Kaleidocide (44 page)

In this rather elaborate dream, he was being attacked by a swarm of well-armed soldiers who arrived in armored SUVs and helicopters. The soldiers' armor and the vehicles were painted a blue-green color, which made Stephenson realize that this dream was inspired by the video he had been shown of the triplets' battle with the mercenary assault team in Oakland, which had happened just before he and Korcz were hired to the protection team. It was a shame that this dream was not precognitive, however, because in it he fought off big numbers of enemies and emerged not just alive, but as a hero. He deleted the dream from the list, however, assuming that it came from something that had already happened.

The next three dreams were not nearly as rousing, but were merely recapitulations of random events that had occurred in his past. So he deleted them from the index also. Then he came upon a very interesting item, which was new to the index, so he had probably dreamed it the night before. It was a dream in which Michael Ares fell to his death from a big bridge, so he left it on the index and determined to tell the rest of the team about it. The next entry was one that was clearly much more fantasy than reality, involving him and the triplets, which probably only made the list because it recurred so often. He deleted it and determined
not
to tell the rest of the team about that one. Then there were a few more past events that needed to be deleted, and a dream in which Korcz and Tyra got married. That contradicted the much higher rated one where Tyra dies from poison, of course, but Stephenson left it on the index because he wondered about the possibility of alternate futures.

As if God or the gods of fortune wanted to make a decree on that particular topic, Stephenson's Dreamscape session was abruptly interrupted by an emergency call from Terrey, broadcast throughout the base and calling the whole team to the house. Stephenson tore off the Dreamscape rig, strapped his gear on again, and quickly made his way up there.

When he saw the scene in the living area of the Ares house, a rush of conflicting emotions surged inside of him—all of which he was careful to hide from the rest of the team gathered there. He felt euphoria that his dreams had come true once again, guilt and sorrow for how they had come true, and no small measure of fear for the implications of the fact that Dreamscape was once again being proven right.

Tyra was slumped over the kitchen counter with her head in the sink, and in her lifeless right hand was still clutched a half-peeled banana with a bite taken out of it. Lynn Ares was sitting on a couch on the other side of the room, sobbing with her head in her hands. One of the functioning triplets was sitting next to her, rubbing her back to give her comfort, and the other was examining Tyra's body and bagging the poison delivery method. The Black Italian girl had been dead for a while, so nothing could be done for her at this point.

“Where are the girls?” asked the disembodied voice of Michael Ares, who was obviously watching them all through the room's cameras.

“They're playing a game in their room,” his wife said in between sobs. “I needed to rest … I asked her to do the rest of the dishes left over from lunch. I'm so sorry.”

“Lynn, don't be sorry,” Ares said. “You didn't have anything to do with this.”

“I started ordering the bananas again,” she sniffled.

“That was Terrey's call. Right, Terrey?”

“Yeah, right,” the man said, in his half-Aussie, half-British accent. “We already had the color yellow with the sniper, so I thought—”

“It's white,” the crying woman said, pointing toward the kitchen. “Bananas are actually white.” Then she burst out in louder crying, and about half of the team experienced a collective “Ohhhh” when they finally realized what she meant.

“But like Michael said, it's on me.” Terrey was obviously trying to mollify the woman and take control of the situation. “And it may have been a daft move on my part, but at least now we know more, and have drawn out another of the assassination methods. We know what the white is, as she pointed out.” He made an awkward gesture toward Mrs. Ares. “And there's never been any more than one poisoning attempt in the previous killings, so I think we can safely say we're done with that. Nonetheless, we should all switch to the astronaut food we brought along with us for the duration. I don't think it will be long now, but since, you know, we don't have our cupbearer anymore…” Now he gestured awkwardly toward the lifeless body at the sink.

“I don't know how long this will last,” the lady of the house said. Terrey's stratagem had worked, apparently, because she had gathered herself more now. “And I don't know how you even can tell when it's over. But until it is, I'm gonna have to go somewhere else, like maybe the Presidio when I take the girls there. I can't be around here right now, after … after
that
.” Now it was her turn to gesture at the body, and at a nod from Terrey the triplet next to her stood up and walked over to the kitchen where the other one was. Together they lifted Tyra's body and carried it out of the room, in the direction of the hill base below. A disturbing vision flashed into Stephenson's mind, of them dissecting it in an attempt to trace the deadly chemicals.

I guess I can delete that dream from the index,
he thought.
Korcz won't be marrying her anytime soon.

“Your idea of going to the Presidio might dovetail with an idea I have,” Terrey said to the woman, “for something else down in that direction. I was talking to Michael about this earlier today, but I'll let you all in on it. BASS peacers have had John Rabin under surveillance since his mother died in the fire, because of his antagonistic attitude toward the company. And sure enough, this morning he was caught making an illegal purchase of a gun, and then found to have been researching BASS locations like this one on the net. So he was taken into custody and is being held at the Marin County Jail. We were looking for a safe place to do this, so now that we have one I think that Jon and Lynn should take his sisters to visit him. This will stop the increasing speculation in the press about why Lynn hasn't been seen in public, especially with Michael, and it will also help BASS with a significant public relations issue. The CEO will be showing kindness to someone who has been openly critical of him, and head off the worse criticism he would get if he never visited the boy.”

“While we're doing that, protected by the rest of the team,” Michael Ares's voice rang out from all around them, “Terrey and Ni will travel a little farther south and check out the security at the Presidio. I asked them to do that, Lynn, because you said you wanted to start working there sometime soon. And if you're now saying you might want to stay there, I definitely want them to secure the place as much as they can, find the safest spot for you to stay, etcetera.”

“We'll do that on Friday morning,” Terrey said, “to give us a full day to prepare. But in the meantime, we need to talk about Stephenson's dreams.” He looked meaningfully at the little man, who experienced again the same flood of excitement, guilt, and fear. “Maybe we should take them a little more seriously.”

“I hate to say I told you so,” Stephenson said, the emotion of pride now eclipsing all the others.

“I looked at the dream, remember?” Ares's voice said. “It wasn't that close to what happened—she was at a table, I think, in the dream, and…”

“Still, it's rather uncanny,” Terrey interrupted.

“I think you should take my dreams
a lot
more seriously,” Stephenson spoke up to the two powerful personalities. He also had always been a bold person—some people had even accused him of a Napoleon complex—but his experiences with the Dreamscape rig had made him even bolder.

“Have you had any others that we should know about?” Terrey asked, and it caught Stephenson off guard, because all he could think of at first were the dreams about the triplets. But then he remembered the other one.

“Yes, actually,” he answered. “I had a dream about Mr. Ares dying in a fall from a bridge.”

“Hmmm,” the Protection G leader said, thinking for a moment. “I don't think we have to worry about that anytime soon. Michael is safely tucked away somewhere, and Jon will be traveling to Marin by aero, so he won't be crossing any bridges. But maybe you should stay away from them the rest of your life, mate, just in case.”

“I'll think about it,” the voice said.

“How did they know what we like to eat?” Mrs. Ares asked from the couch, obviously not being able to move on yet from the murder that just happened in her kitchen. “Did you say something about it in a net interview, like with the wine?”

“Not that I remember,” Mr. Ares said.

“Someone here could have told them,” Korcz spoke up for the first time.

“Well, that's just stupid, Korcz,” Terrey shot back. “Everyone here knows that Jon is a double, and the real Michael
isn't here.
What would be the point?”

“Okey, but I don't like how much you keep from us.” Korcz stared at the Aussie defiantly as he said this.

“Like what, mate?”

“Like what is happening with them,” the big Russian said, pointing to the two triplets, who had just come back into the room.
They're either very fast at autopsies,
Stephenson thought,
or they're putting it off till later.

“What are you talking about?”

“Sex,” Korcz said.

“What?” Terrey said, and his gaze fell on Stephenson.

“Don't look at me,” the little man said, with his dreams about the triplets in mind, but then realized that Terrey was hoping that he, being Korcz's partner and friend, could translate this for him. So Stephenson added, “I don't know what he's talking about, either.”

“Not triples,” the bald man continued. “Sex. How do you say…?”

Everyone stared at each other quizzically, until finally the two female cyborgs shared a look of recognition, and did that weird silent communication with Terrey that ended with a nod from him.

“Sextuplets,” one of the Japanese women said. “That's the word you're looking for.”

“Da. You are sextuplets.”

“Not exactly, but you're very close.” This was Terrey speaking again, never one to let a conversation exclude him for too long. “They were actually octuplets, but two didn't live very long beyond the origination process.”

“Could someone please explain what the hell you're talking about?”

Stephenson heard this from the Ares woman, and thought that she must have been seriously stressed, because he had never before heard her use even mild profanity. Something about how she had been raised at that orphanage—the one run by the wife of the mysterious old guy who had started BASS.

“Mr. Korcz has divined the secret of the
Trois,
” Terrey said. “That they're more than
Trois.
Their three sisters live in the packs on their backs. Or actually we could call them ‘half-sisters,' which would certainly give new meaning to the term, because they only consist of brain matter and some auxiliary nervous systems—all of which have been heavily augmented since they were created, of course.” Stephenson wasn't really surprised to hear this, because Japan had long been renown for the genetic experimentation that had been occurring there.

“How did you discover this, Korcz?” Terrey asked, and Stephenson noticed that the team leader had changed the way he was referring to his partner—he used to call him Valeri.

“I am from Asia,” Korcz answered. “I know a little Japanese. Ni is the number two, San is the number three, and the other one is other number.”

“Go is five,” one of the girls helped him.

“So is missing one and four, maybe six,” Korcz continued. “And when your sister was burned in the fire, you were mourning a death. But she survived.”

“That's right, Valeri,” the same girl said. She used his first name, seeming to appreciate the attention he was showing to her and her sisters. “Our sister Roku lived in symbiosis with Go, in her ‘backpack' as Terrey calls it, and she was killed in the fire. It was she that we were mourning, and that is why Go is still recovering, because losing the symbiotic relationship she had with Roku damaged her own systems severely.”

“Ichi rides with me,” said the other girl, who must be Ni. “And Yon rides with San.”

“So that's why you seem to be able to do the work of six people,” Stephenson said, “because you really
are
six people.”

“It's actually exponential rather than additional,” Ni said matter-of-factly. “We all have the same DNA structure and compatible augmentations, so we are all able to share and process informational and sensory input simultaneously.”

“Did you say ‘Yon'?” the disembodied voice of Michael Ares asked.

“Yes, Yon is the number four in Japanese, and she is our fourth sister, who rides with San.” She nodded toward the back of the other girl.

“Well, that solves a mystery for me,” Ares said. “I've met Yon, she talks to me on my screen sometimes.”

The two cyborgs looked at each other and smiled. Then Ni said, “Yon has an independent streak. She likes to sneak off and do things that we can't control sometimes. We're not surprised that she picked you to talk to.” They smiled at each other again.

“Why?”

“Because she's always had a thing for good-looking men.”

“Really?” said Ares's wife. “How can she know what he looks like
when she has no eyes
?”

“She sees through ours, of course.”

“But she's just a … brain, with no body. So I can't be jealous of her, right?” She laughed for the first time since finding the body. “Why would she even care about how someone looks?”