The Methuselarity Transformation (20 page)

“Where have you been?” asked Ray when Lena walked in the door. It was after midnight.

“Phoenix.”

“What the hell were you doing in Phoenix?”

“I was following a story.” Lena paused and drew in a breath. “I met a woman, Ray,” she continued, “a woman who’s met Terra.”

Ray fell silent. Whatever this meant, it couldn’t be good. How much did Lena know?

“Talk to me Ray. You need to tell me who Terra is and what business you have with her, because whatever the truth is can’t possibly be as outrageous as what I imagine.”

“I’d tell you if I could, Lena,” Ray said, “God knows I’ve wanted to tell you. But I can’t. I’m sworn to secrecy. If I told you, I’m afraid it would endanger us both.”

“This woman’s husband disappeared right after a visit from Terra. But it gets worse. She told me that for the past couple of months, he’d been replaced by an imposter...someone else living in his body.”

“What are you getting at?” Ray asked, but he already knew exactly what Lena was implying. His wife was extremely bright and intuitive, which made her an outstanding investigator. She’d figured it out, at least in its broad outlines. She might not know, though, quite how deep he’d waded into this mess.

“When you said Terra deals in final arrangements, did you mean she arranges for life after death?”

“I told you. We can’t talk about this. It’s too dangerous. She’s too dangerous. I don’t want to put you in her crosshairs.”

“If you can’t trust me with your secrets, I’m not sure what kind of future our marriage holds. And if you’re planning what I think your planning, then I have no idea how to understand what our marriage means. This gives ‘til death do we part’ a whole new twist. Do you even know who you’ll become? And what will become of the person whose body you wind up in?”

“Do you know how crazy all this sounds?” Ray exploded. “Your imagination’s running wild. What you’re implying isn’t even possible. You have to let this go.”

“Isn’t it, Ray? I may have to believe it until you come up with a more plausible explanation. I’ll let you off the hook for tonight, but we’ll keep coming back to it until you tell me something I can believe. You know how I can be when my mind is made up. I’ll get the truth one way or another.”

25

RAY PARKED THE
leased hovercar down the street from the brownstone mansion, waited and watched. Dawn had just broken on a clear Sunday morning. The streets were still empty, even in one of the capital’s most densely populated bedroom communities. In this neighborhood, though, the houses were surrounded by generous tracts of land and many were fortified with tall iron fences or stone walls. The Takana home was notable for the lush foliage that completely hid the lower level from view behind the black wrought iron fence.

His patience paid off. After several hours, a steel gray vehicle glided through the gate onto the road. Ray activated his vehicle and felt it silently lift off the surface beneath it before moving forward. He maintained a respectful distance as the two vehicles left the neighborhood and navigated onto the elevated ringway. The third exit took them to a winding country road leading to a steepled stone faced building. The weathering of the stone and the style of the steeple bore witness to a century or more of homage within its walls. Above the massive wooden doors was a tall iron post encircled by a double helix in multicolored crystal.

“Holiness sticks to places,” thought Ray, recalling digs in his database from the Holy Land with mosques built over churches built over temples built over the ruins of ancient shrines. The gray vehicle came to a stop in front of the building. Marcus, Corinne, and Natasha emerged and entered the church. Ray parked his car around the side, entered through the front and ascended the stairs to the balcony. From the front row, he watched the pews fill up on the ground floor and spotted the Takana family sitting together in the middle of the third row.

As the people filed into the Church of the Double Helix, the music of the pipe organ began wafting through the building. Ray remembered the organ music from churches of his youth, but even in the great Cathedrals of Rome he’d never heard music so ethereal and pure. It sounded viscous as honey and sweeter as it poured out of the organ pipes, the notes fed straight into the instrument from the patterns in the Coded Word.

The Takanas were now surrounded by a sea of heads, mostly as bald and shiny as theirs. Even embedded within this throng of peers, Marcus and Corinne’s regal bearing set them apart. Ten-year-old Natasha stood straight and tall, carrying herself as someone destined for nobility.

The preacher entered from the side of the stage and ascended the pulpit, resplendent in a silver robe embellished with holographic images that sparkled in the laser light that bathed the pulpit. He raised his arms and the assemblage rose to their feet. The scene was at the same time both palpably familiar and oddly alien.

The preacher held his arms out in front of him and gestured for the congregation to be seated. Huge holographic images of double helixes flanked him as the service unfolded, with readings from the source code interspersed with musical
interludes choreographing the rotation of the helixes. As they turned, segments lit up sequentially in seemingly random order, signifying portions of the code that bore the scriptures. During some of these interludes the congregation vocalized in unison sustained tones that emanated from the core of their bodies and together filled the entire volume of the church with commanding resonance.

It was during the sermon that Ray noticed a man at the other end of the balcony who also seemed focused on something other than the preacher’s words. Like Ray, he was dressed very differently from most of the congregation, an apparent outsider. He not only had a full head of reddish brown hair, but also a closely cropped beard covering his face. As Ray observed him more closely, his gaze seemed to be directed toward the same section of the congregation in which Marcus and his family were sitting. When the organ music resumed at the end of the service and people began filing out, the man maintained his focus until Marcus and his family stood and moved into the aisle. Then he hastened toward the balcony door and bounded down the steps.

Ray followed and upon reaching the ground floor found the bearded man and four or five other people obstructing the space between him and the Takanas. He’d hoped for an opportunity to get a better look at them close up, to see Corinne’s radiant face again and to look at Marcus for the first time other than in a mirror. He’d even imagined that if he could get close enough, he would smell the jasmine emanating from Corinne’s body.

As soon as Marcus and his family emerged from the church, the gray hovercar pulled up to the door and the driver let them in. Right behind the gray car a white vehicle pulled up. The intruder entered on the passenger side and the car
sped away in the same direction. By the time Ray got to his car, both other vehicles were long gone. He assumed that the Takanas were headed home and sped toward their house on an alternate route.

As he pulled into their street, he watched the gray car disappear behind the gate. The white vehicle had pulled over on the opposite side of the street several houses back. Ray drove past the Takana’s entry gate and parked around the corner. From his position at the side of the house, he could barely make out Marcus and Corinne through the underbrush getting out of the car. Natasha was no longer with them, perhaps dropped off on the way at the home of a friend. Once they were inside, Ray peered around the corner just in time to see the driver’s side door of the white car open.

The driver, a rugged looking young man with wavy blond hair crossed the street and moved swiftly down the sidewalk in front of the house. He held a cylindrical object in his right hand that he flung over the fence with inhuman force. It soared across the yard and landed just in front of the entry door, rolling the last few feet across the stoop.

The explosion knocked Ray off his feet and blasted open the front gates. A fireball enveloped the house. Ray got to his feet just in time to see the white car speed away. His heart was pounding and he felt himself scream, but no sound came out. In fact, his whole world had fallen silent following the blast, a fitting accompaniment to the hollowness that gnawed at his gut.

Ray ran across the fallen gate toward the front door, but the flames spitting from the opening forced him back. He struggled to remember the layout of the house and ran around the back to find the kitchen door blown out. Smoke billowed from the opening. He pulled off his shirt, wrapped
the fireproof fabric around his face, and plowed into the house through the smoke. The kitchen was empty. He ran into the hallway and stumbled over a body.

Corinne lay unconscious at his feet, while Marcus lay motionless just a few paces away, barely discernible in the smoke. The fire had entered the long hallway at the front of the house and was moving quickly toward them. Ray could feel the intensity of the heat on his bare chest. He could only save one of them. Which one would it be?

Marcus was his investment in his future. If he perished, so would Ray’s dream of immortality. And if Ray tried to save either one of them, he was risking his own immediate survival and his death would be final. But there at his feet was the woman who had colored the brush of his imagination ever since that first tempestuous encounter. Could he abandon her now? Could he ever live peacefully within Marcus’s body knowing that he’d sacrificed her to save himself?

With a burst of strength he’d never before experienced within his own body, Ray scooped up Corinne’s limp form and carried her out through the kitchen and the smoke. He ran another fifty feet beyond the house before collapsing to the ground with Corinne still in his arms. Another fireball shot flames toward them through the door and the framework of the house began to crumble.

Ray didn’t hear the sirens approaching in his still soundless world. He rolled onto his back to see the rescue personnel in their reflective suits sweep Corinne’s body onto a stretcher and roll her away. His mind flashed briefly to another scene long ago when he’d been helpless to change the outcome. By the time they came back for him, he was gone. The rented car was barricaded by the rescue vehicles and he fled on foot. How would he ever explain what he was doing there when the
house was firebombed? With the white car long gone, he’d be left as the prime suspect.

He longed to know whether his sacrifice paid off, but had no way to know for sure whether Corinne had survived. Now he had a more immediate problem. The police would identify him from the rented car and would soon be looking for him. Where could he hide in this too transparent world? And how could he ever clear his name?

Ray navigated to the edge of the neighborhood via side streets and alleys until he reached a more densely populated section and emerged onto a busy thoroughfare. His flight had continued in silence until then. Now sounds were beginning to filter back into his awareness. Footsteps galloped toward him from the distance to his right and he took off in the opposite direction.

His pursuer gained on him fast. He glanced behind him just long enough to see a shock of blond hair. Ray was breathing hard as the pursuer closed in. With his last burst of energy he swerved into the street and saw the red hovercar barreling toward him just as he felt the palm of a large hand land on his back. If only he were back in Marcus’s body with powerful legs propelling him forward. Instead, his own leaden limbs rooted him to the pavement in a killer’s grasp.

26

PHOTINA OPENED HER
eyes and assessed her surroundings. The blast had knocked her against a wall and triggered a reboot of her system. She was now fully up and running. The hallway was filled with smoke and she could feel the heat of the fire moving toward her from behind, but her body could withstand temperatures far beyond the tolerance of a human and she didn’t need to breathe oxygen to survive. Fire rescue personnel had been almost entirely replaced by SPUDs like her because of their superior physical strength and relative invulnerability.

Just before the blast, Corinne and Marcus had been walking toward the kitchen. Now Marcus lay by her feet and two life forms just beyond him were moving toward the house’s rear entrance. The standing figure was unknown to her. She identified the limp life form in his arms as Corinne and determined that she was alive.

Photina bent over Marcus’s inert form and hesitated a moment. He’d been good to her and she was almost certain Corinne would want her to save him. Corinne and Marcus
usually seemed happy to see one another, greeting each other with friendly looking gestures, including a form of embrace they called “hugs.” Sometimes they would touch their mouths together and commingle their microbes.

But there had been one time very early in her education when she’d returned late to the house with a question for Corinne about the day’s lessons. The front door was unlocked. She’d let herself in and wandered through the house until she heard voices coming from the bedroom. Corinne’s voice came at first in almost a whisper, but soon became louder and higher pitched, similar to the distressful utterances that she’d tutored her about days before. She peeked into the room. Corinne was lying on the bed and Marcus appeared to be holding her down and hurting her. The utterances increased in tempo and pitch while they moved rhythmically together in an apparent struggle. She didn’t know what to do and was about to rush into the room to save Corinne when it all suddenly stopped and they became quiet. Corinne had her arms around Marcus with her left hand cradling the back of his head and was whispering again. Photina had backed away from the door as softly as she could, walked to the front door and run all the way home.

The heat at her back intensified. When the second fireball swept through the corridor, Photina threw herself upon Marcus, absorbing the brunt of the heat. Once the explosion was over, she threw him over her shoulder and ran to the front of the house where the fire was already starving for fuel. He was no longer breathing by the time they got outside, but the rescue team arrived in time to resuscitate him. Photina sat a few feet away and watched as he began to come around.