“Excuse me, ” I said slowly, “but would you repeat that last bit?”
Eli’s tongue began to click as he stared at the legs of my coveralls. “You’re really a very in-between size, Gideon. We had a hell of a time finding clothes for you, and I’m afraid this body armor’s strictly off the rack.”
“The targeting and firing mechanisms,” Jonah continued, still focused on the gun, “are very easy to operate—Malcolm was able to simplify the design sketches that Colonel Slayton brought with him when he left the Pentagon. You can choose either manual or voice-operated—”
“Jonah?” I said, trying to be calm. “I really will pay attention to the gun in a minute. But just that last bit again. Please.”
“Uh-oh.” Eli smiled, rolling down the cuffs of the coverall legs so that they touched the boots. “Didn’t I warn you not to go blurting it out, Jonah?”
“What?” Jonah let my arm fall. “You mean about Larissa?” I nodded once slowly, and he said, “I don’t know why you’d be shocked. Did you think a woman like that wasn’t going to have a past?”
“A past?” I echoed. “What—how—I mean, how did she—”
“Well,” Jonah went on, “so far as I know, she’s always had a kind of fascination with personal violence—especially politico-corporate killers. I think she got actively involved through a contact in Germany, and pretty soon she found out that she was very good at it. In her first year she knocked off three chief execs of multinationals, along with two heads of state. I’ll let her tell you which ones.”
“Okay,” Eli said, standing up. “Listen, Gideon, the suit will monitor your body’s vital signs and make most microclimate and physiological adjustments automatically. But in Afghanistan there may be—”
I held a quick hand up. “Just—one second, Eli. Just one damned minute, okay?” I turned back to Jonah. “But—I mean, why? She couldn’t have needed the money.”
“Of course not,” Jonah replied, opening a shoulder pouch on the coveralls to reveal a flexible, highly miniaturized control board. “Hydrocarbon in the microturbine, check, operating at one hundred watts. Armor integrity uncompromised—”
I put a hand over the pouch, blocking his view of the board. “Then why?” I repeated.
Jonah shrugged. “You’ve talked to her. She’s got a highly developed, albeit highly idiosyncratic, moral code. She and Malcolm both do. Take the case that Colonel Slayton tracked her down on—”
“The case that she let Colonel Slayton track her down on,” Eli added, helping me back out of the coveralls.
“True,” Jonah agreed. “You see, Gideon, she was trying to lure him into a private meeting so she could convince him to join our effort. It worked, too—and why not? I mean, there was Slayton, stewing in the Pentagon about the way he and his men had been betrayed in Taiwan, and then he hears about the murder of an American software magnate in Taipei. The man had been killed, according to an anonymous tip, because he’d made an immoral fortune by exploiting the horrendous prison-labor laws that the Chinese instituted on Taiwan after reunification. Given Slayton’s experience, the story interested him. But he hit a blank wall, I mean, there were no leads. And for the Chinese police to turn up no leads on that kind of case, well—that’s a lot of torturing for no result. But as Eli says, Larissa eventually let Slayton find her so she could make the offer.” Shifting gears again, Jonah indicated the racks of weapons. “Now, most of this stuff you’re probably never going to use—advanced antiarmor and anti-aircraft ordnance, the rail weapons that you’ve already seen, highly miniaturized nuclear devices—”
“Jonah,” I said, “can you please just stay on this subje—what?” I moved closer to a rack of what looked like small compressed-air canisters. “Nuclear devices? What the hell are those doing here?”
“Slayton again,” Eli answered. “When Larissa and Malcolm talked him into defecting, the man took everything out of the Pentagon that wasn’t nailed down. He had the highest possible security clearance, you see, as he was—”
“One of their top men in weapons R and D,” I finished for him, remembering what Malcolm had said. “But why did he agree to come over?”
“Well, the rest of us have speculated on that quite a bit,” Eli answered. Then he smiled as I cautiously edged just my face closer to the nuclear devices. “Oh, go on, Gideon,” he said, picking one up and tossing it to me. Screaming as I caught it, I glanced up, only to see his grin getting bigger. “They’re not armed,” he said with a laugh. “How crazy do you think we are?” I looked at him dubiously, and he nodded. “Point taken. But they are safe.”
“All right, then, you play with them,” I answered, tossing the canister back. “And go on about what Slayton’s doing here.”
Eli laughed again as Jonah took up the story: “He’d been working on one of the highest-priority projects in American military history—ever heard of ‘influence technology’?”
“No,” I answered. “Doesn’t sound particularly deadly, though.”
“Maybe not in the conventional sense,” Jonah said. “It’s basically the development of advanced population control techniques—figuring out ways to give the military the power to make whole communities believe whatever the Pentagon wants them to believe. You know how every few years most of the population of Phoenix claims it’s being invaded by UFOs? That’s Slayton’s department—they use air force squadrons flying in highly synchronized formations, equipped with new kinds of running lights.”
“So you think he got fed up with the government after Taiwan,” I said, “then got interested in pulling off hoaxes when he was doing this influence technology, and that’s why he decided to join you?”
“Close as we can tell,” Jonah answered. “He’s never been the most forthcoming person, the colonel. At any rate, he brought along the designs for most of these weapons—and for some that you’ll see later. Most were abandoned by the Americans because of prototype failures and cost overruns, neither of which presented Malcolm with much of a problem.”
I took in a very deep breath, still studying all the hardware around me. “So what happened then?” I said. “With your work, I mean.”
“Then things really got busy,” Jonah said, checking a nearby clock. “We don’t have time to tell you all the stories, but I suppose you’d better hear the big ones, if we expect you to believe us.”
“Yes,” I said. “I suppose I had.”
The pair of them exchanged one of those quick looks of unspoken communication and understanding that are so often characteristic of twins; then they both nodded, and Eli said to his brother, “You take the gospel. I’ll take the bones.”
“Excuse me?” I mumbled.
Jonah turned my way. “Right. Basically, Malcolm thought it was time we addressed the general subject of religion, since people had decided to start killing each other over it again in ways that hadn’t really been seen since the Crusades. And thinking of the Crusades, along with other things, he decided to make Christianity the specific target.” To my immense shock and irritation, Jonah proceeded to pick up three of the nuclear canisters and begin juggling them. “It was another document job for Leon and Julien. You must’ve heard of it—the Fifth Gospel?”
Coming on top of the juggling bombs, this news was enough to send me reeling into a corner. The “Fifth Gospel,” as not only I but most of the world by then knew, was a text discovered several years earlier in a remote part of Syria. Purportedly written by the apostle Paul in the mid–first century, the document described the need to lie about the life and supposed miracles of Jesus Christ in order to spread the faith and gave instructions on how to do so to various sect leaders throughout the area. The results of this “revelation” I hardly need record—for while the Fools’ Congress and Churchill controversies had been focused, at least initially, on political and historical circles, most of the world was immediately swept up in and polarized by the battle over the Fifth Gospel, which inspired the creation of an unprecedented number of Web sites a
nd on-line journalistic organs devoted entirely to the debate.
“That was you people?” I said, stunned. “But it’s the most scientifically examined document in history!”
“Yes, those boys really did their work well,” Eli answered.
“Jesus,” I whispered without realizing what I was saying and getting a laugh out of the other two for it.
“For the next big job,” Eli said, “we did a complete one-eighty.” As he spoke he stepped out and started to receive and return the flipping bombs from his brother. “I’m sure you know that one, too, Gideon—‘Homo inexpectatus’?”
My shock instantly became blatant disbelief. “Now you’re pushing it,” I said, pointing at him. “You couldn’t have done that, that’s been scientifically proved absolutely genuine!”
“Of course,” Eli said, almost dropping one of the bombs. “Scientifically proved genuine because scientists designed it. Which is to say, us. And Julien, of course. See, Malcolm thought it was only fair to give science a dose, since we’d taken a shot at religion. So Jonah and I got hold of a group of anatomically convincing contemporary skeletons—comparatively small ones, but adults—and Julien did a little molecular manipulation. Then Jonah and I snuck them into a remote dig in—”
“In South Africa,” I said, and all of a sudden I was back in limbo: for the remains they were talking about, when they’d been found, had ignited an international firestorm, as even the most skeptical scientists could find no way to dispute the assertion that they were at least five million years old. In other words, the supposed existence of any “missing link” between man and ape, along with the entire theory of evolution, had seemingly been discredited, inasmuch as humans very much like us had apparently existed alongside more primitive types of man. What the Fifth Gospel had done to religion, the aptly dubbed Homo inexpectatus did to science; in less than three years two of the most powerful faiths in the world had been thrown into disarray.
“This is unbelievable,” I muttered. What I did not say, though I felt it strangely and strongly, was that there was something intriguing about it all, as well.
“And you’ve only heard stories,” Eli said. “Wait until you see the—” He stopped when he again caught sight of the clock. “Whoops, look at the time. Sorry, Gideon, but we should really try to get a couple of hours’ rest.”
Jonah nodded. “Believe me, you’re going to need it. Things in Afghanistan may get hot in more ways than one.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, a little perturbed.
“Nothing,” Eli answered evasively, gathering up the bombs and restacking them on the rack. “You’ll see. Come on, we can talk more while we’re walking—about the other jobs, if you like.”
“Other jobs?” I echoed, further astounded; but they were already hustling me outside the room and then on through the corridors and up to my quarters.
I discovered as we went that the “other jobs” they’d mentioned were much smaller undertakings, really just amusements to keep the group’s collective hand in, as the Kupermans’ Florida escapade had been. But this didn’t mitigate the central conclusion to which such revelations inescapably led: that Malcolm’s earlier claim about it being nearly impossible to guess at or believe the extent to which contemporary conventional wisdom and popular debate had been choreographed by his group was entirely justified. Like those individuals who had been manipulated by “recovered memory” therapists during the late twentieth century, human society had begun to view itself, as a result of these people’s hoaxes, in an entirely new experiential context. Our utter reliance on information technology had caused us all—even those who, like me, vainly fancied ourselves to be skeptical by nature—to accept the shocking new “facts” that those systems were delivering and to argue their details rather than their provenances; and in doing so, we validated all of Malcolm’s profound indictments.
Weary though I was, these realizations made it difficult to drift off straight away when I finally did slip into the small but plush bed in my quarters. However, once I achieved sleep it was a deep and disorienting one, a treatment that turned out to be very nearly worse than the ailment of exhaustion—for I was awakened far too soon by the ship’s pulsing alarm.
Apparently we had arrived in Afghanistan.
C H A P T E R 1 8
I managed to ignore the vessel’s Klaxon for several minutes, but then it was joined by the sound of firm knocking on my compartment door. I dragged myself to my feet and soon found myself looking into Julien Fouché’s broad, bearded features. He was wearing his body armor and had a sidearm strapped to his waist.
“It’s time, Doctor,” he said, handing me my own coveralls and boots, as well as the same stun pistol that Jonah had shown me in the arsenal. “The Americans will launch their raid soon, and apparently our Muslim friends are not entirely cooperating. The situation is delicate—Malcolm feels your assistance on the ground will be of great value.”
“Mine?” I said, trying to get into the coveralls. “But why?”
“Their leader is a particularly neurotic and unpredictable fellow who seems genuinely prepared to make a martyr of himself, which would be perfectly acceptable to all of us, if only he had not convinced his wives and children to remain with him by offering assurances of favored places in Paradise. Malcolm seems to think that you may be able to persuade him to change his mind.” Watching me struggle half-wittedly with the coveralls, Fouché began to help me into them impatiently. “Tonnerre, Gideon, one would think you had never dressed yourself!”
I made a more concerted effort to focus, and as I did, a question occurred to me: “Say, Julien, there’s one thing I don’t understand. It was the Chinese, not the Afghans, who killed President Forrester, right? And that’s why we’re here. But what made the Chinese do it?”
“Your Madame President had something resembling scruples,” Fouché answered, “though they were well hidden. When shown pictures of the final massacre of the Falun Gong cult in 2018, she told her cabinet that she intended to bring Beijing’s trade status up for congressional review.”
“Her cabinet? So how’d the Chinese security forces find out?”
“Gideon,” Fouché scolded, hustling me down the corridor, “are you really so naïve? Since the turn of the century the Chinese have made a point of having at least one American cabinet minister in their pockets—further proof, of course, that increased trade with the outside world has done nothing to change the way the Chinese do real business. No amount of money, however, would have prevented a crisis if the truth about the assassination had become known. And war between America and China would have been—”
“Catastrophic,” I said with a nod. “So that’s why Malcolm doctored the footage.”
Fouché smiled. “Righteous mischief is irresistible to him.”
We arrived amidships, and Fouché reached up next to one of the golden-framed paintings that hung on the corridor wall to touch a concealed control panel. “The others have gone on ahead to clear a path, and Larissa will cover us all from the turret.” Suddenly a section of the deck below me began to rise, revealing a hatchway that contained a retractable flight of steps extending down to a few feet above the ground. Echoing up through the hatchway, I could hear voices shouting and the sounds of helicopter and diesel automotive engines.
But what I noticed most was the fantastic heat that was radiating up from the ground: it was far in excess of anything I’d expected or could explain.
“Yes,” Fouché said, catching my consternation. “The apparatus has engaged. We have less than an hour.”
“Until what?” I queried nervously as he started down the steps.
“Until any human foolish enough to remain in this area burns up like so much paper,” Fouché answered, jumping to the ground and then waving me down. “Come! Time presses!”
The landscape surrounding the ship was not unlike that of many other countries in the “analog archipelago,” that patchwork of countries that had fal
len so far behind in the digital technology race that they’d given up the struggle. But the chaos that was enveloping this stretch of the valley of the Amu Darya was alarming even for one of the most backward of nations. Emerging from large tunnel entrances supported by enormous timbers and fortified with sandbags was a host of people, some dressed in military fatigues and some in traditional Islamic garb, all rushing toward a great collection of buses, helicopters, and jeeps. Many of the women bore small children who were, for the most part, screaming, and small wonder: the noise and the heat, combined with the looming silhouette of Tressalian’s ship, would have been enough to terrify much older and more comprehending souls. Me, for instance.
Looking ahead and through the dust whipped up by the chopper blades, I could see Slayton, Tarbell, and the Kupermans fanned out with weapons drawn. They were moving toward one tunnel entrance in particular, using their own stun guns to incapacitate the occasional confused man who, apparently mistaking our team for members of the approaching American task force, stepped forward to try to stop us. As Fouché and I followed the others to the tunnel, I called out:
“Julien! Just what is this ‘apparatus,’ anyway?”
“A euphemistic label, eh?” Fouché answered with a laugh. “It is a weapon that your country’s air force began to research in the late twentieth century—but they were never able to build a successful prototype. Colonel Slayton brought us the plans, Malcolm and Larissa refined them, and observe—a small glimpse of Hell!”
“But what does it do?” I asked, realizing that although the sun had only just come over the eastern horizon, the temperature was climbing fantastically from one minute to the next.
“Destruction of the ozone layer over a confined area!” Fouché shouted back. “The Americans were never able to keep the hole stable or to close it when they wished!”
“And you can,” I said, astonished. “But where is the damned thing?”
“The projecting unit is on Malcolm’s island in the North Sea! It operates through a series of satellites—Tressalian satellites!”