Killing Time (5 page)

Tressalian and I watched as
Slayton produced a handheld DNA reader (much like the one Max had carried
nearly everywhere he went), then popped in the disc and the hair. After a few
seconds he took them out again, nodding as he handed the disc back to me.
"Ah, good, that nuisance is out of the way," Tressalian said, heading
for the metal stairs that led up to the observation dome. "Now, Doctor,
I'll be happy to answer any questions you have—though I think you might enjoy
watching Larissa in action while we talk."

I mounted the stairs next to
Tressalian, whose slow movements were practiced if not easy, while Slayton
stayed a few steps behind us, cither to make sure Tressalian didn't fall or to
keep a careful eye on me; in all probability a bit of both. One felt the
colonel's presence keenly no matter where he was, not least because of the
disturbing and mysterious scar on his face. In an age when almost any organ or
tissue in the human body save the brain could be fabricated in medical
laboratories—when the colonel's own skin could have been duplicated and run
off like so much cloth and then grafted onto his injury—the fact that he left
the disfigurement unaddressed was certainly indicative of the man's character.
The question was, what was such a character doing in the service of the
strange, remarkable man who was hobbling along beside me?

All such cogitations left my head
when we reached the observation dome, which offered an unobstructed view in
every direction— a view that stretched the limits of my credulity even further.

Surrounding us was the panorama
of the night sky, though I didn't have an opportunity to enjoy it: I could see
at least five Geronimos— Apache Mark V military helicopters that had been adapted
for use by local law enforcement as well as the FBI—in pursuit of our ship,
their cannons spinning as they blasted glowing tracer rounds at us. In addition,
there was a fleet of late-model Hummers coursing through the streets below,
lights flashing and large-caliber mounted guns ablaze. From the look of things,
I quickly calculated that we had only a few moments to live—especially as we
weren't yet returning fire.

But then I noticed that as the
multitude of bullets being fired at us reached the tapering, rounded fuselage
of the ship—its pair of foldaway wings and its glowing "head"
resembling nothing so much as a giant flying fish—most of them swerved badly
off target. Tressalian read the puzzled look on my face (he was evidently as
perceptive as his sister), then touched the collar of his own shirt and began to
speak to Larissa through what I realized was a surgically implanted
communications system that provided the two with a secure link to each other.

"Sister? ... Yes, Dr.
Wolfe's right here, and watching anxiously. But remember, we're making directly
for the coast, so there's no need for excessive—Larissa?" Tressalian took
his fingers from his throat with an indulgent shake of his head, then held a
hand toward the scene being played out around us. "I suggest you observe,
Doctor—this seems to be for
your
benefit."

With that, the large rail gun in
the ship's turret opened fire, expelling flights of projectiles that were
proportionately larger than the ones fired by Larissa's handgun. The varied
pattern of destruction wrought by the gun as it spun from pursuer to pursuer
was awesome to behold: a finely focused burst could removed a Hummer's wheel or
a Geronimo's mounted gun, while a wider pattern could reduce both land and air
units to so much shrapnel—and human body parts. All of this, or so Tressalian
had said, was for my benefit: an effort by Larissa not only to impress me with
her flying and combat skills but also, it seemed, to let me know that what I
had stumbled onto was some kind of mortal struggle. But over what?

Excitement, horror, and, yes,
some satisfaction (given that our pursuers were doubtless ultimately controlled
by the same people who had killed Max) were registering inside me; yet I was
still clearheaded enough to be curious. "Their bullets," I said.
"They're not reaching us."

"It has been said,"
Tressalian explained, "that the man who controls electromagnetism
controls the known forces of our universe. I don't pretend to have
mastered
the
area yet, but we have enough insight to be able to project fields that will
cause far more complex forms of matter than bullets to change their behavior.
Even without the fields we'd be in little danger—the ship's superstructure and
sheathing, even its transparent sections, are constructed of advanced composite
resins. Stronger than high-quality steel of a much greater thickness and far
lighter." Tressalian paused a moment, still watching me. "You're
appalled, no doubt," he finally said. "But believe me when I say that
if the governments of the world left us any choice—"

"Of the
world!"
I
echoed in a whisper. "But I thought—"

"Oh, our efforts are quite
global. Here, come and look at this, Doctor." Tressalian turned and
hobbled over to a bank of monitors that was installed on a low table at the
center of the observation dome. "It may help you understand."

I soon found myself staring at
half a dozen images of a considerable military force on the move. There were
ships at sea, remote-piloted fighter-bombers in flight, their ghostly cockpits
empty of anything save computer equipment, and carrier crews loading still more
warplanes with bombs and missiles.

"What is it?" I asked.

"The reason your friend Mr.
Jenkins was killed," Tressalian replied. "An American task force, on
its way to inflict what will certainly be a massive attack."

"On whom? Where are they
going?"

"The same place we
are—Afghanistan."

"Afghanistan ..."I
said, thunderstruck. "But why? And how in hell are you getting pictures of
all this?"

"By satellite,"
Tressalian answered simply. "Our
own
satellites."

My mind made a sudden connection.
"Satellites ... satellites!
Tressalian
—Stephen Tressalian, the man
who devised the four-gigabyte satellite system, who created the modern
Internet!"

"He was my father," my
host acknowledged with an ambiguous nod. "And that sin
was
indeed
his, along with many others. But he paid for his transgressions in the end—and
his money did allow us to undertake all this."

"But what in God's name are
you
doing?"

"The more important question
right now," Tressalian answered evasively, "is, what is your
government doing?"

"
'My'
government?
Isn't it
your
government, too?"

Tressalian, slightly amused,
shook his head. "Not for many years. Those of us aboard this ship have
renounced all nationalities—largely because of these sorts of
national
behaviors."
He indicated the screens.

"What do you mean?" I
asked. "What are they doing?"

"It would
seem
that
they intend to finally eradicate the very impressive underground complex that has
been the principal training ground for Islamic terrorists during the last two
decades."

I looked at the busy screens
again. "Retaliation for Khaldun killing President Forrester?" I
asked.

Tressalian nodded. "Your
country is, after all, nearing a national election. But there's a slight
problem with the government's decision, one that I have reason to believe it
has begun to suspect but which it cannot, given the political rhetoric that led
to this launch, allow anyone such as yourself to discover. You see, Tariq
Khaldun wasn't a terrorist—and he certainly didn't kill President
Forrester."

"But the disc—"

"The man on that
disc"—Tressalian touched a keypad on the table and brought up the
assassination images that Max and I had studied for so many hours—"was in
fact an actor of Afghan origin who enjoyed some slight success in the Indian
film industry during the last part of the twentieth century. We—
borrowed
his
image." Tressalian shrugged with a smile. "How could I know that
there was a minor Afghan diplomat in Chicago who might be the man's double?
Don't worry, though, we've arranged for Mr. Khaldun's escape. At any rate, the
actual killer of the late, lamented President Forrester was"—another
touch of a keypad, and the image before me changed to the second version of the
event that I'd seen, the one in which the assassin's face was Asian—"this
fellow. Hung Ting-hsin, a major in the Chinese external security force."

I paused, now wholly unaware of
the dance of fire and death that was going on beyond the transparent shell
around us. "You deliberately distorted what happened?"

"I'm afraid so."

"So Price created those
images for
you
—you were the 'private contractor' his wife told me
about."

"Correct again. None of us
was happy about Mr. Price's death, Doctor—but he'd decided to try to blackmail
us. Then, when Larissa and Jonah went to warn him against such a course, he
became violent. Actually knocked Jonah against a wall, and would have done
worse, but—well,
Larissa
..."

All the pieces surrounding the
mysteries of John Price's and Max's deaths were falling into place—but none of
them explained why in the world Tressalian was doing any of this, and so I
asked him straight out once more.

"Oh, I have my
reasons," he said, sighing again; but the sound was heavier this time, and
as it came, Tressalian suddenly winced. "I have my—" His eyes opened
wide as the apparent attack of pain seemed to rapidly worsen. "You
must—forgive me, Doctor. I seem to—" Suddenly he clutched his head and
pitched over with a muted cry, bringing Colonel Slayton to his side even before
I could offer any help. "I—think, Colonel," Tressalian said through
gritted teeth, "that I'd better rest for a bit. If our guest will excuse
me ..." His breathing became labored as Slayton pulled one of his arms
around his own neck and lifted his disabled body as if it were weightless.
"I'm sorry, Doctor, I know you want answers," Tressalian gasped.
"Dinner—we'll talk at dinner. For now—remember—" He brought his head
up and, through his agony, gave me a look that I will never forget: it was full
of all the mischievousness of his sister but at the same time conveyed a dark,
terrible urgency. "Remember," he went on, "what you saw on the
door ..." And with that, Colonel Slayton whisked him away.

Tressalian's sudden attack,
combined with the images on the screens at the table as well as the ongoing
combat outside—not to mention the fact that I was now alone—served to turn my
growing anxiety into the beginnings of what I feared would soon become panic. I
tried to calm myself by focusing on what Tressalian had said, by forcing my
mind to delve deeper into the Latin I'd learned so long ago in order to come up
with an answer to the riddle of the legend on the door.

I don't know how long I stood
there, watching Larissa decimate our pursuers and mumbling to myself like an
idiot.
"Mundus vult decipi,"
I repeated over and over, as
bullets streamed around the ship.
"Mundus,
'the world,' yes.
Vult,
'wills'? 'Wants'? Something—"

And then I froze at the sudden
sound of a pulsing alarm that echoed throughout the vessel: not a harsh tone,
exactly, but enough to let me know that something big was happening. I scanned
the horizon in all directions, trying to catch sight of what might be prompting
it—and looking forward, I got my answer:

The wide expanse of the Atlantic
Ocean had appeared on the horizon.

I spun around when a voice I
recognized as Julien Fouché's began to speak over some sort of shipwide address
system:

"Thirty seconds until system
transfer ... twenty-five ... twenty ..."

We showed no sign of slowing our
approach to the water as Fouché continued to count down, in five-second
increments, to "system transfer," whatever that might be; and then I
experienced a startling chill as, in the midst of my mounting fear, I succeeded
in translating the legend.

"Mundus vult
decipi,"
I said aloud. " 'The world wants to be deceived'!"

Not yet realizing the potentially
threatening connotation in the words, I felt a sense of triumph—one that
quickly reverted to terror as the ship sped over the shoreline and dived into
the open sea beyond.

As soon as the vessel was
completely submerged, a series of powerful lights on her hull's exterior came
on, offering an extraordinary view of the coastal Atlantic depths as we turned
north along the line of the continent. What I saw outside, however, was not an
idyllic scene of aquatic wonder such as childhood stories might have led me to
expect but rather a horrifying expanse of brown water filled with human and
animal waste, all of it endlessly roiled but never cleansed by the steady pulse
of the offshore currents. Sometimes the trapped filth was identifiable—great
stretches of medical waste and the detritus of livestock husbandry were particularly
disturbing—but for the most part it all blended into one indistinguishable mass
that I, left alone to watch and ponder, found utterly disheartening. I knew, of
course, that in the years since the '07 financial crash, environmental cleanups
had been deemed unaffordable luxuries in most countries; nevertheless, to be
presented with this sort of firsthand evidence was shocking.

After what seemed a very long
time, I was escorted to my quarters not by Larissa Tressalian (who I assumed
had joined her mysteriously stricken brother) but by the curious little man
called Dr. Leon Tarbell. Alone among the crew, the "documents expert"
Tarbell was unknown to me by either sight or reputation, a fact that made him
all the more intriguing; for he was certainly treated as an equal by the others
and behaved entirely as such.