Forever Peace

  “Ray?” he repeated. They’d been friends since graduate school. He was still and pale. “What will I tell his wife?” He shook his head. “I was best man.”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. “You can’t just say ‘He gave his life for peace,’ though it’s true, in a way.”

  “It’s also true that I dragged him away from his safe, comfortable office and put him in the way of a lunatic murderer.”

  Amelia took his hand in both of hers. “Don’t worry about it now. Nothing you can do will change anything.”

  He stared at her blankly. “She’s not expecting him back until the fourteenth. So maybe the universe will make it all irrelevant by exploding.”

  “More likely,” Julian said, “he’ll wind up just one in a long list of casualties. You might as well wait and announce them all after the shitstorm. After the bloodless revolution.”

  Thurman came over quietly and served them their hamburgers. He’d overheard enough to realize that they didn’t yet know about Ellie’s murder, and perhaps the fact that Gavrila was loose.

  He decided not to tell them. They would know soon enough. There might be something in the delay that he could turn to his advantage.

  Because he wasn’t going to just stand around and let these lunatics wreck the military. He had to stop them, and he knew exactly where to go.

  Through the migraine haze that kept him from communing with these misdirected idealists, some real information did bleed through. Like the identity of General Blaisdell, and his powerful position.

  Blaisdell had the power to neutralize Building 31 with a phone call. Thurman had to get to him, and soon. “Gavrila” might do as a code word.

  * * *

  when we got back to our billet, there was a message on the console for Amelia, not me, to call Jefferson immediately on the secure line. He was in his own motel room in Guadalajara, eating dinner. He was wearing a handgun in a shoulder holster, a dart-thrower.

  He stared out of the screen. “Sit down, Blaze.” She eased herself slowly into the chair in front of the console. “I don’t know how secure Building 31 is supposed to be. I don’t think it’s secure enough.

  “Gavrila escaped. She’s left a trail of bodies leading to you. She killed two people at the Clinic, and one of them she apparently had tortured into giving up your address.”

  “No . . . oh, no!”

  Jefferson nodded. “She got there right after you left. We don’t know what Ellie might have told her before she died.”

  That may have hit me harder than it did her. Amelia had lived with Ellie, but I had lived inside her.

  She turned pale and spoke almost without moving her lips. “Tortured her.”

  “Yes. And went straight to the airport and took the next flight to Portobello. She’s somewhere in the city now. You have to assume she knows exactly where you are.”

  “She couldn’t get in here,” I said.

  “Tell me about it, Julian. She couldn’t get out of here, either.”

  “Yeah, all right. Are you set up to jack?”

  He gave me a cautious doctor look. “With you?”

  “Of course not. With my platoon. They’re standing guard here, and could use a description of the bitch.”

  “Of course. Sorry.”

  “You tell them everything you know, and then we’ll go to Candi for a debriefing.”

  “All right . . . just remember Gavrila’s been jacked with me two-way—”

  “What? That was smart.”

  “We thought she’d be in a straitjacket for the duration. It was the only way to get anything from her, and we got a lot. But you have to assume she’ll retain a lot of what she got from Spencer and me.”

  “She didn’t retain my address,” Amelia said.

  Jefferson shook his head. “I didn’t know it, and neither did Spencer, in case. But she knows the broad outline of the Plan.”

  “Damn. She’ll have passed it on.”

  “Not yet. She has a superior in Washington, but she won’t have talked to him yet. She idolizes him, and combining that with her rigid fanaticism . . . I don’t think she’ll call until she can say ‘Mission accomplished.’”

  “So we don’t just stay away from her. We catch her and make sure she doesn’t talk.”

  “Nail her into a room.”

  “Or a box,” I said.

  He nodded and broke the circuit.

  “Kill her?” Amelia said.

  “Won’t be necessary. Just turn her over to the medicos and she’ll sleep past D day.” Probably true, I thought, but pretty soon Amelia and I were going to be the only people in this building physically able to kill.

  * * *

  what candi told them was frightening. Not only was Gavrila vicious and well trained and motivated by love and fear of God and His avatar, General Blaisdell—but it would be easier for her to get into Building 31 than Julian would have supposed. Its main defenses were against military attack and mob assault. It didn’t even have a burglar alarm.

  Of course she first would have to get onto the base. They sent descriptions of her in the two modes they knew of, and copies of her fingerprints and retina scans, to the gate, with strict detention orders—“armed and dangerous.”

  There were no security cameras in the Guadalajara airport, but there were plenty at Portobello. No one who looked like her had gotten off any of the six flights arriving from Mexico that afternoon and evening, but that could just mean a third disguise. There were a few women her size and shape. Their descriptions also went to the gate.

  In fact, as Jefferson might have predicted, in her paranoia Gavrila bought a ticket to Portobello, but didn’t use it. Instead, she flew to the Canal Zone disguised as a man. She went down to the waterfront and found a drunken soldier who resembled her, and killed him for his papers and uniform. She left most of the body in a hotel room, first cutting off the hands and head, wrapping them well, and mailing them at the cheapest rate to a fictitious address in Bolivia. She took the monorail to Portobello and was inside the base an hour before they started looking for her.

  She didn’t have her plastic gun and knife, of course; she’d even left behind the scalpel she’d used on Ellie. There were thousands of weapons inside the base, but all were locked up and accounted for, except for a few guards and MPs with pistols. Killing an MP sounded like a bad way to get a weapon. She went down to the armory and loitered for a while, inspecting it while appearing to read the notices on the bulletin board, then waiting in line for a few minutes and rushing off as if she’d forgotten something.

  She went outside the building and then re-entered through a back door. From the floor plan she’d memorized, she went straight to ROUTINE MAINTENANCE. There was a duty roster posted; she went to an adjacent room and called the specialist on maintenance duty, and told him a Major Feldman wanted to see him at the desk. He left the room unlocked, and Gavrila slipped in.

  She had perhaps ninety seconds. Find something lethal that looked like it worked and wouldn’t be missed immediately.

  There was a jumbled pile of M-31s, mud-spattered but otherwise in good shape. Probably used in an exercise—by officers, who wouldn’t be expected to clean them afterward. She picked one and wrapped it in a green towel, along with a cassette of exploding darts and a bayonet. Poison darts would have been better, quieter, but there weren’t any in the open stock.

  She slipped outside undetected. This didn’t appear to be the kind of base where a soldier could casually carry a light assault weapon around, so she kept the M-31 wrapped up. She put the sheathed bayonet inside her belt, under her shirt.

  The binding that compressed her breasts was uncomfortable, but she left it on in case it would buy her an extra second or two of surprise. The uniform was loose, and she looked like a slightly chubby man, short with a barrel chest. She walked carefully.

  Building 31 looked no different from the ones that surrounded it, except for a low electrified fence and a sentry box. She walked by the box in the dus
k, fighting the temptation to rush the shoe guard and shoot her way in. She could do some real damage with the forty rounds in the cassette, but she knew from Jefferson that there would be soldierboy guards on duty. The black man Julian’s platoon. Julian Class.

  Dr. Jefferson hadn’t known anything about the building’s floor plan, though, which was what she needed now. If she knew where Harding was, she could create a diversion for the soldierboys as far as possible from her quarry, and then go after her. But the building was too large to just go in cold and hope to find her while the soldierboys were occupied for a few minutes.

  They would be expecting her, too, of course. She didn’t look at Building 31 as she walked by. They certainly knew about the torture-murders. Was there any way she could use that knowledge against them? Make them careless through fear?

  Whatever action she took, it would have to be within the building. Otherwise, outside forces would deal with it, while Harding was protected by the soldierboys.

  She stopped dead and then forced herself to move on. That was it! Create a diversion outside, but be inside when they find out about it. Follow the soldierboys to her prey.

  Then she would need God’s help. The soldierboys would be swift, though probably pacified, if the humanizing scheme had worked. She had to kill Harding before they restrained her.

  But she was all confidence. The Lord had gotten her this far; He would not fail her now. Even the woman’s name, Blaze, was demonic, as well as her mission. Everything was right.

  She turned the corner and said a quiet prayer. A child was playing alone on the sidewalk. A gift from the Lord.

  * * *

  we were lying in bed talking when the console chimed its phone signal. It was Marty.

  He was weary but smiling. “They called me out of surgery,” he said. “Good news, for a change, from Washington. They did a segment on your theory on the Harold Burley Hour tonight.”

  “Supporting it?” Amelia said.

  “Evidently. I just saw a minute of it; back to work. It should be linked to your data queue by now. Take a look.” He punched off and we found the program immediately.

  It started out with an optical of a galaxy exploding dramatically, sound effects and all. Then the profile of Burley, serious as usual, faded in, looking down on the cataclysm.

  “Could this be us, only a month from now? Controversy rages in the highest scientific circles. And not only scientists have questions. The police do, too.”

  A still picture of Peter, bedraggled and forlorn, naked from the waist up, holding up a number for the police camera. “This is Peter Blankenship, who for two decades has been one of the most highly regarded cosmologists in the world.

  “Today he doesn’t even know the right number of planets in the Solar System. He thinks he’s living in the year 2004—and is confused to be a twenty-year-old man in a sixty-four-year-old body.

  “Someone jacked him and extracted all his past, back to that year. Why? What did he know? Here is Simone Mallot, head of the FBI’s Forensic Neuropathology Unit.” A woman in a white coat, with a jumble of gleaming equipment behind her. “Dr. Mallot, what can you tell us about the level of surgical technique used on this man?”

  “The person who did this belongs in jail,” she said. “Subtle equipment was used, or misused; microscopic AI-directed investigation shows that they initially tried to erase specific, fairly recent, memories. But they failed repeatedly, and finally erased one huge block with a surge of power. It was the murder of a personality and, we know now, the destruction of a great mind.”

  Beside me, Amelia sighed, almost a sob, but leaned forward, studying the console intently.

  Burley peered directly out of the screen. “Peter Blankenship did know something—or at least believed something, that profoundly affects you and me. He believed that unless we take action to stop it, the world will come to an end on September fourteenth.”

  There was a picture of the Multiple Mirror Array on the far side of the Moon, irrelevant to anything, tracking ponderously. Then a time-lapse shot of Jupiter rotating. “The Jupiter Project, the largest, most complex scientific experiment ever conducted. Peter Blankenship had calculations that showed it had to be stopped. But then he disappeared, and came back in no shape to testify about anything scientific.

  “But his assistant, Professor Blaze Harding”—an inset of Amelia lecturing—“suspected foul play and herself disappeared. From a hiding place in Mexico she sent dozens of copies of Blankenship’s theory, and the high hard mathematics behind it, to scientists all over the world. Opinions are divided.”

  Back in his studio, Burley faced two men, one of them familiar.

  “God, not Macro!” Amelia said.

  “I have with me tonight Professors Lloyd Doherty and Mac Roman. Dr. Doherty’s a longtime associate of Peter Blankenship. Dr. Roman is the dean of sciences at the University of Texas, where Professor Harding works and teaches.”

  “Teaching isn’t work?” I said, and she shushed me.

  Macro settled back with a familiar self-satisfied expression. “Professor Harding has been under a great deal of strain recently, including a love affair with one of her students as well as one with Peter Blankenship.”

  “Stick to the science, Macro,” Doherty said. “You’ve read the paper. What do you think of it?”

  “Why, it’s . . . it’s utterly fantastic. Ridiculous.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Lloyd, the audience could never understand the mathematics involved. But the idea is absurd on the face of it. That the physical conditions that obtain inside something smaller than a BB could bring about the end of the universe.”

  “People once said it was absurd to think that a tiny germ could bring about the death of a human being.”

  “That’s a false analogy.” His ruddy face got darker.

  “No, it’s precise. But I agree with you about it not destroying the universe.”

  Macro gestured at Burley and the camera. “Well, then.”

  Doherty continued. “It would only destroy the Solar System, perhaps the Galaxy. A relatively small corner of the universe.”

  “But it would destroy the Earth,” Burley said.

  “In less than an hour, yes.” The camera came in close on him. “There’s no doubt about that.”

  “But there is!” Macro said, off camera.

  Doherty gave him a weary look. “Even if the doubt were reasonable, and it is not, what sort of odds would be acceptable? A fifty-fifty chance? Ten percent? One chance in a hundred that everyone would die?”

  “Science doesn’t work like that. Things aren’t ten percent true.”

  “And people aren’t ten percent dead, either.” Doherty turned to Burley. “The problem I found isn’t with the first few minutes or even millenniums of the prediction. I just think they’ve made an error extrapolating into intergalactic space.”

  “Do tell,” Burley said.

  “Ultimately, the result would just be twice as much matter; twice as many galaxies. There’s room for them.”

  “If one part of the theory is wrong—” Macro began.

  “Furthermore,” Doherty contined, “it looks as if this has happened before, in other galaxies. It actually clears up some anomalies here and there.”

  “Getting back to Earth,” Burley said, “or at least to this solar system. How big a job would it be to stop the Jupiter Project? The largest experiment ever set up?”

  “Nothing to it, in terms of science. Just one radio signal from JPL. Getting people to send a signal that will end their careers in science, that would normally be hard. But everybody’s career ends September fourteenth, if they don’t.”

  “It’s still irresponsible nonsense,” Macro said. “Bad science, sensationalism.”

  “You have about ten days to prove that, Mac. A long line is forming behind that button.”

  Close-up on Burley, shaking his head. “They can’t turn it off too soon for me.” The console went dead.

&
nbsp; We laughed and hugged and split a ginger ale in celebration. But then the screen chimed and turned itself on without my hitting the answer button.

  It was the face of Eileen Zakim, my new platoon leader. “Julian, we have a real situation. Are you armed?”

  “No—well, yes. There’s a pistol here.” But it had been left behind, like the ginger ale; I hadn’t checked to see if it was loaded. “What’s up?”

  “That crazy bitch Gavrila is here. Maybe inside. She killed a little girl out front in order to distract the shoe guard at the gate.”

  “Good grief! We don’t have a soldierboy out front?”

  “We do, but she patrols. Gavrila waited until the soldierboy was on the opposite side of the compound. The way we’ve reconstructed it, she slashed up the child and threw her, dying, up against the sentry box door. When the shoe opened the door, she cut his throat and then dragged him across the box and used his handprint to open the inner door.”

  I had the pistol out and threw the dead bolt on the door. “Reconstructed? You don’t know for sure?”

  “No way to tell; the inner door isn’t monitored. But she did drag him back into the box, and if she’s military, she knows how the handprint locks work.”

  I checked the pistol’s magazine. Eight packs of tumblers. Each pack held 144 razor-sharp tumblers—each actually a folded, scored piece of metal that shatters into 144 pieces when you pull the trigger. They come out in a hail of fury that can chew off an arm or a leg.

  “Now that she’s in the compound—”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “If she is, though, are there any more handprint locks? Any monitored entrances?”

  “The main entrance is monitored. No handprints; just mechanical locks. My people are checking every door.”

  I winced a little at “my” people. “Okay. We’re secure here. Keep us posted.”

  “Will do.” The console went dark.

  We both looked at the door. “Maybe she doesn’t have anything that can get through that,” Amelia said. “She used a knife on the child and guard.”