The Dragon Factory (47 page)

“I—”

Cyrus stopped him with a shake of his head. “No, let me talk, Otto. Let me say this.” He stroked the pigeon’s delicate neck. The bird did not struggle to escape but seemed to enjoy the contact. It cooed at Cyrus, who smiled faintly. “Do you know what makes me saddest, Otto?”

“No, Mr. Cyrus.”

“It’s that I don’t think the Twins would ever understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. They see things in terms of product and profit, and they’ve become mired in that mind-set. It actually matters to them; it actually motivates them. They have no grand schemes. Their highest aspirations to date have been to twist genetics in order to make themselves rich. I . . . I long ago lost my ability to communicate with them.”

“To be fair, sir, you play a role in that—”

“Yes, but they should have seen through it and glimpsed the higher purpose. Just as we glimpsed through the foolishness of politics and war making to see the divine beauty of eugenics. Clarity is a tool, Otto, just as perception is a test. The Twins were bred to have greater intelligence. Their IQs are on a par with Einstein, with da Vinci. With
mine
. But . . . where is their Theory of Relativity? Where is their masterpiece? You might say that they’ve done what no one else has done, that they’ve twisted DNA and turned it to their will, but I say, ‘So what?’ They were given the gift of higher intelligence by design. I started them on a higher level and they should have aspired to more than clever toys for rich
fools. There’s no higher purpose in anything they’ve done, or anything they’ve imagined, and by that standard they are failures.”

“We could breed them,” offered Otto.

“Mm. Maybe. But that presents its own risks. No, Otto . . . I think we were both so enamored of their beauty and by their precociousness that we lost sight of our own plans for them. They are not the young gods of our dreams. Of my dreams.” He drew a breath and let out a long sigh. “If they are both taken, then we’ll harvest his sperm and her eggs and enough DNA to begin the next phase. If either or both are killed, then we’ll have to start with the DNA alone and hope that we can use it for gene therapy on the SAMs. I know this is vain, Otto, but we may not live long enough to see the true race of young gods become flesh. It may be two or three generations away, and it may be the SAMs alone who witness it.”

“I know,” said Otto, and he patted Cyrus on the shoulder.

“Of course,” said Cyrus with a flicker of his old mad delight, “at least we will be here to clear the way for the new gods. We will be here to see the mud people—the blacks and Jews and Gypsies and all of those disgusting mongrel races—wiped away. Not just reduced, but gone for good. We will live to see that!”

Otto glanced at his wristwatch. The numbers were matched to the Extinction Clock. He showed the numbers to Cyrus.
“Die Vernichtungs Welle.”

The Extinction Wave.

Those words and the numbers on the clock worked a transformation in Cyrus, whose face changed in a heartbeat from clouds of sadness to a sunburst of great joy.

“Nothing can stop it now,” murmured Cyrus.

“Nothing,” agreed Otto.

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:51
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 9 minutes E.S.T.

The hallway we followed was long and narrow, with doors only on the right-hand side. In one room we found another corpse. The victim was small and thin and had been partially devoured. The head was gone.

“Jesus,” said Bunny, “I hope that ain’t the Kid.”

“I think it’s a woman,” said Top. “
Was
a woman,” he corrected. “That ain’t our boy.”

Clustered around the body were more animal prints. They were scuffed, but it looked like there were two sizes of them. I pulled the door shut and we kept moving, following the blue line that was supposed to lead us to the Kid. Only I’d told the Kid to go hide, so we might be heading in the wrong direction and we had no way to get in touch with SAM and arrange a better rendezvous. I thought about the headless corpse and hoped Top was right.

We cleared all of the rooms and found no one who looked like a teenage kid. Three times guards came at us. Three times we put them down. And, luckily, we saw no more of those freaking dogs. Or whatever they were.

Suddenly I heard a harsh buzz in my ear and then a voice.

“The jamming stopped. Scanner’s up,” called Top. “Commlink’s back online.”

I switched to the command channel.

“Cowboy for Dugout, Cowboy for Dugout.”

Immediately Grace Courtland’s voice was in my ear. “Dugout here, Cowboy. Amazing on the line. Effing good to hear your voice!”

“Right back atcha.”

“Deacon here, too, Cowboy,” said Mr. Church. “Sit rep.”

I gave it to him in a few terse sentences.

“Medical team and full backup are inbound,” Church said. “Say fifteen minutes.”

“Haven’t found our local friend,” I said, “but contact is iminent. Tell arriving medical staff to watch for animals of unknown type. They look like dogs but are bigger than tigers. We took down two, but they are very—I repeat—
very
dangerous. This ain’t a petting zoo, so shoot on sight.”

“Roger that,” said Church, and in the background I heard Grace mutter, “Effing hell.” “Cowboy, we have additional intel for you. We put a lip-reader on that hunt video. Most of what we got was worthless, comments on the hunt, the weather, and the mosquitoes. But we hit gold on one conversation when the men in the video had stopped to take a drink from their canteens. We don’t yet understand what we got, but the content is alarming. Sending a transcript to your PDA now.”

“I’ll look later—”

“Unless you are under immediate fire, look now,” said Church.

“Roger that,” I said more calmly than I felt. I pulled my PDA from my pocket and hit some keys. The transcript came up right away. It was a snatch of a conversation between one of the unidentified Americans and Harold S. Sunderland, brother of the senator. It read:

NOTE FROM TRANSLATOR:
The unnamed person was smoking a cigarette, which complicated the translation. Illegible and unclear words have been marked.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
Where are you going to be during the Wave?

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
Shit. Anywhere but Africa.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
[illegible] . . . not like it’ll happen overnight. [illegible] . . . months for the [illegible] to kill that many niggers.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
Sure, but what if it jumps? All we need is some white guy who can’t keep it in his pants banging some jig and we—

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
[Shakes head] Otto said it don’t [illegible] like that. Otherwise they’d have to [illegible] half of South Africa.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
Yeah, well, they said AIDS couldn’t jump from a monkey to humans, and then some faggot bones a chimp or—

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
It was a rhesus monkey, Einstein, and I don’t [illegible] it just jumped. I asked Otto about that and [illegible] me a sly-ass wink like he knew something.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
Yeah, well, that Kraut fuck had better be right about that, ’cause I am not dying of some jigaboo disease.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
I hear you. [The next sentence is illegible as he has his hand on the cigarette, blocking his lips.]

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
Me, too.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
I’m sure as hell going to stay [illegible] until after September 1.

HAROLD SUNDERLAND:
I thought you trusted Otto.

UNKNOWN AMERICAN:
I do, but I don’t like taking chances. When that frigging Extinction Wave hits I don’t want. . . .

NOTE:
Remainder illegible.

While I listened every drop of my blood had turned to greasy ice water in my veins. I tapped my earbud.

“Is that all there was?”

“Yes,” said Church.

“I can see why the Kid thought we’d be interested.”

“Comments, reactions?”

“It doesn’t exactly fill me with pride.”

“For being a white man?” Grace asked.

“For being a carbon-based life-form. I’d love to have some playtime with both of those jokers.”

“Agreed.”

“How sure was the translator about the phrase ‘Extinction Wave’?”

“Very. What does it suggest to you?”

“The same thing that it suggests to you, boss. Someone’s about to launch a major plague in Africa that will target nonwhites. Is there such a thing?”

“Dr. Hu is working on that. Most of the diseases that sweep Africa are based more on health conditions, lack of food, polluted water. That sort of thing. Diseases focusing on racial groups tend to be genetic rather than viral or bacteriological.”

“The Otto he mentioned has to be Otto Wirths. What did you come up with on him?”

Church said, “Nothing at the moment. We’ve got MindReader working on it. However, we got a hit on the other name the boy gave you. Cyrus Jakoby. If it’s the same man, he’s the father of the Jakoby Twins.”

“As in Paris and Hecate? Those albinos who keep showing up in the tabloids? She can’t keep her clothes on and he’s always getting thrown out of restaurants. Aren’t they scientists of some kind?”

“They’re geneticists, in point of fact. Superstars in the field of transgenics.”

“Well how about that? Any ties to the Cabal or eugenics?”

“Nothing so far. And nothing much on Cyrus Jakoby except a few offhand references the Jakoby Twins made in interviews to the effect that their father was in poor health. MindReader has found twelve Cyrus Jakobys in North America and another thirty-four in Europe. The cross-referencing will take a while, but there are no initial hits or connections to anything that rings a bell.”

“Very well. Let me fetch our young informant and see what kind of intel we can squeeze out of him.”

“He seems to be on our side, Cowboy,” said Grace. “Squeeze lightly.”

“How lightly I squeeze depends on how forthcoming he is, Grace. The words ‘Extinction Wave’ don’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies.”

I signed off.

Bunny said, “ ’Extinction Wave.’ Holy shit. Who thinks up stuff like that?”

“When I meet him,” said Top, “I’m hoping he’ll be in my crosshairs.”

“With you on that.”

There was another burst of static and then a desperate voice said, “Cowboy? Cowboy, are you there?”

It was the Kid and we were back online.

“I’m here, Kid. Where are you?”

“I’m in the House of Screams.”

“Say again?”

“The conditioning lab. Red district. Look at the floor. Follow the red line. It ends right outside where I am. I had to run and then they tried to grab me, but I got away. I—”

Whatever else he was going to say was suddenly drowned out by the roar of gunfire and the sound of a lot of people screaming. Then nothing.

“Kid! SAM . . . !”

But I was talking to a dead mike.

The red lines on the floor stretched out in front of us.

We ran.

The Hive

Sunday, August 29, 3:55
P.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 68 hours, 5 minutes E.S.T.

We crashed through another set of double doors that opened on an atrium that was thick with exotic plants and trees in ceramic pots. The plant leaves, the pots, and the floor were all splattered with blood. The floor was littered with shell casings. There were bodies everywhere. The dead were all strangely similar: short, muscular, red-haired, and dressed in cotton trousers and tank tops. None of the dead had weapons on or near them. From what I could see in the split second I had to take in details was that the entry wounds were on their backs as if they’d been gunned down while fleeing.

The atrium was crowded with people. Scores of the red-haired people were fighting to get through an open doorway into a room labeled: “Barracks 3.” A dozen guards stood in a rough firing line, blasting
away at the fleeing, screaming people. One guard stood apart. He was a big man with a buzz cut and an evil grin. He was wrestling with a teenage boy who had to be SAM. The Kid was screaming and kicking at the big guy but for all his fury wasn’t doing the guard a lot of harm. The guard even looked amused.

SAM broke free and dug something out of his pocket—a black rock the size of an egg—and then leaped with a howl and tried to smash the guard’s skull with it. The guard swatted SAM out of the air like a bug.

All of this happened in a split second as we pelted across the atrium. Somehow through the gunfire and screams the guards must have heard us. They turned and began swinging their weapons toward us.