Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (8 page)

Stellard snapped up his down vest as he listened to the report from Wattington in audio text mode. The NSA had renewed the Scorch and Burn against Gaines and Asher. That was not unexpected, but upon learning of the MONSTERs, Stellard realized the Foundation was in a much weaker position than he’d previously thought.

“The SAB and MONSTERs change everything,” Stellard said, his INU instantly converting his voice into scrambled text. “Can you get a list of MONSTERs?”

Wattington read the text and sighed. “Mission of National Security Transfer Every Resource” personnel weren’t called MONSTERs just because DC loved acronyms. MONSTERs were scary. They could override generals and command enormous resources. With that power came the need for extra-classified appointments. “You ask too much,” he texted back.

Stellard’s early career had been spent in the CIA, so he knew about the unchecked power that both the CIA and the NSA possessed, in spite of the media-friendly illusion of congressional oversight. But back in his days with the agency, MONSTERs didn’t exist, at least not formally. Occasionally, a well-connected, well-liked official in one agency, department, or branch could trade favors with another. However, that was unusual. The typical behavior was one of competition, for credit, turf, or personnel, but primarily for budget dollars.

“The Foundation simply has to reach the Sphere first,” Stellard replied. “Get the list. Do anything necessary. Do you understand? This is the time.”

“We should not overstep now, or the future is in danger,” Wattington said.

“You don’t understand. The future will not matter if HITE gets the Eysen. You’re authorized and ordered to take every risk.” Implicit in Stellard’s directive were bribery, espionage, and assassination, up to the highest levels, whatever it took.

Wattington read the text and then clicked off. HITE, another acronym, belonged to one of the US government’s most guarded secrets. Even the name, Hidden Information and Technology Exchange, belied the science fiction world, which lay behind the gates of the top-secret HITE facility in the Nevada mountains.

Impossible
, he thought as he began a different text conversation with a Foundation operative who’d been working on cracking HITE.

Stellard mumbled something even he didn’t understand after the contact with Wattington ended, hitting the thermostat remote to pump more heat, and then connected back to Taz.

His INU projected images from the operation in Fiji, and he suddenly felt optimistic. Earlier his hopes had been dashed when initial police reports stated that Cira Bradley, aka Gaines and Asher’s six-year-old daughter, had been discharged. Now, however, they were talking about a fresh lead in the hospital.

“While we’re waiting on the patient testimony,” Taz said, still aboard the plane racing to Fiji, “they’ve discovered hidden cameras at the Bradley residence. The cameras aren’t saving their recordings onto any devices on the premises, so we can’t access the footage, but the video is being transmitted across the Internet, so it’s possible we may be able to trace the link and find out who’s been monitoring them.”

“I can already tell you that it’s Booker Lipton. He’s been monitoring them, and wherever you go, the trace will lead either to a dead-end or an Asian sweat shop,” Stellard said, raising his voice. “Is that
all
we’ve got?”

“The residence is clean. They’ve been careful. Indications are they left in a hurry, but there isn’t so much as a scrap of paper with any adult writing on it, just some kid’s crayon drawings. The ‘I love mommy’ and ‘I love daddy’ type of stuff.”

Stellard took a deep breath. He had to remind himself that when the day began, the odds said Gaines and Asher were long dead and the Eysen-Sphere destroyed. Now they knew that to be false. They’d come a million miles. Unfortunately, the miles were not in the direction of the Aylantic Foundation’s goals.

Stellard thought about how they had arrived at this point. During the years leading up to the discovery of the Eysen-Sphere, and particularly those after, the world had become increasingly dangerous. Income inequality had grown horribly out of control with the five hundred richest people owning about eighty-seven percent of the world’s wealth. Terrorism was exploding around the globe, with the buzz of revolution in nearly every country, including the United States. The Foundation had been formed out of this environment and had only two objectives: one, solve the problem, meaning stop the uprising by any means necessary, and two, preserve the wealth and power of the members.

A brilliant and controversial plan had been developed in secret. A core group within the Foundation decided it was the only way, the final option. They dubbed the plan the Phoenix Initiative, and embraced it completely. Although not all members were aware of the entire scope of the Phoenix Initiative, they signed off, believing in the leadership and concerned for their futures.

The Initiative actually began with a simple idea —consolidate all the nations on Earth under a single government and force peace with a single, powerful, police-army-force. Turning the Initiative into reality was incredibly complex, but most of the membership didn’t worry about exactly how it would happen. The leadership had convinced them that there was a plan that could only succeed in secret.

Stellard, a member of powerful furtive organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, was one of the few privy to the Aylantik Foundation’s entire scheme. He’d come from wealth, not the hard-working, create-a-great-idea kind of riches, but rather money that was so old and ran so deep it was contained in the fibers of the currency. Stellard knew two things to be absolute: that the Foundation’s plan could work, and that only one person and one thing could stop it.

Booker Lipton and the Eysen-Sphere.

—O—

The sound of the local police coming online with an update for Taz brought Stellard back to the present.

“There is a patient, a woman. She identified a photo of Gale Asher and claims to have witnessed Asher and the girl leaving the hospital,” the officer-in-charge reported from Fiji. “The patient told us Asher and the girl boarded a helicopter.”

“Was Gaines with her?” Taz asked.

“She said there was a man with them. We showed her a photo of Gaines, but the patient insisted it was not him. Her recollection was that the man appeared younger than Gaines, and might have been Asher’s brother, or even a bodyguard or something.”

Stellard muted all links except the one with Taz. “What do you think?” he asked.

“Gaines could have been disguised.”

“Yes, but wouldn’t they have had at least one of Booker’s agents with them?” Stellard asked, studying the images feeding through his INU.

“Perhaps they were meeting on the helicopter,” Taz said. “Wait, here comes security camera footage showing images of Asher and her daughter leaving the hospital. See the man? No way that’s Gaines.”

“Agreed. We’ll run him down, but that’s definitely one of Booker’s people,” Stellard said, suddenly distracted by an urgent text from Wattington. He read it twice, then said to Taz, “We need to change your flight plan. I know where Gaines is.”

In all the years since the Eysen-Sphere first came to life, Crying Man had never spoken to them. Instead, he’d always conveyed meaning through his expression, hand gestures, and his eyes, yet Gale and Rip had hoped, even expected, that one day he might speak.

There were times when it seemed as if he were about to, or at least was thinking about it, but something between hesitation or loss seemed to stop him. Gale and Rip didn’t even know if the Cosegans were capable of speaking. After the first few years of studying the Sphere, Rip theorized that perhaps the vocal chords of the Cosegans had not yet evolved eleven million years ago because they didn’t need to speak verbally.

Crying Man looked at Rip with a sorrowful expression.

“Thank you,” were the first words that made it to Rip’s lips.

Crying Man’s stare was filled with concern.

“Please,” Rip said. “Can you
please
speak to me?”

Crying Man walked around the skyroom, staring out the windows, seemingly admiring the view, until a single tree caught his attention. It was the largest tree on the island, twisting up among the palms and other spindly, tropical trees. Its thick, smooth bark and broad trunk appeared to have emerged from a Tolkien realm, the only tree that reached above the skyroom, but it mostly curved around the southern corner of the tower as if purposely trying to avoid obstructing the view. Crying Man appeared to be concentrating intently on the tree.

Rip didn’t wish to interrupt him. It almost seemed as if the Cosegan was having a psychic conversation with the tree. If that were possible, and the Cosegans had already proven that almost anything was, what would that mean to be able to traverse into the secrets of the natural world? Gale believed that every living thing was connected in some way. Was this proof?

Crying Man’s expression changed repeatedly as he stared at the tree, then he abruptly turned to Rip and nodded.

Although Crying Man didn’t say anything, Rip had the sense that he was answering yes. He wanted to look at the Eysen to see if it was filled with yellow flowers, which early on in their research had seemed to indicate a positive response to questions posed to the Sphere. In this case, however, Crying Man held his gaze, and that was how the silent conversation began.

“How are you here?” Rip asked in his thoughts.

“The same as you. I am a resident of this moment,” Crying Man answered mentally.

“But you’re from eleven million years ago.”

Crying Man nodded. “In any form of measurement, so many rotations around the sun star are long in duration, impossible to imagine. But it is not as simple as that. Time becomes heavy when measured, and heavier still when experienced. Yet that is only because of human perceptions. In truth, time is in the eyes.” He pointed to his eyes. “That is where we see everything.”

“Yes vision, but—”

“No, not
vision
.” Crying Man shook his head. “Not looking out from the eyes, looking
into
them.”

“Into what?”

“The universe.”

“In the eyes?”

Crying Man nodded. “Without this,” he pointed to his eyes again, “time does not exist. Time is only something we made up. Understand?”

Rip wasn’t sure.

“I am alive eleven million circles ago, and yet I am here now with you, just like that.” Crying Man snapped his fingers.

“But how do you do it?”

“To understand the answer, you would need to come to my world. You may try to think of all those years compressed, forced into the Sphere so that we both may stand around that duration, gaze upon it, sample from it, consider its meaning, and be joined through it.”

“It’s hard for me to fathom.”

“You will understand this completely when you die.”

Rip wanted to ask about Cira and Gale, but another question suddenly overtook his thoughts. He tried to push it from his mind, forgetting that by even thinking it, he’d already asked it in their silent conversation.

“What happens when a person dies . . . ” Crying Man repeated Rip’s unspoken query. “When you die, the light of stars fills you again, the energy of all who have ever lived flows into your being, and you remember everything.”

“How do you know this?”

“We, whom you call the Cosegans, have mastered the restraints of human limitations.”

“But then, what happened to your society?”

He turned and looked back out to the ocean for a moment before returning his stare to Rip’s. “It is stable at this moment.”

“This moment? When is that exactly? I see the Cosegan world from afar, across the divide of more than ten thousand millennia. Where is this moment in all of that?”

“You must understand that when you see me, I am not coming to you in a linear way. The last time you saw me may not have happened ‘yet.’ When you next see me, it may be ‘before’ this occasion.” Crying Man grimaced, as if remembering something painful.

Rip tried to process the Cosegan concept of time. Assuming Crying Man was a sophisticated artificial Intelligence “guide” or interface into the Sphere’s “operating system,” then accessing “him” at various random out-of-sequence points made sense. Still, Rip wondered what had happened to them.

“So your civilization, or what we see as cities and call the Cosegan world, are as powerful and beautiful now as they were when we first saw them seven years ago?” Rip asked, then pushed, “What happened to your people?”

“I’m sorry. I must go now.”

“Wait,” Rip said, worried he may have offended Crying Man somehow and needing him to help.

“Cira and Gale,” Crying Man said, detecting Rip’s concern in his thoughts.

“Yes. I need help protecting Cira and Gale,” Rip said breathlessly as Crying Man projected their names. “Can you do something? Will you?”

“Do you see the Sphere that you call the Eysen?”

“Yes,” Rip said, turning toward it.

“And yet you question if I can protect your loved ones today?” Crying Man was suddenly just a face inside the Sphere. “After all the days you have spent looking within the Sphere, you still have no idea what we are capable of.”