The Forever Man: A Near-Future Thriller (37 page)

At the same instant, the Heliraptor explodes in a brilliant flash that creates a sphere of debris that slams into the street and the surrounding buildings. Windows shatter. Vehicles crumple. Spectators collapse under a spray of shrapnel.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Lane looks over to see the Bird’s jaw fully slack and his eyes bulging, a rare snapshot of shock and fear. But only for an instant. The Bird turns to Lane with a red rage already spreading across his face. “They fucked with me, Anslow. They fucked with me big time.”

“We’ve got to get you off the street. There may be follow-up.”

The security detail rushes up and forms a phalanx around the Bird and Lane. Together, they start wading through a crowd of stunned onlookers on the sidewalk. Sirens fire up in the
background.

“Green,” the Bird declares as they move away from the calamity. “He told ’em I wanted in, and they tried to take me out.”

“Could be,” Lane says.

“He knew they’d try to take me out.”

“Maybe so,” Lane responds.

The Bird takes out his handheld and says “Green” into it.

“You might want to wait on this,” Lane suggests. “You’re tipping your hand.”

“Yeah? Well the other guy’s got nothing left to bet,” the Bird says. “So who gives a fuck?”

The Bird extends his free hand palm up. His call went through. “Hey, Green.” He stares at the handheld, which is sending video of his face to Harlan. “Wanna see something?” He turns the handheld camera toward his building, where the entire upper story is now engulfed in flames, then back to himself. “That’s where I live, Harlan. And you know what that means, asshole? It means you’re dead meat.” He shoves the phone in his pocket and starts down the street at a furious pace. Lane lengthens his stride to match.

“He can run but he can’t hide,” the Bird declares. “Not on my turf.” He gets back on his handheld. “I want Street Party headquarters and the neighborhood sealed tight—right now.”

***

“We just got a break, Rachel. A really big break.”

Harlan appears genuinely excited as he ducks his head into her office. “Grab your coat and your keys. We’ve got to move on this right now.”

“Move on what exactly?” Rachel asks as they hustle on down the hall. Harlan had surprised her. He seldom talked to her this early in the day.

“Can’t tell you. Not yet. We have to do this on the QT or it won’t work. We need to agree to the terms before it goes public.”

Rachel sorts through this precipitous development as they leave the Street Party headquarters and head to the parking lot in the rear, where they keep an SUV for private use. Its tinted windshield and smoked windows provide an anonymous ride. What’s he up to? She finds out as soon as she pulls the vehicle out of the lot and heads down the street.

“Sorry I didn’t let you in on this earlier,” Green apologizes. “I’ve been negotiating with the corporation that owns Mount Tabor. They’ve agreed in principle to move out and let the land be returned to the public domain. It’s a huge victory. All the demonstrating, all the speeches have
finally paid off.”

“Very impressive,” a slightly dazed Rachel responds. Could it be true? Green might have talked them into moving their rejuve facility somewhere more secure. Everybody would win. The corporation, whoever they were, would look publicly spirited for donating the land. Green would reinforce his image as a populist hero. And they would all grow forever young with nobody the wiser.

“So where to?” Rachel asks as she turns onto a main street.

“The gate at Mount Tabor.”

“We’ve got Street Party people up there demonstrating right now,” says Rachel.

“That’s why we’re in a vehicle with no-peek windows. Don’t worry. They know we’re coming and we’ll be waved right through.”

Harlan spends the balance of the fifteen-minute ride discussing how to present this momentous development to the media. It’s too big for the Feed to ignore and will probably run on dozens of news channels. The more he talks, the more Rachel hopes it’s all true. Such is the primal force field of Harlan Green.

At the heavily fortified gate, they arrive unrecognized by the protestors and a simple lobe scan is all they need to drive on through. Immediately inside is a small military base of some kind. As they start up the hill, Rachel spots what appear to be bunkers among the trees, but the higher they climb, the less fortified and more parklike the place becomes.

“Now that we’re straight on the media strategy, all you have to do is drop me off,” Harlan informs her. “We need to work in parallel to pull this thing off. You go on back to the office and start putting a detailed plan together. I’ll phone you when I’ve got the deal done and signed. It might take quite a while, so don’t worry—and keep a lid on it, a big lid. At least for now, okay?”

Rachel nods. She keeps looking down at their shifting position in the map display on the vehicle’s navigation system. Depending on what happens, it might be useful information.

“How do we know where we’re going?” Rachel asks.

“They said it’s near the top. Someone’s coming out to meet us.”

They come over a crest and round a gentle curve. On their right, a massive concrete structure juts from the hillside, broken only by a large loading gate and a nearby door. Both entrances are constructed of heavy steel. As Rachel pulls into the parking area, the door lifts up vertically and a man emerges with dark skin and a small frame. If Rachel had to guess, she’d say he was Indian.

Green opens his door the moment the vehicle stops. “I’ll take it from here. Just wait for my call.”

Rachel gives a wry grin as she watches Harlan walk off toward the slight man standing by the door. He didn’t even bother to bring a computer or a briefcase. Not like him. Whatever
just happened must have happened really fast.

“Good evening,” Zed greets Autumn as he enters the grand dining hall atop Mount Tabor. The fading light from the west casts a soft light on Autumn through the big windows. “How are you?” he continues. It sounds mechanical and formal, but it’s the best he can do.

“I’m just fine,” she answers with a polite coolness.

Zed masks his disappointment and steals a glance at his reflection in the large mirror on the far wall, which is paneled with Tasmanian blackwood. He appears to be about forty, and constantly confirms it in every mirror he encounters. His head is still shaved, waiting for his hair to catch up with the rest of the process, but it gives him a look of rugged masculinity. He is still struggling to adjust to his shifting musculature, so his movements are somewhat awkward.

“I know I’m a little clumsy, but that’ll pass,” he explains.

“I know.”

Of course she does. She went through the same readjustment. So what can he say to draw her out? The entrance of two waiters interrupts his rumination. Wine is poured. An appetizer of smoked salmon arrives.

The waiters depart and they consume the appetizer in silence. The table seats fourteen, and they sit opposite each other in the middle. Two place settings amid a barren plain of polished rosewood.

“How was your flight over?” he asks.

“Pleasant.”

After a long silence, his patience is spent. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

“And just what would you like to hear?” she asks him in the most patient of tones.

“Maybe we could start with the obvious: That I’ve changed considerably since the last time you saw me.”

“Should I be surprised?”

“No, but you might be a little more excited about it.” Zed pauses and closes his eyes to compose himself. “Nobody else shares what we do. Nobody has lived so long and been given a second chance. All the wisdom we’ve accumulated can now be applied while we’re young and healthy. You can have the children you never had. You can travel to where you never went. You can learn everything you never had time for. You can savor those experiences in a way you never
could before. Think of it.”

“I have thought about it quite a lot, Mr. Thomas Zed.”

“Please, just call me Thomas.”

Autumn rises from her seat and moves to the nearest window. Smoldering remnants of sunlight struggle through a dark band of clouds on the horizon. “We all have a time, Mr. Zed; and for you and me, that time has come and gone.”

“You can’t be serious. Look at yourself in the mirror.”

She turns to him and smiles with a conviction he finds unnerving. “You think you’ve beaten the clock because you can bring your body back around. But nothing goes on forever. Everything has a beginning and an end.”

“So what do you say to all those who believe you have a soul?” Zed counters. “Because along with a soul comes life everlasting. No time limit. No expiration date.”

“Not really,” Autumn says. “You’re assuming that your mind and your soul are the same thing. They’re not. Your mind has to die for your soul to move on, which means your body has to die, too. We all come with an expiration date. It’s built into the rhythm of life, and there’s nothing we can do to change it.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself,” Zed says. “And just how would you prove such a thing?”

“An experiment. And that’s precisely what you and I are. We’re that experiment. And when it’s complete, it’ll show that we all have a time, and that once that time has come and gone, we go with it.”

Zed rises from his seat and circles to Autumn’s side. “All right then, we both believe in an experiment. Mine offers hope. Yours offers oblivion. I suggest we try mine first.”

“As you wish,” Autumn says. “It won’t change the outcome.”

“We’ll see about that. In the meantime, I want you to go home and pack up and be ready to leave. You won’t need much. Everything will be taken care of.”

Autumn turns to face the last remnant of dusk out the window. “I’m sure it will.”

Zed finds Green waiting for him at rigid attention in an anodized aluminum chair in a guest room at the north end of Zed’s residential complex. The politician watches a big video display where the Feed replays the attack on the Bird’s penthouse from a wide variety of angles and perspectives. Any event in the Trade Ring and its periphery now falls under the paranoid gaze of at least a dozen cameras, and the Feed is expert at ferreting them out and flinging them over the broadband in record time.

Green turns toward Zed’s entrance. “You missed.”

“Mistakes do happen,” Zed admits.

“The Bird will come after you, you know that? He’ll take us both out if he gets the chance.”

“Then we won’t give him the chance,” Zed explains as he sits down on the couch. “We have options.”

“Such as?”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, it would take a major military action to get in here. I doubt that your friend has the means.”

“You’re underestimating him. He has thousands of fighters at his disposal, and he’s very resourceful.”

“I’m sure he is. And if it looks like he’s going to pose a serious threat, we can always evacuate by air.”

“And what about my career? How do we keep that from going up in smoke?”

“You’re a man of peace,” Zed declares calmly. “You’re a man on a diplomatic mission who just made a big breakthrough. For the first time, real progress has been made to heal the differences between business in the towers and people on the street. On the other hand, the Bird would seem a madman who’s hell-bent on extreme violence that threatens to undo all that you’ve worked so hard for. In the end, justice will prevail. And somehow, I doubt that your avian friend will survive the experience.”

Green purses his lips in thought, then speaks. “And how might we expedite all this?”

“At the first sign of real trouble, we’ll evacuate you to one of your offices in another city, where you can make a heartfelt plea for peace and reason. It’ll be a good move for you. For the most part, your campaign has been pretty much rage-based. Now you’ll be seen as much more balanced and nuanced.”

“Balanced and nuanced,” Green repeats. “That just might work.”

“Of course it’ll work,” Zed reassures him.

But it won’t, as Zed well knows. Not with the Bird out there on the rampage. Green has betrayed him and Green will pay. The Bird will pursue him relentlessly and do whatever it takes to get his revenge. And that includes telling the whole world about the miracle technology hiding up on the mountain under the stewardship of Thomas Zed.

On the other hand, if Green were no longer in the picture, the Bird might quickly become a very reasonable man, especially if he were to take Green’s place on the short list.

Rachel points to the big green rectangle of Mount Tabor, which dominates the video display in her office. She shows Lane the road that comes in off Sixtieth Avenue and winds up the former park’s western slope past the drained reservoir. “This is the road Harlan and I took to the top after going through the gate. We looped around the reservoir and went on up to a little parking area in front of what looks like a huge bunker set in the side of the hill. If they’re hiding something, this is definitely where they’re doing it. If your Johnny’s up there, that’s where you’ll find him.”

Lane nods at the image. “Sounds like it.”

“I still don’t know how in the hell the Bird thinks he’s going to get in there,” Rachel says. “The gate on Sixtieth looks like Fort Knox, and they’ve got bunkers all the way up past the reservoir.”

“Plus they’ve cleared the trees back around the entire perimeter,” Lane adds. “Anybody up above has a clear field of fire on anybody coming up from below. It would be a suicide charge. Even if you got through the clearing, you’d have to fight uphill on foot to get to the buildings.”

Rachel studies the map. “The only way that makes sense is to break in through the main gate so you can use the roads. But then they’d really have you in their crosshairs.”

Lane’s handheld buzzes. He reads a text message and looks up to Rachel. “The Bird has just put out an order for his forces to assemble along Seventy-second Avenue on the far side of the mountain away from the gate. Now why would he do that?”

***

The Bird carefully steps around an oil spot on the cement floor of the hangar. It might soil the leather soles of his chapel-buckled loafers crafted from hand-chosen calfskin. The big structure’s front door is rolled up to reveal the single runway of Troutdale Airport, located several miles to the east of the city. A crop duster points its propeller-driven nose toward the door. Its single-seat cockpit pokes up from a fuselage painted bright yellow with blue trim. Underneath each wing hangs a linear array of spray nozzles.