either way, but the results
can
be controlled, and they want to make sure it goes their way. That they end up ruling and profiting forever.”

She controlled her temper and did what she always did at times of uncertainty. She thought. The defensiveness she felt might be justified, or it might be coming from guilt, from knowing she might have been helping the wrong side. Whereas Booker had an awful reputation, she intuitively trusted him, and where the Foundation had an illustrious reputation of generosity, her intuition told her there was a lot she didn’t know, and maybe her world was a little backwards.

“What do you mean exactly?” Savina asked. “Do you have proof?”

“I know what our Sphere showed.”

“Which is?”

“That they’re going to engineer the plague to eliminate whom they want, and to make sure they alone sell the cure. The Phoenix Initiative.”

Booker expected her to be shocked, but instead she replied calmly.

“The Foundation is engineering a plague in order to stop a larger outbreak that could wipe us all out, and they’re making sure that we have the cure available. What would you have them do, let the plague wipe us out before we have a cure? Many will die, of course, but we can’t avoid that. The Phoenix Initiative is the best chance we have. With it, we’ll save as many as we can.”

“Billions will die!”

“If the Foundation does not act,” she snapped.

“No, billions die
because
of the Foundation. They’re seeking to control the population by outbreak and vaccine, a cycle of dependency on the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industries.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Do you believe the Sphere?”

“Of course.”

“Then you will believe it,” Booker said as he pressed a button. A ten-foot section of the wall next to them lit with images. A few seconds later, she found herself staring at Rip Gaines.

The Judge didn’t yet know that Wattington, aka Murik, the Foundation’s best inside source in the government’s search for Gaines, had been compromised. Plenty of Foundation agents had infiltrated the CIA, NSA, FBI, Defense Department, Justice Department, Homeland Security, just about anywhere money could buy influence, which was everywhere, but Murik had been at the top of the Sphere situation.

Moving up the launch of the Phoenix Initiative would be much easier if they could find one of the other seven Spheres Savina had mentioned, but that seemed unlikely, even if any of them still existed. Whoever had one would obviously guard it and keep it secret, but he suspected they were still buried somewhere. The idea of seven more was so new and mind-boggling that he really didn’t know
what
he thought.

The Foundation had already put its considerable resources to work in an effort to locate the two Spheres in Booker’s possession. The Judge gave the order to seek and destroy any location that could be used to hide Gaines, Savina, and the Spheres. Going forward, he would operate under the assumption that the launch would proceed without the Spheres.

“I don’t like heading blindly into the most dangerous period in human history, but the plans were completed based on years of data pulled from the Sphere,” the Judge had told the committee. “The sooner we move, the less chance we have that some variable will change.”

The Judge also knew that as long as he had the five scientists who authored the time-shift paper, he could prevent Booker’s UQP team from manipulating something in the past to derail Phoenix.

He’d just sent several teams to Hawaii in order to assist Taz’s return to the island. A large operation had also been secretly put into place to fly the five important scientists to a hidden Foundation facility in Central America, where Savina’s two assistants, who had been rescued from the fire at the lab, would be waiting.

—O—

Ever since he’d let Gale and Rip escape seven years earlier, Barbeau had been heading a powerful DIRT unit, the deep covert group of trustworthy agents within the Bureau known only to the former FBI director, who was now the US Attorney General. DIRT’s mission, to uncover corruption inside the NSA, CIA, FBI, and other government agencies, had yielded hundreds of bad agents and officials.

However, the Attorney General had decided on a bold strategy: rather than expose it and risk destroying the very fabric of the government, DIRT continued to track and monitor its targets, waiting for an opportunity to cut out the biggest source of the corruption, namely the Foundation. DIRT had also discovered much of Booker’s infiltration into many agencies, but for unknown reasons, the Attorney General had determined this to be less of a threat.

Answering only to the Attorney General and having access to MONSTERs, Barbeau exercised significant power, which he applied with subtle subterfuge. He’d learned early on that the Foundation and Booker were locked in a battle over the Spheres and, ultimately, the future, yet the insanity of the Foundation’s Phoenix Initiative remained murky to Barbeau. Because of the Foundation’s blatant and widespread abuse and bribery, disguised as contributions, grants, contract awards, and other various ploys, it was easier to target, so he had no problem with his boss’s directives to follow every Foundation lead.

For years, Barbeau had believed the Foundation’s actions were based mostly on corporate greed. Recently, however, as more information surfaced about the Phoenix Initiative, he began to piece together the absolute terror of their true motives. Barbeau assumed the Attorney General saw Booker’s empire, although also frequently on the wrong side of the law, as a necessary counterbalance to the Foundation. Booker’s well known “by any means necessary” mantra meant he bribed, stole, “removed” threats, and did whatever else he deemed appropriate to achieve his goals.

But Barbeau’s once-firm belief in a black and white – right and wrong, good versus evil - world had fallen into many shades of gray, like ashes blowing in the wind.  The complexities of the crisis were well beyond him, and in order to have as few of his excruciating, relentless headaches as possible, he wanted to keep it that way.

When the news of Gaines’ surfacing reached the back rooms of the intelligence community, Barbeau’s DIRT team had picked up the information. With fresh data, as reports poured in and the drama flushed out all sides, the horrific details of the Foundation’s ultimate plan were confirmed. Once Barbeau learned the truth and intent of the secret Phoenix Initiative, a scheme he could barely believe was real, his head pounded constantly and he had hardly slept. The Attorney General ordered all resources available to close in on the Foundation.

The Attorney General knew the government, over-burdened by massive corruption, could not fight off the Foundation alone. It would be like a brain surgeon operating on himself. Several times over the last few years he’d done things that would help and favor Booker’s side of the epic battle, not out of loyalty to Booker, but as a way to keep a balance of power. Now that assistance was critical to potentially save billions of lives.

After intercepting a transmission from Stellard, DIRT had learned of the ship of scientists in international waters in the Pacific. Barbeau got a MONSTER to clear the way for US Navy intervention. SEALs boarded the
Bright Future
and, after a brief firefight during which they overwhelmed Foundation agents and rescued the five authors, Barbeau quietly arranged to release the scientists to Booker’s people in Hawaii.

Taz, now in custody, was already undergoing a rigorous interrogation. DIRT agents were searching for Stellard, and expected to arrest him within hours. They didn’t have enough to indict the Judge yet, but Barbeau had other ideas.

During an encrypted conversation with the Attorney General, Barbeau asked for authorization to take more drastic measures. The conversation had been short.

“That would be too difficult in the current climate,” the Attorney General had said. “For us, anyway. Why don’t you broach the subject with Booker directly?”

Barbeau agreed, and that would be his first step, but he assumed Booker would have already done it if he could. Barbeau decided that should Booker decline, he’d enlist several top DIRT agents into his plan to assassinate the Judge, even without the Attorney General’s blessing.

Under Booker’s direction, Huang had been feeding Barbeau and DIRT information for years, but Barbeau had never fully understood the extent of the Foundation threat. Now, however, he knew time was short. He dialed a secret number and waited for several minutes while the call was routed in a ping-pong pattern around the globe. Huang smiled when he saw the incoming communication was from the man he’d helped to free, and someone he knew would be a big help in the continuing fight against the Foundation.

—O—

Harmer, after a rough interrogation session, which included shock “therapy,” had been freed by Booker’s operatives in Hawaii. Her liberation had come at a cost—two BLAXERs and four Foundation agents had died. They got her onto a waiting plane with the five scientists where she collapsed into the seat, a nurse tending to her injuries. Also on board was Professor Yamane, whose death had been falsely reported by Honolulu Police. Barring any interference, their plane would land on El Perdido in a few hours. In spite of Harmer’s repeated attempts, none of Booker’s people seemed able to confirm Cira’s status.