Dark Matter (54 page)

But what truly salvaged Fielding's sanity was learning that he had brought the love of his life out of China and married her. His neuromodel remembered only pining in vain for Lu Li, whom it still believed was trapped in Beijing. I told the story of Lu Li's escape from Geli Bauer's surveillance teams, which, while not so dramatic as mine, was more successful. A few hours after I'd left her house that night, Lu Li had slipped outside with her bichon frise and made her way across Chapel Hill on foot. There she joined a Chinese family that owned a restaurant where she and Fielding had frequently dined. That family hid her in their home until the events surrounding Trinity were resolved.

When I told Fielding that I'd brought Lu Li with me from North Carolina, and that she was waiting outside, he asked that he be given a few minutes to collect himself before she was brought before the camera. His question stunned me, but I realized then how "human" a computer could be. Talking to Peter Godin's neuromodel had been like talking to a machine; but then talking to Godin the man had been much the same. Andrew Fielding, on the other hand, had been an eccentric character renowned for his wit and passion. Even in the synthesized voice of his neuromodel, I heard the spark of the man who had saved a poster from the Newcastle club where he'd seen Jimi Hendrix play in 1967.

While Fielding collected himself, we caught up on the fates of the people we'd worked with at Trinty. Zach Levin had been stabbed by Geli at the door of the Containment building, but he'd recovered. He has now resumed his position as chief of R&D for Godin Supercomputing. John Skow was fired by the NSA, but he is rumored to be writing a novel based on his experiences at the ultra secret intelligence agency. Like Skow, Geli Bauer knew too much about national security matters to face a public trial for Fielding's murder. After extensive debriefing by the NSA and the Secret Service, she quietly disappeared. I'd like to think that justice caught up with Geli somewhere, but I suspect she's working in the security division of some multinational corporation, scaring the hell out of superiors and subordinates alike.

When Fielding finally told me he was ready to see Lu Li, I said a fond farewell, then turned and started toward the door.

"David?" said the synthesized voice behind me.

I stopped and looked back at the sphere. "Yes?"

"Are you still troubled by your visions?"

"I don't have them anymore."

"And the narcolepsy?"

"Gone."

"That's good. Tell me ... do you still wonder if your dreams were real or not?"

I thought about it. "They were real to me. That's all I know."

"Is that all you want to know?"

This was vintage Fielding. "Can you tell me more?"

"Yes."

"All right. Tell me."

"Remember your first recurring dream? The paralyzed man in the pitch-dark room?"

"Of course."

"You told me that he saw the birth of the universe: the Big Bang, a huge explosion like a hydrogen bomb, expanding at a fantastic rate, displacing God."

"Yes." I took a couple of steps back toward the flashing sphere.

"You said it felt like a memory to you. As if you had really seen that. Seen it as God had seen it."

"Right."

"But you didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't see that event as it really happened."

"How do you know?"

"Because for the first two hundred million years after the Big Bang, there was no light in the universe."

I felt a chill on my skin. "What?"

"The image of a massive fireball is a common misconception, even among physicists. But in the beginning, the universe was mostly hydrogen atoms, which gobble up all available light. It took two hundred million years for the first stars to ignite, due to the compression of hydrogen by gravity. So the Big Bang was quite a bit different than you 'remember' it. It was a huge explosion . . . but nobody saw anything. Certainly not a nuclear fireball."

I stared at the slowly flashing lasers in the sphere, a strange numbness in my extremities. "Are you saying everything I dreamed was created by my mind?"

"No. A lot of what you dreamed about the universe is true. And the rest of it could be true. I'm merely pointing out a fact. A small discrepancy. A man's dreams are his own business. I'm a great believer in dreams. They took me quite a long way in the real world. As they did you. They saved your life.

Probably millions of other lives as well. So don't worry too much about it."

I didn't know what to say.

"I'm sure I did the right thing by telling you this. I don't want you going through life with a Jesus complex. Go back to being a doctor. Prophecy is a lonely business."

Levin and his team had not yet learned to synthesize realistic laughter, but if they had, I was certain I would have heard a chuckle as I left.

Beyond the door, Lu Li stood waiting, dressed in her best clothes and wearing a nervous smile. Her eyes watched mine for the slightest clue to what she should expect.

"Is he ready for me, David?"

I nodded, then smiled. Her English had come a long way in three months.

"Is he ... you know. All right?" Her eyes were wet.

"He misses you."

"Good. I have something to tell him." Her smile broadened. "Something that will make him very happy."

"What's that?"

Lu Li shook her head. "I must tell him first. Then you."

She slid past me, into the Containment building.

I walked out into the desert light and looked toward the Administration hangar. Rachel was sitting on the hood of our rented Ford, wearing blue jeans and a white blouse and looking much as she had on the day she'd called me in a panic from her ransacked office. She slipped off the hood and walked toward me, a cautious smile on her face.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

I nodded, my mind still on Fielding's last words. If my dreams really were hallucinations, as Rachel had always claimed, I had a lot of questions about how I had come to know certain facts. But one thing was certain: I could work that out in my own good time.

"You sure?" Rachel said, slipping an arm around my waist. She was always careful to avoid the wounded shoulder. "What did Fielding say?"

"He told me to go back to practicing medicine."

She laughed, her dark eyes flashing in the sun. "I'm with him." Her other arm slipped around my waist, and she pulled me close. "Whatever you need to do. I mean that."

I looked back at the Containment building, then kissed her on the forehead.

"You're what I need."

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Greg Iles is the author of seven bestselling novels, including Sleep No More, Dead Sleep, The Quiet Game, and 24 Hours (released by Sony pictures as Trapped). He lives in Natchez, Mississippi, with his wife and two children.