Brain Storm (13 page)

He kept the newer name.

It was silly, really. There wasn't much point to subterfuge here, of all places. But by the time he was repatriated, he was an old man and it was hard for an old man to change.

He was a doctor of sorts, though he had not practiced seriously in nearly a decade. He was venerated by the others in the IV village. He liked the organization's name, too—a name that stood for an aspi-ration and a way of life, and nicely expressed in writing by the classic looking Roman numeral, and in ordinary speech as an ordinary number four.

This suited him. He felt it was his due. Especially since there were so few of the old ones left around these days. If the hunters didn't find them—unguarded, away from IV—old age inevitably took its toll. Heinrich Kolb had tried for a long time to remedy mankind's ultimate malady—death—but after many years of trying, he had to at last admit defeat. Everything died. But that didn't mean a phoenix could not rise from the ashes.

It was an odd thought. Strangely eloquent. But it was the thought to which Heinrich Kolb awoke this morning.

He saw the bird. The phoenix. It perched atop a red disk, its wings spread majestically against the forces of man and nature. At the center of the red disk, a twisted black shape. Familiar to all.

Kolb knew that the image was recognized around the world. To most it was terrifying and hated. To Kolb it represented a freedom of expression he hadn't enjoyed in years.

He found his slippers at the foot of his bed. Putting on his heavy woolen dressing gown, he made his way to the bathroom.

There was still a web of early-morning frost clinging to the edges of the heavy window panes, but the warming yellow rays of the sun would soon send it scuttling for the shadows.

He ran a hot, hot bath and prepared himself for another day.

An hour later, he was out in the village.

It was an amazing place.

It was as if some Titan had carved a piece from the rugged terrain of Bavaria and resettled it here into the cleft between three Argentinian mountain peaks.

The homes were adorable little chalets. Gaily painted shutters and flowering window boxes com-plemented the cobblestone drives. There were little shops from which the delectable smells of pastries and bread tempted passersby.

The roads were narrow and well traveled. The curbs were painted all around in a deep red. It was all very clean, very orderly.

There were many people out in the village. Some drove their tiny foreign cars, but these were either the young or those higher up in the movement. Most, like Kolb, preferred to walk.

The rarefied mountain air sometimes caused his breathing some difficulty, but today was such a beautiful day he refused to allow his aging lungs to hinder him. As he walked, he pulled a curved plastic device from his jacket pocket. At one end was a tube. Kolb placed this between his pale lips and inhaled deeply.

He felt the prescribed medicine fill his tired lungs.

He breathed a few times, deeply and, thus invigorated, forged ahead, basking in the warmth of the bright morning sun.

He was at the door to a quaint little cafe where he often enjoyed breakfast when he was intercepted by an urgent young man who came running at him from the direction of the governing buildings.

The man had milky blue eyes and a crop of short blond hair. For a moment, Kolb thought that he was one of his own, but he realized that the age wasn't right. This boy couldn't be more than twenty.

"Herr Kolb, you are wanted at the main house."

Kolb made an unhappy face. "You have the wrong man." He attempted to slip through the doorway.

The boy was persistent. He shook his head. "It is you," he said. "Herr Kluge has requested your presence immediately. He insists it is quite urgent."

Kluge. The boy wasn't mistaken.

With all hope of a peaceful breakfast dashed, Kolb sighed. Nodding wearily, he followed the young boy to the main house.

It was less a house than a fortress. It was an ancient temple that had been fortified in recent years to withstand a major ground assault. The walls were high stone, dark even in the bright sunlight.

Two armed soldiers snapped to attention as Kolb was ushered through the main entrance by his young escort. The man led him into a spacious office off the main corridor. A man he recognized as Adolf Kluge rose as Kolb entered. Kluge walked around the desk to shake the old man's hand as the young escort exited the office, tugging the heavy door closed quietly behind him.

"So, Doctor, are you up to a new mission?"

Kluge asked, grinning.

"A mission?" Kolb made an unhappy face. "You were at my birthday celebration last month, Adolf.

The number of candles nearly set the entire house ablaze."

Kluge chuckled. "You are in better shape than I am," he said in a self-deprecating tone.

"Then you are late to see your own physician.

Very, very late," Kolb replied.

Kluge laughed once more, heartily. He crossed around behind his desk. "You are probably right about that," he said. "My doctor has to drag me into his office against my best protestations."

He reclaimed his seat.

"In that we are similar," Kolb admitted. He still stood by the door, suspicious of the motives of the man behind the desk.

"Come, come. Sit down." Kluge gestured to a large, comfortable chair beside the desk. "It will be your last rest for a while, I fear."

Kolb followed Kluge's extended hand, dropping silently into the overstuffed chair. "You are mistaken if you think I will leave the village," Kolb said, shaking his head. "I retired from my practice years ago. If you didn't know from the evidence around you, I failed in my experiments."

Kluge nodded, seriously. "There were limita-tions," he agreed. "Eugenics is not an exact science."

"Nor this laboratory genetics your predecessor forced me to dabble in," Kolb complained.

"Ancient history." Kluge waved dismissively.

"You may live to see the fruit of your dreams after all, Doctor."

In spite of himself, Kolb was becoming interested.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Kluge leaned back in his seat. "Four has various stock holdings around the world. PlattDeutsche, as you know, is a company in which we are heavily involved."

"Yes," Kolb said impatiently. He was aware of all of this. Though only a doctor, he was allowed to attend the many meetings held during the formative years of the organization. He was one of the last founding members left alive.

"PlattDeutsche America is a very successful off-shoot of the original company. At least, until the Americans decided to disband their military." Kluge leaned forward. "Our highest placement at the company is a man by the name of Lothar Holz. Do you know of him?"

Kolb shook his head.

"I am not surprised," Kluge said. "He was educated in foreign universities. Of course, his primaiy education was here. The boy had a rather—" Kluge searched for the correct word "—circuitous path to us. But he is with us now and he has contacted us today with some remarkable news."

"What is it?"

Kluge placed his palms flat on his desk. "Prepare yourself, Doctor," he said, his voice serious.

When Kluge finished speaking ten minutes later, Heinrich Kolb was already mentally packing for his journey.

It was getter warmer in northeastern America now, but the nights would be cold. At his age, he was always cold. He would pack warmly and buy cooler clothes as necessity dictated.

Kluge rose to shake his hand, and Kolb left the large office, hurrying back down into the main village with its tiny little gingerbread houses and gleaming, spotless windowpanes. His missed breakfast was long forgotten.

An hour later, he was packed. The same young man who had led him to the main house was outside his cottage with a small Fiat, its engine running. He loaded the doctor's luggage into the trunk and helped the old man into the front seat.

A plane ticket to New York's JFK Airport was tucked into the sun visor above the passenger's seat.

The young man got in his own side and, revving the engine, made his way quickly and carefully through the clean cobblestone streets past the whitewashed buildings. They headed out to the mountain road.

And so it was that at eighty-nine years of age, Heinrich Kolb, best known as Dr. Erich von Breslau, history's notorious "Butcher of Treblinka," set forth from the tiny Argentine village to fulfill a dream he had thought was long dead.

11

Mervin Fischer quailed nervously in his seat before asking the question. "Is this ethical?"

Holz dismissed the possibility as irrelevant. "He's already agreed to it."

"I'm not sure it's right...."

"I am not interested in your opinion. You've seen Newton's data?"

"Yes."

"So you understand the possibilities? If we can download selectively?"

"Theoretically. But your host is a mess. He's not living in the real world. The delusions will be prob-lematic. They'd be a real danger in practice."

"You'll weed them out."

Holz was very persuasive. But he should have understood that this wasn't exactly Mervin's area of expertise.

For the past hour, Mervin Fischer had examined the data as it streamed from the temple electrodes into the mainframe. The individual with the deep-set eyes that seemed to glare at everyone in the room at the same time had remained rigid beside the terminal throughout the entire procedure.

Mervin was glad the man couldn't move. There was something in those eyes—as cold and limitless as the far reaches of space—that the young programmer found unsettling.

Fortunately the signal from the mobile interface unit had been transferred to the lab when Holz had returned to the PlattDeutsche complex in Edison, New Jersey, and so the man was sustained in his immobile state. Good thing, too. If this subject was as dangerous as Holz said he was, it was a risk to even let him out of prison. Mervin wondered what kind of warden would allow a dangerous psychotic out without armed supervision. Of course, they had tested the interface on prisoners early in the developmental stage, but the experiments had always been on volunteers and always under strict supervision.

And never, ever outside of prison walls.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would have doubted the veracity of the storyteller, but he had heard this from Mr. Holz himself.

Dr. Newton had gone to his own lab with a few information CDs and a single hard drive from the mobile lab. The driving force behind the entire interface project had been upset that he didn't have primary access to the volunteer. When Mervin had arrived, Newton had left, griping that he was being shut out of his own program. He hadn't even had time enough to download all of the subject's file from the van.

When the programmer requested the backup information to confirm what he had gotten from the subject, Newton had refused.

That didn't matter to Mervin. In fact, it was probably better this way. There were still problems with the radio interface hookup.

Sometimes the signal deteriorated due to background radio signals, atmospheric conditions or just a plain lousy signal. He couldn't count the number of times the tech people had to replace the little black signal antennae on the backs of all the computers.

No, in Mervin Fischer's view, whenever possible it was better to use a physical link. Hence, the electrodes on the volunteer's temples.

Mervin didn't really need the original files. He was just being anal. At least, that's what everyone always accused him of being.

Carefully he created his own backup file from the man's brain.

He had barely downloaded the information before Mr. Holz had stormed into the lab. A crew of technicians led by Ron Stern transferred the interface signal from the lab back to the van. They then trundled the test subject with the frightening eyes back outside on some kind of mysterious mission. Lothar Holz himself gave a few hushed last-minute instructions.

Mervin Fischer assumed his work was done once the information was downloaded. He was wrong.

Moments after the van had passed through the gates of PlattDeutsche America, Holz returned to Mervin's cramped office. What he asked from Mervin made the young man's forehead itch. It always itched when he was placed in a difficult moral situation. He could feel the large red blotches already forming.

"I'm uncomfortable with this, Mr. Holz."

His boss was asking him to do something that would push the interface technology further than it had ever gone before. And he wasn't quite certain if he was the right man to do it. But Holz didn't seem to have the same reservations.

"Fischer, I don't want your input. I want you to do it."

"Dr. Newton is probably best suited to perform this sort of test," the programmer said uncertainly.

"You know how to program a computer?" Holz asked testily.

"Yes, but—"

"You understand the interface programming?"

Mervin was sure that Mr. Holz knew he had written much of the interface programming himself. He nodded nonetheless.

"You're one of the ones who kept telling me that a computer was just a less complex version of the human brain. And if we can download human

thought into one of these blasted machines, why can't we download the duplicated information into someone else's brain?"

"Theoretically..."

"Don't give me theoretically!" Holz exploded.

"I've had it up to here with all of your theoretical garbage! Can you do it or not?"

Mervin was frightened. Barely twenty-two years of age, he was a brilliant computer hacker who had graduated from college three years early and moved swiftly into the work force. But he was hopelessly inept in most social situations. Mervin could remember being yelled at precisely twice in his life. Once by his father for breaking into his savings account and increasing the balance by eleven million dollars and once by a stranger when he had stepped in front of the man's car, his nose buried deep in the pages of Star Trek fan magazine. Both times he had responded to the shouting the same way. His bladder had burst like a mud-and-twig levee in a monsoon.