Death Wave (25 page)

“It's been part of me all my life,” she said.

Looking at Aditi like a little boy asking for candy, Frankenheimer said, “Could … would your people on New Earth show me how to make a communicator for someone here?”

“Someone? Who?”

“A test subject.” He licked his lips, then added, “Myself, I suppose.”

Aditi said, “I could find out for you.”

“Could you? That would be great!”

“I'll ask my people this evening.”

“Great,” Frankenheimer repeated. “Wonderful.”

Now Aditi lounged back on the bed, too tired and emotionally spent to order dinner for herself. She recognized the eager glow of ambition in Frankenheimer's eyes. Can I trust him with a communicator? she wondered. I'll have to ask Adri about that.

But first I need to talk to Jordan.

*   *   *

Jordan was also feeling close to exhaustion. He had spent the entire day staring at the images New Earth's astronomers had sent to him. Dead worlds. Whole planets wiped clean of life, down to the bacteria. A world of creatures who reminded him of butterflies: utterly devastated, their beautiful winged bodies strewn across the rocks and sands of their dead world. A planet covered with mats of biological matter that formed a worldwide mind: totally destroyed by the lethal gamma wave. Planet after planet, intelligent species after intelligent species, civilization after civilization, erased as if they had never existed.

Otero wants visuals to show the public, Jordan told himself; now we've got plenty. But can we show it? Will it be too upsetting, too demoralizing, too soul-wrenching?

As he rubbed his aching brow, an ancient quotation came to him: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

From the Bible, somewhere, Jordan remembered. Knowledge is always preferable to ignorance. No matter how painful, no matter what the consequences, the truth shall set you free.

He hoped that was right.

Glancing at the clock set into the wall below the holographic viewer, Jordan saw that it was nearly dinnertime. Otero will expect me downstairs, and I'll have a lot to show him.

Then Aditi appeared in the viewer, sitting up on her bed fully clothed. She looked drawn, worn, pale.

“What's the matter, darling?” Jordan blurted.

She smiled wanly. “I was going to ask you that same question, Jordan. You look … troubled.”

“So do you.”

They spent the next several minutes explaining the events of the day, the reasons for their weary melancholy.

“Yes,” Aditi said mournfully, “watching the dead worlds can be very depressing.”

“You've seen them?”

“A few.”

With a determined shake of his head, Jordan said, “We've got to prevent that from happening to more planets, more intelligent creatures.”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” he echoed.

“But getting the World Council to act won't be easy, Jordan. You'll have to move the whole world, all its people.”

“
We'll
have to move the world,” Jordan corrected.

“That's still only two of us.”

“But with you beside me, dearest, I can move mountains.”

She smiled wanly. “We can try, at least.”

“Lord, I miss you, Aditi.”

“And I miss you, too, Jordan. I hope we can be together soon.”

“It can't be soon enough.”

With a troubled shake of her head, Aditi half-whispered, “I never thought I could feel so … so empty.”

Jordan could see on her face the pain he himself felt.

Forcing a bitter smile, he changed the subject. “So your scientist friend wants a communicator for himself.”

“Yes,” Aditi replied. “It would require major surgery to implant one in his brain.”

“Couldn't it be outside the body, a device like a phone?”

“I suppose it could.”

Jordan pursed his lips, then suggested, “Perhaps your people on New Earth could work with Mitch, here in Chicago. It could become a new product line for him.”

Aditi actually giggled. “And make him even richer.”

“And open up new jobs for people,” Jordan countered.

“I'll talk to Adri about it,” she said.

“Fine.” Glancing at the clock again, Jordan said, “I'm afraid I'm expected for dinner.”

“Go ahead, darling. I'm going to put in a call to Adri and then go to sleep.”

“Pleasant dreams, my dear.”

“And to you,” she said. “Dream of me.”

“I always do.”

 

SAN FRANCISCO

Union Square was filled with tourists, working citizens enjoying their lunches in the smiling sunshine, and jobless nobodies like Nick Motrenko, who had nothing better to do.

But Walt had other ideas.

Rachel was sitting beside Nick on one of the benches. A couple of teenagers zoomed past on souped-up rollerboards, laughing as they weaved through the pedestrian traffic, startling the older walkers. Nick saw one elderly gentleman yank a phone from his jacket, his face twisted with anger.

“Calling the cops,” he said to Rachel.

“But the square's a police-free zone,” she protested.

“Not if somebody files a complaint.”

Sure enough, within less than a minute a blue-anodized drone swooped over the square and the rollerboarding teens stopped, picked up their boards, and headed out of the square.

Just the threat of cops makes them leave, Nick realized.

“Where is Walt?” Rachel wondered. “He said he'd be here at noon.”

“It's only five after … Hey, there he is.”

If he weren't so tall, they might not have recognized him. Walt was wearing a regular suit; he looked almost like a businessman or even a politician, despite his height and scrawniness. His hair looked as if it'd been freshly cut, he was clean-shaven and smiling brightly. On his arm was a brassy-looking redheaded woman, very young, dressed in a tight sweater and clinging miniskirt, with a capacious tote bag slung over her shoulder.

Nick got to his feet as the pair of them approached. Slowly, uncertainly, Rachel got up, too.

“Hello there,” Walt called out, in his deep, strong voice. He stopped in front of Nick and Rachel and introduced, “This is Delores, otherwise known as Dee Dee. Dee, meet Rachel and Nick.”

Dee Dee smiled perfunctorily as Nick tried to avoid staring at her generous breasts. Her hair was brick red. Can't be natural, Nick thought.

Walt stepped past a worn old
KEEP OFF THE GRASS
sign and headed for the shade of a tree. “Lovely morning, isn't it,” he said as he hunkered down and sat on the grass. Dee Dee sat beside him. Rachel and Nick sat also, making a little circle at the base of the tree.

“You look wonderful,” Rachel said to Walt. “All dressed up and all.”

Walt beamed happily. “I'm in disguise,” he said.

Nick thought he was probably shacked up with Dee Dee. Getting regular sex makes a guy happy, he knew.

“Dee Dee works for the police department,” Walt said.

Before Nick could respond, Dee Dee said, “I'm a clerk in the property section.” Her voice was nasal, irritating.

Walt went on, “And she has brought us a gift.”

“It's from the department's inventory,” said Dee Dee, as she opened the clasp on her tote bag and spread its top wide.

Nick peered into the bag. “It's a gun!”

Rachel looked startled.

Still smiling, Walt explained, “As far as the police department's records are concerned, this gun never existed. My clever little Dee Dee has erased it from their inventory.”

Nick knew better than to take it from the bag. Someone might see it.

Walt was going on, “The pistol is almost entirely plastic. Very difficult to spot it with ordinary security sensors.”

“Why do we need a gun?” Rachel asked.

His smile going even wider, “Why, someday we might decide to rise and strike.” He focused his red-rimmed eyes on Nick. “Perhaps we will save our world from the aliens with a well-placed assassination.”

 

BOSTON

“Once this was the tallest building in the entire state,” said Vera Griffin. “They named this restaurant the Top of the Hub. You could see clear into New Hampshire from here.”

Sitting across the candlelit table from her, Castiglione could see little outside the restaurant's sweeping windows except a forest of other office towers.

He had no desire to make small talk with this woman. Not yet.

“What was Mr. Otero's reaction when you told him that I need to speak to him personally?”

Griffin dimpled into an almost-guilty smile. “He doesn't like the World Council very much. He thinks you should leave Jordan Kell alone.”

Arching a brow at her, Castiglione said, “Leave him alone to be attacked by fanatics? Murdered by terrorists? That doesn't make much sense.”

She shrugged her slim shoulders. “That's what Mr. Otero believes. I'm in no position to argue with him about it.”

Castiglione accepted defeat graciously. “Well, let's forget him and Jordan Kell and everything else. You tell me the story of your life and I'll tell you the story of mine.”

Griffin nodded happily. “You first.”

Castiglione was only partway through a heavily edited autobiography by the time they finished dinner, went down to the street, and walked leisurely up to Beacon Hill and Griffin's shabby studio apartment.

It was while they were in bed together that she finally admitted that Jordan Kell himself would make a surprise appearance on the show she was producing and sit for an interview with Carlos Otero.

Castiglione lay beside her in the darkness, and as Griffin snored lightly in a happy slumber, he wondered how he could stop this show from going on the air.

But first I've got to get out of this bed and back to my hotel, he said to himself.

*   *   *

After dinner, Jordan showed Carlos Otero some of the imagery that Elyse Rudaki had sent him. The two men sat together in Otero's man cave, where one entire wall was a holographic viewer.

For nearly two hours they watched planet after devastated planet, worlds scrubbed clean of all life by the passage of the death wave. They sat side by side, in yieldingly comfortable wing chairs, lit only by the glow from the viewer, and watched death spreading across the galaxy.

Elyse Rudaki's voice nearly broke into sobs more than once. “There's so many of them,” she said in a tear-choked whisper. “So many.”

Otero said nothing, his eyes fixed on the scenes of desolation, the glass of mezcal in his hand untouched. Jordan had drained his scotch long ago, but sat riveted in his chair, unable to get up and pour himself more.

At last the three-dimensional display went dark, and the room's scattered lamps came on again softly.

Otero put his untouched drink down on the table next to his chair, then turned to Jordan.

“Those are actual images, not computer generated?”

“Actual images,” said Jordan.

“They're not fakes? Not touched up? Enhanced?”

Jordan said evenly, “Those are the images recorded by spacecraft that the Predecessors sent to worlds engulfed by the gamma wave.”

Unmoved, Otero said, “You know that if there's any trickery here, any falsification of any kind, no matter how trivial, some wise-ass techie will figure it out and beat us over the head with the evidence. That could destroy us.”

Fighting down a surge of irritation, Jordan replied, “The astronomers of New Earth are not charlatans. What reason could they have to enhance those images? Aren't they horrific enough for you?”

Otero nodded grimly. “I'll get my technical people to go over them. We have to be a thousand percent certain about these images before we show them on the air.”

Jordan replied tightly, “Very well.”

At last Otero reached for his drink. “This is powerful stuff.”

“It's real.”

“And this death wave could do the same thing to us, here on Earth?”

“When it gets here.”

“In two thousand years.”

Jordan said, “Two thousand or two million: once it gets here it will kill every living creature in the solar system, unless you're adequately protected.”

“And your aliens can protect us?”

“They can show you how to protect yourselves.”

Otero gulped at his mezcal.

*   *   *

Once he woke up in his hotel room, Rudolfo Castiglione called Anita Halleck. But not before ordering his breakfast—and a dozen roses to be delivered to Vera Griffin's desk at the Otero Network headquarters. No name, no card. She'll know who they're from, he told himself.

Halleck looked impatient. “I only have a few minutes before another damnable budget meeting.”

“I think I've found Jordan Kell,” Castiglione said, almost offhandedly, as he reached for a croissant.

“Where?”

“Carlos Otero is sheltering him,” Castiglione said, munching on the croissant. “I don't know exactly where, but Otero has him, I'm sure.”

“Get to him! Warn him that he's harboring a wanted fugitive.”

“It's not that easy, my dear. So far, he's refused to see me.”

“I'll call him myself,” Halleck said. “He can't refuse to talk to
me
.”

“I suppose not. In the meantime, I'm going to try a back-channel approach.”

“Back channel?”

“Strictly unofficial. Off the record. But perhaps I can get to see Kell that way.”

“And what good will that do?”

With a knowing smile, Castiglione said, “Once I meet with him and know for certain where he is, we can call in a security team to take him.”

Halleck smiled back. “Rudy, you're little short of despicable.”

He put on a pained expression. “Little short? Where have I failed?”