The Golden City (3 page)

One of the young men rapped his knuckles on the window. Dressler nodded and switched on an intercom.

“We’ve done the system check three times,” the technician said. “Everything is ready to go.”

“Good. We’re going to start up now. Dr. Assad, would you please come into the control room.”

Dressler switched off the intercom as the young woman with the head-covering entered the control room. “I’d like you to meet Dr. Assad. She was born in Syria, but has spent most of her life here in the States. With Mr. Boone’s permission, she’s been given a red level security access.”

Dr. Assad smiled shyly and avoided Michael eyes. “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Corrigan.”

Everyone sat down and Dr. Dressler starting typing commands. Boone was the last person to find a chair, but he never relaxed. He was either watching the people in the room or studying the computer screen.

For the first hour, they followed an established protocol. Michael heard an electrical humming noise that started and paused and started again. Sometimes it was so loud the observation window began to vibrate. Dr. Assad had a round face and very dark eyebrows. She spoke with a calm voice as different levels of the computer were tested.

“The first ten qubits are operative. Now activating group two.”

As time passed, the computer woke up and became aware of its power. Dressler explained that the machine was able to learn from its mistakes and approach complex problems from different angles. During the second hour, Dr. Assad asked the computer to use Shor’s algorithm—a sequence of instructions that broke large numbers into smaller divisors. During the third hour, the machine began to examine the symmetries of something called an E-8, a geometric object
that had 57 dimensions. After five hours had passed, Dr. Assad’s monitor screen went blank for a few seconds, and then the calculations continued without pause.

“What just happened?” Michael asked.

Dressler and Assad glanced at each other. “It’s what we saw last time,” Dressler said. “At a certain point, the computer begins sending substantial amounts of particles off to another realm.”

“So it’s like radio signals sent off into space?”

“Not exactly,” Dressler said. “It will take light years for radio and television signals to reach another galaxy. Our computer’s electrons are going to some place that’s not so distant—a parallel level of reality.”

Around the sixth hour, one of the technicians was sent out to get dinner. Everyone was munching on chips and sandwiches when the monitor screen flashed several times. Dr. Assad put down her mug of coffee and Dressler scooted his office chair over to her work station.

“It’s coming,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Michael asked.

“The messages from our friends. This is what happened before,”

A dark wall of “plus” symbols flashed onto the screen. Then spaces appeared between them like holes in a wall. A few minutes later, the computer began creating geometric patterns. The first ones were flat like paper snowflakes, but then they gained dimension and symmetry. Balls, cylinders and cones floated across the screen as if they were being pushed by underwater currents.

“There!” Dressler shouted. “Right there! See it?” And everyone stared at the first number—a three.

More numbers appeared. Groups of them. Michael thought they were random, but Dr. Assad whispered, “This happened before. They’re special numbers. All prime.”

The monitor screen showed equations using different symbols, and then the equations vanished and shapes returned to the screen.
Michael thought the shapes looked like balloons, but then they became living things: fat globular cells that divided in two and reproduced themselves.

Then—letters. At least, Dressler said they were letters. At first, they were geometric scribbles and scrawls that looked like graffiti scratched on a window. Then these symbols become solid and more familiar.

“That’s Hebrew,” Dr. Assad whispered. “That’s Arabic … definitely. Chinese … I think. I’m not sure.”

Even Boone looked enchanted. “I see an A and a T,” he said. “And that one looks like a G.”

The letters arranged themselves in lines. Were they in code or just random groups? Then spaces appeared between the letters, forming three-letter, five-letter, and twelve-letter segments. Was that a word? Michael asked himself. Do I see words? And then words appeared in different languages.

“That’s the word
read
in French,” Dr. Assad said with flat voice. “And that’s the word
see
in Polish. I spent a month in Warsaw when I was …”

“Keep translating,” Michael said.

“Blue. Soft
. In German. Those new words look Coptic. English now.
Infinity. Confusion …”

The words joined each other, forming phrases that sounded like surrealistic poetry.
Dog take the star road. The random knife with whiskers
.

By the eighth hour, messages were being sent in several languages, but Michael focused on nine words written in English.

come to us

come to us

COME—TO—US

W
hen she had finished her geometry problems, Alice Chen slid off the bench, grabbed a scone from the breadbox, and pushed open the cooking hut’s heavy door. It was cold and windy on Skellig Columba, but Alice left her quilted jacket open. Her black braids swung back and forth as she hurried up the pathway that connected the three terraces on the northern edge of the island. Two rainwater catch basins and a garden with parsnips and cabbage were on the final terrace, and then the pathway disappeared and she was striding across rocky ground dotted with sorrel and saw thistle.

Alice scrambled up a boulder, kicking off bits of black lichen as if they were ashes from an ancient fire. When she reached the top, she turned slowly around and surveyed the island like a guard who had just climbed up a watchtower. Alice was twelve years old—a small, serious girl who had once practiced the cello and built forts in the desert with her friends. Now she was living on an isolated island with four nuns who thought they were taking care of her—not realizing that the opposite was true. When Alice was alone, she could assume
her new identity: the Warrior Princess of Skellig Columba, Guardian of the Poor Claires.

She could smell peat smoke coming from the cooking hut and the rotting odor of the seaweed hauled up from the shore and used to fertilize the garden. The cold wind coming off the water touched the collar of her jacket and made her eyes water. Directly below her were the chapel and the four convent huts, each one resembling a stone beehive with slit windows and recessed doors. Looking out at the ocean, she could see the whitecaps on the waves and a dark line on the horizon that marked the circumference of her world.

The Poor Claires cooked special treats for Alice, mended her torn clothes and poured pots of hot water into a galvanized washtub so that she could enjoy a once-a-week bath. Sister Maura made her read Shakespeare plays and Irish poetry, and Sister Ruth, the eldest nun, guided her through a Victorian Era textbook of Euclidian geometry. Alice slept with the nuns in the dormitory hut. There was always an oil lamp burning in the room; when Alice woke up in the middle of the night, she could see the nuns’ heads lying in the center of goose-down pillows.

She knew that these gentle, devout women cared about her—perhaps they even loved her—but they couldn’t protect her from the dangers of the world. A few months earlier, Tabula mercenaries had landed on the island in a helicopter. While Alice and the nuns hid in a cave, the men broke down the door of the storage hut and killed Vicki Fraser. Vicki was a very kind person, and it was painful to think about her death.

Alice believed that everything would have been different if Maya had been on the island. The Harlequin would have used her sword and knives and shotgun to destroy all the men on the helicopter. If Maya had been living at New Harmony, she would have protected
Alice’s mother and the rest of the people living there when the Tabula arrived. Alice knew that everyone at New Harmony was dead, but they were still with her. Sometimes, she was doing something completely ordinary—tying her shoes or mashing her potatoes with a fork—and then she saw her mother getting dressed or heard her friend Brian Bates playing his trumpet.

Alice jumped off the boulder, turned away from the convent, and headed west across the rocky ground. The island was formed when two mountain peaks pushed their way out of the water, and the bluish-gray limestone was riddled with caves and sinkholes. During her months on Skellig Columba, she had stacked up columns of rocks; some were signposts for her different pathways around the island while others were false clues that might lead a careless invader off the edge of a cliff.

Her storage spot was a badger-sized hollow hidden inside a patch of weeds. She kept a rusty butcher knife that she had found in the storage hut and a paring knife stolen from the convent kitchen wrapped in a sheet of plastic. Alice thrust the butcher knife beneath her belt, wearing it like a short sword, and strapped the paring knife to her forearm with two large rubber bands. There were no trees on the island, but she had found a walking stick down by the landing dock, and she used it as a tool to probe mysterious places. Now that she was armed, she tried to walk like a Harlequin—calm but alert, never fearful and uncertain.

After hiking for about twenty minutes, she reached the western end of the island. The constant attack of the waves had cut away chunks of limestone. Now the cliff looked like five gray fingers reaching into the cold water. Alice walked to the largest of the fingers and stood near the edge. It was a six-foot jump over a crevasse to the next section of cliff. If she slipped and fell, it was a long drop down to the jagged rocks that received the surge of each new wave.

The gap between the two sections of cliff was wide enough to make the jump difficult, but not impossible. She had already imagined what it would feel like if she didn’t reach the other side. Her arms would flap wildly like a bird that had just been shot. She would have just enough time to hear the waves and see the rocks before the darkness reached out and claimed her.

A flock of shearwaters circled overhead, calling to each other with a wavering cry that made her feel lonely. If she looked toward the center of the island, she could see the cairn that marked Vicki’s grave. Hollis Wilson had dug a hole and piled up stones like a madman. He had refused to speak, and the only sound came from the blade of his shovel as he jabbed it into the rocky ground.

Alice turned and stared out at the empty horizon. She could walk away, returning to the warmth of the cooking hut, but then she would never know if she were as brave as Maya. Alice placed her walking stick near a clump of grass and adjusted the two knives so that they wouldn’t shift around when she moved quickly. She stood at the far edge of the cliff and realized that she had only about ten feet of running space before she had to leap across the gap.

Do it
, she told herself.
You can’t hesitate
. Clenching her fists, she took a deep breath, and then dashed forward. As she approached the edge, she stopped suddenly. Her left foot kicked a white pebble into the gap; it bounced off the walls and disappeared into the shadows below.

“Coward,” she whispered as she backed away from the edge. “You
are
a coward.” Feeling small and weak and twelve-years-old, she gazed out at the seabirds riding the air currents up to the heavens.

When she took a few steps back to level ground, she saw a black shape come over the ridge. It was Sister Maura, red-cheeked and breathing hard. The wind grabbed at her veil and the sleeves of her dress.

“Alice!” the nun shouted. “I’m not pleased with you. Not pleased at all. You didn’t finish diagramming your sentences and Sister Ruth said you didn’t peel the carrots. Back to the hut. No dawdling. You know the rule—no play until work is done.”

Alice took a few more steps back and concentrated on a patch of red lichen on the other side of the gap. There must have been something in the way she held her body that told Sister Maura what was going to happen.

“Stop!” the nun screamed. “You’ll kill yourself! You’ll—”

But the rest of the words were absorbed by the wind as the Warrior Princess ran toward the edge.

And jumped.

H
ollis Wilson carried his new weapon in a guitar case stuffed with wadded-up newspaper. A few weeks ago, he had asked Winston Abosa to supply him with a bolt-action rifle capable of hitting a target at least a hundred yards away. Winston owned a drum shop in Camden Market and he used his contacts there to purchase a stolen Lee-Enfield with a hunting scope. The original Lee-Enfield rifle was used in World War I; this Mark 4-T version had been developed in World War II for snipers. After Hollis had fired the rifle, he planned to leave it on the rooftop and walk away.

London police officers usually noticed Hollis when he strolled down the sidewalk or sat in an underground train. Even when he wore a business suit and necktie, there was something in the way he carried himself that seemed a bit too confident—almost defiant. The guitar case was the perfect camouflage. When Hollis encountered a police officer near the entrance of the Camden Town tube station, the young woman glanced at him for only a second and then turned away. He was a musician—that’s all—a black man in a shabby overcoat who was going to play on a street corner.

The rifle shifted inside the case as he passed through the turnstile. For Hollis, the London underground always felt less intense than the New York City subway. The cars were smaller, almost cozy, and the train made a soft whooshing sound when it entered the station.

Hollis took the Northern Line to Embankment and then switched over to the Circle Line. He got off at Blackfriars Station and walked briskly up New Bridge Street, away from the river. It was about eight o’clock in the evening; most of the suburban commuters had already left their jobs and hurried home to the warm light of their televisions. As usual, the drones were still working—sweeping the street, painting women’s toenails, delivering take-out food. Their faces showed hunger and exhaustion, a grinding desire to lie down and sleep. A billboard hanging on the side of a building showed a young blonde woman looking ecstatic as she spooned a new kind of custard out of a carton.
Happy Today?
asked the billboard, and Hollis smiled to himself.
Not happy
, he thought.
But I might get some satisfaction
.