Dark Genesis: The Birth of the Psi Corps (28 page)

“I don’t understand.”

“I was right, about the need to produce powerful telepaths. You saw the enemy?”

“I saw-terrible things. Creatures of darkness.”

“Yes. But we can hurt them, somehow-or our children can. I think that’s why one of the-angels-died. I think the enemy found them on Earth, saw what they were up to. They had to fight, then, to protect the secret. Protect us. They made us, Ms. Alexander . They took the raw stuff of humanity and made something better . I think they started very long ago, helping us along, guiding us. But just over a century ago, they gave us the final push, the final gift. Now it’s up to us. The ship is gone, isn’t it? And the anomaly?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes. He stayed here until we found him. Now he’s gone.”

“Evolution crawls to imperfection?”

“Yes, of course. Evolution is about reproduction, nothing else. It never produces anything `better’ except in that sense. It evens out extremes in preference to flexibility. What we want is an extreme—the best telepaths possible. Evolution is a blind process. Natural selection can’t plan for anything, it can only respond-with glacial slowness-to present conditions. But sentient beings can plan and design. We are outside of evolution now, beyond it, free of its limitations. Telepaths weren’t produced by evolution; better telepaths won’t be produced by it either. Not fast enough, anyway. It’s up to us to take up the work where our creators left off. It’s up to Psi Corps.” He smiled faintly. “The mirror never sees itself.”

They were silent for a time, and Natasha fell asleep. He held himself up against the gentle pressure of their acceleration, gazing down thoughtfully at her. She had been a good aide. A good friend, even. He trusted her more than any living person. But he didn’t trust her this much. He didn’t trust her with this. This was his mission, his burden. He still had life enough and time to do the things that needed to be done. Psi Corps was already on the right course-he had done most of the right things. He had known. How was still unclear-had the dead Shalako somehow passed a piece of its soul to his grandfather , thence to his mother, finally to himself? Or was it more subtle than that, an imprint on the genes that formed neurons, a program, software that would lie dormant until triggered by certain input? He didn’t know, and didn’t really care. All he really knew was that he no longer had any doubts.

His mistake had been the underground, and there he had let emotion cloud his judgment. For Psi Corps to be what it had to be. some unpleasant things had to happen to its members. His love for Ninon Davion and her daughter-his daughter, Fiona-had led him to rationalize a wrong and almost disastrous course. Ninon would not have wanted to see her daughter in the Psi Corps he was creating. But his sentiment was as nothing when measured against the greater need. If humanity fell, was extinguished, the struggle of teep against mundane was meaningless. Only an organized force could stand against the coming darkness, and only the Psi Corps could create it. He would spare Fiona if he could, but the resistance had to end. And it would. very soon. His mission. His burden.

He extended his fingers until they lightly touched Natasha’s face. And recoiled. The Shalako-or whatever it really was-had left something there. Something small, almost unnoticeable, but something in her brain. Like a seed. He brought his fingers back down and did his work very lightly. She would remember everything, but never desire to speak of it, save to him. When he died and she died, then no one would know. But the machine would have been built by then. The machine would run without knowing why. It was best that way-a machine that knew its purpose, its destiny, might fight against it, try to steer its own way. Humanity-and telepaths-no longer had the luxury of that sort of spurious freedom.

He settled back into his own couch, weary, seeking sleep without dreams.

In her own dreams, Natasha Alexander saw the being of light, and it looked back at her with a fight that illuminated thought and bone and blood and marrow; it looked upon her genetic structure and was pleased.

IT WILL BE YOU, IF THE DARK. NESS COMES SOON, the light said, OR ONE IN YOUR LINE, IF THE DARKNESS COMES LATER. YOU, OR THE ECHO OF YOU, WILL NEAR THE CALL, AND YOU WILL COME TO US, AND WE WILL FINISH THE WORK WE BEGAN IN YOU.

And as the light faded, Natasha Alexander wept tears of ultimate love, and dreamed of being finished: gleaming, indestructible , whole. And she knew one thing: They would meet again.

CHAPTER 3

Fiona put on her winningest smile for the young doorman. He looked uncertainly back down at his clipboard.

“I still don’t see your name on the fist.”

“Sure you do. Miriam Soto. “

“Oh. That’s funny, I thought you said a different name. Must’ve heard wrong. You can go in, then.”

“Thanks, handsome.” She left him blushing at the door.

She had plucked the name from his mind easily enough-along with the fact that he didn’t know what this Soto looked like-but when the real Miriam showed up, that would make things sticky, so she had best hung. The Four Seasons ballroom was just starting to fill up, so it was still easy to pick people out at a distance. She spotted the tall, elegant figure of Holden Waters right away, surrounded by a small flock of pretty young things. Trying to sashay-not quite sure she knew how, and not at all happy in her strapless evening gown-she went to join the flock, waiting at the edge until she caught his eye.

“Oh, my,” he said, “I don’t believe I’ve met you.”

“How soon they forget,” she replied.

“But don’t tell me that we have! I couldn’t forget such a face.”

“Well, perhaps it isn’t my face you would remember,” Fiona said, sweetly. This prompted huffs of outrage from the other women around Waters, and two of them drifted off.

“Young lady ” he began, more than a trace of irritation rising in his voice.

“Yes-Daddy?” She raised her voice on the last.

“Young lady, I don’t know who you are-“

“That’s okay, Daddy, the paternity test knows who you are, and-“

“Could we have a word in private?” He glanced around the room. Like neutrons caroming through plutonium, the first girls to huff off had begun a chain reaction, and attention was shifting their way. She smiled and waved languidly as Waters led her off, gripping her arm gently but firmly. A few moments later, they were in a small lounge. “Now. Young lady. I don’t know whether we’ve really met or not-“

“Daddy, you might want to turn the camera off, if there is one in here.”

“Stop calling me that!”

He said nothing about a monitor, and she understood from his surface reaction that there actually wasn’t one–as far as he knew. So she smiled sweetly, pulled a molded plastic gun from her purse, and shot him. There was only a suspiration-the pistol used C02—and a little blood as the flechette pricked into his throat. His expression was just turning to horrified shock when his legs went. She caught him on the way down, eased him into a chair.

“Here we go!” she said, removing her long-sleeved gloves.

She placed her hands on his temples and scanned. When she had everything she needed, she planted a very fore, clear thought in his mind. When he awoke, he would know for certain that one of his factories was about to explode, which one, and when. He would have just enough time to evacuate his workers, and no more. She put her gloves on, reached back into her purse, and pulled out a black marker. She left him with LIVE FREE printed across his forehead.

She didn’t go back through the ballroom, but slipped out a back door she had been informed of-it could be exited, but not entered. She returned to her van-a late-model Cortez-drove a few blocks, parked, and shucked out of the dress, exchanging it for jeans, T-shirt, light chest armor, and a sweatshirt. Then she resumed driving. She pulled onto 1-5 and headed south toward Tacoma, past Boeing-Mitsubishi Field, and took an exit into the grey heart of an industrial park. She parked outside the outer fence, retrieved an assault rifle and wire cutters from a compartment under the seat, and got out.

The outer fence was mostly symbol, there to keep kids out-the real security precautions were farther in, and were someone else’s responsibility. She cut through the mesh in a few minutes, checked her watch, stepped through the gap, and waited, watching the blinking lights perched on the high vents of the Waters complex . She tried to remain collected, but the sight of the sleeper factory tightened angry cords in her chest. No one who had met one of the zombies the antitelepathy drug eventually produced could really imagine it was a legitimate option. Yet it was manufactured by the ton, wasn’t it?

Nortnals watched their neighbors take the injection twice a week, without blinking. After this, maybe they would blink. At 10:00, klaxons started wailing. Hopefully this meant only that Waters had awakened and done the right thing. Fifteen minutes later, she heard the sound of several people running toward her and raised her rifle to greet them, just in case they weren’t who she expected.

Matthew?

It’s us!

At about that same moment, three small suns appeared in the Waters complex, and an instant later the shock of the explosion blew over her. Hard on its heels came Matthew, Stephen, Cinnamon , Adam, and Phoebe, and she threw herself into Matthew’s arms, allowing herself the luxury of a quick embrace.

“You did it!”

“Perfect plan!” Stephen said, slapping her on the back. “Perfect , that is, if we don’t get caught. Let’s move, people!”

They piled into the van and Stephen took the wheel. He gunned the engine, and they streaked out of the lot.

“Any problems?” Matthew asked, squeezing her hand.

“Only the walking-in-high-heels part.” The van rattled from the shock of another, greater explosion.

“That was the sleepers,” Stephen remarked. “Had to clear the building away first in order to get maximum dispersal.”

“The weather is holding,” Matthew observed. “The cloud should drift right through Seattle. Maybe after normals get a taste of the stuff, they won’t be so eager to inject it into us.”

The evacuation rush-and the related panic that swept through the nearby areas-covered their escape nicely. They got back on I-5, exited again a few miles later, and made a quick stop at a friendly house in Renton. There Cinnamon, Adam, and Phoebe piled into a green Makarov Bogatyr utility and headed due south toward Portland. Fiona, Matthew, and Stephen continued in the van, driving for six hours on back roads, rounding the imposing Mount Rainier, out through the Yakima valley, until they at last reached a private airstrip belonging to Rentech Corporation. A dapper young man in a black three-piece suit met them at the gate.

“You aren’t looking for the wine country, are you?” he asked.

“Yup,” Stephen replied, “I’m lookin’ for a bottle of ‘61 Chaldee.”

The fellow nodded in satisfaction.

“Welcome, Mr. and Ms. Dexter, Mr. Walters. Your travel arrangements have been made. Your plane is boarding now. My name is Rinaldo D’Aguila, and it will be my pleasure to accompany you on your journey.”

“Pleased, I’m sure,” Stephen replied.

Fiona bounced twice on the bed, experimentally.

“I think I’ve forgotten exactly what this is,” she remarked, collapsing spreadeagle on the huge four-poster.

“It gets better,” Matthew said, peering into the next room. “A shower. Shall we get clean before we get dirty, Mrs. Dexter?”

“Why compartmentalize?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. She took one more bounce on the bed to catapult her toward Matthew. Later, as they lay sweaty and gripped together, Fiona glanced sleepily around the room.

“Y’know, I didn’t even think about whether there might be a camera in here.”

“Too late to worry about that now.” Do you trust these people? I’m naked in one of their suites, which doesn’t say much about my intelligence, because no, I don’t. But they’ve always played well by us. We would have had a hell of a time blowing the sleeper factory without their help, and even more trouble getting away. Now we’re in a nice room, we’ve got a day or two to amble around the French Quarter while they get us ready for the next leg. It beats our usual travel arrangements. He smoothed his hand across her belly. (skepticism) 77tey helped us because Waters competes with them in pharmaceuticals, not because they care about teeps, Fiona replied. True enough. But if the underground ran exclusively on altruism , we’d be in pretty bad shape. Which she couldn’t disagree with.

Fiona slept restlessly. The bed was too comfortable, the room too nice. Some of her people were sleeping on the streets tonight, some in concentration camps. It didn’t seem right that she should be surrounded by such luxury. But that wasn’t all of it. She eased out of bed and went to the window, gazing out at the lights of New Orleans. The new French Quarter stretched out below, rebuilt after the terrible flood of 2092. It didn’t look so new anymore. So much of the city had been destroyed in the flood that many had wanted to call it New New Orleans, but it hadn’t been a very popular suggestion.

Deep down, she wondered if she didn’t need a New Fiona. She loved her cause, but she had changed a great deal in the fourteen years or so since she had taken Monkey’s place. At first, she had believed she could somehow win, change the whole world. That had been a good feeling, the best. The little victories were good-when they snatched a kid from Psi Corps or blew up a sleeper factory-but in the old days those all had been garnishes to the main course, the dream of that last battle, after which everything would be okay. The years had gnawed at that dream, and without knowing exactly when or how, she one day had realized that winning small battles was all there was, because the war-the war could not be won. They were bailing water from a hulled lifeboat. Eventually she came to where she could admit this to herself, and even make a little peace with it.

The problem was that she could not even begin to speak of it to others, not even Matthew. What recruited people and kept them going through everything was the very simple belief that one day it would be over, and they could all step into the sun. What kept them going was hope. And she and Matthew, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, had become the center of that hope, the axis of it. How would the rest feel if they knew she, Fiona, the mother of the revolution, had no real hope left in her own heart?