Cosega Sphere (The Cosega Sequence Book 4) (14 page)

Savina thought of her assistants as brothers. They had shared countless, exciting hours exploring the Sphere and witnessing many extraordinary scenes, but nothing like the adventure of being swallowed by it. Savina had full confidence in her “brothers,” believing they would do anything for her, and for the Sphere.

“We need to talk about what just happened,” one of them said as she came out of her office after her call with the Judge.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “We’ll get some lunch.”

Outside, the northern California air held a chill. The grey April day gave no sign that spring was trying to fight its way into the meteorological schedule. Savina shivered, but didn’t want to go back through all the security to get her jacket.

“Let’s drive to that sushi place,” she suggested, looking at the other two a moment longer, knowing a bond had formed among them, forged in the surreal aspects of their mission to help save the world.

The three of them piled into her Acura and Savina negotiated the mid-day traffic to her favorite eatery, about fifteen minutes away.

“Savina,” one of the assistants began, “where did we go? Where did the Sphere take us?
How
did it take us?” His voice sounded different now, holding an understanding of the unbelievable things they’d seen.

“When I started this project, the Judge told me that the Sphere shows the entire universe to us,” Savina said. “But I think we now know it’s much more than that.” Her voice hushed, as if speaking in a sacred place, the three of them alone in the world of the Sphere. “The Sphere is like the
key
to the universe and all that the universe might be part of. The multiverse, other dimensions, the truth of time . . . everything.”

“To hold all the stars in your hands,” one of them said.

“Yes,” she whispered, distracted by the memory of it.

“But it sounds a lot like you’re talking about UQP,” the other one added.

“I know,” she said quietly. “Universe Quantum Physics. It’s more than Booker’s pet project. He must be on to something.” 

Savina recalled the many wonders of the Sphere, how it often seemed to respond to their needs, even when unvoiced. The wondrous hours spent watching hundreds of animals that no longer existed, that were not even in the fossil record. Plants, trees, water creatures—such things as Dr. Seuss could never have dreamt. She thought of the violet trees that stretched taller than redwoods, and pink rainstorms falling across hundreds of miles of tangled, yellow-leaved, blue vines as thick as passenger trains.

One of her favorite views into the Sphere had been the cities constructed entirely of light. Some ancient or future civilization—she didn’t know which—had mastered photons and electromagnetic waves. It had been a glorious thing to behold, cities the size of any modern metropolis with no solid structures, only light in every imaginable color and intensity creating the buildings.
How had they harnessed the energy for such a place
, she still wondered.

Now it seemed the answers were surfacing, and many of them might already be known by Booker’s UQP project.

—O—

The Judge sat, three thousand miles away, listening to the private conversation between Savina and her assistants. He tinkered with a robotic sleeve that could be worn by quadriplegics, giving them back the use of their arms. It wasn’t quite ready, but the technology had come from the Sphere. It would work soon.

The conversation concerned the Judge. Savina might have assumed the lab was bugged, but she obviously hadn’t guessed that the Foundation’s invasion went as far as her car, and that was only the start. The Judge could listen to her while she showered, hear her talking to the carrots growing in her vegetable garden, and knew more about Savina’s routines and habits than she herself did. The Foundation could take no chances with their Sphere and those who handled it, and her words confirmed what he already suspected. The Sphere had seduced her.

With so much at stake, he would have to think through his next move very carefully. There were others who could take her place, although Booker had most of the best. Even if she were irreplaceable, with Gaines back in the world, each moment held the potential to crash the Phoenix Initiative, taking with it humanity’s best chance for survival. No, somehow he needed to keep her on board.

The Judge continued to listen in on his three employees in Savina’s Acura.

“Gaines has been working on the Sphere for seven years!” one of them said. “Seven long years. And do you think he’s had access to Booker’s UQP resources?”

“It’s hard to imagine Booker allowing scientists to see the Sphere, or to even know it still exists,” the other assistant said.

“But the Foundation allows us to see ours,” Savina countered. “And they’ve kept it secret. We haven’t said anything to anyone. Booker could do the same. Through bribery, legal intimidation, even threats of death.”

“Would it take that much?” one of them asked. “Once a scientist spends a little time with the Sphere, he would do anything to continue. It’s the most important scientific discovery ever! Look at us. What could compare to the work we’re doing? Would you want to do anything else? I mean, if the Foundation cut your pay in half, wouldn’t you still stay? Wouldn’t you do this work for free?”

They all agreed.

“So Booker has how many scientists in his UQP program?” one of them asked.

“No one knows for sure,” Savina replied, “but it could be hundreds. And it’s not just quantity. He has the best.”

“What do you think they’ve discovered?”

“Maybe the same as us. It’s not like we have a manual for the thing.”

Savina and her team had never seen Crying Man. During their four years on the project, they’d seen remarkable scientific data, including information relating to the origin of the universe and the recent history of humanity, but they’d concentrated much of their efforts on the future. It’s what the Foundation wanted. Technology was the other push. The Judge had ordered them to pursue every sign of engineering. Savina assumed that was an effort to keep up with Booker and to develop machines which could help the Foundation win the future.

In all that time, they had not seen anything to explain who built the Eysen and why. Each of them had wondered, but even if it had been their assignment, the Eysen was not cooperating. Sometimes days had been spent unable to get the Sphere to get off the growth and molecular structure of a single flower, or the formation of one of Jupiter’s moons.

It had not all been minutia though. They had gleaned incredible plans for solar power plants, levitating vehicles, aerospace design, and many other technological advancements. A host of those discoveries had already been put into production, or were in some form of development. Still more, some of the most important and fantastical technologies, were being secretly held by the Foundation to be used or introduced years, even decades, into the future. The Sphere was like a trillion-dollar research and development department.

“What are we going to do when we get back to the lab?” one of them asked.

“We have no choice,” Savina responded, deep in thought. “We have to go farther. We have to let the Sphere show us its secrets. I don’t know what risks we may face . . . ” She paused, thinking back on how the lab had been consumed, how they were all floating in some unknown realm, untethered from anything they knew. “But we must press on. Before we find Gaines again, we have to find someone else inside the Sphere.”

“Who?”

“The Cosegans.”

Taz handled the Fiji hospital operation from his INU as he was driven toward the university. He wished he could have been there, but it was satisfying to know he’d been right. Gale Asher and Booker’s people had not moved the little girl. He tried to imagine how difficult it had been for Gale to leave her daughter, knowing she would almost certainly be captured.

The leader of the Foundation’s mercenary unit had been relaying a play-by-play until they were able to get a video to connect via a satellite link. Technology made it almost unnecessary for Taz to be in Fiji anyway, but still he believed in “smelling the air,” and “tasting the blood,” as he put it.

“Taz, we’re linking to an INU inside the hospital room,” the mercenary leader said. “We’re about to get live images.”

And then, suddenly, there was the prize; the bandaged little daughter of Asher and Gaines. A few feet away stood a tough-looking woman whom Taz recalled from the files.
Hammer or Harson or something
, he thought. She worked for Booker Lipton, proof of what they already knew. Booker had been hiding them all these years, and if Asher and Gaines had survived, then so had the Eysen-Sphere.
Only a matter of time.

“Take the room,” Taz ordered. “But be extremely careful. I want both of them alive. And don’t touch the girl. No need to risk her vision until we have to.”

Taz knew that soon enough the competition would arrive in Fiji to claim the girl for themselves. The NSA and CIA were going to find out. They always did. He might have to move Cira, but in the meantime he would get Harmer—he finally remembered her name—on a plane to Hawaii. He wanted to talk to her in person. Gaines and Asher had trusted the woman with their daughter’s life. She had to know where they were.

Taz had already sent another team to Fiji, but they were still a few hours away.
Would the parents really have left their precious daughter behind? Alone?
He contemplated doubts and logic, which had often opposed one another in this case.

“There are three-hundred-thirty-some odd islands they could be hiding on without even leaving the country,” Taz told Stellard. “You know as much as I do about Asher and Gaines. Would they abandon their wounded little girl?”

Stellard didn’t think so either, and now that they knew their daughter hadn’t really been on the plane that crashed, it was very possible that Gale Asher had also not been on board. “I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance that Asher is still somewhere in Fiji.”

“Yeah, and I’m stuck in Hawaii following the cold trail of Gaines, who’s probably a thousand miles from here now.”

“But we have a contact,” Stellard said. “This guy, Dabnowski, has worked on Booker’s UQP team for years. He’s probably seen the Sphere, and may well have been with Gaines over the past few days.”

“I know,” Taz said, not as excited as his boss about the prospect of grilling a nerdy scientist when his real targets, Gaines and Asher, were so close. “I’ll work him over. Why won’t he talk to me on the phone?”

“He doesn’t trust the NSA,” Stellard replied.

“Who does?” Taz asked as he saw the shabby concrete sign for Kamanele Park. Old metal jungle gyms and rusty swing sets gave the small area between busy neighborhood streets a dated feel. It was only the giant shade trees and palms swaying in the warm breeze that came close to making it a worthwhile “park.” His contact had chosen it for the meeting, no doubt due to its proximity to the university, and the fact that no one important would ever bother with the place.

Taz promised Stellard a full update as he signed off and wandered over to one of the worn benches. He was a few minutes early, but twenty minutes later, when no one had shown up, he was ready to leave. Taz had almost reached his car when his driver pointed to the trees bordering the opposite end of the park.

A man in his early thirties, wearing glasses and carrying a beat-up, old-fashioned leather briefcase, stumbled over the exposed roots of a nearby tree, then quickly looked back as if someone might have shoved him. Taz headed toward the man.

“Are you Dabnowski?” Taz asked once he was close enough.

He nodded and checked behind him again. “Taz?”

“That’s me,” Taz said. “Thanks for coming.” He wanted to scold him for being late, for wasting his time, but the guy already looked as if he’d been chewed out a few times that day. Taz, believing he was a thousand miles from the action, needed to catch a break.

Actually,
Taz thought,
he looks wildly nervous. Scared even.

Taz pointed back to his bench. “Should we sit?”

Dabnowski looked around again, scanning the whole area. “This one’s better,” he said, pointing to another bench nestled in a cluster of trees. Once they were sitting down, Dabnowski, dressed in a rumpled cotton suit with no tie, asked, “So you’re with the Foundation?”

“Yes.”

“There are agents all over the university, you know?” he asked, fumbling with one of the plastic buttons on his shirt. Taz noticed a light stain, maybe coffee.

“I know,” Taz said. “Have they talked to you?”

“No. I’ve been staying out of the way. They, the NSA, interviewed me a long time ago. I was friends with Snowden.” His voice was strained, as if he was constantly suffering from indigestion.

“Really?” Taz said with a combination of respect and nervousness as he too scanned the area.

“We were neighbors. Met when he first moved to Hawaii.” Dabnowski looked out through the trees again. “I told them I didn’t know him well, but we were close.”

“Wasn’t he only here a year?”

“Fifteen months. Fifteen very serious months.”

Taz nodded. Although curious about the Snowden connection, he didn’t have the luxury of digging around in history. He needed information about current events, namely Gaines. “Did you work with Gaines?”

“Yeah, I knew him. I mean, we met a couple of times, but I mostly worked on the project when he was gone.”

“Gone where?”

“I don’t know where he went when he wasn’t here. He wasn’t here much, but we kept working.”

“What did you work on?”

Dabnowski stood up and paced. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“Then why are you here? Why are you meeting with us?”

“Because the Foundation is the best chance we have to change things. Well, the Inner Movement might be able to . . . ” Dabnowski looked off into the near distance, but it was as if he was seeing something a million miles away. “Anyway, the Foundation is working against the NSA on this.”

“And how do you know that exactly?”

“I’ve done work for Sky Race.”

“Right.” Taz recalled Stellard telling him about that, but he’d been distracted with the Fiji hospital raid. Sky Race, Inc., a huge corporation involved in space technologies, controlled by a Foundation member, was an extremely influential company. “It must have been more than work, if you know all that.”

“Look, Taz, I can see you’d rather be somewhere else, and you may think I’m some loser-nerd, but you’re the weak player at this meeting. I know enough to be scared because I don’t want to die, but there are things in life that we’re obligated to do. I’m an astrophysicist, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in earthly affairs.” He glared at Taz, as if annoyed at needing to explain his qualifications and motivations. “It’s exactly because of my interest in space that I’m so concerned about this planet.”

“Okay, okay. Relax,” Taz said.

“It’s impossible to relax when the Sphere is in danger of falling into the hands of the US government.”

“Who should have it?”

“Gaines.”

Taz gave him a quizzical look.

“I know the Foundation is seeking it for its own purposes, and that’s a distant second to Gaines keeping it, but a heck of a lot better than the NSA giving it to HITE.”

Taz didn’t know who or what HITE was, but they’d wasted enough time. “What did you do with the Eysen?”

“I was on the Mauna Kea team.”

From a bar bet he’d lost in college, Taz knew that a dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii called Mauna Kea, measured from base to summit, stood nearly a mile taller than Mt. Everest. He was also vaguely aware that it housed some “telescopes,” but that was the extent of his knowledge. “What’s the Mauna Kea team?”

“We work at the observatories,” Dabnowski said. “There are thirteen telescopes, the most advanced in the world, funded by eleven countries. It’s the largest astronomical observation facility on Earth—electromagnetic spectrum, infrared, visible light, submillimeter, radio . . .”

“Must be like Disneyland for you,” Taz said. “But what are you doing with the Eysen-Sphere up there?”

Dabnowski looked at him as if he’d just asked what color the sky was. “Do you know
anything
about the object you’re looking for?”

Taz suddenly felt self-conscious. “I know what I need to know.”

“I don’t think so,” Dabnowski said. “You have no idea what the Sphere is.” Then he paused and looked directly into Taz’s sunglasses until Taz took them off. “You don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”