Ghost of the Gods - 02 (11 page)

“Not now, baby,” whispered Sarah. “Later…”

Despite her protest she did not move off him. Her green eyes, wide with desire, glistened in the dim light as if lost in a distant world. A light snow had started to fall. Flakes were caught in her hair. He pulled her tight and kissed her again and wanted nothing else in this world than to have her. He knew it was impossible and irresponsible to go any further. He knew they could miss their quarry when the shadow exited the alley, but Mark was never very responsible when it came to love. He’d had more affairs in his life than he could count. Those affairs had cost him a good marriage and ultimately contributed to the death of his ex-wife and daughter in the plagues that had hit Los Angeles. Women were his weakness and he’d never experienced anyone like Sarah. Though he could not admit it even to himself, buried in denial, he wondered if his attraction was the result of unnatural influences. Was the god-machine behind what was going on? Sarah was breathing heavily in his ear. A layer of clothing was all that was stopping them.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

From the corner of his eyes, Mark sensed movement on the roof of the townhouses. An assist automatically applied image enhancement algorithms to outline the visual edge where the shadow’s dark body blocked out the field of stars in the night sky. The shadow paused at the side of the roof where faint streetlight reached up to him. Mark could now see his shape more clearly. He could just make out the shadowy form of a man with night vision goggles looking directly at them. They’d been noticed. Mark tensed up.

“What’s wrong?” whispered Sarah.

“Don’t look, we have company.”

Mark felt the fog of desire evaporating. Sarah slowly shifted off his lap. She made a show of adjusting her clothing. The shadow was no longer visible on the roof. Sarah was fixing her hair and pointedly not looking at the alley. An assist outlined fleeting movement on the fire escape. The shadow made no sounds, no metal creaking, no feet on stairs. Mark did not see the shadow emerge from the alley. The next thing he saw was a man dressed in dark clothing and a red baseball cap heading down the opposite sidewalk. The backpack was gone. He must have left his gear behind. A medical assist helped confirm this was the shadow. The man moved in complete silence. There were no footfalls, no rustle of clothing.

“Ready?” whispered Mark.

Sarah took his outstretched hand and they began walking. All the cameras would see were two lovers out for an evening stroll. The sidewalk was empty except for them. Sarah lifted his arm around her shoulder. Their target was a full block away. Snow was beginning to fall steadily. The flakes formed halos around streetlights and windows. An assist began highlighting the man’s shallow foot imprints in the snow.

After nine blocks the man turned down a street overflowing with nightlife. It was a district that had twenty-four hour activity. Mark and Sarah followed their target onto the busy street. He was grateful they were no longer sticking out like a road flare on a deserted country lane. They walked past a dance club with a pounding soundtrack Mark could feel it in his body. Excited conversations chattered all around them. Couples were dressed in things too showy for the cold night air. Every building had glowing signage promising all things imaginable, including several that were very illegal before the plague.

“We got lucky this guy headed into a busy place,” he said. “It would have looked very odd to the eyes in the sky if we followed him into an abandoned neighborhood or worse.”

“Maybe not so much luck,” said Sarah. “Our cat burglar didn’t want to stick out any more than we did. Making a beeline toward late night entertainment will seem pretty normal to anyone watching.”

Mark held Sarah close as they walked through a scene that belonged in old Las Vegas. Every block or two they switched sides of the street. Their target kept up a steady pace. A huge casino named the Royal Parisian had its doors open to the night. The sounds of slot machines and yells of winners spilled out onto the sidewalk along with the aroma of marijuana. Mark knew they were nearing the outer event horizon of the singularity. It was like the final weather front in a storm. For several blocks he had begun feeling closer to normal. The god-machine connection was stabilizing. Sarah sent him a memory capsule of what they’d been doing in the park, complete with everything she’d felt. Mark looked at her. She just smiled. He turned back in time to see their man duck into an alley.

“This could be it,” said Mark.

He picked up the pace. The man reemerged less than thirty seconds later wearing a gray coat, a different hat, and carrying a small backpack over one shoulder. Mark slowed back down.

“I just picked up a stray thought from our friend,” he whispered. “This guy knows which cameras and RFID readers are working and which aren’t. He has inside information. That alley he just used to switch his appearance had no coverage. Want to bet he has more than one bracelet?”

“He may look calm,” added Sarah. “But he’s very nervous and agitated. He’s radiating tension like frayed electrical wires.”

After a few more blocks, the man turned onto Michigan Avenue and crossed the Chicago River. The waterfront on the opposite side had been transformed into the hottest entertainment district in the city. If the previous district was Las Vegas, this was the French Riviera. They followed their target at a greater distance, since Sarah could now track him by the emotional signature he radiated. The man wound his way through obstacles, staying parallel to the river, walking block after block, merging into and then reemerging from crowds on the street. It felt wonderful to be out of the influence of the singularity, as all Mark’s senses sharpened to razor edges of clarity. He picked up a stray thought from the burglar about freedom, then a memory of a bitter argument with his wife. Their quarry stopped walking and lit a cigarette.

“His name’s Paul,” said Mark.

“He’s burning with excitement,” whispered Sarah. “Something big is about to happen. There could be violence. He might even have explosives.”

“That’s a horrible thought.”

They stopped at the corner of a building, then stepped behind it as a shield. They were about 40 feet from Paul. An assist calculated a threat assessment. The building’s corner would deflect a worse case bullet trajectory or blast effect from a small explosive charge. Snow was coming down harder, but it had no effect on the crowds. The street was, if anything, busier. When people had all their basic needs fulfilled by the government, their free time increased and they had to fill all that emptiness with something. The protectorate itself was a modern opiate for the masses. Mark unobtrusively peered around the corner. Paul’s cigarette was almost gone. He lit another cigarette from the first one. Mark slipped back out of sight. A street performer began playing a guitar and singing. Time dragged on.

“Paul’s recognized someone,” whispered Sarah. “I think this is what he’s been waiting for.”

Both Mark and Sarah moved far enough out from the corner to get a clear view of Paul. Finely dressed people were flowing in crosscurrents between them and their quarry. A Catholic priest approached Paul from out of the crowd and shook hands. The priest was tall and thin with a gray, windblown mop of hair.

“Am I good or what?” said Sarah.

“You called it,” said Mark. “Just glad you were wrong about that violence.”

“Smart ass…”

An assist showed the priest was pure organic. The priest’s heart rate was elevated and skin temperature was low normal. Mark was finding it nearly impossible to filter out all the stray thoughts surrounding the two men, while Sarah obliviously had no trouble focusing her empathic skills on any target she chose. The two men spoke casually like old friends for a few minutes. Paul handed the priest something that looked like an ultra-thin touch screen phone. An assist flashed some indecipherable runic symbols over the black device. The priest handed Paul a thin white envelope. The two shook hands again and walked off in opposite directions. Mark got enough of a stray thought from the priest to know the man of god had just received something stolen. So Paul was a thief, after all. Mark wondered what made that device so important.

“You take the priest,” said Mark. “I’ve got Paul. Play nice.”

“Do you love me or what?” said Sarah with a huge smile.

“Or what?” said Mark.

He patted her on the butt as she started to walk off. Sarah spun around, smiled at him, and then merged into the bustle of people.

As Mark began to follow the thief, he was hard at work filtering and searching for any related stray thoughts he could capture. He picked up some more mental debris about freedom from Paul, then a full memory from the priest Sarah was tailing. The memory was like a daydream scene of gothic conspiracy. The daydream took place in a room paneled in ornately carved wood and ringed with tall bookcases. Candles in wall sconces were the only source of light. Nothing electrical was permitted in the room. A group of old men sat around a large meeting table. They looked so self-important to Mark. Some were dressed in religious garb while others wore expensive suits. Smoke from incense drifted through the air. Mark knew from the priest’s thoughts the purpose of the group was an inquisition to decide which information should be hidden for all time in darkness and which could be allowed into the light. Mark understood this was a daydream memory of some real event.

Mark stopped at an intersection as an Enforcer Humvee rolled by. As he resumed walking, he began daydreaming about what he’d learned from years of receiving stray thoughts. People dreamed nonstop when awake. Sometimes their dreams were daydreams and other times they were reality dreams. It was ironic that some people said they never dreamed. Mark knew for a fact consensual reality was assembled in the brain as an immensely complex immersive movie, which was actually a specialized type of dream. The purpose of this reality dream was to assemble what came pouring in from the five senses. In some cases a reality dream was little more connected to physical reality than sleeping dreams. Mark thought of dreams as the brain’s analog to computer simulations or models. You could have accurate simulations or sloppy simulations.

In time Mark had grown to realize dreaming was literally the primary function of the human brain. What people called dreams were really several completely different beasts. The two main categories of sleep dreams were non-REM and REM dreams. Non-REM dreams were time compressed reconstructions of the day’s events and not very mysterious, while REM dreams were experiences that emerged from somewhere unexplainable. REM dreams were not, as popular belief had it, merely translations of the babblings of what psychiatrists had labeled the subconscious.

Mark had learned all this and more about the human mind from his journeys into the god-machine—journeys that traversed and chronicled many levels of consciousness, both human and other. These journeys occurred in lucid dreams, which he was certain were partially fed by the timeline archives within the god-machine. These archives contained recordings of fully relivable critical memories from human lives throughout history. The archives spanned countless millennia. They also contained memories from other life forms such as animals, which were all too alien for him to grasp or even access.

Mark trailed the thief as they left the crowded entertainment district behind. He thought about the runic symbols the assist had displayed over the device Paul had handed over to the priest. The meaning of those symbols was unknown and seemed undecipherable. What had the assist been trying to tell him? Mark had a gut feeling that device could be a key to understanding the tribe of hybrids they’d discovered.

Paul was soon moving at a fast pace. The streets were nearly empty. Mark was concerned his prey would notice him and let a second block grow between them. As before, an assist was outlining Paul’s lone footprints in the deepening film of snow.

A gust of wind stirred up a miniature whirlwind out of the tumbling flakes. Mark tried to step over a snowy puddle at a curb, but landed short. He felt dampness creep into one of his sneakers. When he looked back up, Paul was gone. The assist
enhanced footprints were a tenuous trail of bread crumbs; all it would take to lose Paul was a long enough dry patch of sidewalk. Mark started to jog to catch up before it was too late. He rounded a corner in time to see Paul crossing a street and start up a flight of stairs to a raised platform for the L train.

When Mark reached the deserted platform, he realized he and Paul were the only people in sight. He tried to look disinterested. While no stray thoughts indicated otherwise, he suspected his cover had been blown. An express train blew through the station in an assault of sound and flashing windows. Mark received a stream of memory capsules from Sarah. She had followed the priest back to his church and was waiting outside to see if anything developed. A few long, tense minutes passed in the station, then a local train arrived. Mark had no idea where he was heading as he boarded the car shortly after Paul.

The train pulled from the platform and was soon racing along. It went underground, then a short while later rose again as an elevated train. Mark took out his cell phone to use as a prop. He decided to use the time to write an e-mail to Kathy to see how everything was going in his absence. He tapped out a short message and pressed
send
. When he looked up, he caught Paul staring at him before the man could quickly look away. The L came to a stop and Paul disembarked. Mark knew exiting the train might shred anything remaining of his cover, but what choice did he have? He exited just before the train began to move.

Paul stood in the darkest corner of the station underneath an overhang. His arms were crossed. He was smiling directly at Mark. There was a strong, steady wind mixed with tiny flakes of snow. The platform was empty and as lonely as the last. Several of the overhead sodium lights were failing as they cast puddles of dirty yellowish illumination over the platform. Mark looked up at a surveillance camera aimed at Paul and realized it was probably not working. Paul had chosen this stop carefully. Mark sensed no threat and was confident his superior reaction time and strength gave him an unbeatable edge. He walked up to Paul, bringing him within reach.

“I assume we’re not under surveillance,” said Mark. “That’s why you chose this stop.”

“Assume what you want,
Antinostrum
,” said Paul. “Your cult likes to believe it knows everything.”

Mark sensed the name
Antinostrum
was a test of some kind. He cast as wide a net as possible for stray thoughts but captured only empty airwaves. At the same time he concentrated on the name
Antinostrum
, triggering a small, quick data-flood that also returned nothing useful. There was a scrap of history about
Antinostrum
referring to a public health crusade against potions and pseudoscience snake oil remedies in the nineteenth century. This was getting him nowhere. Mark decided the most effective course of action was to say as little as possible to draw Paul out, so he said nothing. Paul’s expression changed to anger.