Mount Dragon (62 page)

He looked questioningly at Levine.

“And perhaps then you'll tell me why you chose to depict your summer house in ruins,” Levine replied.

“Perhaps,” said Scopes. “Let's get to work.”

In the end, Levine chose to look like himself, with an ill-fitting dark suit, bald head, and uneven teeth. He turned slowly in front of the unblinking video camera in the Octagon. The feed from the camera would be scanned into several hundred hi-res images that together would make up the Levine figure that would be taking up residence on Scopes's virtual island. Over the last ninety minutes, the AI subroutine had asked him countless questions, ranging from early childhood memories to memorable teachers, personal philosophy, religion, and ethical beliefs. The subroutine had asked, him to list the books he had read, and the magazines he had subscribed to during the different periods of his life. It posed mathematical problems to him; asked about his travels; his musical likes and dislikes; his memories of his wife. The subroutine had given him Rorschach tests and even insulted him and argued with him, perhaps to gauge his emotional reactions. The resulting data, Levine knew, would be used to supply the body of knowledge, emotions, and memories that his cyberspace character would possess.

“Now what?” Levine asked, sitting down again.

“Now we wait,” Scopes said, forcing a smile. He had undergone a similar process of interrogation. He typed several commands, then sat back in the couch as the supercomputer began to generate the two new characters for his cyberspace re-creation of Monhegan Island.

A silence fell onto the room. Levine realized that, if nothing else, the interrogation had kept him occupied, kept him from realizing that these were in fact the last minutes of his life. Now, a strange mix of emotions began to crowd in on him: memories, fears, things left undone. He turned toward Scopes.

“Brent,” he began.

There was a low tone, and Scopes reached over and pressed a button on the phone beside the couch. The patrician voice of Spencer Fairley sounded through the phone's external speaker.

“The helicopters have arrived, sir,” he said.

Scopes pulled the keyboard onto his lap and began typing. “I'm going to send this audio feed down to central security, as well as to the archives, just to make sure there are no troublesome questions later. Listen carefully, Spencer. In a few minutes, I'm going to give the order for this building to be evacuated and sealed. Only yourself, a security team, and a bioemergency team should remain. Once evacuation is complete, you must shut off the air-circulation system for the Octagon. You are then to pump all ten canisters of VXV into the air supply, and restart the system. I'm not exactly sure how long it will take to…” He paused. “Perhaps you should wait fifteen minutes. Then, send the bioemergency team to the emergency pressure hatch in the Octagon's roof. Have Endicott depressurize the hatch from security control, instruct the team to place the beakers of cyanophosphatol inside the hatchway, then seal and repressurize the outer hatch. Once the team is clear, have the inner hatch opened remotely from security control. The beakers will fall into the Octagon and break, dispersing the cyanophosphatol.”

He looked at the screen. “Are you following this, Spencer?”

There was a long pause. “Yes, sir.”

“Even after the cyanophosphatol does its work, there will still be live viruses in the room. Hiding in the corpses. So, as a final step, you must incinerate them. The heat will denature the cyanophosphatol as well. The fireproof shell of the Octagon will keep a fire in as well as it will keep a fire out. But you must be careful not to cause a premature explosion or a dirty, out-of-control fire that might spread the virus. A fast-acting, high-temperature incendiary such as phosphorus should be used first. When the bodies have completely burned, the rest of the room should be cleansed with a lower-temperature incendiary. A napalm derivative will do. Both will be available from the restricted laboratory supplies.”

Listening, Levine noted the methodical detachment with which Scopes described the procedure:
the
corpses,
the
bodies.
Those are our corpses
, he thought.

“The bioemergency team should then perform a standard hot-agent decontam on the rest of the building. Once that's finished—” Scopes stopped short for moment. “Then I guess, Spencer, it's up to the board of directors.”

There was a silence.

“Now, Spencer, please get my executor on the line,” Scopes said quietly.

A moment later, a rough, gravelly voice sounded through the speakerphone beside the table. “Alan Lipscomb here.”

“Alan, it's Brent. Listen, there's to be a bequest change. Still on the line, Spencer?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Spencer will be my witness. I want fifty million set aside to fund an endowment for the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics. I'll provide Spencer with the details, and he'll pass them on to you.”

“Very well.”

Scopes typed quickly for a few moments, then turned to Levine. “I'm sending Spencer instructions to transfer the entire cypherspace databank, along with the compiler and my notes on the C
³
language, to the Institute for Advanced Neurocybernetics. In exchange for the endowment, I'm asking them to keep my virtual re-creation of Monhegan Island running in perpetuity, and to allow any serious student access to it.”

Levine nodded. “On permanent display. Fitting for so great a work of art.”

“But not only on display, Charles. I want them to add to it, extend the technology, improve the depth of the language and the tools. I suppose it's something I've kept to myself far too long.” He smoothed down his cowlick absently. “Any last requests, Charles? My executor is very good at getting things done.”

“Just one,” Levine said evenly.

“And that is—?”

“I think you can guess.”

Scopes looked at him for a moment. “Yes, of course,” he said at last. He turned back to the speakerphone. “Spencer, are you still there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please tear up that patent renewal for X-RUST.”

“The renewal, sir?”

“Just do it. And stay on the line.” Scopes turned back to Levine, one eyebrow raised.

“Thank you,” Levine said.

Scopes nodded quietly. Then he reached for the phone and pressed a series of buttons. “Attention, headquarters staff,” he said into the mouthpiece. Levine heard the voice echoing from a hidden speaker and realized the message was being broadcast throughout the building.

“This is Brent Scopes speaking,” Scopes continued. “An emergency has arisen that requires the entire staff to vacate the premises. This is a temporary measure, and I assure you that nobody is in danger.” He paused. “Before you leave, however, I must inform you that an alteration is being made in the GeneDyne chain of command. You will learn the details shortly. But let me say now that I have enjoyed working with every one of you, and I wish you and GeneDyne the very best of luck in the future. Remember that the goals of science are our goals, as well: the advancement of knowledge, and the betterment of mankind. Never lose sight of them. And now, please proceed to the nearest exit.”

Finger on the switch hook, Scopes turned to Levine.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

Levine nodded.

Scopes released the switch hook. “Spencer, you are to present all tapes of this event to the board next Monday morning. They must carry on according to the tenets of the GeneDyne charter. Now, please begin introducing the VXV gas. Yes. Yes, I know, Spencer. Thank you. Best of luck to you.”

Slowly, Scopes replaced the handset. Then he returned his hands to the keyboard.

“Let's go,” he said.

There was a humming noise, and the lights dimmed. Suddenly, the huge octagonal office was transformed into the garret room of the ruined house on Monhegan Island. Gazing around, stunned, Levine realized that not just one, but each of the room's eight walls was a vast display screen.

“Now you know why I chose the turret room,” Scopes said, laying the keyboard aside again.

Levine sat on the sofa, entranced. Outside the garret windows, he could clearly see the widow's walk. The sun was just coming up over the ocean, the sea itself absorbing the colors of the sky. The seagulls wheeled around the boats in the harbor, crying excitedly as the lobstermen rolled barrels of redfish bait down the pier and onto their boats.

In a chair in the garret, a figure stirred, stood up, stretched. It was short and thin, with gangly limbs and thick glasses. An unrepentant cowlick stood like a black feather from the unruly mass of hair.

“Well, Charles,” it said. “Welcome to Monhegan Island.”

Levine watched as another figure on the far side of the garret—a bald man in an ill-fitting dark suit—nodded in return.

“Thank you,” it said, in a voice hauntingly familiar.

“Shall we wander into town?” the Scopes-figure said.

“Not just now,” the Levine-figure said. “I'd prefer to sit here and watch the boats go out.”

“Very good. Shall we play the Game while we wait?”

“Why not?” said Levine-figure. “We've got a lot of time to kill.”

Levine sat in the darkened Octagon, watching his newly created character with a wistful smile.

“A lot of time to kill,” said Scopes from the darkness. “An infinity of time to kill. So much time for them, and so little time for us.”

“I choose
time
as a keyword,” said the Levine-figure.

The Scopes-figure sat down again in the rickety chair, kicked back, and said:

Levine—the real Levine—smelled a strange odor in the air of the Octagon; pungent, almost sweet, like long-dead roses. His eyes began to sting and he closed them, listening to the voice of the Scopes-figure:

There was a silence, and the last thing Levine heard as he drew the acrid gas into his lungs was his own voice, reciting an answering quotation: “‘Time is a storm in which we are all lost…'”

The desert looked strange under the high thin covering of cirrus clouds. It was no longer a sea of light, but a darkening blue plain ending in distant, hard-edged mountain peaks. A chill, and the smell of the desert autumn, hung in the air.

From their vantage point atop Mount Dragon, Carson and de Vaca looked down on the blackened ruins of the GeneDyne Remote Desert Testing Facility. The massive underground bunker of the Fever Tank was now a jagged crater of darkened concrete and twisted rebar erupting out of the desert floor, surrounded by sand scorched a deep orange by fire. The plasmid transfection laboratory was merely a skeleton of I beams warped by the heat. The dormitories and their shattered, dark windowframes stared with dead eyes out over the landscape. Everything of value had been removed weeks before, leaving only the hollow shells of buildings as mute sentinels to what had been. There were no plans to rebuild. According to rumor, the Missile Range was going to use the remains as a bombing target. The only signs of life were the ravens plundering the destroyed canteen, circling and squabbling over something inside.

Beyond the ruins of Mount Dragon, the rubble of another vanished city rose from the landscape: Kin Klizhini, the Black House, felled by time, lack of water, and the elements. On the far side of the cinder cone, the cluster of microwave and radio towers sat silently, waiting disassembly. Far below, the pickup truck the two had driven in on sat where the perimeter had once been, a lonely spot of color in the drab wastes.

Carson stared mesmerized. “Amazing, isn't it, that a thousand years separates those two ruins,” he said quietly. “We've come a long way, I suppose. Yet it all ends up the same. The desert doesn't care.”

There was a silence.

“Funny they never found Nye,” de Vaca said at last.

Carson shook his head. “The poor son of a bitch. He must have died out there, somewhere, and become dinner for the coyotes and buzzards. He'll be found someday, just like we found Mondragón. A bleached skeleton and a sack of rocks.” Carson massaged his left forearm, remembering. There was a lot of metal in it now, and it still ached in damp weather. But not here, in the desert.

“Maybe a new legend of gold will grow up around the story, and in five hundred years they'll be looking for the Nye gold,” de Vaca said, laughing. Then her face turned serious. “I don't feel sorry for him at all. He was a bastard even before the PurBlood got to him.”

“The one I feel sorry for is Singer,” Carson said. “He was more than a decent guy. And Harper. And Vanderwagon. None of them deserved what happened.”

“You talk like they're dead.”

“They might as well be.”

De Vaca shrugged. “Who knows? With all the bad press it's been getting lately, maybe GeneDyne will put its resources toward finding a way to undo what it did to them. Besides, in one sense, they
are
guilty. Guilty of embracing a great and terrifying vision, with no thought to the consequences.”

Carson shook his head. “If that's true, I was just as guilty of that as they were.”

“Not quite,” de Vaca said. “I think there was something in the back of your mind that was always skeptical.”

“I've asked myself that every day since the PurBlood rollout was terminated. I'm not so sure. I would have taken the blood just like they did.”

De Vaca looked at him.

“It's true. There was a time I would have followed Scopes to the ends of the earth, if he'd asked. He had that effect on you.”

De Vaca continued to look at him curiously. “Not on me,” she said finally.

Carson said nothing.

“It was very strange, that fire, wasn't it?” de Vaca asked.

Carson shook his head. “Yes, it was. And Scopes's confession. If you could call it that. I'm sure we'll never know what really happened. There was unfinished business between those two, Levine and Scopes.”

De Vaca's eyebrows lifted. “Well, I guess it's finished now,” she said.

Carson hesitated. “I wonder if they'll ever go through with X-FLU,” he said at last. “Now that we solved the problem, I mean.”

“Never,” de Vaca said emphatically. “Nobody would touch it now. It's too dangerous. Besides, we don't
know
all the problems have been solved. And the problem of altering future generations—of changing humanity itself—has just begun. We're going to see some terrible things in our lifetime, Guy. You know this isn't the end of it.”

The clouds had thickened and the desert darkened. They stood motionless.

“We'd better go,” de Vaca said at last. “It's a long drive to Sleeping Ute Mountain.”

Carson remained still, his eyes transfixed by the shattered grandeur of what had been Mount Dragon.

“You've got relatives who are waiting, eager to meet you. And a feast of mutton stew and fry bread. And dancing and singing. And the memory of old Great-Uncle Charley to honor, who saved our butts out there in that desert.”

Carson nodded absently.

“You're not chickening out, are you, half-breed?” She put her arm around his waist and smiled.

With an effort, Carson pulled his eyes away from the ruined complex. Then he turned to her and grinned.

“It's been a long time since I've had a good bowl of mutton stew,” he said.