Kill Switch (11 page)

Top frowned. “Was it me or did the power go out when that thing flashed?”

“It went out,” I said.

“And it came back on?”

“Yeah.”

He held up his watch. The digital display was flashing the way those things do after a power interruption. “All my gear's in reset mode except the flashlight. It doesn't have a circuit breaker. Just a battery. It went off but came back on.”

We all checked our gear and got the same results. Bunny said, “You think that machine is the EMP weapon they were building?”

Top shook his head. “Can't be the EMP cannon. It's too big.”

“I know, but we got hit by something like that.”

“EMP would have fried the electronics,” said Top. “This just interrupted the power.”

“What can do that?” asked Bunny. “I mean to everything, even our flashlights?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

“Doesn't make sense,” said Bunny. “If something could interrupt electrical conductivity all the way down to a watch battery, wouldn't it fry our central nervous system? I don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, guys, but why ain't we dead?”

We had no answer for that.

Top gave the big machine a long, hateful look. “Cap'n, I'm two-thirds convinced we ought to put some blaster plasters on that thing and blow it back to Satan. We got a nice airplane waiting outside.”

“Yes,” said Bunny fiercely.

I shook my head. “Blowing it up isn't our job and we don't know what will happen if we damage it.”

They didn't like it, but they nodded. Hell, I didn't like it, either.

“Let's gather what intel we can,” I said, “find Erskine and his team, and then get the hell out of Dodge.”

“Hooah,” agreed Top.

“Hooah,” said Bunny, but his voice was small and unemphatic.

We stood in silence, lost in the strangeness of the moment, still caught in the net of whatever had just happened to us. Three soldiers, gasping like beached trout, feeling small and scared.

That's when we heard a voice say,
“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

 

INTERLUDE FIVE

OFFICE OF DR. MICHAEL GREENE

EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK

WHEN PROSPERO WAS TWELVE

“Did my son talk to you about his God Machine?” asked Oscar Bell. He sat on the doctor's couch, legs crossed, hands resting on his lap. Greene thought he could see a flicker in the man's eyes. Nerves, perhaps, or excitement.

“Please understand, Mr. Bell, that I encourage an air of unrestricted confidence in my sessions with your son,” said Green. “However, that comes with a certain level of trust. He knows that what he says goes no farther than—”

Bell held up a finger. “Don't. You want to stick to some set of bullshit doctor-patient rules, then consider your services terminated.”

That hung in the air, ugly and real.

“I…,” began Greene, but once more Bell cut him off.

“I don't need a blow-by-blow. I don't want to know what the kid jerks off to, and I don't want to know what he thinks of me. That's all psychobabble nonsense and we both know it. But I do want to know about the God Machine. And I mean everything.”

Greene felt as if he had been nailed to his chair by the force of Bell's green-eyed stare. The man frightened him, and that went beyond the threat of a massive financial loss. Bell seemed willing to give him a few seconds to work up to it.

Finally Greene took a breath and said it. “Prospero does not believe he is a human being. Not entirely. It's his belief that he is either an alien from another world or perhaps another dimension, or that he is a hybrid of human and alien genes. It is his belief that he is not your actual son but the product of some kind of genetics experiment. He believes that you ‘adopted' him only as a means of profiting from the genius he gets from his alien DNA.”

Bell uncrossed and recrossed his legs. “Kid has some imagination.”

“Has he said any of this to you, sir?” asked Greene.

“Don't change the subject, Doctor. Tell me what Prospero's told you about the God Machine.”

“Well … your son has been researching the artists and philosophers of the surrealism movement and believes that their works represent visions of the world from which he comes. Notably the paintings of Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst, and the pulp fiction horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft. Your son is uncertain as to whether the surrealists are from the same world or if they somehow traveled there in dreams. I think he's leaning toward the latter opinion.”

“And the machine is what?” asked Bell. “A phone so E.T. can call home?”

“No, sir,” said Greene. “Your son believes that it will somehow open a doorway and allow him to return to his true home.”

“Did he say anything about EMPs?”

“I'm not sure what that is.”

“Electromagnetic pulses. Has Prospero mentioned that at all?”

“No, unless a ‘null field' is the same thing.”

Bell's eyes flared momentarily. “What did he say about that?”

“Not much. He said it was an unwanted side effect and he was trying to correct it.”

“
Correct
it?” Bell shot to his feet and for a moment Greene thought the man was going to punch him. Then Bell sagged back and sat down hard, shaking his head. “Correct it, Jesus fuck.”

“Is something wrong?” asked Greene.

Oscar Bell ran trembling fingers through his hair. “You wouldn't understand if I told you.” He took a breath and bolted his calm back in place, one iron plate at a time. “Exactly
how
was he planning on correcting it?”

“I'm not sure. Something about a mathematical pattern that he couldn't solve unless…”

Bell's eyes hardened. “Unless
what
, Doctor? I need you to be very specific.”

“Very well,” said Greene, “but believe me, I've looked into this myself and there's nothing to it. Not even a mention on the Internet. Prospero believes that the key to making his God Machine function properly requires a sequence code that can be found in certain rare books he refers to as ‘The Unlearnable Truths.' These are, according to him, books of magic that have been hidden for many centuries. He said that they are guarded because they contain dangerous secrets.”

“What kind of secrets? The God Machine isn't magic, Doctor. It's absolutely bleeding-edge science. I have forty physicists scratching their heads trying to understand what the fucking thing does, do you know that? I have guys at MIT, Cal Tech, and Stanford losing sleep over it. I've got two Nobel laureates about to go into therapy because my twelve-year-old son's designs make their heads hurt. The only thing they agree on is that the machine is real. It will do something, but wild as it sounds, Prospero understands quantum mechanics on a level that no one alive can match. No one. I sat down with Stephen Hawking and he started to cry when he read Prospero's notes. It was like he was having a religious experience, and we're talking about Stephen goddamn Hawking.”

“Not to be rude, Mr. Bell,” said Greene, “but what makes you believe the machine will do anything at all? From what Prospero tells me, it doesn't work.”

“Doesn't work? Jesus wept. Maybe it's not doing what Prospero wants it to do, but it sure as shit does a lot of other things.”

“What things?”

Bell's eyes narrowed. “That's above your pay grade, Dr. Greene.”

“I feel I must caution you about placing too much stock on your son's projects,” said Greene. “Since he's discovered surrealism he has become visibly detached from the real world.”

“What he's doing is real to him.”

“Perhaps,” conceded Greene reluctantly, “but encouraging it is hardly in the best interests of Prospero's emotional and psychological health. His fascination with these ‘Unlearnable Truths' has become an obsession, and I fear what will happen when he finally becomes convinced that no such books exist. He is placing a dangerous amount of faith on ultimately possessing them, or at least reading them so he can divine their mathematical secrets.”

“Has Prospero told you the titles of any of these unlearnable books?”

“No. A few. Even though I could find nothing on anything called the Unlearnable Truths, there is plenty on the Net about the individual books. As I mentioned, the titles appeared in horror stories written in the early twentieth century. They don't really exist. It's only Prospero who believes they're real.”

“Interesting.”

“No, sir, it's not
interesting
. We're talking about Prospero's mental health.”

Bell shook his head. “Mental health? I think that ship sailed a long time ago.”

“Mr. Bell, we're talking about your son.”

Bell stood up. “That little freak is nobody's son.”

Greene stood up, too, angry but afraid of this man. He wanted to punch Bell, break his nose, throw him down the stairs. He kept his fists balled at his sides. It was clear, however, that Bell was aware of Greene's anger. He even glanced down at the white-knuckled fists.

“Let's be clear,” said Bell quietly. “You're going to shift the focus of your sessions and talk only about things that relate to the God Machine, the science behind it, and Prospero's intentions for it. You will also write down the titles of every single piece of art and every single one of those unlearnable books. You'll do that right now, before I leave your office. If I like what I see, and if I am assured that you are going to continue to remember that you work for me, not for the boy, then I'll consider whether to increase your hourly rate. What is it now? Four hundred an hour? That sounds low to me.”

Bell did not wait for an answer. Instead he turned and walked to the door.

“I'll be downstairs. You still have some of that scotch I gave you for Christmas? Let me go see.”

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE VINSON MASSIF

THE SENTINEL RANGE OF THE ELLSWORTH MOUNTAINS

ANTARCTICA

AUGUST 19, 11:23
P.M.

We spun toward the sound, our combat reflexes doing what our numbed minds probably couldn't. Our guns came up, our fingers laying flat along the trigger guards. The voice was far away but it was piercing and shrill.

“It's back in the lab complex,” said Bunny, and we began moving that way. Stumbling at first but finding our coordination. Walking, fast-walking, running. We left the cavern and reentered the corridor that led back into the Gateway complex, and then moved quickly but cautiously between the rows of stacked boxes. The sound continued, calling us, drawing us. But it was still far away, deep inside the structure.

“Boss,” snapped Bunny, “on your ten o'clock.”

We all turned. Ready to fight. Ready to kill. I could almost hear the coming thunder of fresh gunfire. The savage Killer who shares my mind with me was poised, ready to do the things that earn him the name he wears. All of my earlier hesitation was gone.

A figure came walking around the end of a long row of crates.

It walked slowly and a bit awkwardly, but it wasn't another albino penguin. It wasn't another soldier, either. This time it was a thin, fortyish man wearing a lab coat over a plaid shirt and khakis. His feet were bare. His glasses were nearly opaque from the blood that was splashed across his face. It soaked his clothes and dripped from him, and he left a long line of bare red footprints behind him.

“Stop right there,” I yelled.

He kept walking.

“Sir—you need to stop right there or I will put you down. Do you understand me?” My finger was along the curve of the trigger guard, quivering, ready to slip inside and squeeze off the shot. The Killer snarled inside my mind.

The man slowed and stopped. He lifted his head as if listening to something far away, and again I thought I heard that voice cry out those same meaningless words we'd heard before. Not Russian and not Chinese. Not any language I ever heard of.

“Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”

We couldn't see who spoke, but it was closer now. Just beyond the range of our flashlights. A hundred yards? Less? Fifty? Twenty? The echoes were deceptive.

“Put your hands on your head, fingers laced,” I told the man. “Do it now.”

The man seemed to smile for a moment. “We are always what you want,” he said in a voice that was muddy and thick. “The sequence is written in the stars.”

“Put your hands on your head,” I repeated. “I won't tell you again.”

“It is there to be read.”

He said those words—or at least those are the words I heard—but I swear to God that those aren't the words his mouth formed. It was so strange, like watching a foreign film with bad dubbing.

“No truth is unlearnable.”

“Tell me your name,” I demanded. “What is your ID number?”

The man opened his mouth to say something else, but this time instead of words a pint of dark blood flopped out and splatted onto the front of his shirt. He made a faint gagging sound and then his knees buckled and he collapsed with exaggerated slowness to the ground.

“Go,” said Top as he moved up to cover me.

Bunny and I broke cover and ran cautiously toward him, checking each side corridor in the maze of crates, covering each other.

“Green Giant,” I said, and Bunny grunted an assent. He took up a defensive posture while I dropped to one knee by the fallen man. I put my fingers to his throat and got a big silent nothing. “Dead.”

He was a mess. Blood everywhere. A name tag hung askew from his lab coat.

M. ERSKINE

The scientist in charge of this project. From close up I could see that his skin was as gray-white and mottled as the penguin's feathers had been. Like the skin of a mushroom.