Jezebel's Ladder (5 page)

Jez awoke in the same, private-hospital room again. This
time it was dark, and a stuffed, nine-inch reindeer lay next to her on the
pillow. The reindeer had a pink bow, big eyelashes, and a handwritten name tag
that said, “Olive.” The sheer absurdity made her laugh out loud, even though
her head was splitting.

The sound woke Benny, who had been
sleeping on the chair in the corner. “Don’t scare me like that again. Two pages
in two weeks is a record.”

When Jez tried to ask a question,
the words and sounds fought with each other and slurred together. The former
actor held up a hand. “Don’t try to speak. Simplification is probably the
quickest-acting and most virulent page. Your brain is looking for something to
organize. At this point, it will simplify anything you focus on, even language.
If you talk too much, you’ll end up with another version of speed speech.
Instead, we’d like you to focus on the pages. With your abilities, maybe you’ll
find something we missed.”

Benny tapped his phone open and
said, “She’s awake. Bring the demonstration.”

The head of the Hollywood branch of
the project pulled his chair closer. “I made them keep you under until the CT
scans came up clean with no brain swelling. You’ve been promoted to Talent
Scout in the Mergers and Acquisitions department. It’s time to share the next
layer of secrets.”

Moments later, Elias Fortune strode
into the room, smiling. “You found an excellent recruit, Ms. Johnson. You are
to be commended! Already he’s inventing a new form of martial arts and
correcting my guards’ protocols. It seems I have a new head of security. I want
you to do more of this luring thing.”

“People respond better to her
invitation than to blackmail, sir,” Benny grumbled. “I think you’ll be
impressed to see what else she can do. Why don’t you introduce her to the
artifact?”

The billionaire pulled out a
softball-sized crystal ball, and pressed a button. Instantly, a star map filled
the walls of the room. “This is a map of every known red giant in our galaxy, and
some that astronomers don’t even suspect yet.”

Jez stared in awe as Fortune
narrated in a tone that grated on her spine. “This hand unit is just the
projector. The prototype was the size of a football field. I gave this page to
a former SETI lead manager. He saw his page as computer code, pure math logic.
The man was secretive and totally obsessed. Unfortunately, he burned out before
it was completed. The first replacement I picked flamed out in a week–humans
can only take high-gamma state for so long. But if you try to open the cocoon
for the butterfly, it won’t survive anyway.”

Benny interrupted the coarse logic.
“Evidently, it’s an intense page. While he was raving, the second person tore
the page into strips. We found that any master of a page can will it to come
apart into three, smaller units, supporting subsections we now refer to as
paragraphs. Since then, we only give people a paragraph at a time.”

Fortune, miffed at the
mollycoddling, continued. “The third scientist wasn’t in the same league as the
others but he got the unit working. It locates red giants everywhere. There’s a
lot more to the code we haven’t penetrated yet, but we know this map will hold
a key role in the future of human space travel.”

Jez took the globe from his hand
and stroked the surface. The star field slid sideways. She spread her fingers
and the image zoomed in. Fortune blinked. “We didn’t know it could do that.”

Benny smiled an unspoken, “I told
you so.”

Jerking a little, Jez stuttered, “Combine
with anomalies.”

“Crusader’s page?” Fortune asked. “What
would that give us?”

“The dark to the light,” Jez said
cryptically.

Benny watched her, trying to guess
her meaning. “Anomalies in space? That would be black holes. That’s the
counterpoint to the stars, yin and yang.”

Fortune nodded slowly. “So we could
map anything using those two extremes, like building any number on a computer
from zeroes and ones?”

She closed her eyes. “More.
Missing. Tell about all pages.”

Jez dropped the crystal ball onto
the sheets as her hand twitched. She whimpered.

Benny stroked her hand saying, “Easy,
it’s just new pathways forming, new connections in unexpected places. It grazes
the motor memory sometimes. Try not to move too much.”

As her eyes stayed closed, Fortune
turned off the projector and put it away. “We don’t even know how many pages
there are. Someone obviously meant them to work together. Nonetheless, some,
like the Russians, would rather kill their page holders than let anyone else
know the secrets. The Russian Army had two paragraphs we call Deep Quantum and
Zero Point Energy. Either paragraph eventually sent the reader into a coma. The
Russian navy has algae-based acrylics. The US Air Force Midas project had Ice
Nine, a stronger construction material than steel, but then they ran out of
funding. Recently, they picked up some odd gravity equations from the dead
professor that Eye Corps tracked.”

Alarmed by the amount of negative
input, Benny said, “Some pages are harmless. One, called Super Goo, was like
the ultimate air bag.”

Fortune was a realist in a familiar
debate. “Almost all the pages represent power. Many, like the Override page,
can be turned into weapons. Others, like gene design or biomass sustainability
equations, give a corporation an edge on technology for the next century.

“I found the first page in the
Ladder Project. We call it Archetype. Simplification is just one paragraph of
that page. I was a bioengineer trying to create new medicines. There are
infinite combinations in nature, but only a few Archetypes a species will
aspire to. They all try to converge there. The female will only mate with the
male with certain traits. I learned that we don’t need to be concerned with all
combinations, just the ones everyone is heading toward. In mathematics, there
is something called a fixed-point iteration. Perform the same operation over
and over till you reach a balance that no longer changes. In music, the chorus
has many members, but when you listen, they combine into one message.”

The older man paced as he related
his story. “But even with my advanced skill, I went broke over a period of
thirteen years, waiting for FDA approval that would never come. Desperate to
earn money to save my failing company, I found that the same Archetype
principles applied to Hollywood stars. There are only about eighteen male lead
morphologies and thirteen female leads. Using that knowledge, and a vast, film
library of free pornography from the seventies, I could map body images from
one actor to another. Thus, the X-Ray specs program was born. You could make
the people in any film appear naked with perfect realism. It made me a
millionaire overnight.”

Jez wrinkled her nose at the
concept. Benny said, “Jezebel, I agree with that assessment, having had it used
against me. The only pattern immune was his wife Claudette. Fortune then made
millions more selling the blocker techniques.”

The billionaire sneered back, “I
plowed those millions into the stock market and real estate to buy the hand of
that wife.”

Benny started to argue. “Claudette
put just as much into that studio as… Forgive me. You were saying?”

Fortune stared at the actor for a
moment. “You want to screw her, don’t you?”

Benny struggled for a moment over
which woman the billionaire was referring to. “Claudette was a friend before
you hired me to collect more pages. Her request was the only reason I let you
speak to me. And as lonely as she got when she was married to you, she never
asked and I never offered.”

Jez blurted out a single word. “Ternary.”

The men stopped arguing. Benny
asked, “Pardon?”

“Page authors. Mindset base three.”
Jez’s speech started like a car with square wheels, but she quickly gained
momentum. “The document has three broad sections. The primer describes
vocabulary we lack to understand the whole, like explaining microbiology to an
ancient Sumerian. The second category is life science. The third category has
to do with the practicalities of space construction.”

Both men were too stunned to speak,
so she continued. “I can’t prove this, but within each category, I expect nine
ideas. The whole document, when you piece together all the complete pages,
should contain twenty-seven. This is three to the third power.”

Fortune muttered, “Outrageous.”

Benny laughed. “I’d wager every
dime in my bank account that you won’t find any way to disprove her. Borrowing
from both of us, her IQ is probably over four hundred, but I think she’s proven
her recruiting theory and risked enough for tonight.”

Fortune blinked. “Butterfly, take a
week off. Fly to Hawaii to find that surfer Oobie was tracking. I don’t care, but
I want the list with your next ten proposed employees on my desk by next
Friday. We shouldn’t all risk being in one place again. It could endanger the
whole project.”

With that, the older man departed
brusquely.

Benny was still chuckling. “That’s
as close to a thank you as you’ll ever get from Dirt Bag.”

 “Why you… on project?” Jez stammered.

Benny got serious. “I think of our
Ladder like Jacob’s Ladder. He saw angels and a way to climb to Heaven. Later,
he wrestled an angel so that he would be blessed by God. He did it because he
was afraid his brother, Esau, was going to kill him as payback for earlier
treachery. Fortune has committed a lot of evil deeds, and he’s trying to wipe
that clean. However, there was a price for Jacob escaping his past sins: a
limp, a name change, and some new rules. He got what he wanted, though, for
himself and an entire people.”

 “I thought we were discussing Dirt
Bag. Are you escaping something in your past?” Jez guessed.

“Just like the song says, I’m
building a ‘Stairway to Heaven.’”

Jez never refused a trip to a tropical paradise.

She lay on the white sand next to
Daniel, basking in a bikini. Daniel, by contrast, was forced to wear shoes,
war-paint sunscreen, and a big, floppy hat. “You were right about the fantastic
view, but this gear you’re making me wear is birth control.”

Jez laughed as she watched the
surfers. “You’re a vampire. Too much sun will sear the flesh right off you. I,
on the other hand, have a performance tan to maintain.”

He grumbled and had more of his
virgin colada. “What’s the word on our target?”

“He is as normal as the day is long,
but he’s got great muscle definition.” She winced as another one of the
athletes wiped out in a tight curl. Daniel looked longingly at the unreachable
girls all around. “Don’t sweat it. I’m still teaching you the ropes. When the
time is right, you won’t find a better wingman. What did I tell you about
presents?”

Daniel sighed and recited, “Girls
like presents, even little ones. Whenever they look at it, they think of you.”

Jez nodded and held up her
origami-butterfly necklace. “Most girls have a favorite animal. Find that, and
you’re halfway home.”

Jez didn’t say that the primary
purpose of her advice was to get the boy to
listen
to a girl, and ask
personal questions. “Then you find out what her secret, guilty pleasure is. We
all have one: chocolates, books, exotic tea flavors, nail polish.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked, taking a bite
of fresh pineapple from his tray. “What’s yours?”

“Shoes. Learn the basic types and
brands, and you’re in with about one in six hotties.”

****

That night at the pig roast, Daniel
seemed eager for conversation. “Any luck on that list the boss wanted?”

She nodded. “I found the first
seven easily. I’ve got to do some heavy research reading for the rest. Then I
may need to visit the observatory and borrow some expert brain power to finish
my recommendations.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Daniel
offered.

She shook her head. “Just enjoy
your vacation and be ready to start that computer programming class on Monday.”

“No other plans at all for this
weekend?” he fished.

She feigned ignorance and then
signaled the staff to surprise Daniel with a cake that had sparklers in it. “Happy
seventeenth birthday!” Jez shouted, as the whole luau sang to him.

Daniel had a huge grin on his face.
“It isn’t till Sunday.”

Jez shook her head. “With the flight
back and the time zone changes, you’ll miss the whole thing. I wanted to give
you a chance to celebrate.”

“You really are a great older
sister,” he replied.

“So does that mean I can take back
the presents?”

He punched her playfully in the
shoulder.

The first present, from her, was a
watercolor set. “You need more color in your life.”

He felt the paper, and commented, “The
texture on this is great.”

“It’s handmade,” she explained.

The next gift, the smallest, had the
code name “Uncle Buddy” written on the tag. “A blank DVD?” asked Daniel.

“Read the note tucked inside.”

The note was signed by a popular
action star. The DVD was a copy of his latest film.

Daniel exclaimed, “This isn’t even
out yet!”

Jez shrugged. “Your uncle knows
some people on the Oscar committee. The last present is from Dirt Bag. I bought
it. The money is a corporate bonus for the whole Crusader success, but it’s the
thought that counts, right?”

Daniel stared at the manila
envelope. “I don’t need more money.”

“I know; that’s why I put it to
good use.”

He opened it up, curious. Inside
was a letter from a southwestern-US, horse-rescue society, thanking him
effusively for saving the lives of ten horses, and giving them enough food till
they could be adopted. Behind the letter were pictures of the horses he had
saved, with the promise of more to come.

Jez announced, “You saved them from
the butchers at auction. It represents everything you do for a living, but no
one knows about. I figured this way you could hang a plaque in your room.”

“That’s kind of cool. Strange, but
cool.”

****

By the return trip Sunday night,
she was ready for the teleconference aboard the jet. All three division
managers were linked into her presentation. Daniel sat behind her to operate
the PC and provide moral support. He already had the rescued horse pictures
scanned in as screen savers.

She led off with, “The trick for
recruiting is not just to get friendly specialists, but to find people we can
hire without raising suspicions.” She frontloaded the presentation with some
no-brainer suggestions: two former astronauts, a mechanical engineer who
specialized in eco-friendly projects, a Brazilian aerospace executive with
experience as ground control, and a doctor who had invented better re-breathing
devices.

After showing photos and one-page
bios of each, she added comments like, “The cosmonaut could be a Russian trade
expert, or an international, private-jet pilot.”

Fortune rubber-stamped the first
set. “You have a good eye. Even with no pages, these will all be good additions
to my staff. The Brazilian will present a little difficulty. I may have to
acquire the whole company, something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.”

Then she started phase two. She had
carefully leaked a few of these to Benny in an effort to gain his support. “Number
six, Swami Rama, is a master yoga instructor.” She gave her pitch about the
benefits of meditation and preparation prior to reading a page.

When Fortune scoffed at the idea,
Benny explained, “I use a regimen of meditation myself, and teach it to the
newcomers. You’ve seen how beneficial the theta conditioning has been, but it
takes a lot of my time away from other, more important matters.”

Baker, the British head of
intelligence gathering, said, “Delegating this stuff is always more efficient.
It can’t hurt to try.”

Fortune grunted acceptance.

“Number seven is actually an old
acquaintance of mine, not someone from your list. Kyle Anderson is a freaking
genius. He works for a computer animation company, one of your Hollywood rivals, but is bored out of his skull. He worships the ground Dirt Bag walks on,
and has read all his computer-science papers.”

“This isn’t somebody whose bones
you want to jump, is it?” Fortune accused.

Jez kept her cool. “Kyle doesn’t
even need to know I exist. You wanted good people for the red-giant project,
and I think he can help you.”

Baker said, “Let me check him out.”

Jez took a deep breath. “The next
one is a peace envoy for the Middle East. We’ll probably have to kidnap him,
technically, to make the offer.” When no one objected on moral grounds, she
continued. “I propose to get him alone in an elevator. I’ll have one of Oobie’s
wheelchairs with me. If the envoy is active, I'll touch him with the tip of a
page. This will cause a stun-gun effect. We take him off the elevator at
another floor and have the interview.”

Fortune frowned. “I can’t risk a
valuable page in the field like that.”

“What about the blank page in my
safe?” Benny suggested.

Baker chimed in, “Our working
theory is that the information gets wiped when the carrier gets killed, but
that shouldn’t change the theta effect.”

Fortune debated with them for
several minutes before grudgingly ordering Benny, “Try the blank on Butterfly.
If it works, she can have it for this experiment.”

Benny started to object when Jez
interrupted, “That would be acceptable.”

Fortune snapped, “This meeting is
running over the allotted time. Who are nine and ten?”

“A pupil of the late Professor…”
she started.

Fortune shouted, “Out of the
question! They’re all under US-governmental seal. You know the rules.”

“You just green-lighted the
kidnapping of a diplomat,” she shouted back.

“Not a US employee,” Fortune
insisted. “The Midas team and I have an agreement. Case closed. Number ten,
please.”

Sighing, Jez put up the last slide
and dug in for another battle. It was the only woman in her list. “Nena
Horvath.” The blonde’s publicity picture was worth a few thousand words. Daniel
was chomping at the bit, with a big thumb’s up and a huge grin.

“A nineteen-year-old, Miss Iowa runner-up?” Fortune scoffed.

“If you'll read further,” Jez
persisted, “you’ll see that she was a
high
-level, executive assistant
for one of the Fossil chemical companies.”

“How is a gymnast, health-food nut
going to be any use to our efforts?”

She gritted her teeth and said, “Vice
presidential-level assistant. Originally we thought it was sexual harassment.
She did join a women’s self-defense class soon after. But your hacker contacts
found out that she phoned a federal, whistle-blower hotline from her posh,
corporate apartment. They tossed her out on the street the next day and had a
gag order issued by a high, federal-court judge. Now, no one will hire her
except the local animal shelter.”

 “I’ll send a contact team today,” Baker
jumped in. “This is a golden opportunity. She can tell us a lot about their
whole informational structure, and she has an ax to grind.”

Fortune seethed. “Fine. It seems
that Oobie has an opening for a new secretary. If you’ll excuse me, I have
better things to do. Good day.”

Daniel’s expression was priceless. “You
set me up so the animal lady would like me. She likes horses, doesn’t she?” He
sounded like he was about to hyperventilate. “You are the best wingman ever.
Anything you want, I’ll do it.”

Jez laughed. “I’ll remember that.”