Summit (43 page)

* * *

The baby grows and changes, a time-lapse film of a life, and soon it is Theodore Winn. Born of hatred, will he hate her—even though she does not hate him? She cannot follow the logic of it, so she simply waits.

Winn gets up from the bed. He is a large man, and very fit. She had known he would be difficult to defeat, and those brawny shoulders and large, strong hands prove it. He stares at her, puzzled, and then looks around at the room. "Where am I?" he asks.

She cannot reply.

"I've got to get out of here," he says, and he walks toward the door.

Valentina blocks his way. She cannot let him leave. "No," she says.

"What do you mean? I'm a busy man, young—"

She knees him in the groin and pushes him down onto the floor.

And the battle begins.

* * *

What was going on? Was it the clam chowder? Winn was starting to feel—well, no, not strange. No, he felt all right. It was just that—

"The Soviet Union has its problems, I grant you," Grigoriev was saying, "but they can be solved. America also has its problems, but they are insoluble by definition, because they arise from the fundamental conflict between the good of the individual and the good of society. You think you can have both, but you can't. Individual self-interest leads to exploitation, and that leads to the squalor and crime and poverty I saw on my ride through New York City this morning. You can't eradicate these problems through charity or welfare or more prisons; you can eradicate them only by changing the very nature of your society so that exploitation is impossible."

This was ridiculous. It was high school rhetoric. And yet... never mind. Ridiculous. "What is the old joke?" Winn said. " 'Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's the other way around.'"

Grigoriev smiled. "A very old joke. Do you honestly believe it's true?"

"I believe there will always be exploitation. The Soviet Union has already done more than its share, and I see no evidence that it's going to stop. America may have difficulty balancing conflicting interests, but in the Soviet Union there is only one interest—the state, and it is interested only in perpetuating itself. Someday there will be paradise on earth, you tell people, so put up with the inefficiency and the oppression for just a while longer. They've become pretty cynical about that by now, haven't they, Mr. Secretary?"

Grigoriev shrugged. "There will always be cynics. Call me Pavel."

"Pavel." Was it getting hot in here? Don't suppose these windows opened. Maybe a glass of water. "Would you like some water, Pavel?"

Grigoriev shook his head. "No thank you, Ted. But please, help yourself."

Winn got up and poured a glass. It felt good to get out of that chair. He hated sitting down. His hand wasn't shaking, was it? His hand never shook. "We should really get down to business here," he said, returning to his chair.

"Of course. Shall we talk about my arms-reduction proposals, then?"

* * *

They roll around the floor. She quickly loses the advantage of her surprise attack and has to contend with a larger, stronger adversary, now enraged by the pain she has inflicted on him.

He pins her next to the bed. "What's going on?" he demands.

She can't think what to say. Would he try to rape her, as so many of them had? That would give her strength; she could find some hatred then.

But instead he simply shakes his head and stands up. "This is ridiculous," he mutters, and he leaves the room before she has a chance to stop him.

This has never happened before. She struggles to her feet and races after him. She can't let him escape.

* * *

"Pulse rate one-fifty and erratic," Doctor Chukova said. In the pyramid, her patient was pushing rhythmically against the restraints: left leg, right leg, left leg... Was she running?

"It's taking a long time, isn't it?" Trofimov said. He was wringing his hands as he stared at the console.

Chukova glanced over at Rylev. He hadn't moved from his chair by the door. The American spy sat next to him. "One-sixty," she murmured. No one seemed to be listening.

* * *

No one could say Grigoriev hadn't tried. Winn seemed a little out of sorts, but that was hardly what they were after. It could be attributed as much to the lack of progress in the meeting as to any psychic influence. Perhaps Stashinsky had said a prayer, and there had been a miracle. That was all right with him.

They were talking about disarmament now, and perhaps they would get something accomplished. He hoped so. "I see no reason," he said, "why we should not link discussions of all types of weapons for the purposes of creating one comprehensive treaty...."

* * *

She reaches him at the top of the stairs, but he pushes her aside and hurries down to the large empty hall. She follows him. He tries the front door. It is locked. "How do I get out of here?" he demands.

"I don't know," she says.

"What's going on? Am I a prisoner?"

"Yes," she whispers. Everyone is a prisoner.

"And you're my jailer or something?"

She shrugs.

"Why did you attack me?"

She can't think of an answer.

"If you're not my jailer, then can you tell me how to get out?"

"There is no way out."

He looks at her, and then dismisses her. She is no threat, and she has no information for him. He strides across the hall and through a doorway. She knows what he will find there. Another stairway—this one leading down into the depths of the dream-building, spiraling into the darkness, still descending long after you think it cannot go any farther. But there is no bottom to this place, just as there are no windows or back doors. She has looked for them and has not found them; neither will he.

He returns eventually, looking grim and winded. "What's upstairs?" he demands.

"Nothing."

He rushes past her. She follows, worried that he will open the doors on the second floor and release the creatures inside. But he doesn't stop at the second floor. He continues up and up, flight after flight.

She hasn't done this. It never occurred to her to go up.

The darkness starts to fade.

There is a door.

He twists the knob. It's locked, but the door rattles encouragingly. He takes a step back and kicks it. It opens.

He steps outside. She follows.

They are on the roof. It is flat and covered with gravel. Fog surrounds them—or perhaps they are in the clouds. She can see only a few meters in front of her. "Gotta be a fire escape or something," Winn mutters, and he starts exploring.

He has found a way out of the building. He is resourceful as well as strong. She has to do something. She starts after him, and stubs her toe. She looks down. A brick is lying there on the roof. She reaches down and grabs it, then hurries to catch up with him.

"Damn fog," he says.

She likes being wrapped up in the fog, unnoticed, scarcely visible. She wishes she could spend her whole life in it. But that won't happen. And she has to act. Now.

She hits him over the head with the brick.

He roars and staggers; then he drops from sight.

She rushes forward and stops at the edge of the roof. He is dangling over the edge, his hands slowly losing their grip on the gravel. She falls to her knees and grabs hold of him. She can't let him die, any more than she can let him escape. His face is bloody and twisted with fear and pain. Beneath him she can see nothing but fog. He is slowly dragging her down with him. It would be so nice to fall into the fog—a moment of pain at the end, perhaps, and then nothing. But she must not let that happen.

"Can't—hold—" she gasps. But she has to. Oh God, she has to.

* * *

Doctor Chukova watched the wildly spiking brain waves on the EEG and the racing, erratic pulse, and she knew Valentina could not last much longer. Over the speaker the summit droned on, but who could tell what horrors were taking place inside the poor girl's mind? "We must stop it," she announced. "There is a danger of ventricular fibrillation."

She made a move toward the pyramid. She saw Rylev silently staring at her. She closed her eyes and stopped.

* * *

"No!" she screams. This is a dream, and she must have dream-strength. She pulls, her muscles on fire, her lungs sucking in the moist air. And eventually he starts to rise. He scrambles onto the roof beside her. They spend a moment on all fours, both gasping for breath, trying to recover from the nearness of death. And then he looks at her with hatred—yes, with hatred—and he attacks.

* * *

Grigoriev was still speaking, but Winn couldn't follow him. Too many facts and figures. Winn was usually very good about facts and figures, but now he listened to them as if in a fog. What was this all about, anyway? Numbers of warheads and kinds of missiles and ranges and targets and the timetables for scrapping them and the worldwide correlation of forces. It all seemed to pass through his mind without sticking. The main issue was—was something else. He couldn't quite focus on any of it. This was not good.

But he couldn't think what to do about it.

* * *

He attacks, but much of his strength is gone, and the fight is even. They pummel each other on the rough surface of the roof. His face is covered with blood now. It is in his eyes, and he seems to be having difficulty seeing. She is so exhausted that her punches have little effect. If she could find the brick again... but she can't. He is on top of her. She has no strength to move, to hit—scarcely enough to breathe.

And then he topples over in mid-punch. The brick has done its job, apparently; he has bled too much. He lies still on the roof next to her.

She listens to his chest to make sure he is still alive. Yes.

It's over, then. She struggles to catch her breath. She looks around.

And she realizes it isn't over.

She has to get him back to the room. That's the way the dream-logic works; she is sure of it. She must close the door on him before she can truly conquer him. But she can't. She can't drag him across the roof and down the stairs and along the endless corridor. And even if she could, she has lost her bearings, and no longer knows where the door is. She needs to rest; she needs to think. The fog has to go away. It's hopeless.

And so she sits beside the unconscious president in the swirling fog, and she starts to cry.

* * *

And eventually Winn began to realize that Grigoriev was making some sense. A lot of sense, in fact. Oh, the details still escaped him, but clearly Grigoriev was as interested in peace as he was. They were both reasonable men—he could see that now. Why couldn't something be worked out?

In fact, some of the other things Grigoriev had been saying—

No. That was crazy.

He didn't feel quite right.

"I wonder if you'd excuse me," he said to Grigoriev. "I have to go to the bathroom."

"Of course." Grigoriev rose politely, and Winn went next door.

What was the matter? Nothing, really. He just had to clear his head for a moment. He stared at himself in the mirror. Sometimes you see yourself from a different angle, in a different mirror, and suddenly your face looks totally unfamiliar—and yet it doesn't. It's you, you know it's you; you've just found another way to look at yourself.

Winn felt that way now. Silly feeling. It was just a different mirror.

They should do something about disarmament. He couldn't remember any of the suggestions his advisers had made to him. That didn't matter, though. He and Grigoriev would work something out. He looked at his watch. Not much time left in today's session. Time enough to accomplish something, perhaps. He returned to Grigoriev, who smiled at him.

Winn smiled back. "All right," he said. "To get somewhere in negotiations, each side has to make some concessions. I know you've made some recently—the reduction in Warsaw Pact forces and so forth. Now tell me: what do you want from me?"

Grigoriev looked a little puzzled. "You mean—what concession?"

"That's right. So that we can have a treaty worked out by the end of this summit."

Winn waited while Grigoriev thought.

* * *

Was this it, then? Had it happened? Evidently, although the change had not been as—as miraculous as he had been led to expect. Grigoriev tried not to look upset. He was doing his duty; he knew what to ask for.

And if he got it, his career was finished.

* * *

"It has come to my attention," Grigoriev said, "that researchers in your intelligence community have developed a drug that has a powerful and beneficial effect on a person's behavior without affecting his intelligence or alertness. It works, I am told, by interacting with certain natural opiates in the brain. Are you by any chance familiar with this drug?"