Torn (26 page)

Impossible, on the face of it, but nevertheless true. Clearly something is truly amiss. Ruler Weems has been a bad little gnome. He has secret passageways that don’t show up on the blueprints. But where do they lead? Where was he for the missing three hours? Somewhere within the Bunker, maybe perusing some until-now-unknown collection of illegal porn? That would be delicious, and might even be useful. But what worries Vash, what furrows his handsome brow, is the possibility that Wendall Weems has a way to leave his Bunker without being seen, and thus the ability to confer with his supporters without being monitored by BK Security.

Bad little gnome.

11. His Master’s Voice

Much as he’d like to hang around the Hive and socialize, Shane skips lunch and hurries back to his domicile unit, intent on checking in with Maggie Drew.

Housekeeping has made a visit, leaving fresh towels on
the rack. No sign that any prints have been lifted—fingerprint powder is messy stuff—but he’s assuming his water glass has been bagged as part of the security routine, because if he’d been in charge, that’s what he’d do. Just as he assumes they’ve copied the files off his laptop, strictly as a precaution. In fact, he hopes so, as it will confirm that Ron Gouda is just another ambitious contractor looking to get ahead. More numbers to crunch for the Ruler database, and no indication—not yet—that his impersonation has been detected.

With cell phones not functioning, Shane has no choice but to use the landline thoughtfully provided by his hosts. In full confidence that will he be recorded, if not actually monitored, he punches in the agreed-upon number, which begins with the area code for Dayton, Ohio.

“RG Paving, how may I direct your call?”

“You’re talking to the big cheese, honey babe.”

“Mr. Gouda! How are you, sir? Is the skiing good?”

“Ha! Nobody believes me when I tell ’em this ain’t a skiing vacation. Like nobody seems to believe old Ronnie’s interested in improving his mind. Why is that? Never mind. Thing is, I only got a short interval before I got to get back. But I really need to cross a few t’s on the bid for the I-75 grade-and-pave. Hate to lose that one just because I didn’t give it the hairy eyeball one last time. Can you send the PDF to my e-mail? Thanks a mil, honey babe.”

He disconnects, opens the laptop, and waits for the link to activate on the encrypted messenger software. His old pal Charley Newman calls it ‘Instant Messenger For Spooks,’ which pretty much sums it up, but you don’t have to be a spy to want your personal e-mails to remain private,
and that goes triple for federal employees. It does mean that Maggie will have to use her personal computer, not the office terminal, but that’s probably for the best, too. Her message pops up on the screen.

Honey babe?

That’s what the big cheese calls his Gal Friday.

So, how goes it, Mr. Cheese?

Weird but interesting. Very slick operation. Security level extremely high, verging on paranoid. Cells don’t work. My guess is, all communication filtered through security. Plus, I think I was drugged last night.

WHAT?

Can’t be sure, but other guests report falling deeply asleep at exactly the same time. Possible airborne sedative. Fentanyl or something equally effective.

FENTANYL HIGHLY DANGEROUS!!!

Anything on our friend Missy?

ACKNOWLEDGE FENTANYL DANGEROUS!!!

Okay, acknowledge. Don’t worry, I won’t be in my room tonight when they pump the stuff in, if that’s what they’re doing. Now what about the mysterious Missy? Any luck?

Yes, indeed! Mysterious M. identified as Melissa G. Barlow, spouse of Eldon Donald Barlow, gameware designer. A Level Five member and a big-time contributor to Ruler coffers, associated with the Weems faction. Eldon owns many, many toys, including a Gulfstream G-450.

You are my sunshine! Address?

Sorry. Barlow residence not specified as to street address, just listed as ‘ski lodge, Conklin.’

That’ll get me started. Anything else?

Leave while you can. RIGHT NOW.

Soon, honey babe, soon.

If the morning session was impressive, based on the sheer persuasive charisma of Arthur Conklin, the afternoon session is, for Shane, more than a little strange. This time they’re seated in regular auditorium seats, not the individualized cubicles, and yet they’ve been instructed to don the same wireless headphones from the earlier session.

Despite the oddity of wearing individual headphones while in a group—what’s next, 3-D glasses?—the session at first seems straightforward, and very old school. The instructor, a trim, slightly nerdy fellow equipped with a headset, uses a pointer and a series of charts as he explains each of the Ten Reasons to Rule Yourself, taken from the first chapter of the founder’s famous book. It all feels
eerily reminiscent of the Bible classes Shane attended as a child, which he supposes makes sense, since
The Rule of One
is, for this group, a kind of scripture guiding them along the one true path to self-improvement.

“Rule One,” the instructor intones. “‘There is only the one of you.’ Okay, so what does it really mean? Your first reaction may be to think the answer is obvious, that we are all individuals, unique to ourselves. But as with everything Arthur Conklin writes, there’s more to it than that. Much, much more. What he’s referring to is—and you’ll find this in the glossary—a concept known as
the singularity of mind.
It is the idea, fundamental to
The Rule of One,
that
you are your mind.
Does that sound obvious? It’s not. It bears repeating—
you are your mind.
You are not your heart. You are not your soul. You are not a bag of skin filled with bones and organs. You, the distinctness of you, exists entirely within the electrical field generated by the human brain. So before we can take a step along the path laid out by Arthur Conklin, we must first accept that there is a difference between the
mind
and the
brain.
The brain is just another organ, albeit a rather amazing one, containing billions of distinct cells, each cell linked to billions of other cells by synaptic connections. For purposes of this lesson, try thinking of the
brain
as a radio set and the
mind
as the electrical field that comes into existence when the radio is turned on. We accept that the mind cannot exist without the brain, just as blood cannot circulate without the heart. But the mind is not the brain, just as blood is not the heart.”

Listening to the warm, strangely familiar voice in his headphones, Shane experiences an unsettling disconnect. Word for word it sounds like a typical self-improvement nar
rative—unlocking the power of the human mind to overcome life obstacles—but the nerdy, earnest dude on stage just doesn’t seem to fit the powerfully persuasive voice.

And then he realizes why the voice doesn’t fit. He slips off the headphones and confirms his suspicion: the speaker has a thin, reedy voice with a slight lisp, whereas the voice in the headphones belongs to none other than Arthur Conklin himself.

So how is it possible that Nerdy Dude is so perfectly limning what must be a recording? Right down to the timing, the pauses, the rhetorical flourishes? It can’t be a variation on lip-synching, the execution is too perfect for that. The only explanation Shane can come up with is some sort of software that runs the speaker’s voice through an Arthur Conklin filter.

Shane is put in mind of that nostalgic magazine ad, with a dog listening to an old phonograph recording of His Master’s Voice. The Rulers had taken it several steps further, by finding a way to make the institute lecturers speak in their master’s voice.

Bizarre, but actually very effective—why mess with success? If Conklin himself is no longer available, keep his image alive in updated videos, let his voice be replicated and repeated, endlessly and intimately, through the mouths of his acolytes.

Plus, and Shane knows a thing or two about programming, it must be really cool software. Now that he understands the mechanism that drew him in, he loses interest in the content—a lot of lofty-sounding stuff about using the hidden powers of the mind to find the One True Voice that will lead, essentially, to the pot of gold at the end of your personal rainbow. He tunes it all out and concen
trates on the problem at hand: finding the power couple who snatched Haley Corbin from the airport.

Shane’s gut tells him Haley is alive, and that she’s somewhere nearby. Locating her begins with locating Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, whose ski lodge must be among those that overlook the campus. There are hundreds of condos and lodges, so he can’t simply go door-to-door, not without triggering a reaction from BK Security. He has to find another way. If he had weeks or months he might pull off a direct infiltration, posing as a Ruler wannabe with big pockets, or maybe by infiltrating the security force. But he doesn’t have weeks or months. From what he’s seen of BK Security, they’ll twig to him sooner rather than later, possibly before the three-day seminar concludes. He has to make a move in the next few hours, before all the doors slam shut.

The session concludes with a fairly brief description of the Ruler hierarchy. New members enter at the lowest level, of course, and gradually proceed upward through a series of ‘graduations,’ ultimately achieving the “seventh level of oneness.” Each level requiring a considerable investment of not only time, but increasingly hefty initiation fees. By level five, qualification includes having a net worth of no less than five million dollars. The implication being that by the time you’ve gotten that far along, money will be sticking to you like stink on a monkey. Not that the lecturer, speaking in Arthur Conklin’s voice, puts it quite so indelicately, but that’s what Shane hears beneath all the smooth talk. Join the Rulers and become a money magnet. Revel in your selfness. Empathy is a weakness. Guilt is for losers. Celebrate the glorious oneness of you, and grab all the loot you can with both hands.

After the session concludes, and most of the new recruits have stumbled out of the auditorium looking somehow both stunned and energized, Shane lingers behind and seizes the hand of the speaker, shaking it enthusiastically.

“Heckuva talk, partner! You could sell ice to the Eskimos, and coming from me that’s a compliment. Ron Gouda, Dayton, Ohio, pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Thanks,” says the startled speaker, attempting to extricate his hand from Shane’s big paw. “If you’ll follow the others to the Hive, there’s free hot chocolate.”

“I’ll do that, sure, you bet. Lemme tell ya, friend, when they told me the fee for a three-day seminar was five grand, my first thought was, for that kind of money I can go to Club Med, soak up the sunshine and the piña coladas. But now I been here and heard the presentation, I’m thinking it’s worth every penny. Five hundred thousand pennies, to be exact.”

“I, um, they have cookies, too. In the Hive. To go with the hot chocolate. Just follow along with the others,” the man urges, trying to step around.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” Shane says, blocking his way. “What level are you? I’m betting a guy who talks as good as you must be at least a Level Six.”

“Level Six is very high,” the man says uneasily. “Most of the instructors are, um, Level Two.”

“You’re a Two? Well, I’ll be darned. That raises my appreciation of the whole enterprise, if a fella as accomplished as you is only got that far along. My opinion, they need to bump you up to at least a Five! I met a Five and he’s a pretty smart dude, but no smarter’n you. You know him? Eldon Barlow? Something to do with them computer games, I don’t know what, exactly. But I do know he’s got himself a beau
tiful aircraft, ’cause that’s where I met Eldon, him and his wife, Missy, they were at Dayton Airport, that’s the birthplace of American aviation in case you didn’t know, on account of Wilbur and Orville Wright are from Dayton, and there’s this gorgeous Gulfstream G-450—are you familiar with the 450?—and I just had to go over and admire it and that’s when I run into the Barlows. Really nice people. They got a ski lodge here and told me to drop in and say howdy, was I ever in the vicinity. But wouldn’t you know, I misplaced their number and my cell don’t seem to work worth a darn. I don’t suppose you could point out where the Barlows live? Or if there’s a phone book or directory where I can look ’em up?”

The speaker, by now trembling with nerves, is staring at Shane the way an unarmed hiker might look at the sudden appearance of a grizzly bear on the trail. His eyes flitting to the exits, calculating where to retreat and how fast he has to run to get there, all the while not wanting to antagonize the bear in his path.

“We’re, um, not allowed to give out any personal information,” he says.

“Sure, a course. But you know the Barlows, right? At least you heard of them?” A flicker in his eyes confirms that he has, indeed, heard of the Barlows. “Are they home by any chance? Maybe you could call ’em yourself, tell ’em Ron Gouda from Dayton happens to be in the vicinity. They want, they can call me. No loss of privacy, we do it that way, right? Whattaya say, Mr. Two Level, can you help me out? Can you call the Barlows?”