Shattered Sky (10 page)

“Favorite food?”

Smiling, Dillon found a pen in the scant supplies of his desk, and on the blank side of the fortune scribbled “Eggplant Parmesan.” Then he slipped it back into the cookie.

T
RANSCRIPTION EXCERPT, DAY 199. 13:49 HOURS

“Do you think we have a purpose, Maddy? Or are we just like those praying pigeons, picking out patterns in something that's totally random?”

“You're the master of patterns, aren't you? If anyone would know, it would be you.”

“Some patterns are too complex for even me to see.”

“Or maybe it's just so simple, you keep looking past it.”

M
ADDY FOUND
G
ENERAL
B
USSARD'S
office to be as Spartan and cold as the man himself. Only his own chair was plush and padded—the chairs on the other side of the desk were so rigid, they cut off circulation to one's legs.

“I'll make this brief, Lieutenant Haas.”

Maddy had been expecting some sort of dressing-down. It was clear that Bussard was not happy with her performance and her integration—or lack thereof—into the team. After Gerritson's death, she had remained cold and aloof.

Bussard tapped a lead pencil on his blotter, not making eye contact, which was unlike him. It was the first clue that this meeting wasn't going in the direction she had assumed. “Apparently our efforts to see to our guest's comfort have not gone far enough,” he told her. “Or at least that is the opinion of General Harwood, and the Joint Chiefs.”

It was all Maddy could do to suppress her grin. So even the führer had a master. Now she realized that if Bussard was
going to be brief, it was to minimize his own embarrassment at having to actually admit that he had superiors. She was, in effect, watching him squirm, and she had a front-row seat.

“General Harwood feels our guest might need some human contact—and that we might be able to use such contact to get information from him that he has been unwilling to share.”

“They don't consider contact with you human enough, sir?”

He read her smirk, and chose to relent rather than retaliate, chuckling slightly. “I suppose my bedside manner is not my strongest point.”

“I sincerely hope, sir, that you're not calling on me for my ‘bedside manner.' ”

This time Bussard held her eye contact. “He's restrained, Haas. And by my observations, so are you.”

Maddy gave him the slightest nod.

“You will continue with your current duties, but now, when you bring your meals to him, you will bring your own as well, and wait there until he has been returned to his quarters. As his chair won't release him while you're there, you'll have to feed him. You will be wired with a video surveillance device, and in this way you will develop a supervised rapport with him. Then, once you've gained his trust, you will ask him the questions we provide you.” Bussard took a breath, weighing how much information he should ration out, then finally he said: “Our guest is none other than Dillon Cole.”

And although Maddy already knew this, she reacted with requisite shock. “My God!”

“God has nothing to do with this,” snapped Bussard. “Remember that, Lieutenant Haas. And also remember that if you repeat his name or the details of your assignment to anyone else in this facility, you will be severely dealt with.”

O
N THE MORNING OF
her new assignment, Maddy left her quarters just after dawn, wearing a sweatsuit. A daily run was one of the few liberties military personnel were allowed at the plant; it was one of the few activities not under intense scrutiny, and therefore Maddy's favorite time of the day. Maddy fell into stride by the time she rounded the north side of the reactor building, and followed the path into a patch of woods corralled within the facility's inner fence. Occasionally there were others on the path, but they always kept a respectable distance, like planes in a holding pattern. Today, however, she was joined by an unexpected companion. A golf cart pulled up alongside her from a connecting path, as if the driver had been waiting there for this ambush. Maddy moved to the side to let him pass, but he did not. He instead matched her speed.

She recognized him right away. Tessic. His overcoat was layered upon an expensive white suit that bespoke more pleasure than business.

“I've come to congratulate you, Lieutenant Haas.”

The thought of
the
Elon Tessic pursuing her in a golf cart was ludicrous. Here was a man whose company built everything from surveillance satellites to fighter jets. What possible business could he have with her? “Congratulate me on what, Mr. Tessic?”

“On your new assignment.”

Maddy slowed her pace down to a walk, taking a moment to size him up. His hair was only slightly graying, and his skin seasoned by the Mediterranean sun. Somehow she had thought he would look older. His smile seemed pleasant but unrevealing. “Why would you care about my assignment?”

“I not only care about it, I helped arrange it.”

Maddy chuckled. “You? You convinced Bussard?”

“I don't bother with Bussard. His superior is far more reasonable.”

“You met with General Harwood?”

He waved the thought away. “It wasn't a meeting, it was a luncheon. We both had the salmon special.” He pulled his cart to the side and stepped out, abandoning it. “May I walk with you, Lieutenant?”

“From what I gather you can walk anywhere you want.”

He chortled, but didn't deny it. “I called in many years' worth of favors to gain a high security access here. I assure you I don't take that for granted. Bussard, however, takes everything for granted.” A fellow officer jogged up behind them. Tessic didn't speak again until the man had run past and the sound of his footfalls had faded. “The American military has in their possession the single most powerful person ever born to our humble little species. And what do they do? They bring him dead horses and aging politicians. Clearly his purpose is greater than this—but they squander him on petty, small-minded tasks. Just as they've squandered you.”

He waited for a reaction from her, but she chose not to give one. Maddy didn't like this. No one—particularly a man like Tessic—spoke so candidly without expecting something from it. What did he want?

“Bussard is a very limited man,” he continued. “With limited perspective. He can't see the big picture, like you or I.”

“I see no picture, Mr. Tessic. I have a job to do, that's all.”

“You say that now—but there may come a time when the picture you see and the orders you are given contradict one another. I wonder what you'll do then.”

“Orders are orders.”

The path was coming toward the end of the wood, and
the bare gray walls of the plant loomed between the thinning pines. Tessic stopped, and turned to her.

“Do you believe in God, Lieutenant Haas?”

She hadn't expected the question. “I can't see how my beliefs are your business.”

“The way I see it, there are only two possibilities,” Tessic said. “Either there is purpose and meaning to our lives, or there is not, and everything is random and meaningless.”

“I'm not surprised you see everything in binary.”

Again he laughed. “That's all everything comes down to, isn't it? Zeros and ones? The separation of light from dark on the first day of creation.”

“And which do you believe in Mr. Tessic? The zero, or the one?” Oddly, she found herself actually caring about his response.

“I'm a practical man. The way I see it nothing can be gained by believing in a meaningless world. No accomplishments would be worth celebrating, no comfort in success. When you see life as meaningless, no amount of money in the world can buy the joy you desire. I've always found it practical to hold to the other alternative: that there is meaning and greater purpose to life.” He casually brushed some pine needles from his vicuna overcoat. “And so my trappings of success do not trap me. For that same reason, I believe there must be a purpose for the existence of Dillon Cole—and I can assure you it is not to rejuvenate livestock and despots.”

“I wouldn't have pegged you as a spiritual man.”

He nodded. “9906753,” he said, and at first offered no explanation. A phone number, she thought. Was this all just an elaborate come-on? His offhand demeanor darkened then, became a shade more solemn. “My mother was a survivor of the death camps. Did you know? The rest of her family died in the gas chambers.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Years ago, I arranged for her to undergo laser surgery to remove the number on her arm, but she refused. For her it was a battle scar. 9906753. A badge of courage and a reminder of those lost.”

Another officer jogged past them, this one a bit more interested in their presence than the first. He caught their gazes, but offered nothing more than a quick “g'morning” as he passed. It got them both moving again toward the plant.

“You see, Lieutenant, I must have faith that there is justice,” Tessic said before he left her. “Punishment for the wicked, and liberation for the innocent.”

And as Maddy went to prepare for her new assignment, she couldn't help but wonder what Tessic was planning, the punishment or the liberation.

T
RANSCRIPTION EXCERPT, DAY 201. 13:29 HOURS

“Do you think I'm evil, Maddy?”

“That depends—are you going to share that sundae?”

“No, I'm serious.”

“Why should you care what I think?”

“People out there think I'm God or the devil, and they don't leave room for anything in between. I want to know there's someone who can see me as human.”

“I wouldn't be here feeding you if I thought you weren't human.”

“If the shards are agents of evil, here to end the world, I wouldn't be too pleased about that, but I'd understand it. If we were spat out here to be gods, I could understand that, too.”

“From what I hear, you've been to both those places.”

“And so I know it's wrong. There's some other purpose, I just can't figure it out.”

“You've been in lockdown for six months, and you still haven't gotten over yourself?”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just because you are what you are, it doesn't ordain some grand purpose. Maybe it's your purpose to sit here, and be fed by me. Have you ever thought of that?”

“You don't believe that, Maddy. Any more than you believe it's your purpose to feed me.”

E
IGHTEEN HUNDRED MILES AWAY,
a dentist with no future was called to service in a war against Dillon, and the shards.
Martin Briscoe was, in fact, the perfect candidate, as his mind had been sharpened and focused into a weapon by a single image that plagued him. It was the image of his dead wife and son that obliterated most everything else in Martin Briscoe's mind. He was particularly focused on the day he was fired, and then saw the angels.

“How are things, Marty? Getting better?” His afternoon began in a conference. Banning, who sat at the head of the marble conference table, took the lead. He was a blowfish of a man with such bad breath that his patients preferred to be knocked out rather than endure his halitosis. They all must have heaved a collective sigh of relief when he gave up the drill for dental administration. He was the type of officious asshole who would add an “a” in front of a patient's name, as if their little dental factory wasn't impersonal enough.

“Fine, fine. Couldn't be better.” It was a rote response, geared at curtailing any further interrogation. It wasn't anyone's goddammed business how he was. Martin sat down, grinning at the half-dozen faces seated around the table. None of the associates of Eureka Dental had much of a poker face; they telegraphed their intentions long before saying them aloud. “Actually,” Martin added, “I'm having a marvelous day.”

The clutch of dentists looked to one another with that troubled, self-important gaze, like members of a secret society. Yes, Martin knew why they were gathered, and he was going to force them to go through the exercise in slow, tortured strokes. Let them be the ones to suffer the pain of this particular extraction.

Judith the Compassionate was the next to speak. “We've had even more complaints, Marty—from quite a variety of your patients.” She glanced down at a folder in front of her.
“I have them right here—would you care to look them over?”

Martin grinned, imagining that they were all bobbing heads in a shooting gallery, and he was firing away with the disgruntled joy of a postal worker. “No thanks.”

Banning the Halitoxic snatched the folder away from Judith and flipped through the pages.

“A Mrs. Susan Bernstein claims that you injected her daughter's anesthetic right
through
her tongue.”

What's the problem? The little bitch is pierced just about everywhere else.
Martin only grinned. Banning continued.

“And a Tommy Watkins claims that you carved your initials in his molar.”

Just like he's been tagging his initials all over town. The spray paint was still on his fingertips.
Martin only grinned. Banning angrily flipped a page.

“And now, a Mr. Fisher claims that this very morning, you urinated into his rinse sink during your examination! I couldn't believe it!”

“I could,” mumbled one of Banning's minions.

Banning slapped the grievance folder on the table for emphasis. “Good God, what were you thinking?!”

That Fisher was a prick in a power tie who deserved a little piss on his life.
“Listen, I've got a pulpotomy in ten, are we almost through here?”