Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (18 page)

“Come on,” Matthew said. “I’ve got something to show you.”

They stood in darkness, a thin, cold wind whipping around them.

“Where are we?”

“Just wait.” Over time, their illusions had gained clarity as each surrendered control to the other. It was not exactly like reality, or even like a dream, but like the sharpest of memories. They sat on a pinnacle of stone, and the sky gradually began to grey. A line appeared, far away, darkness separating from light, and then, with breathtaking suddenness, a thumbnail of brilliant orange appeared, and a plain of copper. She gasped with the intensity of it. “That’s the Sulu Sea,” he said, quietly. “See those dark places? The Philippines.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“This is one of my favorite moments. I climbed up here in the dark. I almost got sick from the attitude, and I sat here, not believing it would be worth it. I almost went back down, while it was still night. Then this… ” He trailed off as the liquid sun separated from the waters, and the whole world emerged in shades of gold.

“Where are we?”

“Mount Kinabalu, on Borneo. I wish I could see your face,” he murmured.

“Oh, if you could see it you might not say that,” she said.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? We carry such clear pictures of everything but ourselves .” His face, an indistinct oval, nevertheless seemed sad.

“Wait,” she said, and concentrated. She brought up the image of a model she had seen on the vids. in magazines.

“Oh!” he said, and then, “No. That isn’t you. Put her away. I can wait.”

“Wait? Wait for what?” she asked bitterly.

“We’ll meet,” he said. “We’ll meet, and I’ll know you.”

“Sure,” she murmured “Sure we will.” She looked back out at the flaming waters. “Thanks. Thanks for showing me this.”

He nodded.

“You’re welcome, Fiona.”

She felt something like an arm going around her, and a flood of warmth, tenderness-And then searing light, so bright it was painful. She coughed back a shriek as Matthew and the Sulu Sea vanished, replaced by the hideous brilliance and the sudden clashing of metal. She shut her eyes, tightly.

“Get her out,” a voice—a real voice, made of quivering air-said. “Put her in compound five.”

She was out. Out of the box. They lifted her up, but her legs would not, of course, support her. Two men dragged her along, and still she could not open her eyes. Matthew? But he was gone, not even a whisper of him left.

CHAPTER 4

Stephen Walters grinned toothily at the look of outrage on the secretary’s face.

“Mr. Waiters,” she said, “I’ll thank you not do to that.”

“It was just a thought, darlin’,” he replied.

“Yes. Your thought, and quite at home in your foul little head. Please keep it there.”

“Hey. Your loss. Is he ready to see me?”

“In a moment.”

He put his hands behind his back and took one with the other, glancing aimlessly around the office. Despite his bravado, he was intensely curious. What could the director want with him? The door opened up, and Waiters put on a cocky smile when he saw who came out.

“Well, if it isn’t my old friend Fedor!”

Fedor’s return grin was froglike, so wide was his mouth, and his black eyes shone with good humor.

“Hello, moi droog. What terrible thing have you done, to be called before the director himself ? It wasn’t that Turkish girl, was it? I warned you they were funny about such things there.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re talking about, Fedor. And I might ask you the same, you know.”

The secretary coughed for attention.

“Mr. Walters. The director will see you now.”

“Well, it’s been nice knowing you, Stephen,” the little Russian said. “If you have a moment before they lock you in prison and throw away the key, come by my place. And bring that bottle of vodka you owe me. Potato, not grain, for God’s sake.”

“I’ll do that, friend,” Stephen said. He clasped Fedor’s hand warmly and watched him go. He brushed his uniform and straightened it, combed his fingers through dirty blond hair, shot the secretary a final leer, and entered the director’s office. “Hello, Mr. Director,” he said. “What is it today?”

Kevin Vacit looked up at him. Walters tried not to show it, but Vacit gave him the creeps sometimes. The director had a mind that ran on tachyons, always on top of everything-but behind the now-and-then smile and the benign expression, there was something more alien than even the few Centauri he had met. Something extraor something missing. It was a good thing, he reflected, that Vacit was not a teep-then he mentally blushed, realizing that the director might have any number of teeps around monitoring him anyway.

“Stephen Walters,” Vacit said, glancing at the contents of a file folder. “Born June 15, 2155, in Casper, Wyoming, U.S.A. Joined EarthForce in 2172-served in the 355th North American. Won the EA Silver Star for bravery at the Battle of Douala. Because of this you weren’t court-martialed the very next year, in 2173, for striking a superior officer. Served as a mercenary soldier in the CAB until 2175, when you manifested latent telepathic abilities. Eventually rated P8-very surprising for such a late bloomer. Joined the Corps voluntarily that same year. You’ve been in the special … ops division since then.”

“That all sounds right, sir.”

“You’ve done mostly undercover work, is that right?”

“Yes, sir. I’m not strong enough to be a Psi Cop, so I do what I do best.”

“And I hear you do that very well-except that you are perhaps too enthusiastic.” Vacit pulled a new page from the file. “Others are unwilling to work with you. They say you take too many chances.”

“I just prefer to work without a net, sir. You can’t win a race without getting on the fastest horse.”

Vacit locked his hands together and put them before him on the table.

“Well, Mr. Walters. I’m going to give you a chance to do what you do best, and I assure you, this time you will be very much without a net.”

“The Corps is mom and dad, sir. I’m up for it.”

“I’m glad to hear it.” Vacit lifted a packet and passed it to him. “Those are the files on one Fiona Temple. She’s presently in our internment camp near Kuala Lumpur. I want you to break her out.”

“Sir?” He shuffled through the photos. They depicted a young woman, maybe twenty. She was pretty, with auburn hair, high cheekbones, and large, blue-green eyes.

“Ms. Temple was, until recently, a member of one of the most powerful cells in the resistance. We haven’t been able to learn much tm her, she’s a P12, and very good at blocking even the most determined scans. We could dig until she broke, but I think we would lose far too much that way. In the end, I think she would be more useful to us free than interned.”

Walters nodded.

“I see. The old buddy game. Yes, sir, I’m up to it”

Vacit nodded.

“Again, good. But Walters, you speak of this to no one. You report only to me, in the field or anywhere else. As far as the Corps goes, you don’t exist anymore, is that understood?”

“Yes, Sir.,,

“And Walters?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This woman is important. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You will have some help in escaping from the reeducation camp-I’ll give you the details later. But understand, no one in the camp will know about you. If you misstep, you’re just as dead as any rogue trying to escape.”

“I sort of figured that, sir.”

Vacit nodded.

“That’s all that need be said just now, then. You’ll be flown there in two days. I suggest in the meantime you familiarize yourself with the area and work on your story. Make it close to the facts so your surface thoughts don’t contradict what you say. She’s good enough to do light scans without you noticing.”

“With all due respect, Director-that you don’t have to tell me. Like I said, I do what I do best, and this is it.”

“It had better be, Mr. Waiters. It had better be.”

Kevin watched Walters go with some misgivings. Monkey’s death had come as something of a blow-he somehow never thought the old man would die, but there could be no doubt this time. It had taken days to find a fragment of him large enough to identify, but forensics not only had confirmed that it was him, but had enough of him to prove he was dead. Of course, it might have been a clone-No. Monkey would not be able to stand the thought of another him. And Fiona had been captured. He had always known it was a possibility. Monkey had never put her on the front lines, so to speak, but Monkey himself was never far from danger, and Fiona was never far from Monkey. He had to be careful, very careful. He was sure some of the more powerful teeps suspected him, and perhaps a few senators. One got old, after all. And though none of his enemies was in much of a position to touch him, it wouldn’t do to underestimate them. If they were to discover that he had nurtured the resistance, even as he made the Corps stronger-well, he doubted any explanation would save him. Worse, everything he had done would be for nothing. He would do what he could for Fiona, but daughter or no daughter, there was only so far he could go.

He looked down at his agenda. All routine, all things he had done a thousand times and would do a thousand more. Then he looked at the new report on his desk, and thumbing through it, felt an itch he hadn’t felt in a long while. He chimed his secretary’s conilink.

“Has the travel office put together the equipment I asked for?”

“Yes, Director. The team will be ready to leave Thursday.”

“Inform them that I will be joining them. Notify Mufwene that he will be in charge for a few days. And get me Ms. Alexander. I want to talk to her.” And there was another thing he had been putting off. “Get me a meeting with the Centauri ambassador, as well.”

CHAPTER 5

Fiona fell into the filthy water for the third time, choking on the fetor of human waste and dead fish. An involuntary breath sucked the filthy muck into her mouth and nose. Her stomach tried to vomit, but there was nothing in it. She tried to push up on trembling limbs. Though her broken leg was healed, more than a month in the isolation tube had left her with the resilience of a boiled noodle. The Malaysian sun had raised moonscapes of blisters on her back and arms. The fever that caused-and the lack of food-were no help to her atrophied muscles. Her arms gave out. and she collapsed back into the flooded rice paddy.

“Get up, you lazy bitch!” The voice sounded far away. She understood that her head was underwater, and that she might well be drowning. She couldn’t muster the energy to care. “Bitch!” And then a jolt that yanked her whole body into a ball, cramped with agony.

Ah, yes, agony. Leave it to real pain to show how sunburn, starvation , and fatigue were nothing but pretenders. She came out of her ball like one of the cobras that hung around the paddies, uncoiling each screaming muscle in a single motion that ended with her fist displacing the guard’s jaw four inches upward . Not a big man anyway, he went back into the sludge, flattening rice as he did so. She stood there, glaring down at him, as other guards began shouting and a couple of shots were fired. The downed guard stood, his eyes full of a piggy sort of hatred. She balled her fists. He advanced, raising his shock stick. She snarled and assumed a boxing stance. Kicking would be useless in this gunk. The guard regarded her, and then exchanged the baton for a pistol.

“Hey! Hey!” One of the other prisoners was slogging through the water toward them. “Don’t!”

The guard quickly shifted his aim.

“Hey! Just wait a minute, fellah!” The man was tall, strong-looking, a dirty blond, even dirtier now.

“You. Shut up.”

“Just hey, listen, man! Look at her tattoo. P12. You know what that means?”

“Shut up!” He cocked the hammer back.

“Okay, okay. But how do you think the Psi Cops are going to react when they come around and find you’ve scragged one of their possible recruits? How many P12s do you think there are anyway? It’s not like she was trying to escape.”

The guard narrowed his eyes.

“You aren’t a P12,” he observed.

“No.”

The guard slammed his pistol back in its case and strode toward the big man. He hit him in the neck with the shock stick. The prisoner gurgled and folded, but did not fall. Fiona started forward , but two more guards grabbed her from behind. The guard hit the blond man again, and again, and again, until he was still in the mud.

“You mindwitches. You make me sick. You think you are so much better than us. But Osman Taheng will show you who is better . You’ll learn that, if nothing else.” He turned back to Fiona. “You will carry him back to the camp. Whether he is dead or alive, you will carry him.”

The fellow began to groan about halfway back to the camp, which meant they only had five more kilometers of torturous mountain ridge to negotiate. She had wrapped his arms around her neck, and was dragging him behind her. Fiona had lost count of the times she had collapsed under the man’s awkward weight. Worse, the guards were holding the rest of the work gang to her pace. This meant they would be as delayed as she, quite possibly beyond the evening meal, which was meager enough as it was. All in all, it was better than the isolation tube. Except-Except she missed Matthew. She hadn’t found him since she emerged. For all she knew he was still in his hole. Or dead. For the briefest instant she had thought the man she carried-who had come charging to her rescue-might be he. But a glimpse of his mind was enough to dash that hope.

“Hey-woddja-th’ bulls loose mom-” He sucked a long, shuddering breath, and she stumbled again, this time just to her knees. “‘Ey, no=’ he said, a little more strongly. “I c’n walggh=’ He gagged into silence.

“I doubt that. He hit you seven or eight times. You shouldn’t even still be alive.”

“Hell, my momma used to do me more times than that every morning.”

“Oh. So this is just nostalgia for you. And I was going to thank you.”

“Walk!” A guard jabbed her in the back with a stunstick, but it wasn’t charged.

“Oh-kay, here we go=’ She draped his arm back around her shoulders and heaved him up. His legs kicked a little at the ground. “Be-still,” she grunted. “That’s-not-helping.” Sorry. 11 A few minutes later, he did manage to get his legs under him again, and she felt more than half of his weight come off of her shoulder. At that point the guard hit him with his stunstick again. “You son of a-” She choked, as her charge collapsed once more.