STAR TREK - TOS (13 page)

“No reason,” he lied. “Just paranoid, I guess.” He chuckled loudly, the forced laughter sounding hollow even to his own ears. “I mean, how do I know that you folks aren’t aliens?”

“Good point,” Carlson conceded amiably He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a Nicoderm patch just above his elbow. “How many E.T.’s do you know that are trying to quit smoking?”

Walter smiled weakly.
How long can I pull this off,
he worried,
even if I have spent almost a decade
studying the layout of those molecules?

“In fact, Dr. Nichols,” Lt. Christopher broke in, “we will be subjecting you to an exhaustive physical examination before you leave this facility, just to make sure that you are one hundred percent human.”

[106]
I should be,
Walter thought. Then a horrible idea occurred to him.
Unless those sneaky Ferengi
did something to me when I wasn’t looking!
For a second, he almost believed that he’d been injected with alien DNA or something, then he came to his senses.
Calm down,
he told himself urgently.
Don’t let
your imagination get out of control.

“Not that we’re really worried about that,” Shannon O’Donnell reassured him. “We’re most interested in your brains, not a blood sample. I’m hoping that, working together, we can refine and improve your formula for transparent aluminum until it’s almost as strong and durable as the Ferengi version.” She glanced down at her notes, then snapped her fingers as if she had just remembered something else. “We also want to take advantage of your recent research into cryonics.”

Walter sat up straight, startled. “How do you know about that?” He hadn’t wanted to go public with his new venture until he had all the technical kinks worked out; at best, he was at least a year away from launching his first cryosatellite.

“We have our sources,” Lt. Christopher said, feigning a sinister leer. “The important thing is that cryonics is a major part of Project F. Our prototype, the DY-100, is intended to be a sleeper ship, capable of traveling vast distances to the stars while its crew and passengers remain frozen in suspended animation.”

“You can see,” O’Donnell said, “why we find your cryosatellite concept so intriguing.” Carlson said she was an astronaut, Walter recalled; he wondered if she was planning to be one of those frozen space travelers. “We’ve also been carefully watching that whole[107]Biosphere experiment in Arizona,” she added as an aside.

“So,” Carlson inquired cheerfully, “what do you say, Walter? Are you with us?” His enthusiasm and energy were infectious. “We can definitely use a mind as ingenious and imaginative as yours.”

Walter had to admit he enjoyed being mistaken for a genius. His whole reputation, not to mention his thriving business, was based on his supposed invention of transparent aluminum. How could he give that up now, especially when he had a chance to be part of history in the making?

Besides, there were bound to be commercial applications to the technology being developed here.

Somebody had to keep an eye out for such opportunities, if only for the sake of the average American consumer. ...

“When you put it like that,” he said humbly, “how can I refuse?”

CHANDIGARH, INDIA

JUNE 14, 1993

FOR SECURITY REASONS, the summit was held in a bombproof bunker several levels below the palace. A mirrored ceiling provided the illusion of open space, while also allowing wary bodyguards to view the proceedings from an extra angle. Polished granite walls, inlaid with geometric patterns of red and yellow marble, enclosed a rectangular chamber dominated by a conference-size teak table around which Khan’s honored guests were seated. Each attendee had been permitted one armed bodyguard, who stood rigidly behind their respective charges, alert for any sign of danger or betrayal. An unsheathed scimitar that had once belonged to Saladin himself, served as a centerpiece atop the table.

Khan waited until all his guests were in place before entering the chamber. Then he strode to the[109]

head of the table, accompanied only by Joaquin and Ament. Golden embroidery glittered on a jacket woven of the finest Gujarati silk. “Welcome,” he greeted those present. “I thank you all for accepting my invitation to meet here today.”

He took a moment to survey the faces gathered at the table, most of which he had never before witnessed in the flesh. These were his far-flung brothers and sisters, fellow fruits of the Chrysalis Project, whose superior minds and bodies had brought them, despite their relative youth, to positions of prominence throughout the world. They were, he was forced to admit, an extraordinarily diverse lot: a Balkan dictator, a Somalian warlord, a charismatic Peruvian revolutionary, an exiled Chinese superwoman, the self-proclaimed prophet of a millennial cult, and the commander of an American anti-government militia.

They seemed, on the surface, to have little but enhanced DNA in common, but Khan was confident that he could unite his scattered siblings under a single banner.
We owe it to the world,
he believed with all his heart,
to combine our superlative abilities for the betterment of humanity.

At least some of the attending luminaries seemed anxious to get down to business. “Why have you called us here?” Vasily Hunyadi demanded impatiently. He was a ruddy-faced Romanian, with a drooping mustache and wild, bushy eyebrows, who had lost one eye in the bloody civil wars consuming the former Yugoslavia. Khan was aware that Hunyadi had been accused by U.N. observers of practicing “genetic cleansing” in the areas under his control. “I have a war to fight.”

“Yes,” agreed Dr. Alberto Gomez, alias “Pachacutec,”[110]who had raised a rebel army in Peru as part of a decades-long campaign to restore the ancient Incan Empire along Marxist lines. A bristling, salt-and-pepper-colored beard obscured his aquiline features and made him look older than his mere twenty-two years. Despite all his genetic advantages, he appeared to have taken poor care of his body, which looked paunchy and out of shape beneath his ostentatiously proletarian peasant garb. “What is this all about, Khan Singh?”

Khan appreciated their directness. He also desired to cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Over two decades ago, the Chrysalis Project brought forth into the world a new and superior breed of humanity, genetically engineered for the express purpose of leading mankind into a brighter and more glorious future. We are the culmination of that magnificent venture,” he informed them, gesturing expansively toward the highly varied personages gathered around the table. “You have all seen the documentation I sent you, establishing irrefutably our unique kinship. Moreover, you must feel in your very bones and blood, as I do, the innate superiority that drives you to make your mark upon the world. You must know, deep down inside, in the biological coding of your chromosomes, that we share a very special destiny, and a duty to see that destiny realized.”

He spoke in English, certain that his supremely gifted peers were as fluently multilingual as he. “I am proud to call you my brothers and sisters. Individually, we have each accomplished much. Imagine now what we can do together.” His spirit soared upon the exultant wings of his own rhetoric; he saw the future, shining as brightly as the summer sun, radiate outward from this humble bunker to transform the

[111]entire planet. “It is within our grasp to reshape history and grant to the world a new golden age, a second renaissance. An era of progress and discovery, of stability and order, unparalleled in human history!”

If he expected applause or affirmation, he was quickly disappointed. “Under whose rule?” asked a stocky African man whose military uniform was adorned with a veritable panoply of gleaming medals and ribbons. Elijah Jugurtha Amin was one of the most powerful warlords battling for control of the famine-stricken nation of Somalia. He eyed Khan with open distrust, his thick arms crossed atop the stout barrel of his chest. “Yours?”

“Sounds suspiciously like a New World Order to me,” General Randall “Hawkeye” Morrison drawled dubiously. The only American at the table, the militia leader was clad in khaki-colored military fatigues.

Large mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes from the other leaders at the summit. He chewed habitually on a piece of gum as he tipped back in his chair. “Like you might be planning to bulldoze Lady Liberty beneath a load of utopian hogwash.”

Standing at Khan’s right hand, Joaquin reached for his ursine belt buckle, but Khan discreetly raised a hand to forestall any immediate attempts to punish the American for his defiance. These were not, after all, inferior politicians and government functionaries of the sort who could be easily cowed by an unexpected act of violence; these were his peers, superior beings like himself, who had to be dealt with on an entirely higher level. (Besides, the presence of so many armed bodyguards made any abrupt executions problematic to say the least; Khan had no wish to spark a[112]senseless shoot-out in the bunker of his own palace!)

He remained standing at the head of the table. “In the
Iliad,
the great poet Homer states wisely, ‘A multitude of rulers is not a good thing. Let there be one ruler, one king.’ ” Khan bowed his head with as much humility as he could muster as he presented himself as that ruler. “Naturally, as the prime mover who has brought us all together, I see myself as the head of our alliance, but rest assured,” he offered generously, “that each of you will have a voice in the greater Khanate to come. As chief executive and sovereign, I would consider it my responsibility and obligation to advance, to the best of my considerable abilities, our common agenda.”

Angry mutterings arose from his assembled guests, but Khan pressed on, raising his voice to be heard above the protests. “Look at the chaotic state of the world today,” he exhorted his prospective allies.

“War and misery in the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Terrorist bombings in New York, England, Italy. Thousands made homeless by flooding in India, Nepal, and the American Midwest. Entire nations breaking apart into anarchy. ...” Khan shook his head, profoundly offended by the world’s disarray. “Can you not see that a single, unified authority is needed to bring order to this tragic state of affairs?”

Hunyadi sneered derisively. “I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but there will be no more conflict in Eastern Europe once we have purified our population, and driven the genetically unfit from our land.”

His single eye gleamed with cruel anticipation. “Leave that to me.”

“Yes,” Amin seconded Hunyadi. “There will be peace[113]in Somaliland, too, but only after I defeat my enemies, including the heinous American occupying forces.” Khan recalled that the American president had recently dispatched additional U.S. troops to assist in the United Nations’ largely ineffective peacekeeping efforts in Somalia. “Victory is the only peace I crave.”

Caustic laughter came from the attractive Chinese woman sitting across the table from Amin. Exiled from her own country after Tiananmen Square, Chen Tiejun had founded a separatist matriarchal colony on a remote island off the coast of New Zealand, attracting like-minded women from all over the world. Her glossy black hair was cut short, rather in the manner of Joan of Arc, and she wore a suit of molded resin body armor with pleated rubber joints. “Just like a man,” she ridiculed the Somalian warlord. “Your answer to everything is conquest and oppression. Trademark patriarchal thinking.”

“Patience, my brethren,” urged a serene, ascetic-looking figure clad in flowing chartreuse robes. The constellation of Orion was tattooed upon his high, pale forehead. “There is no need for strife. All living things will be as one when our transcendent starfathers return to usher in the new millennium.”

Gomez snickered and rolled his eyes. “Who invited this lunatic to the meeting. Let me guess, our

‘starfathers’ come from outer space, yes?”

Brother Arcturus, founder and sole prophet of the Panspermic Church of First Contact, replied with the weary resignation of one who was accustomed to being mocked by an unbelieving world. “As all truly enlightened souls are aware, the evolution of the human race is an eons-old experiment being[114]

conducted by higher intelligences originating in the Orion system, who long ago seeded the Earth with their own cosmic DNA.” He nodded knowingly in Khan’s direction. “I would not be surprised if the so-called Chrysalis Project was all part of the grand design, perhaps initiated by aliens in human guise.”

I
doubt my mother was from outer space,
Khan thought, although he sometimes wondered about Gary Seven. Where
did
all that fantastic technology come from? It was a measure of Khan’s rightful self-confidence that he was not intimidated by the prospect of extraterrestrial life; he liked to think that, should he ever meet an alien face-to-face, he would prove its equal or more.

“Utter rot!” Gomez labeled Arcturus’s beliefs. “Mindless imbecility of the worst sort, in that it promises salvation from the stars rather than through tireless revolutionary struggle.” Gomez had once been a university professor in Lima; his pedantic tone betrayed his academic roots. “Science fiction, it seems, is the new opiate of the masses.”

Hawkeye Morrison came to the defense of the genre. “Sure beats all that left-wing Marxist claptrap you trade in,” he snapped at Gomez. “Now that’s fantasy, all right. Haven’t you heard, Señor Professor?

Communism is as dead as Elvis.”

“Never!” Gomez’s voice rang with revolutionary fervor. “The betrayal of the great Bolshevik experiment hardly negates the overriding principles of dialectical materialism. The class struggle is a force as inescapable as gravity, leading inevitably to the rise of a true workers’ state.” He glared balefully at Morrison, all but spitting out his words. “Your pathetic[115]Yankee posturings are nothing more than the last feeble bleatings of a morally and socially bankrupt society. We will build the People’s Regime atop your own bloated corpse!”

Morrison rose angrily from his seat. “You goddamn commie weasel!” Gomez’s bodyguard, an unsmiling mestizo gunman, reacted instantly, drawing a Walther P5 automatic pistol from beneath his woolen alpaca vest.