Music of the Spheres (15 page)

All three men looked up into the shielded
room to see the Kinemet suddenly light up in a fashion similar to a magnesium
flare. A moment later everything in the room turned into the same light. If not
for the Kinemetic dampers in the other room, the Kinemetic radiation from a
milligram of the element could conceivably quantize most of the Observatory, as
Klaus had informed Terry earlier.

The entire lab room was filled with a
brightness so sharp Terry had to put his hand up to protect his eyes. The
sensors that had been attached to the soldier stopped transmitting data to Klaus’s
computers, since they were also affected.

“They’ve quantized,” Klaus said by way of
commentary. “During the Macklin’s Rock incident, Alex Manez was exposed for
approximately four hours. The actual length of time required could very well be
four seconds, for all we know. Quantum Resources used the four hour marker as a
constant, so I’ve been doing the same.”

Jose, who also had his hand up between his
eyes and the lab, asked, “So that’s when we’ll know?”

“We’ll know if he is altered or not. Once
the Kinemet has completed its process, everything in the room will return to a
solid state, and then we can go in and take some readings on the subject. After
that we’ll perform a simple quantization procedure and see how quickly he
rematerializes. Anything more than nine seconds is a failure; the pilot
wouldn’t have enough time to get his bearings and initiate the dampers.”

Giving a nervous cough, Jose asked, “What
about the ‘splash’ effect you mentioned?”

“There won’t be any Kinemet left for a
secondary reaction,” Klaus said. “If they had only packed enough Kinemet for a
one-way trip to Centauri, there would never have been any fission and the
Quanta
would never have exploded.”

“So we’re safe?”

“Yeah.” Klaus typed a few more commands
into the computer, and then spun around on his chair. “The lab is electromagnetically
sealed. No one can get in or out. Meanwhile, I’m hungry. Time for something to
eat.”

∞

Before leaving, Klaus punched a key on one
computer, and the window between the main workshop and the lab room grew darker,
enough so that it was no longer physically uncomfortable to look directly at it.
Of course, there was nothing to see beyond the glass other than a bright blur.

Following Klaus out the door, Jose ordered
Terry, “You stay here. Make sure no one enters except us. Anyone else tries to
get in here, send me an alert on the comlink.” Almost as an afterthought, he
added, “I’ll bring you back a sandwich or something.”

∞

Terry, who had remained stoic while the
co-leaders were in his presence, let out a curse and punched his open hand with
his fist in frustration once he was alone.

His anger was directed not only at Klaus,
Jose and the Cruzados, but at himself for being such a sucker.

Everything he had done had been to honour Itzel,
and to ensure what happened to her never happened to his people again.

And he was right at the center of it; he
was the catalyst. If he hadn’t run away from home like a petulant child; if he
hadn’t naively taken up with the Cruzados; and if he hadn’t betrayed his
grandfather by stealing the ancient scroll, none of this would have happened.
How many people—innocent or not—had died because of Terry’s actions? How many
more would die?

In the past two days, Terry had been
helpless to do anything but stand by as Klaus experimented on the American
soldiers. Once he had determined the first subject had failed to change
completely, Klaus ordered the victim taken out of his sight, and never followed
up on his progress. Terry had never seen anyone with such a lack of remorse or
conscience. Klaus was completely absorbed in his task, and didn’t exhibit any
signs that he cared who lived and who died in the pursuit of his goal.

One day, while eating lunch by himself,
Terry had overheard some of the other Cruzados a table over talk about Klaus,
and how he and his uncle had been the ones who had kidnapped Alex Manez a
decade ago, and had been somehow betrayed by him.

Terry hadn’t seen much of Captain Gruber. The
man spent most of his time teaching the Cruzados combat techniques for ship-to-ship
battles and how to fight inside space stations.

That last bit of information drove home the
reality that Terry was part of an insurrection, rather than the liberation and
rebirth of the Mayan culture he had dreamed of.

And it had only been possible because of
him.

There had to be something he could do to
stop them. But he knew he wasn’t clever enough by far. He didn’t know how to
fight, and he was too transparent to become a politician and sway the Cruzados
to his views.

He took a few measured paces towards the
window of the lab, and he felt a pang of guilt knowing that the soldier inside
would most likely endure hours, days, or weeks of agony before dying of Kinemetic
exposure. He hadn’t even found out what the soldier’s name was.

His grandfather was most likely completely
ashamed of Terry. He hoped the old man was all right. Jose had promised to keep
him safe and secluded in case anyone from Quantum Resources or NASA tried to
use him to figure out where the Cruzados were and what they were doing. Terry
realized now that they were, in effect, holding Yaxche hostage against Terry’s
continued cooperation.

It was a complete disaster. He probably
couldn’t have screwed things up any worse if he had planned it that way.

He pulled up a chair near the window and
sat down to wait out the rest of his vigil. Although he wasn’t the kind of
person to give in to despair, he half-hoped the Kinemetic radiation might leak
through the window somehow and permanently turn him into a being of light.

∞

A few hours later, Terry looked up when he
heard footsteps out in the hall.

The workshop door opened and Jose entered
the room.

“How is it going,” Jose asked, and Terry
shrugged.

“All right, I guess.” Terry looked, but he
didn’t see a plate of food or even a bottle of water in Jose’s hands. The
Cruzados leader must have forgotten. Stomach rumbling, he said, “You mind if I
take a break?”

Jose, stepping toward the window as if he
could see what transpired within, waved his hand dismissively to Terry. “Sure.
Be back in an hour, would you? That’s when the experiment should be over. We’ll
find out if the price we paid is worth it.”

∞

Before heading down to the mess hall, Terry
stopped at the lavatory. Inside, he entered one of the stalls and sat down on a
chrome toilet lid. He had no need to relieve himself, but just needed a few
moments to pull himself together before facing any of the Cruzados.

They were all very rough men, raised in
some of the most poverty-stricken regions of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and
Honduras. If Terry didn’t act as tough as them, they would see it as an act of
weakness. He had already lowered himself in their eyes by his protests on the liner.
If he had any chance of getting out of his situation alive, at the very least
he had to maintain whatever status he had left in the eyes of the Cruzados.

While gathering up his courage, Terry heard
the washroom door open and two men entered. He recognized them by their voices.
It was Klaus and his uncle, Captain Gruber. Making himself as still as could
be, Terry waited for them to go about their business and leave.

The two men spoke in German, so Terry had
no idea what they said, but their tones were full of menace.

Klaus said,
“Achten Sie darauf, Ihre Männer
sind bereit. Ich werde Signal, wenn der Vorgang abgeschlossen ist. Sie wirst
sie töten Jose und Terry.”

When Terry heard his name, the hairs on the
back of his neck stood straight up, and he cursed himself for not being able to
understand what was said.

In English, Captain Gruber asked, “What
about the rest of the Cruzados?”

“I have enough evidence to convince them
Jose was just using them for his own benefit; he was never a true believer.
Don’t worry about them; without a leader, those sheep will soon flock to my
banner. —Oh, and if you can, make sure it looks as if it was Jose who killed
Terry. Fuel for the fire.”

After a moment, Gruber said, “Shouldn’t be
too hard.”

“Soon, Uncle, we will finally take what
Alex Manez promised but failed to deliver. I won’t rest until that little brat
is dead, too.”

∞

“You’re late,” Jose said in a reprimanding
voice when Terry returned to the workshop. “The Kinemet has almost burnt out.”

Klaus didn’t look up from his computer.
Captain Gruber stood off to the side, but the older man didn’t look directly at
Terry. His eyes, however, took everything in, and a chill ran down Terry’s
spine.

“Uh, sorry,” Terry said and shrugged as
Jose shot him a scathing look.

He tried to make sure none of the three
other men in the room saw how his hands shook, how his breathing was ragged, or
how hard his heart thumped in his chest. Almost, he had decided to run and find
a hiding place somewhere in the observatory. He knew, however, that if he had,
it would have only been a matter of time before they discovered him.

He was a dead man anyway. He knew it deep
in his heart. Even if he returned to the lab, once the experiment was proved a
success, Captain Gruber would murder him. After all that Terry had done, he
felt he deserved it, and decided to face his destiny. If he was to die, at
least he would die brave, instead of running like a coward.

“Not a moment to spare,” Klaus said and
motioned toward the other room.

The light inside the lab flared and
suddenly extinguished, and Klaus retracted the window tinting.

Soon, everyone could see the soldier slowly
rematerialize as thousands of tiny flashes of light coalesced and went out.

The entire transformation took less than
six seconds, according to a timer display on one of the monitors, and Klaus
stood up, obviously excited.

“Did it work?” Jose asked.

“I don’t know,” Klaus said, never taking
his eyes off the soldier. “I need to revive him and run some tests. If he shows
all the signs of a successful metamorphosis, then we can run him through a
simulation and measure his reactions.” He tapped a command, and an intravenous
tube in the lab turned blue as some kind of stimulant was introduced into the
subject’s system.

Within moments, the solider stirred. His
legs jerked as sensation and consciousness returned to him.

Through a microphone, Klaus called out, “Private
Teegs, can you hear me?”

“Whass,” the soldier said, his speech
clearly not at full capacity. He licked his lips, forced his eyes opened and
tried again. “What’s going on? What happened?”

“How do you feel?” Klaus asked. “Can you
describe the sensation?”

“I heard it,” the young man said, voice
filled with wonder. “It was a song. Haunting. It filled my head. It—”

Just then, his entire body shook with a
convulsion. A look of panic spread across his face and his eyes bulged out.
Veins popped up on his forehead and neck.

“What’s happening to me?” he cried out.

Klaus spoke in a hard voice into the
microphone. “Calm down. It’s just an after-effect of the procedure. I assure
you, you’ll be fine.”

But the man was anything but. Both Terry
and Jose ran forward to look as another spasm took the soldier and he fell off
the gurney to the floor.

Like a fish out of water, he writhed and
twitched, all the while howling in agony. The imaging machine and medical
monitors sparked as they were overloaded with electricity. Most fizzled and
went dead, but one caught fire and popped with a couple of tiny explosions
until the overhead sprinklers shot CO
²
into the room to smother the
flames.

“You have to help him!” Terry shouted,
looking over his shoulder.

There was no concern or empathy evident in
Klaus’s eyes; merely a look of disgust and frustration. “It’s over.”

“But he’s dying.”

Without replying to Terry, Klaus turned to
his uncle and shook his head. Captain Gruber, who had looked as tense as a
tiger ready to spring, relaxed visibly.

Jose, watching the soldier’s final death
throes, asked, “What now?”

“We’ll have to clean up the lab, reset
everything and try again tomorrow. Only one variable left; at least we’ll have
a fifty-fifty shot.” With that, Klaus walked out of the workshop, his uncle
following a few steps behind.

Terry turned to Jose. “We can’t just stand
here and do nothing. He’s dying.”

“He’s already dead,” the leader of the
Cruzados said, his voice hard and steady. “Nothing we can do at this point.”

Trying not to let Jose see the tears
streaking down his face, Terry turned away from the window. His hands continued
to shake.

If the soldier had lived, Terry would now
be dead at the hands of Captain Gruber. Which was the more just outcome?