Agents of the Glass (29 page)

Mrs. Cardigan pushed her chair back from the table. Neither Silas nor Reza had ever seen her look so worried.

“This is very troubling,” she said. “James Thorneside—or St. John de Spere, if you prefer—is not someone to be taken lightly. He's not like us. What I mean is that he's not like
anyone.
He's brilliant and creative but utterly unpredictable because he doesn't feel emotions. He
can't.
The story is that he had almost no human contact for the first ten years of his life. He was the subject of a bizarre psychological experiment. His parents were scientists. Quite mad ones, I'm afraid. They kept him in a room without windows and controlled every aspect of his life.”

“But I've seen him smile,” said Silas. “In fact, he's smiling in almost every picture we have.”

“It's an illusion, that's all. I wouldn't be surprised if he could cry on command, too. He imitates; he pretends. Look a little closer at that so-called smile. It's as if a machine taught him. The mechanics of a smile are all there—the teeth, upturned lips—but his eyes are cold, unfeeling…the eyes of a reptile. The truth is, he's no different from those lab animals he destroyed twenty years ago. He's a monster, the laboratory creation of twisted minds who were
obsessed
with eugenics—using genetics to create the perfect human. Clearly, he has picked up right where his parents left off. And to say that his idea of the perfect human and ours are different would be the understatement of the century.”

“If you never met him, how do you know so much about him?” Silas asked.

“Do you remember the file I showed you the day you brought Andy to the Mission for the first time? The one that surprised you so?”

“Yes, of course. What does she have to…”

“Twenty years ago, she was a postgraduate student at Grootman College. She was the advisor who refused to allow the experiment that went wrong.”

Silas whistled. “No kidding. Do you think he knows…”

“I hope not, for her sake. For everyone's sake. She's in a different field and has a new name, too—but for a very different reason. She changed hers when she got married. Lots of water under the bridge since then.”

Although virtually no one outside the Llewellyn family knew it, Howard was an excellent cook.
^*
Andy actually preferred his dad's cooking because he stuck to the basics. Nothing fancy, no weird vegetables or fish that he'd never heard of. Chicken. Beef. Occasionally, pasta. As Andy worked on his
Indefatigable
model, which was spread out over half of the kitchen table, trying his best
not
to think about Winter or the Agents of the Glass or NTRP or the fast-approaching concert, Howard sautéed chicken to go on top of a Caesar salad.

“How's the model coming along?” Howard asked over his shoulder as he shook the frying pan back and forth. “Looks like a lot of pieces. How many are there?”

“Like, a thousand or something,” Andy answered. “This first part is the hardest, because you have to make sure everything is straight. If you're not careful, the hull turns out twisted.”

Andy stood up to show him how the individual wood planks were attached to the framework.

“Holy cow. I didn't realize it was so…It's like you're building a real boat. How long is it going to take?”

“The instructions say about a hundred hours. But probably longer for me, since I've never done one like this before.”

“Well, no one can say you're not patient. Hold on a sec.” With a flick of the wrist, he flipped the chicken in the air like a pancake. “So tell me, whose ship is this again?”

“Horatio Hornblower. I mean, he's not real, but the
Indefatigable
was a real ship.”

Howard smiled. “
Indefatigable.
I like that. Seems perfect for someone else I know.”

“Mom?”

“Actually, I was thinking of you, but now that you mention it, it fits her pretty well, too. And speaking of your mom, I have a little surprise for you. She's on her way—she'll be home a day earlier than she thought. She'll be here in time for dinner on Saturday. I'm sure you're ready for a little break from my cooking.”

“No, your cooking is great.”

“But…”

“No
but.
It's just…I…Can I ask you a question? About your job, I mean?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Why do you have to be so…negative? It's like you can't ever like anything that's good. You know, like the Karina Jellyby thing. It really is amazing what some of those kids are doing.”

“I know.”

“But…then…why?”

“The short answer is: It's what people want.”

“But you're not like that. And what about Mom? Her whole life is all about helping people. When you're on the radio, you make it sound like she's wasting her time.”

“I'm playing a character, Andy. There are a lot of people out there who think that Howard Twopenny is right. People who buy products from our advertisers. Who pay the station a
lot
of money for those commercials.”

“So you don't believe what you're saying? Doesn't that make you—”

“A hypocrite? Sure. You could say that. But it's more complicated than that. It's not just about the money. The world you believe in—your mom's world, Karina Jellyby's world—is locked in a battle with the world of people like Howard Twopenny. A battle that the good guys are losing at the moment. At least part of the reason for that is that they don't truly understand the nature of the enemy. It's hard to defeat an enemy you don't understand. I like to think that I help make that perfectly clear.”

“Oh, I think you're doing that,” said Andy. “A lot of people
hate
you. Doesn't that bother you?”

“Ah, but they hate Howard
Twopenny.
To me, he's like a ventriloquist's dummy. At the end of the show, I stuff him back into a suitcase. You know, I think that's the best thing about radio. I'm a voice, not a face. That's why I've been resisting my boss's plan to put my show on TV. That all make sense?”

“I guess.”

“Good. So now it's my turn. What's the real reason you showed up at the studio?”

Andy hesitated and sat down. How much more could he reveal without having to explain
everything
? “It's…we're…I'm working on this story at school, you know, in the Broadcast Club. I can't tell you all the details because some of it is a surprise, but it has something to do with the Karina Jellyby concert. Are you really going to come?”

“Wouldn't miss it. Are you kidding? Me and Jellybean, breathing the same air. Of course, I'll probably have to listen to a speech about how that air is being replaced by CO
₂
—she's really into that whole global-warming, carbon-footprint mumbo jumbo.”

Andy sat bolt upright in his chair, transfixed. “Wait. That's it! CO
₂
! Carbon dioxide. Not
cotwo.
God, I'm an idiot. Sorry, Dad. I need to make a call right now.”

“What are you talking about? What's so important about CO
₂
?”

“I can't explain—all I can say is: It could be a matter of life or death!”

*
It was certainly
not
something he would want his listeners to know.

Mrs. Cardigan's brow was furrowed, and her knitting needles were clicking and clacking as her fingers flew, wrapping burgundy yarn this way and that. When she reached the end of the row, she looked up. “Whatever happened at Halestrom, NTRP is planning the same thing for the concert at Wellbourne. Just think: two hundred and fifty bright, young, idealistic minds. De Spere must be licking his lips at the thought of it.”

“I have something here,” said Silas, his fingers still tapping furiously at the keyboard, in search of video from the Halestrom Conference. “When I—” He stopped as his phone, vibrating, scooted across the table. He held it up for all to see that it was Andy.

“Hi, Andy. Everything okay? I'm putting you up on the big screen for Mrs. Cardigan and Reza.”

“Yeah, okay. Listen, I was wrong. The email to Winter. It's not a
cotwo
delivery—it's CO
₂
. Carbon dioxide. The stuff they use to make soda fizzy. So simple. I'm sorry, I should have thought of it before.”

“But why would they be telling Winter about a…Holy smokes! Andy, you're a genius.”

“What's going on?” Mrs. Cardigan asked. “What's so unusual about a delivery of carbon dioxide?”

“Because it's
not
carbon dioxide. The tanks are filled with the gas they used at the Halestrom,” Reza explained. “Which is, I'm guessing, a more refined version of the gas that was used in the Grootman College disaster twenty years ago. And that's how they get it into the building, no questions asked. Every bar and concession stand uses tanks of CO
₂
.”

“You have no idea how big this is, Andy,” said Silas, holding his phone in front of the monitor he'd been working on so Andy could see it. “You need to see this, too. Somebody was very clever and turned off all the video feeds from inside the Halestrom Hotel—well,
almost
all the feeds. I found one camera that is not part of the security system or their closed-circuit TV network. This one was installed by the heating and air-conditioning contractor to monitor equipment. It's an easy, cheap way for them to see what's going on remotely. Fortunately for us, the thing it's aimed at only takes up about a quarter of the screen…and it's high-def video, so I was able to slow it down and blow up the individual images. In this first part, you can see the people Ilene Porter was talking about. That's George Washington, and there's Beethoven. Now I'm going to fast-forward to when things start to go crazy.”

“Right,” said Reza. “She said that the figures were coming and going so fast that she couldn't tell what she was seeing. Like a flickering movie, I think she said.”

With a final tap on his keyboard, Silas sat back in his chair. “I was able to isolate that section of the video and examine it frame by frame. What's interesting is that they've alternated pictures of various types of scenes with printed messages and super-bright colors—that's why it looked like flashing lights to Ms. Porter. But there's a definite pattern to it, a rhythm.”

Reza and Mrs. Cardigan stared at the screen as Silas gradually slowed down the parade of 3-D images until they could see them in detail. The first to appear clearly was of a young girl begging on the side of the road, her clothes tattered, her face unwashed, her eyes dark and lifeless. Then an entire family huddling in a culvert, the mother holding a baby close to her chest. Rows of abandoned houses and shuttered factories. Emaciated farm animals. Puppies and kittens in crowded, filthy cages. An overturned boat with hundreds of desperate people in the water around it. Poverty. The poor. The starving. The beaten down. The miserable. Thousands of photographs of humans and animals drained of any value or importance or dignity they once had. It was a slide show intended to do one thing: evoke pity and sympathy in anyone who viewed it. Yet, in the midst of all that misery, one face appeared again and again.

Smiling. Confident. Beautiful.

Winter Neale.

Mrs. Cardigan touched Silas gently on the arm. “Turn it off, please. So that's what it's all about. St. John de Spere is offering them Winter Neale. He's setting her up to be the empress of his warped, soulless world.”

“I don't understand,” said Silas. “If he wants a world without positive qualities like sympathy, what's the point of manipulating people with these images?”

“Maybe he's trying to show that the world isn't merely in trouble but is past the point of being able to be fixed,” said Reza.

“No, it's more than that,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “Those pictures are part of the process. They're very
deliberate.
” She closed her eyes, deep in thought.

Silas clicked the monitor off, and the Loom was silent for several seconds before he said, “By my calculation, it's something like five hundred images per second. At that speed, they're flashing by so quickly that they don't register on a conscious level.”

Reza nodded, adding, “Subconsciously, however, the human brain has amazing abilities, and it's processing the images one by one and storing them away somewhere.”

Mrs. Cardigan opened her eyes. “By themselves, the images would have no lasting effect. Same thing with the flashing colors. But similar series of flashing color plates have been used to stimulate certain parts of the brain, creating a state of hypnosis. In those circumstances, the mind could become more…
suggestible.
”

“Where does the gas fit in?” asked Andy.

“Without a sample, there's no way to tell,” answered Mrs. Cardigan. “Clearly, the rules of the game have changed. We have some catching up to do.”

“We should consider canceling the concert,” said Reza. “There are too many variables outside of our control. It's too dangerous.”

“With all due respect, I disagree, Reza,” Silas said. “There are risks, but I'm working on a plan that I think will work. That I
know
will work. If we're going to find a way to fight back against
this
—this gas, this entire process—we need to get our hands on some of it. Analyze it. Develop an antidote. A vaccine. And don't forget, we have the advantage of surprise. NTRP thinks we're clueless about all this, so their guards will be down.”

“But these are kids,” said Reza. “
Good
kids. Exceptional, even. What if we fail? I'm a computer person; the world is made up of zeros and ones. You're certain we'll succeed. NTRP is just as certain that they will. Yet, logically, someone has to be wrong. Are we prepared for the
possibility,
no matter how slight, that that could be us? Are we prepared to sacrifice two hundred and fifty kids? Or even one, for that matter?”

“In one night, we stand to learn as much real, hard information about NTRP and its plans as we would with five years of spying. It's too good to pass up,” said Silas. “And besides, we have a secret weapon, too.” He pointed at Andy's face, projected on the screen before them.

“Mrs. Cardigan, what do you think?” asked Reza.

A true leader, Mrs. Cardigan did not hesitate. “Let's move forward with the plan. There's risk in everything we do, but every morsel of information we have helps us to minimize it. So, we keep digging and evaluate the situation every six hours. Anything new comes directly here to the Loom. Andy, can you come by tomorrow for a final briefing? Good. In the meantime, keep your eyes and ears open, and be extra careful. And…everyone? Wool socks. Andy, do you have a pair?”

“I…uh…There's a bunch of socks in my drawer, but I don't know
what
they're made out of.”

“Well, that won't do,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “I'll see to it that you're properly equipped.”

“Just one more question,” Reza said. “Why now? And why Wellbourne, of all places?”

“I have a theory about that,” said Mrs. Cardigan. “St. John de Spere cannot resist a pun.
Eugenics
comes from the Greek, meaning ‘good breeding.' You see, the whole point of eugenics is to create a race of people who are born with
exactly
the right qualities—who are, in other words,
wellborn.
”