Thirst No. 4 (42 page)

Cindy and I stare at each other. She nods. I shake my head.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I ask.

“It’s the only logical explanation,” Cindy replies.

“It’s not logical at all. It’s impossible,” I say.

“What are you two talking about?” Matt demands.

Cindy taps her laptop. “The Cradle’s Internet program. Someone just activated it.”

“How?” Matt asks.

“You mean why,” Cindy says. “Because we killed the Cradle.”

Shanti sits up and rubs her aching head. “Who activated what?” she mumbles.

“But if they’re all dead,” I say, “then who’s left alive to turn it on? Cindy, are you absolutely sure you had every member of the Cradle in that facility?”

“Yes. I even forced kids who were not feeling well to attend your sessions. When the bombs exploded, it was like the Array’s head was chopped off.”

“Then it can’t be the program,” I say.

“What if they designed it to take over if they ever stopped feeding it fresh data or new lines of code?” Cindy says.

“They didn’t know anything about computers,” Matt protests. “They were just a bunch of kids.”

“What about the intelligence they were channeling?” Cindy asks. “We have no idea what it was capable of. I find it fascinating that it’s chosen to go after us only minutes after we killed its main mouthpiece.”

“You speak of the program as if it’s alive,” Matt says.

“Maybe it is,” Cindy says.

“That’s science fiction,” Seymour says. “We’re decades if not centuries away from developing intelligent machines.”

“I’m not talking about human programmers,” Cindy says. “I’m talking about an intelligence that might have existed before our sun was even born. We have no idea how old the powers are that the kids were in contact with.”

“Tarana,” I say.

Cindy nods. “He taught us stuff no one in the world knew. He was the real president of IIC. He helped us make trillions and it was always obvious to me that he was just the beginning.”

“Hold on a second,” I say. “Let’s not get carried away. I have no trouble with the idea that the kids were trying to install a gigantic program on the Internet. But I’m with Seymour and Matt. The program can’t be conscious.”

Cindy frowns. “I have a slightly different problem I’m struggling with. I’d expect that no matter how sophisticated the program is, it must still need a biological link to connect to the spiritual realms.”

“Huh?” Shanti says.

“She’s saying the program still needs a person to help it channel the evil spirits,” Seymour says.

“Then we’re back to the possibility that the Cradle must have members we don’t know about,” I say.

“If they existed, the IIC had no record of them,” Cindy says.

“That counts for nothing,” Matt says. “Those kids could have been meeting behind your backs for years. There could be another three hundred of them out there for all we know.”

“I don’t think I’d go that far,” I say. “The Cradle was anxious to destroy the Telar’s Link. It was an obsession. That was the only way I got them to accept me and Umara. They wanted all the help they could get. If they had another group, they would have brought it to aid with the attack.”

“Did you ever sense another group when you were connected to the Cradle?” Shanti asks.

“No,” I say.

“But you were definitely aware of evil spirits?” Seymour asks.

“Absolutely,” I say.

“Who is Tarana?” Matt asks.

“A powerful Familiar,” Cindy replies.

“Could he be something more?” I ask.

Cindy shrugs. “You have more experience with these realms than I do. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the Familiars are tightly organized in a hierarchal fashion. If that’s the case,
then it stands to reason the ones on top may have evolved into something greater than our small human brains can even imagine.”

We hear a siren at our backs. I look in the rearview mirror. A police car is trying to flag us down. I glance at Matt, who shakes his head.

“I wasn’t speeding,” he says.

“What name did you rent this van under?”

“Robert Reeve. The ID is squeaky clean.”

“This van was parked outside the entrance to the IIC’s headquarters,” Cindy says. “Its plates could have been picked up by our remote cameras.”

“And fed to the Cradle’s Internet program?” Seymour asks. “I doubt it.”

“See what the cop wants,” Cindy says. “But I suggest we all be ready to move fast, if necessary. We can’t be taken in for questioning. We’d never be released.”

Matt pulls the van over to the side. The police car parks and we note we’re dealing with two officers. One comes up on Matt’s side, the other on mine. I’m surprised to see they have already drawn their weapons.

“Can I help you, officer?” Matt asks the policeman after rolling down his window.

“License and registration please.” Matt’s cop is older, sun-beaten, carries a gut from too many doughnut stops over the years. He has the face of a bulldog, he looks angry at the world.
He takes Matt’s paperwork in his left hand while he continues to hold his gun in his right.

The cop outside my window is young and gawky. He has nervous blue eyes that remind me of a fish out of water. His gun looks like it might break his frail arm if he ever summoned the nerve to fire it. I push a button and my window rolls down and I smile.

“Beautiful morning, isn’t it?” I ask, and it’s true. Locked in IIC’s headquarters, I had lost all awareness of what time of day it was. The cop wants to return my smile because I’m cute but he’s got something else on his mind.

“Where you folks from?” he asks me.

“Lots of places. We’re old friends. We’re just passing through.”

He nods nervously but doesn’t respond. He keeps looking to the other cop for directions. Bulldog finally takes a step back and orders Matt out of the vehicle.

“Why, officer?” Matt asks calmly. “What have I done wrong?”

“Listen, punk, I just gave you an order.”

Cindy leans forward. “Don’t listen to him. By law, he has to tell you why he’s stopped us and why he wants you to exit the vehicle.”

Matt stares at Bulldog. “Did you hear that? This woman is a lawyer. I demand to know why you pulled us over.”

Bulldog raises his gun and puts it to Matt’s head. “Get out now. Last warning.”

“We can’t let this escalate,” Cindy says. “Alisa, use your powers.”

Cindy isn’t aware of the extent of Matt’s power so it’s natural she should turn to me to get us out of this jam. I’m happy to oblige. I turn to the nervous guy on my right and catch his eyes.

“Go back to your vehicle and forget all about us. Treat yourself to a milk shake this afternoon. You need to gain some weight.”

As the young cop turns back toward the squad car, his partner gets more nervous. He rams the gun up against Matt’s skull and pulls back the hammer. “You want to die, huh? You want me to blow your brains out?”

“Stop,” I say calmly. “Relax and lower your gun.” The angry cop does as I say and I continue. “There’s no reason to get excited. You don’t want to hurt anyone. You’re a good man and a fine officer.”

“I’m a great police officer,” the man mumbles.

“That’s right,” I agree. “Now tell us why you stopped our van?”

The tension flows from the man’s face. He stands swaying like an unsupported mannequin. A breeze could blow him over. He speaks like a robot.

“An all-points bulletin has been issued for a vehicle of this make and license-plate number. We were warned that you are armed and dangerous. We were told to approach you with extreme caution.”

“Do you know what crime we are supposed to be guilty of?” I ask.

“No, Miss.”

I hold the cop’s eye and heat up his synapses. “None of these orders have anything to do with us. Return to your car and forget you ever saw us. Also, erase meeting us on the digital tapes you keep in your vehicle. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“We’re going to leave now and you two are going to take the rest of the day off. Go to the Chumash Casino outside Solvang and have some fun at the blackjack tables.”

“Go to the casino. Play blackjack. Thank you. Good-bye.”

The cop walks away and I order Matt to get back on the road.

“We have to get another car,” Cindy says.

“Do you think?” I say sarcastically.

“Why so testy, Alisa? It’s unlike you.”

Because I’m damned. Because it’s all hopeless.

I dislike using my psychic abilities. I feel as if Tarana is attached to every subtle act I take. My soul is still connected to his. We are like allies, only he believes he’s in charge. The feeling of being watched persists.

“I was looking forward to relaxing after we destroyed the Source and the Cradle,” I say. “Now we have the Internet sending complete strangers after us. It kind of wrecks your day, you know.”

“We have to get out of the city,” Matt says. “The more isolated we are, the more off the grid, the safer we’ll be. I have a feeling it’s going to take time to figure this one out.”

“To live off the grid we need cash,” Seymour says.

“I’ve got plenty,” I say.

“So do I,” Cindy says.

“What does it mean to live off the grid?” Shanti asks.

“It means we don’t pay for anything with credit cards,” Seymour says. “We don’t go anywhere with security cameras. We don’t even use a phone or log on to a computer. And we’ll have to change our appearance.”

Shanti is dismayed. “Can a person live like that nowadays?”

“Not easily,” Seymour says with disgust.

W
e end up in a hole-in-the-wall motel in the Nevada desert, in a small town called Baker. The town is famous for being a place to drive through while on the way to Las Vegas, it being only a half an hour outside of Sin City. In the summer the average temperature is a hundred and ten. In the fall—the present—it drops to a comfortable ninety-nine. I can only assume the people who live in Baker are preparing for an eternity in hell.

We rent three rooms for twenty-five dollars each. Since we stole the truck we arrived in, we park it a mile away to disassociate ourselves from it.

Each room has either twin beds or a queen-sized bed. Shanti and I end up with the latter. We’ll be sharing the same mattress, although I doubt I’ll sleep much.

Our room comes with a creaky air conditioner that blows
freezing air for fifteen minutes before stopping for the rest of the hour. It is like it knows how little we paid for the room and it doesn’t want to overwork itself.

I offer to go out and get Shanti a bag of ice.

“You can sleep with it near your head. It will keep your blood from boiling.”

“I’m from India, I don’t mind the heat,” she reminds me. She has just come out of the shower and is combing her long black hair. I’ve showered as well and am sitting in an oversized Lakers T-shirt I bought at a nearby gas station. It’s all I wear, I’m not shy, but Shanti has on a cotton robe she’d be better off without.

“I’m sorry about the mess we’re in,” I say. “I keep fighting to get rid of our enemies, but no matter how many battles we win, the situation keeps getting worse.”

Shanti shakes her head as she presses her dripping hair with a towel.

“I think the situation’s improving,” she says. “A month ago we had the Telar and the IIC both trying to kill us. Now they’re largely out of the picture and we just have a computer virus to worry about.”

“It’s not a virus, it’s a program. And it’s probably smarter than us. I can’t begin to imagine how we can destroy it.”

“If the story about the Hydra’s true, then maybe it’s the immortal head that never dies, and the best we can do is bury it somewhere.”

“Hopefully in a mainframe in Antarctica.”

“If that’s what it takes,” Shanti says.

“I can see a computer program being written so that it could infiltrate the FBI and all the other law enforcement databases and convince them that we’re dangerous people that need to be tracked down and arrested. But what I don’t understand is how fast it went into operation. We blew up the kids and half an hour later we’re on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. It’s like someone tipped the program off.”

“A lot of IIC people escaped the blast.”

“I arranged for most of them to escape. But how many of them knew about the Cradle’s Internet program?”

“It sounds like the thing’s haunting you,” Shanti says.

“It is. Cindy’s remark about a program, no matter how sophisticated it is, still needing a human liaison stuck with me. The woman might be a monster but she’s insightful.”

“So you’re saying there is another Cradle out there?”

“No. Like I said in the van, I think the Cradle would have called in all its resources to fight the Source. Plus, when I joined with the kids, I never sensed them thinking about another Cradle.”

“Could you read their thoughts?” Shanti asks.

“I had a sense of the sum of their minds. Trust me, that last time we went after the Source, they were scared. They thought the Link was going to fry them.”

“Maybe they sensed the virus working in their blood.”

I lower my head. “Maybe.”

Shanti drops her towel and looks distressed. “I’m sorry, I said that without thinking. I know how hard it was for you to give the order to inject them with the virus. That’s the kind of decision I could never make.”

“What would you have done in my shoes?”

“I’m the wrong person to ask.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m weak, I can’t hurt a fly.”

“Making life-and-death decisions doesn’t make a person strong. But when I weighed the risks of letting the kids go, it just felt too dangerous.”

“I understand.”

“How did you feel during the final session? You came out of it looking like hell.”

“Just sitting near it gave me an awful headache.”

“So you did link with us?”

“Yes.”

“What did you experience during the session?”

“I didn’t see things as clearly as you. But I did see images of Egypt and how the Telar were hiding in a temple beneath the sand. I guess because I’ve spent time with her, I felt Umara close at hand. I sensed when she spoke to you.”