Kaleidocide (27 page)

25

DREAMS

“Okay, mates,” Terrey said, “let's hop to it, as we say down under.”

The Protection Team was gathered in our living room, I assumed because its windows were now fully secured, and Lynn refused to travel down into the base below for the meeting. She disliked the fact that there was a huge facility hidden underneath her beloved homestead, and liked to pretend that it didn't exist.

I was watching the meeting through the two-way netroom equipment, and because it was state-of-the-art, I could switch between four perspectives and zoom in on individuals whenever I wanted to. I was currently having a closer look at the cupbearer named Tyra, who had painted multicolored decorations on her floating wheelchair, which had formerly been all black. I assumed she had gotten permission from Terrey to do that, and that she had used the removable paint that was all the rage lately, but I was a bit taken aback that she would use so many colors in the situation we were currently facing. Like Terrey wearing black, however, I supposed that if she was a traitor among us, she wouldn't broadcast it so blatantly.

While I was checking out clothing and colors, I noticed that Korcz was
not
wearing black, perhaps because Terrey had pointed out that he was the day before? Terrey himself was wearing it again, though.

But Terrey was starting the meeting, so I forgot about the probably pointless clothes issue and listened to him. I drew back my view so I could see everyone in the room. Besides Terrey, Tyra, and Korcz, there was Lynn, Min, the triplets, the double, and finally Stephenson, who looked rather nervous about something (
Was he sweating?
).

“We've made it through our second day,” Terrey said. “Which is a good start. But we've got a long way to go.”

“At least you hope so,” Lynn chimed in, rubbing her big belly. “Since you're getting a million dollars a day.” She smiled at this, but only a little.

“And many expenses to pay from that, as you'll remember, marm.” He gestured around the room. “Like paying these fine people. So let's talk about what they've been doing. The triplets have upgraded the already stellar security measures to prevent or prepare for any threat. No one can get anywhere near this place unless we want them to, and the only one we do is the food truck, which we'll meet at the gate down below. The air defenses on the hills around here are quite sufficient to protect from any local air attack that might ensue, and we don't have to worry about a long-range jet. The Chinese would never send one into our airspace, because that would be an act of war with no deniability, and we're protected by NORAD anyway.

“Car accidents are a favorite method of political assassinations, because they appear random and intent is deniable, but we don't have to worry about that because we knew ahead of time and can keep you off the roads. And when we do need to go somewhere, such as the little trip we have planned to the city, we can use the aeros. Very convenient … I like to think that there will be some very frustrated mercenaries driving around the Bay Area this week, waiting for a car ride that will never happen.

“This whole hill has been scanned so well that the only way a bomb could have been placed and remain is if it was made of something no human has ever encountered before, and if that's the case, we have bigger problems than the Chinese. And the whole hill is being
continually
scanned by the sensors we've installed, so no explosive or gas or poison could be introduced. But just in case, Tyra has been testing all the food and water, and thankfully she's still okay … except for her leg.” He gestured toward the plump lady. “I like what you've done with your chair. Those colors could help offset the
ban lan
of the enemy … I'll get to that more at the end of this meeting.

“But back to the measures we've already taken, the
Trois
and their faithful assistants”—he now gestured to Korcz and Stephenson—“have electronically and physically examined every possible sniper location up to three thousand meters. That's two hundred meters beyond the current range of any rifle in the world, and even beyond any possible upgrade we don't know about yet, because none of the last ten upgrades, over the last twenty years, have exceeded ten meters.”

“That's a little too much math for me,” I said through the netroom, so they all could hear me. “What's the bottom line?”

“The bottom line is that it's Buckley's—no way in the world—that a sniper could hit anyone in this house. I am very confident that you could sit on any of the porches, or even hang by the pool, without any fear of being shot. In fact, I'm thinking we should set up a photo op so the media could show the double and Lynn somewhere outside the house.”

“I thought you were keeping Lynn and the double separate from one another, so it would be safer for her, if he becomes endangered.”

“We
are
keeping them separate,” Terrey said. “Jon is staying below in the base. But just like he needs to be seen in public sometimes, he and Lynn should occasionally be seen together, to head off any suspicion or attention drawn to an obvious change in your patterns. Of course, as you know, I'd much rather be keeping Lynn in an entirely separate place, because the rest of us have to be here, at the most secure location. But she wouldn't leave.”

“If and when I'm going to die—” Lynn started.

“I know,” Terrey finished. “You'd like to die in your house.”

“Speaking of the trip to the city,” the double spoke up. “How will we avoid a sniper during that?” All this talk of dying must have reminded him that his life was on the line more than anyone's.

“That was on my agenda,” Terrey said, “so let's talk about it now. Once again the gods of personal protection have been smiling on us. You will enter one of the aeros in the hangar bay of this mountain base, fly in it to the castle in the city, exit the car inside the bay there, conduct your business inside one of the most secure buildings in the world, and then come back the same way. You will
not
be at risk. However, just in case something bizarre happens, like the aero goes down or someone infiltrates the castle, we have an extra safety measure for you.”

One of the triplets stepped toward the double and handed him a piece of equipment about the size of her hand.

“This is an Atreides shield, designed by BASS about a year ago and recently cleared for safe use. If you're in danger or expect it, you can wear this on a belt or waistband at your right hip, like you would a phone. When activated, it will protect your body from almost any weapon, but for only about half an hour, so only turn it on when necessary. There's one for Lynn, too, courtesy of her husband, in case she does go outside the house at some time.” The triplet gave another one to my wife. “It took this long to get them to you because they have to be programmed to your body specifically in order to be safe. They also cost a small fortune to build, so unfortunately the rest of us won't be so blessed.”

That wasn't entirely true, I knew, because Min had a version of the shield built into his body—one of his many combat augmentations. He could activate this “second skin” at any time with his mind, and instantly become even more indestructible than he already was.

“Could we be alerted visually to potential dangers?” the double asked. “You said this lunatic has colors for everything he sends, right? Like the blue color on that assault team in the holo you showed me. Would it help to watch for certain colors?”

“Maybe,” Terrey said, “but the problem is we haven't been able to identify a common pattern in the kaleidocides that have already happened, or that there necessarily is a common pattern. There could be different colors, depending on the situation. There are five that figure prominently in the Tibetan Book of the Dead—and there are some Buddhist elements in Sun's religion: red, yellow, blue, white, and green. But that doesn't explain the black that we've seen associated with betrayal and poison, unless the black is simply added to those five.”

“Or it could be the five elements,” the triplets said, briefly forgetting their protocol and all speaking at the same time. So now I knew that they were capable of making a mistake. But they corrected it quickly, and just one of them continued. “Throughout the Shang, Tang, Zhou and Qin dynasties of ancient China, which is the referent for much of Sun's faith, the emperors selected colors as symbols based on the theory of the five elements, which are water, fire, wood, metal and earth. These correspond with the colors black, red, greenish blue, white, and yellow. Ancient Chinese people believed that the five elements were the source of everything in nature, including the colors that come from each of them. They had a saying, ‘Colors come naturally while black and white are the first.'”

“So that's the working hypothesis of the
Trois,
” Terrey said. “And I don't think I've seen anything to disprove it yet. If it's true, and that's a big if, then we've already seen greenish blue—”

“The teal color of the assault team was greenish blue,” the triplet interrupted again, “with black mixed in because it is the color of death, or maybe ‘the king of colors,' as it was referred to in ancient China.”

“So the greenish blue and the method of direct assault are off the table now,” Terrey resumed. “And we'd be looking for the other methods to be black, red, white, or yellow, according to the Shimmies' theory. I don't know if that helps us much, Jon, because like I said, we don't really know.”

“You said something about a car accident in one of the assassinations,” the double added. “What color was the car?”

Terrey looked at the triplets, and they remained still for a moment as they were accessing their data files. Then one of them said, “White.”

“So we should be especially looking out for black, red, and yellow,” Jon said, and Terrey shrugged his shoulders and said “Maybe.”

As they were talking, the second screen on my wall flashed like it had before, and some letters unfolded across it again:

YON: I DO NOT COMPLETELY AGREE WITH MY SISTERS. BE CAREFUL ABOUT OTHER COLORS TOO.

As I was wondering which triplet was texting me these words with her mind, and why she didn't speak up in the meeting, the words disappeared off the screen and Terrey wrenched my attention back to him.

“But overall we're in good shape to hold out for a while,” he said. “And speaking of that, Michael, have you come up with any more clues as to why Sun wants you dead, or anything we could use to expose him and get him to back off?”

“Nothing yet,” I said, and felt guilty again, this time because I had been watching a movie tonight instead of investigating the mystery.

“All right,” Terrey said. “Then the next agenda item is our man Lawrence here.” He pointed to Stephenson, who was definitely sweating now. “He shared something with me after dinner that I thought would be best discussed with everyone, rather than being whispered down the lane. Go ahead, mate.”

“Well, I'm sorry to have to bother you with this,” the little man said, starting out nervously but soon gaining confidence because of his conviction about what he had to say. “For the past year or so, I've been experimenting with a Dreamscape rig that records my dreams and calculates their precognitive potential. Which means their ability to tell the future. I know some of you may think I'm crazy—heck, my partner doesn't even agree with me. But I believe that there's really something to this. I've had numerous dreams that have come true in one way or another, most recently the exact circumstances of our rescue from a fire in New York, when we were brought here.”

“Is that true, Korcz?” I asked from the peanut gallery.

“Yah, that one is true,” the big, bald Russian replied. “But the others, not really.”

“The Dreamscape system is in continuing development,” Stephenson countered. “They're learning how to identify precog dreams better as time goes on, and so am I.”

“I'm sure we can respect your right to your hobby, Stephenson,” I said, “as long as it doesn't interfere with your work. But why are you telling us about it?”

“I'm getting to that, sir. When I met Miss Ponchinello and saw her interest in Valeri…” I raised my eyebrows at this, and saw Lynn do the same. “It reminded me of something I had seen before, kind of like a déjà vu. So I searched my dreams that had been recorded and found images of a dark-haired, dark-skinned lady who was in love with Valeri.”

“Hold on a second,” Lynn said. “Tyra, do you even have this interest that he's talking about?”

The woman in the floating chair hesitated for a moment, so Stephenson spoke for her: “Last night she told Valeri that when she was recovered, she wanted to … celebrate with him.”

Lynn asked Tyra if that was true, and the woman smiled and nodded. Everyone then looked at Korcz, who just shrugged his shoulders.

“That may have happened very fast,” I said. “Love at first sight, I guess. But it hardly qualifies as a convincing case of predicting the future.”

“Right, but I'm not done yet. I not only had a dream where a dark-haired, dark-skinned lady was with him, I also had a dream where a dark-haired, dark-skinned
man
was with him.”

“So?”

“So, I searched the net about Tyra, trying to scratch my déjà vu itch, you know, and I remembered from working security in New York that boss Ponchinello had a son named Tyrone Jr.” He looked across the room at Tyra. “I'm sorry if this is too personal, but it
is
well documented on the web, so it's really public. But Tyra used to be Tyrone—she's a transgender person.”

There was a bit of a gasp around the room, not because Tyra was transgender—that was very common—but because this must have been an interesting surprise for Korcz, especially if the feelings had been mutual.