The Gift (17 page)

“We still don’t know what happens when a human merges with a gift.”

Sensing an easy opportunity to agree with Web, Jack did. “It’s not natural.”

“Are you insane?” Chang’s exasperation was approaching anger. “We just found out that there is a reward for being first and a punishment for being anything else. What if the same rules apply to the ability to retrieve the Maker's data in the way we’ve been shown? Do you really want to be the man whose actions resulted in Russia or Pakistan gaining exclusive accelerated access to all of the Maker's knowledge? We do not know where this first merged person is, but we know he is not here. This is our only chance to gain a lead in this.

“We have absolutely no choice. We must do this, and we must do it as quickly as possible. There is no more time for debate on this issue. Colonel, I insist you allow me to merge with a gift and get me and anyone else who is willing to do so back to Peterson immediately!”

“Are you willing to join with your gift, Major?” Web asked Angela.

“Yes, Sir.”

Web turned his head slightly to ask AJ the same question, but stopped short of doing so when he saw the blank expression on his face. “Is he…”

“Yes, Sir. He started merging while Doctor Liu was talking.” Angela answered.

“Let’s stick to protocol then. Since you’re willing, do whatever it is that you need to do to make it happen,” Web directed.

“Doctor Liu, a word if you will?” Web asked politely as he stood to exit the shelter. Chang stood and followed him.

Outside of the shelter, Web continued walking until he reached a light set about a hundred feet from the shelter. There was still sufficient daylight to negate the need for the set to be on and there were generators closer to the shelters providing power, so the spot provided privacy and relative quiet.

“What’s wrong with you, Doctor? I’ve never seen you act with so little regard for another’s feelings.”

Chang was visibly upset and took a moment to gather himself before responding, “We are going about this incorrectly and we have already lost part of the game. This is not a game we can afford to lose. We have already learned that we are unlikely to play a role in the construction of the first interstellar vessel mankind has produced. What if we lose the next move in the game? There may be no other chances and the fate of humanity will be completely out of our control. Even if there are no group minds on their way, whichever country possesses this technology in the way it was designed to be used will be the power in the world. I left a communist dictatorship where people were persecuted for what they believed, where my parents struggled to survive while millions were killed. I must do everything I can, I will do everything I can to prevent that. I’m sorry, but your feelings pale in comparison to our need to act.”

Web thought for a moment before responding. “I agree with you. The stakes have been raised, but we only recently found that out. We will accelerate from here. Tension on the team will not aid us in our mission.”

“Colonel, as I have said before and has now been proven to be true, we cannot wait until we know. Doing so will only ensure we find out from someone else more bold and we will be left at their mercy. You have only ever been on top. You’re an officer in the most powerful military in the world, living in the most prosperous and strongest nation the world has ever known. The rest of the world, the parts of it that know a different kind of struggle than Americans, will not hesitate to act because of the potential risks. Human life is not as precious in those places. It should be, and it can be if the knowledge contained in that data store is used properly.”

“I appreciate your passion, Doctor and as I said, I agree with you on what must be done now. Can we try to do so civilly? I assure you, developing factions and resentments will only hamper our efforts.”

“Yes, Colonel. You’re right, recriminations will not help at this point, but to be clear, I am getting a gift and merging with it as soon as we return, correct?”

“Pandora’s box is wide open now. I couldn’t close it again if I wanted to. Yes, you may retrieve a gift as soon as we return.”

Web had arranged for AJ and Angela to be moved onto the Chinook helicopter after everything else was on board, including several dozed gifts. There had been some concern about moving them while their gifts were changing them, but in the end it was decided the team could not wait. Chang’s sense of urgency was now instilled in all of them.

Web had taken the opportunity presented by the loading time to update his commanding officer about the latest events and requested suitably qualified volunteers be found while the team was in flight. His CO assured him they would be at the SCIF when the team arrived there. Web informed him that he was leaving Jack behind as temporary commander of the site until the command could get a higher-ranking replacement in place.

Having fulfilled his commitment, Web entered the aircraft. He was the last to do so before the loadmaster. It took off a few minutes later.

An hour and a half into the flight, Angela returned to full consciousness. AJ followed her a few minutes later. Casual conversations stopped when the team noticed they were awake. AJ was the first to speak.

“I don’t feel much different, better, but not much different.”

Angela was right behind him, “Neither do I, although my gift, I’ve named him An by the way, tells me the human form is not designed very robustly and he’d like to do something about that. I said no. I’m going to ask him if he knows any more about what’s going on now that we’re one.”

“I’ll do the same,” AJ said.

Less than a minute later Angela spoke again, directing her attention to Web, “An tells me something unusual has happened, something that has never to his knowledge been done before. One of the purposes of the mass shed by the landing ships is to establish a framework for a worldwide intelligent communication network. When sufficient gifts merge with humans, the network is supposed to become aware. This time, it became aware before that requirement was met.”

“Does it know why?” Web asked.

“He, Sir, and yes. A man who merged before us brought the network up before the controlling intelligence came to be of its own accord.”

“So, who is controlling it?” Rui asked.

“That man.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Rui said.

“No, it doesn’t. Do you know where this man is? Can your gift, can An, help you find him?” Web asked.

“One moment, Sir,” Angela stopped talking and closed her eyes for a moment, “It’s not a guarantee; but there’s a very large group of nodes not far from…wait, that’s weird.”

“What is it, Major?”

“I was going to give you the coordinates to the center of the group of nodes, but I thought you’d want to know where it was without having to call up a map. It’s within 30 miles of Peterson, Sir.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“Let me see…” Angela talked silently with An for a moment before answering, “Yes, Sir. It’s in Pueblo, near the intersection of Bruce Lane and Duncan Road.”

“That’s Sam’s neighborhood. Can your gift correlate his address with that location?”

“They overlap, Sir.”

“How in the hell…” Web turned away from Angela and grabbed a headset off of the cabin wall, put it on and activated it. “Connect me to base security.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
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Sam wasn’t feeling particularly powerful anymore. In fact, quite the opposite. For the first time since merging with Adia, he felt worn down and distracted. It was as if he was trying to concentrate with two different types of loud and obnoxious music playing in each ear. It wasn’t impossible, but it was inefficient and painful.

“You didn’t mention how incredibly uncomfortable this would be, Adia. Please tell me there’s a way to make it stop.”

“I did not anticipate any discomfort for you, Sam, and I don’t yet know what’s causing it. I’ll need to monitor your brain patterns in response to network activity in order to find the source of your ill ease. Until then, I cannot say that it will be possible to make it stop without abandoning control of the network. If you choose to do that, I do not know if it will ever self organize, or for that matter if there will be any way to activate it again.”

“You can explain that to me later. Right now it feels like my head is going to explode. I think I’m going to lay down for a while, give you some time to work on the problem. In the future, I need to pay more attention to you when you tell me you don’t know something. You may have been born to complement me, but it doesn’t appear your complementary elements include helping me be cautious.”

“Would it have helped if I had cautioned you? I can change.”

“No, it wouldn’t have, and don’t. I’m just cranky. This was my choice. I’m going to rest now.”

Sam moved from the living room to the bedroom and slowly lowered himself to the bed. He was accustomed to being in pain, but almost never had headaches and had never had one like this. He didn’t bother trying to sleep because he knew there was no chance of that. Instead, he covered his eyes with a pillow and tried to lay very still. He didn’t lay there long before being interrupted by Adia.

“Sam, a bonded pair just contacted each of our network nodes.”

“What does that mean? Please keep it simple.”

“On its face, it indicates some interest in the way we’ve activated the network. As I said, our actions were unusual and both humans and gifts are curious by nature. It will probably happen again, perhaps many times. Right now, however, the nodes are still close to us and are departing in a semi-spherical pattern. It would be trivial to determine our approximate location by triangulating on their locations. It’s likely someone is looking for the pair that activated the network, for us.”

“Can you determine where the contact came from?”

“Within limits based on the delay between contact requests and very limited triangulation…”

“Simple, please.”

“Between forty and sixty miles north of us.”

“Dammit! We have to go. Can you do anything for this pain that will make me any more functional?”

“For short periods.”

“Do it.”

Sam started to feel slightly better as he carefully got up and went to his closet to get a suitcase. Opening the suitcase on the bed, he quickly threw in some underwear, socks, jeans and a few shirts. He picked up the pictures of Elizabeth and Zach and carefully placed them on top of his clothes. He closed the suitcase, opened his nightstand and took out his emergency cash and shoved it in his pocket before extracting his pistol and a couple extra boxes of ammunition. He put the gun in his waistband and the extra ammo in the zippered pocket on the opposite side of the suitcase from the pictures. He was certain he’d need the cash and hopeful he wouldn’t need the gun. As prepared as he had time to be, he headed outside to his Jeep, set the suitcase on the passenger seat, walked around to the driver’s side, got in and started it up.

“Is that the best you can do?” Sam asked.

“This is the best balance of pain mitigation and maintaining your ability to function.”

“Then it will have to do. Direct the nodes to move more randomly and accelerate their departure from this area. Then, start creating as many general-purpose nanites as possible from parts of the truck that we won’t miss. Leave room for three people. Is there anything you can do to make it more efficient? It would be very convenient if we didn’t have to stop more often than absolutely necessary.”

“The nodes are responding to your instruction and I have begun the process of creating nanites. I can make the vehicle much more efficient. Which is your priority, improving the vehicle or having a pool of available nanites?”

“Go with the pool first. You’ll have some time to work on the truck when we get to Jim’s.”

As they were talking, Sam had pulled out of the drive. He took what he believed would be his last look at the house. It wasn’t a bad little house, he thought. Not a bad little house at all.

Sam arrived at Jim’s without notice. He’d left his phone at the house and didn’t want to try communicating with Jim using the Worldnet while driving. He was having enough trouble driving as it was. Tasking his brain any more than he was would likely get him pulled over for driving while impaired. Then, he’d have to explain the gun, which would probably result in him being taken in, which is where Web would find him, he was sure. Not a risk he was willing to take.

Parking his truck as far off the road as Jim’s driveway allowed, Sam exited the vehicle and walked up to Jim’s front door. He ignored the doorbell. He hated the things. Instead, he knocked firmly three times, just like they’d taught him in the service. Some lessons stick for life.

“Just a minute.”

A few seconds later, the porch light came on and Sam heard Jim’s voice more clearly.

“Who is it?”

“It’s me, Jim.”

“I don’t know anybody by the name of me. Go away!”

Sam started to say something else, but the opening door cut him off.

“I’m just screwing with you. Come on in, Sam.” Jim waited for Sam to enter, then closed the door and turned the porch light back off. “I assume your late night visit is related to our earlier activities?”

Sam hadn’t considered how late it was and was about to apologize for getting Jim up, but one good look at Jim convinced Sam he’d been awake and actively working on something. His eyes were bright and he looked like he was restraining himself from doing calisthenics just because he could.

“You look like you’re ready to bounce off the walls, Jim.”

“I have so much energy, I don’t know what to do with myself!” Jim responded with a smile. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Sure, whatever you have handy.”

“Got a fresh pot of coffee, not that I need it anymore. Still like the taste, though.”

“That would be great, black, one sugar.”

“Have a seat in the living room. I’ll meet you there.”

Sam walked to Jim’s living room. He hadn’t been to the house very often, just a few times after a particularly pleasant fishing trip. He liked the place. It didn’t feel like a bachelor pad, probably because Jim hadn’t changed much about the decor after his wife died. Sam could understand that.