Immune (17 page)

Crude as they were, the connections Dr. Stephenson had made between the machines and his own amputation-exposed nerve bundles had been effective. It had taken a while to make sense of the wild sensory data that bled into him through his optical nerve and through the cables he now thought of as his tail. At first, he had thought the strange sensations were only pain-induced hallucinations. How wrong he had been.

His nanite-infested bloodstream had worked miracles, accepting the attachments as if he were a hybrid plant with some new genetic sprigs grafted to his trunk. New skin had grown up around them in a way that just seemed right. Even better, the physical connections to his nervous system were getting better. Yes, the nanites had been one busy little colony, always analyzing his health, always seeking ways to fix imperfections. And while they could not regenerate lost limbs, they were very good at keeping him alive and incorporating usable new parts.

What Raul had initially thought were hallucinations were his first feeble attempts to deal with the data coming from the ship’s damaged neural network, a magnificently capable system that his consciousness roamed at will. It was incredible. Now, when he thought about something, he not only thought about it with the neurons in his own brain, he thought about it with all the functioning neural pathways in the ship.

Unfortunately, only a very small portion of the original neural net was currently functional. The molecular data storage banks were the most heavily damaged, although he worked steadily to repair them. He had the feeling that if he could just reach a critical mass here, he would attain access to knowledge that would enable him to understand how to bring more of the power systems back online. And with more power, he could bring the main computers back to life.

In the meantime, he had made a glorious breakthrough. He had managed to tap the Internet remotely. Raul still didn’t quite understand how he had achieved it. He had been wishing that he could access data from the outside world and somehow the ship had brought a connection online. It wasn’t a physical connection like a cable line or an uplink to a satellite. Somehow, the ship just managed to make it happen.

But that connection was spotty and limited, the result of damage to a set of components that were the object of Raul’s current repair efforts. Clinging with one hand to a set of conduits, Raul unfastened the casings, his artificial right eye seeing the activity in those circuits in a way that no human eye could. As he observed the data flow, his brain, augmented by the shipboard neural net, understood exactly what was wrong. He might never again leave this craft, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t touch the outside world.

A broad smile crawled across Raul’s face. Perhaps his suffering had not been in vain. Maybe God wasn’t done with him after all.

Heather rolled over in bed and opened her eyes, surprised to see her own arms stretching high into the air. It was Saturday, and she was still alive and not in a federal penitentiary. Considering the horrible nature of her dreams, this waking was a major improvement.

Glancing over at the clock on her bed stand, she saw that it was 5:30 a.m. Holy cow. She had been so busy just trying to survive the week that she hadn't really had a chance to think about the fact that she was still alive and in good health.

Heather rolled out of bed and slipped into her long, white robe and her fur-lined, moccasin-style slippers, then made her way quietly down to the kitchen. By the time the teakettle started whistling, she had already gotten the chamomile tea bag situated in her cup, switched on the television, and begun channel surfing for any news that might indicate some other disaster was on its way to annihilate them.

The smell of the tea wafted up to her nostrils as she began pouring the hot water over the bag and then paused to add a little Splenda.

At first she barely registered the scratching at the kitchen window, so softly did it intrude into her consciousness. When she did look up, there was nothing there, just a large section where the condensation had left a cloud on the pane. Only as she started to turn away did she see it, crude letters in the condensation where a finger had traced them on the outside of the glass.

“I know what you are.”

Heather set down her tea and walked across to the windowsill. On closer inspection, it was a thin layer of frost, not steam or condensation, that had been scratched away.

She shifted her gaze to the tree line at the back edge of their yard. There, standing in the snow beneath the pines, stood the Rag Man, his long, greasy, blond hair and the mouthful of bad teeth in his grinning face immediately recognizable. His eyes, though. Where were his eyes?

Grabbing a long butcher knife from the block on the countertop, Heather opened the sliding glass door and stepped out into the predawn darkness, the garden dimly illuminated by the light from their back porch. As she stepped out, the Rag Man slid back into the trees.

Heather lunged after him, almost slipping on the ice covering the deck’s lower step, but she managed to right herself as she plunged into the snow-covered grass beyond. She reached the tree where she had last seen him, whirling to make sure he did not jump out of the darkness behind her.

There in the snow beneath the tree, a clear set of footprints led away into the woods just beyond her backyard. Heather sucked in a chest-full of air, then moved, head bent to keep the trail in sight as she made her way forward. In seconds the trees behind her masked her house from view, bringing down a deeper darkness that would have been absolute, except for the light of the three-quarter moon that filtered through the branches high above.

Those tracks in the snow pulled her onward, her hand clutched so tightly around the handle of the big knife that it seemed the skin would peel away from her knuckles at any moment. She felt like screaming after the Rag Man: Who are you? What do you want from me? Stay the hell away from my family!

“I know what you are.”

The voice behind her was so close she could feel the hot breath puff against the back of her neck, could smell the rot in those decaying teeth. Suddenly all the anger and strength leached out of her body, replaced by an icy terror that left her frozen in place, unable to move. Unable even to turn her face to look into those vacant eye sockets.

“I know what you are becoming.”

“I know what you are becoming.”

“I know what you are becoming.”

Heather sat straight up in bed, the struggle back to consciousness leaving her momentarily disoriented. Ever so slowly, her racing heart slowed its beating.

Jesus. The same dream she had endured before. On impulse, she pinched her arm hard. Ouch. Well, if she wasn’t really awake, then the old myth of not feeling pain in dreams was flat-out busted.

Snow. There had been snow in the dream, but it was summertime. Of course it was a dream.

She glanced at the clock beside the bed. 5:30 a.m., same as in the dream. Well she damn sure wasn’t going downstairs to make some tea. Not this morning.

As Heather stared at the clock, waiting for it to tick to 5:31, a new worry settled over her. She hadn’t been able to remember her dreams for weeks now. Every morning she awoke knowing that she had been dreaming but dreading the thought of remembering them. Even worse, now that she had remembered this one, she had the distinct feeling that it was the least threatening of them all.

If the dreams were bad, her waking hallucinations were worse. Thinking back, she identified the day, three weeks ago, when she had quit seeing numbers in her mind and started seeing visions. In a weird way, it made sense. Programmers used mathematics to generate the fancy 3D imagery in video games and animated movies. Her mind had just gotten so good at math that the calculations now formed movies instead of equations. As scared as she had been during her original savant experience, this new phase horrified her beyond belief.

Several times she had caught herself briefly lapsing into a sequence of visions, each producing a variation on something she had been observing, each vision ending with a different predicted outcome. The visions had become so real that she had difficulty bringing herself back into the present. Anything might trigger them.

Yesterday, Heather’s mom had bumped into the back of a chair, triggering a sequence of visions of her mom falling and catching herself on the table, or tipping over the flowerpot, or cutting her arm on the vase. Always the visions converged into a single projected outcome, but for that brief instant in time, while under the influence of her waking dreams, Heather remained frozen, unable to move or respond.

Heather had once read about people who experienced fugues, trancelike states where they lost touch with reality. It was typical of the institutionalized insane. If this continued, it was only a matter of time until others began to notice. And it was getting worse.

Refocusing her attention on the clock, Heather saw that it read 5:34. Okay. That was probably different enough from the dream that she could go downstairs with some confidence. Pulling on her robe and slippers, Heather padded softly down to the kitchen and flipped on the light. Just to be sure, she made herself a cup of hot chocolate instead of her usual cup of tea. Something about that made her feel really stupid. Next thing you knew she would be hanging up horseshoes and tossing salt over her shoulder.

It just wasn’t fair. She was going to be a senior in high school. Wasn’t she supposed to be having fun, not worried about going insane? Dear God, why did they ever have to find that starship? Why couldn’t she just be normal?

A single teardrop rippled the thick surface of the dark brown liquid in her cup, but Heather, lost in yet another one of her newfound visions, didn’t notice.

Freddy Hagerman was used to cold trails, but this one had gone cold as a penguin’s ass. If it wasn’t for pure stubbornness, he would have given up a long time ago. Of course, knowing that he wouldn’t have a job to go back to if he didn’t come up with something had added a little extra motivation. Even so, amidst all the glowing interviews with the Rondham Institute staff and follow-ups with the cancer survivors, he had almost missed it.

Of the thirty-eight experimental subjects, he had tracked down all but one, a fourteen-year-old boy named Billy Randall. By all reports, Billy had been every bit as successful in his recovery as any of the other patients. But tragically, he and his entire family had been killed in an automobile accident on their drive back to Arizona, after his release from the institute. The horror of the news had shaken the small community of Wickenburg, Arizona, to its core.

The entire town had planned a welcome-home celebration, complete with banners and a parade. Instead, the collision between the family Taurus and a semi-truck just outside Barstow, California, had left the bodies so disfigured that the people of Wickenburg were left to bury three sealed caskets.

The thing that had attracted Freddy’s attention was the Barstow medical examiner’s report. Containing a detailed description of the fatal injuries suffered by each member of the Randall family, the report was well ordered and typical. It had taken Freddy three passes through it before he could place a cause for the feeling of wrongness.

All three family members had suffered fatal head injuries as several pipes from the semi’s load had penetrated into the car’s passenger compartment. Everything was thoroughly described in the report. There was absolutely nothing unusual about it.

There was only one problem with that. The car had been carrying one very unusual young man who had been injected with nanites derived from Rho Project research. Freddy had read Priest William’s journal, had seen the evidence of what those nanites could do. And even if these people should have been killed instantly, those microscopic machines didn’t just give up without trying to repair broken bodies. There should have been signs of unnatural healing on Billy’s corpse, even if that healing had not saved his life. But the report contained no mention of anything unusual about the boy’s mortal wounds.

Freddy straightened his aching back and looked up. It was unbelievable how many stars you could see at 2:00 a.m. in the high desert of Arizona, especially on a night with no moon. Well, staring at the stars wasn’t going to give him his answers.

Freddy stomped down, driving the shovel deep into the soft dirt. There was no way around it. He was going to have to see Billy Randall for himself.

“You’ve hardly touched your breakfast.”

“Sorry, Mom. Guess I’m just not that hungry this morning.” Heather couldn’t bring herself to look into her mother’s eyes. The air was thick with her parents’ distress at her situation, a mixture of sympathy, worry, and disappointment. She hated not being able to tell them that she hadn’t plagiarized anything, no matter what she had been forced to admit to.

Her father’s gentle voice caused her to look up from her eggs. “Heather, tough as this situation is, it will pass. In the meantime, you just have to press on with your normal routine.”

“And not eating won’t help,” her mother continued.

“I know, Mom.”

When she didn’t move to put more food in her mouth, her mother shrugged in defeat.

“Oh well, I guess you can be excused. Maybe visiting with Mark and Jennifer will help more than breakfast.”