Ghost Planet (35 page)

Mitchell’s second facility had been built about a hundred kilometers outside the New Dublin colony, which was situated next to a bay on one of the planet’s largest islands. Like the Symbiont Research Institute, the smaller facility could only be accessed by shuttle or transport. Sarah and Garvey had put their heads together and extracted a plan for the building and grounds from a secured area of the company’s Web site. Without that we’d never have found a way in that didn’t involve bushwhacking.

As I tried to ignore the rustling alongside the trail, and the occasional set of eyes made luminous by my light, I wondered whether Sarah had betrayed us. I didn’t want to believe it, but someone obviously had.

“Stay where you are!” a voice ordered from the path just ahead. A laser sight came to rest on my chest. “Raise your hands!”

Bright light washed over me and I lifted my arms slowly, saying, “I’m not armed. I’m Elizabeth Cole. Dr. Mitchell is looking for me.”

There was a wary silence, followed by low murmuring. One of the guards came forward and fastened restraints on me—real, key-access restraints this time. The nylon loop dangling from my right wrist gave him a moment’s pause.

That’s right, I’m not helpless, you asshole.

But I reminded myself that the guard—about my own age, and nervous-looking—probably wasn’t an asshole.

“Let’s go,” he said, taking my arm.

The trail led downhill for another kilometer, finally opening out into a valley with a small lake. A white fingernail of crescent moon reflected from the still surface, reminding me it had been about a month since Peter’s arrival. I felt better knowing he was in the forest behind me, watching and waiting.

The facility was situated next to the lake. One of my guards called ahead, and I saw someone exit the building and descend the steps to meet us. Instinct ignited a warning beacon even before I recognized her, and in that moment I would have done anything to be on the opposite side of the planet.

“Here’s our girl back again,” said Mitchell. She gave me one of her smug smiles. “I suppose you’re here to rescue your friends.”

“I was thinking of a trade. Why don’t you keep me and let the others go?”

“Touching, Elizabeth. I’ll give it some thought.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Mitchell turned her attention to my escorts. “Has your sweep picked up anyone else?”

“No, doctor. No sign of a transport either. It may have already left.”

“I don’t think so—nobody’s heard it. Keep looking, Jai.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I think you may have overstepped a little this time, doctor,” I said, hoping Peter was in range. “You’re free to do with me as you like, of course, but you must realize at some point someone is going to ask you to produce Murphy.”

She hooked her cold fingers around my arm and led me up the stairs. “Grayson Murphy is officially on the ‘missing’ list. People who go missing on this planet rarely turn up again.”

The situation was going from bad to worse. Not only had she failed to confirm that Murphy was here (for the sake of our recording) and alive (for the sake of my sanity), she’d covered herself for the possibility of his disappearance.

“So we’ve basically done you a huge favor by escaping. The least you can do is let me see him.”

“I’m not sure we agree about that.”

She led me through a set of wooden doors into a cozy lobby complete with fireplace, overstuffed chairs, tea tables, and colorful rugs.

“This looks more like a hotel than a hospital,” I observed.

“Exactly what it is.”

“What does your company want with a hotel?”

“It was originally built with the idea of housing visiting executives and entertaining potential clients.”

“ERP administrators with money to burn on private contracts.”

“Needless to say, since the onset of the alien threat visiting executives have been scarce. I’ve converted the facility for my own purposes.”

“I heard about your detachment successes. Congratulations.”

Mitchell guided me down a hallway decorated with artwork and more expensive rugs. “Poor Sarah. Heroics are almost always misguided.”

My breath caught in my throat. Sarah
had
betrayed us. She just hadn’t done it on purpose. Mitchell must have figured out she had helped us escape.

“So who is it that’s paying your employer to create slaves by detaching symbionts?”

Mitchell smiled. “You’ve waxed a little melodramatic in your theorizing, Elizabeth. ERP
is
chronically understaffed, but there is no burning need to enslave the native population—especially considering more than half of you are over the age of fifty.”

Again she’d avoided saying anything likely to shock planet administrators. And I’d still learned nothing about Murphy and the others. Garvey’s plan B was growing more appealing by the second.

“You’re saying you
don’t
have detached ghosts living in some kind of work camp?”

“As I believe I’ve told you before, we’re most interested in ending your ongoing threat to the project.”

I clenched my teeth in frustration.
Breathe, Elizabeth.

“If that’s true,” I said more evenly, “you must be planning to roll out detachment planetwide.”

“We’re still in the experimental phase, of course. There are kinks to be worked out. But I think Dr. Murphy’s success with the Ghost Protocol is a good indicator of our chances for success with detachment. It’s just a matter of selling the benefits.”

Chilling how similar—and yet opposite—this benefits comment was to the one Murphy had made a few weeks ago in camp.

“You’ll need an influential supporter to implement something like that,” I said.

Mitchell laughed. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

The corridor ended in front of a narrow stairway. She stopped and turned to me. “There’s someone staying with us who’s asked to meet you. I think he’ll make a believer out of you.”

I’d never forgotten the conversation I’d overheard my first day at the institute, between Mitchell and one of her clients. Was I going to meet her patron?

“Who is it?”

“I’ll let him introduce himself. If I were you I’d be on my best behavior. He’s asked me to turn you over to him when you and I have concluded our little project.”

This reminder of just how high the stakes were in this game hit me like a frigid blast of air.

Mitchell guided me to the top of the stairs and knocked on a door. It was opened by a very tall man, fiftyish, smartly dressed and smiling. Slender, angular, and good-looking, he had a tanned complexion, long nose, and short brown hair. His face was immediately familiar to me, but I struggled to place him.

“Hello, Maria. And Elizabeth, at last. Please come in.” He stepped aside, and Mitchell led me into the richly furnished apartment.

She slipped a key from her pocket and released my restraints. “I’ll leave you to it, John. Call for a guard when you’re finished here. I don’t want her going anywhere on her own.”

“Of course,” he said with a nod. “Thank you for indulging me, doctor.”

Mitchell smiled, and it was a different kind of smile than the ones I’d seen on her before. It was warm …
genuine
. I felt sure this was the client who’d been talking with her at the institute—a tall man with a slight accent. Mitchell had used the same tone with him.

But I hadn’t gotten a look at that man’s face. Why was he so familiar?

Mitchell closed the door behind her, and I stood rubbing my wrists as I scanned the room. More overstuffed furniture, a dining table set for two, low classical music playing over the sound system. A picture window provided a view of the lake and grounds.

“Please relax, Elizabeth,” the man said. “I’m a friend.”

I stared at him. “
Whose
friend?”

“Yours, I assure you.”

I waited for him to say more, but he just stood watching me.

“You don’t recognize me, do you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I feel like I should.”

“Well, most of the photos of me were taken on Earth. I’ve lost weight here, and finally got rid of the beard.” He reached a hand out to me. “John Ardagh.”

My mouth fell open and my hand reached out mechanically. I struggled to reconcile this sudden revelation with the image I had of Ardagh as Earth’s altruistic benefactor.

“So you’re the money behind detachment research.” No wonder Mitchell enjoyed so much autonomy. “But then, I guess you’re the money behind everything.”

Ardagh laughed. “Not anymore. We have public funding, corporate funding, funding generated by the planet’s own resources—any flavor of funding you care to name. I’m basically a figurehead over a bloated, unwieldy board of directors that is completely out of touch with the reality on the ground here. But I do still have a personal fortune, and a few side projects that are near and dear to my heart—like detachment.”

I frowned. “I don’t understand why someone like you needs to bring in someone like Mitchell. You have hundreds of scientists on the ERP payroll. Unless…” I swallowed. “Unless you don’t want anyone to know what you’re up to.”

“ERP had a Symbiont Studies team, once upon a time,” he said, unruffled. “It started out small and shrank to nonexistent as the staff kept going back to Earth. Problematic, studying beings that are inescapable, deemed to be dangerous, and that constantly remind you of a painful loss. That’s where Maria’s proven invaluable.”

“Because she has no heart, no conscience, and isn’t afraid of anyone, you mean.”

Ardagh smiled, gesturing me toward one of the fat chairs by the window. “Don’t be so quick to assume you have all the answers, Elizabeth.”

I sat down and he settled on the sofa across from me. “Why don’t you give me the answers I’m lacking,” I said. “Is your board aware of your goals for detachment?”

“I certainly hope not, but again you’re jumping to conclusions.” He folded his hands and gazed out at the lake. “The irony of it—all this money I’ve given to Maria’s company, only to have the answer come from a symbiont. Mind you she tried to steal the credit from you, but I know what’s been going on in your camp. I know very well who unlocked the secret to detachment.”

Concealing my alarm, I replied cautiously in case he was fishing. “What do you mean?”

His eyes came back to my face. “I’ve been funding Blake Kenner’s colony for the last six months. I believe in keeping a close eye on my investments.”

“What?”
So much for concealment. “Why would you do that?”

“A smart investor hedges his bets. I wasn’t convinced Maria was creative enough to solve detachment. I found Devil’s Rock the same way most of its residents did—long hours trolling the Net for oblique references to ghost sanctuaries. I set up a phantom bank account for Blake in New Seattle, and I gave him pretty much whatever he asked for. Unfortunately his agenda was on a collision course with my own, and he didn’t have much more imagination than Maria.”

I could hardly believe it, and I wondered if he was playing some kind of game with me. The layers of manipulation were staggering.

“We must be talking about huge sums of money. I know the project is important to you, but—”

“I don’t give a fuck about ERP.”

I stared at him, astonished. “You
founded
ERP.”

“True. More or less.”

He might be crazier than Mitchell. “Why do you care about detachment if you don’t care about ERP?”

Ardagh gave me a sympathetic smile. “If you’ll bear with me a moment, I think that will become clear.”

I sank back in the chair, my fingernails digging into its fat arms.

“I relocated here with my wife, Ruth, in the earliest days of the Ghost Protocol. We quarreled over it—she cried for weeks—but I didn’t make my fortune by blindly trusting other people to do their jobs. I did care about ERP in the beginning, for all the right reasons. But I’m a businessman, Elizabeth. I’ve been riding the green technology wave for more than two decades. Ardagh 1 looked to be the ultimate green enterprise—
if
we could get on top of the alien problem.”

I remembered Murphy describing how Ardagh had recruited him from Trinity. How he’d made Murphy believe in ERP, persuading him to relocate and help fight the greatest threat to its success.
Murphy
was the one who’d come to Ardagh 1 “for all the right reasons.”

“After we arrived, we made a brief stop in New Seattle for a tour of the counseling center. Then we boarded a private shuttle for New Dublin, hoping to be settled in our new home before we had to deal with ghosts. An hour into the flight, somewhere over Everglade Isles, gale-force winds started up out of nothing and hurled us into the swamp. When I woke, Ruth was still unconscious, hanging half out of the torn hull. I seemed to have avoided even a scratch. What was left of our ship had lodged in the branches of a huge cypress, over an alligator-infested swamp. We were there nearly a week by the time they found and rescued us.”

I frowned in confusion. “I thought your wife died in that accident.”

Ardagh stretched his long legs in front of him as he leaned back against the sofa. “No, I did.”

It clicked into place with a shock like a physical blow. I sat straight up in my chair.

“You’re a ghost!”

“I figured it out that first day—saw my own body hanging from a branch a few meters lower. I climbed down and kicked it loose, and it splashed into the swamp. The alligators made short work of it. When my wife woke I told her she was my ghost. I told her I’d take care of her, but she had to keep in the background when we were with others—that those were the rules here. God bless her, she never questioned.”

“Jesus
,
” I murmured, aghast. What kind of creature was this? Some relative of those swamp dwellers in his story. “How have you kept it a secret all this time? Or
have
you?”

Was it possible Mitchell knew? No, she hated us. She would have exposed him.

“I immediately moved us outside New Dublin, not far from here actually. I conduct most of my business remotely. I really had no trouble until they installed those scanners in all the counseling centers and administrative buildings. I’m allowed to bypass them of course, but sometimes it’s awkward. People think I’m eccentric. Ruth follows me predictably as a shadow, but I’m always worried she’ll get confused and wander through one.”