EIGHTEEN
Brutran wants to speak to me after my firsthand experience with the Cradle but I feel the need to be alone. There’s a room on the fourth floor that was ordinarily used as an overnight suite for IIC executives that were working late and didn’t have time to go home. I have appropriated it as my own private quarters. After speaking to Lark, I hurry upstairs and lock the door.
Already I feel I’m in deeper than I planned. Mentally linking with the Cradle reminds me of the time the Telar tortured me with a device called the Pulse. The purpose of the Telar’s invention was simple—to induce agony. But in practice it caused so much pain it made me lose even my sense of “I.” Sharing a psychic connection with the kids has a similar effect on me. With both, I feel I’m no longer myself.
Yet I fear the long-term effects of the Cradle will be worse than the Pulse. Alone in my room, I don’t feel alone. It’s as if I have two shadows instead of one, and this second shadow doesn’t conform to my movements. It follows me, it gives the impression it will never leave me, but it does what it wants. I worry that in time I will do what it wants.
I feel watched.
Eyes staring at the back of my skull.
Invisible hands on my shoulders.
Most of all I feel fear.
Yes, I, the fearless vampire—the thing terrifies me.
I throw myself down on the suite bed and try to sleep. Since I have entered the IIC stronghold, I have slept at most three hours, and my nerves are ragged from fatigue.
I feel a desperate need to hear a friendly voice. Matt has given me what he swears is a secure cell phone. I pick it up and give Umara a call. She answers right away.
“How are you?” she asks.
“I feel like I’m losing my mind,” I say.
“That’s to be expected. Tell me everything that’s happened.”
I give Umara a quick but thorough overview. It doesn’t take long with her because she grasps situations quickly. Plus she was in a similar position thousands of years ago. When I finish, she asks if I want help.
“Not yet,” I reply. “No matter how much Brutran opens up to me, I don’t trust her. There’s no predicting how she’ll react when the Telar’s top people have been killed.”
“When she’s done using you, she’ll try to get rid of you.”
“Probably. But she’s more desperate than you would imagine. This will sound strange but it’s like she clings to me.”
“It’s probably an act. She’s a master manipulator,” Umara says.
“It could be genuine. And she still might be planning to kill me.”
“The devil’s at his most dangerous when he’s telling the truth.”
“Speaking of devils, how do I get rid of this feeling that the Familiar is still attached to me?”
“You can’t. It is attached to you. And it will grow stronger the more you feed it.”
“With pain and suffering?”
“I think for a creature as advanced as your Familiar, that’s probably dessert. I’m sure it’s listening to every word we’re saying, while drawing up long-term plans.”
“For what? Me? The world?”
“Both. Sita, I’m sorry but I did warn you.”
“When you spoke in the car on the drive down, I don’t know, it all felt like an old fable. I didn’t really think I’d be battling demons.”
“The battle has yet to start. Right now you’re allies.”
I groan. “Tell me some good news.”
“Shanti and Seymour are a hundred percent cured. That means we can start manufacturing Charlie’s vaccine. The question is, who should we turn to for help?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. As soon as we attack the Source, the Telar will release the virus. We’re almost out of time. I say send Charlie here and let him turn over his research to the IIC’s best scientists. With a sample of the vaccine already available, I bet they can start mass-producing it within two days.”
“The Telar can kill half the population in that time.”
“That’s why we should get it ready now,” I say.
“One point worries me. Without the need for daily injections, you’ll lose the strongest hold you have over Brutran and her people.”
“I still have your blood samples. That’s enough. They still need me.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Hey, you’re supposed to be cheering me up.”
I feel Umara smile. “Would you like to talk to Matt? He told me to tell him if you called.”
I hesitate. “What’s his state of mind?”
“The trip back to Missouri was rough. Teri’s funeral, seeing her parents, having to invent a story to explain her ‘accident.’”
“I wish I could have been there.”
“You look too much like her. You would have raised questions.”
“Put Matt on. I’ll talk to him.”
Umara pauses. “Sita?”
“Yes?”
“You had to sacrifice Lisa. It was your only way in.”
“I know. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Umara sets down the phone and while I wait I roll on my back and stare at the ceiling. It’s almost as if I see a shadow hovering over me.
“Hello, Sita. Mom says you’re going through hell.”
“I’m sure I deserve it.” I give him a quick rundown on what’s been happening, almost a repeat of my update to Umara. The only difference is Matt doesn’t ask any questions. He doesn’t even object when I talk about sending Charlie to join me. That’s a surprise. It’s like he no longer cares, about anything.
“You have always been against going to the IIC for help,” I say.
“You’re already there, it’s done. Besides, you’re right, you start to hurt the Telar and they’ll strike back. We need tons of vaccine on hand. Let the IIC make it and distribute it.” He pauses. “Isn’t that what you want?”
“I guess I just miss our old arguments,” I say.
“They were all about nothing.”
“You miss her. I miss her, too.”
“I know. At least I got to . . . say good-bye.”
“That was fortunate.”
I hear Matt sigh. “I just wish my mom had more of Krishna’s blood. Or John could have kept Teri in her body. She was right there, you know, in my arms. She just slipped away.”
“I don’t think we’ll understand why it happened the way it did. But you know, even though her life was short, it was rich. She won the big race. She won your love.”
“Yeah. The love of a man who couldn’t protect her.”
“Your love was wonderful. And who knows, perhaps we’ll all meet again one day. All these battles I’m fighting with these demons, it makes me believe there’s got to be a few angels out there, somewhere, looking over us. Krishna couldn’t have stacked the deck totally against us.”
Matt draws in a deep breath and slowly lets it go. He sounds like he’s relaxing. “Your words help.”
“Your voice helps, Matt. Just the fact you’re out there.”
“You get in a tight spot, give me a call. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
“That means a lot to me.” I pause. “I love you.”
He’s silent a long time. “You’re always in my heart, Sita.”
We talk a while longer but it’s just a bunch of words. He does tell me, however, that Lieutenant William Treach came to Teri’s funeral. He says the man appeared confused. Worse, it appears his wife is in a mental hospital. Matt gives me the name of the clinic. He got it from the detective knowing I would want it.
When Matt and I hang up I call the police detective. I feel responsible for upsetting the Treaches’ lives. I catch him at work, alone in his office. The man asks who I am and in an instant I know he’s not well. Damn, I should never have used my psychic powers when I was in Teri’s body. I definitely started a loop in his mind.
“I’m Teri Raine’s cousin,” I say. “She told me about meeting you in Denver. And I heard you were at her funeral in Missouri.”
“That’s true. Our first meeting was serious. It involved a murder case. But we formed a bond of sorts the next time we spoke.” He stops and the confusion in his voice is evident. “I felt close to Teri, it’s hard to explain. I was saddened to hear about her death.”
“It was a tragedy.”
“I was never clear how she died.”
“I believe the accident is still being investigated. But it’s not the reason I called. I’m concerned about you and your wife.”
“My wife? How do you know my wife?”
“I heard she was ill.”
“Who told you this?”
I allow a measure of my telepathic power to flow out. “It doesn’t matter. Lieutenant William Treach, Bill, please close your eyes and relax. Listen to the sound of my voice. You don’t have to block out other sounds, you simply have no interest in them. You’re not even concerned with your office. You hear my voice and that’s all that matters. Do you understand?”
He sounds dreamy. “Yes.”
“From the time you returned home to your wife after meeting Teri Raine, a series of suggestions were placed in your mind. They were placed there with the best of intentions. No one meant you any harm. But it’s time those suggestions were erased. You’ll feel better with them gone. Now go back in time to that evening. You walk in the house and you sense someone behind you. From that instant on, until six o’clock the next morning, I want you to purge all your memories. Anything that happened during that time can no longer bother you. It no longer exists. From now on, you’ll feel and act like your old self. Is that clear?”
“Yes.”
“Continue to sit with your eyes closed and take a five-minute nap. When you awaken, you will have forgotten that I called. But you’ll feel rested and refreshed, ready to tackle any task that comes your way. At the same time, deep in your heart, you know your wife, Sandra, is going to be okay. She’s going to make a full recovery. Is this totally clear?”
He hesitates. “I don’t feel . . . Yes.”
My mental powers are at full strength. I don’t know why he hesitates.
“What don’t you feel, Detective?” I ask.
He’s a long time answering. His breathing sounds strained.
“Something’s here,” he whispers. “Something . . . dreadful.”
I go to ask him to clarify but stop. He’s sensing the Familiar! Worse, the creature’s trying to disturb the healing I’m doing on him.
“Hang up the phone, Detective, and take your nap.”
I cut the line before anything else can be done to the man.
I feel as if I’ve been psychically abused. I dare not call Sandra and try to repair her mind. In her disturbed mental state, God only knows how vulnerable she would be to a Familiar. I’ll have to avoid acting as a healer until I’m rid of the creature.
The Familiar interference shakes me up. There’s one thing I can’t stand—it’s the feeling of losing control. Now, with this parasite attached to my skull, or my shoulders, or wherever, I feel exposed to all kinds of dark and invisible influences. But I’m not sure if that’s really the case or if it’s just fear that’s making the situation seem worse than it is.
Lying back on my bed, I try to recall any helpful clues Umara might have given me when she told me the story about the origin of the Telar.
“How did a primitive culture like the ancient Egyptians come up with something as sophisticated as Professor Sharp’s array?” I asked as Umara and I left the enchanting town of Carmel behind and began to enter the even more magical redwood forests of Big Sur. The coastal route from Santa Cruz to Malibu took longer than the inland route but I wanted to enjoy the beauty of the rugged coast before condemning myself to a miserable imprisonment in Brutran’s stronghold.
“Who are you calling primitive?” Umara said from the passenger seat. We had argued over who was to drive. Both of us were control freaks. In the end, we agreed to split the task.
“Sharp needed computers to be certain his array was working. The same with the IIC and their psychic army. How did the Telar manage to skip these steps?”
“You assume we stumbled across it the same way. That wasn’t the case. You have to understand we were a deeply religious people. We worshipped many deities but understood they were all manifestations of the one. We were especially grateful to what nature gave us and for that reason our names for God and Mother Nature were identical. My own name, Umara, means ‘the Mother.’”
“I hope your parents didn’t see you as a divine incarnation when you were born,” I teased her.
“Far from it. I wasn’t a priestess when our array first began to appear. I was a pot maker. My hands were stuck in clay all day. Except when I was firing and painting my creations. Those were simple days filled with a great deal of satisfaction. My childhood was joyful.”
“Something must have triggered the creation of your array,” I said, with a note of impatience. Umara has only one fault. She’s never in a hurry. I suppose it’s a reasonable quality for a twelve-thousand-year-old woman to possess. But I find myself often wishing she would get to the point quicker.
“It started rather innocently. On our equivalent of Sunday, our day of worship, we used to gather near the banks of the Nile at nighttime and pray. We had maybe a dozen songs we all knew, and we used to sing them with great love and devotion. Thanking nature for rain, the river, our crops, our good health. Like I said, we were a devoted people. But as a race, we began to enjoy the silence that would follow our prayers, and for that reason we made it a rule that we’d sit quietly for a few minutes after every hymn.”
“How did you begin to ‘enjoy the silence’?”
“I mean exactly what I say. We were a sensitive race and we found it pleasant to sit still after each prayer. A large number of us sensed a presence in the silence. I think it’s the way we lived that made us so receptive. We had no enemies. When other tribes from the interior of the continent visited, we welcomed them with open arms. We never tried to take lands that didn’t belong to us. We were content with our own village beside the river.”
“So what triggered the array?” I asked.
“While sitting in silence after our prayers, a few of us began to make sounds.”
“Involuntary sounds?” I asked.
“Well, they weren’t planned.”
“You began to speak in tongues. Like the Pentecostal people.”
“That’s a fair example. But I must add that we were by no means a dogmatic race. We embraced all religions as long as they were based on love and gratefulness. We saw gratitude as the key to invoking the grace we felt from our prayers.”
“Did you personally speak in tongues?”
“It started that way for me. I didn’t do it because others were doing it. I was a shy teenage girl. I wasn’t trying to show off. But imagine ten thousand people all singing in harmony, and then falling silent, and in that silence a few sparks began to ignite.”
“Sparks?”
“It was like an energy burst through some of us and we had to let it out by speaking. Only we didn’t know what we were saying. We only knew that it sounded like a language. It seemed to have structure and syntax.”
“But you were just speaking gibberish.”
“No. It got to the point that one in ten of us started to talk like this. That was over a thousand. And when that number was achieved, the words we were spouting became clearer, and we began to sense their meaning.”
“Wait a second. Are you saying that nature itself began to teach you a language?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Try telling that to the millions of people worldwide who go to Pentecostal churches. When they pray with fervor and start to speak in tongues, it’s nothing they can control. It just happens.”
“I understand that. I’ve seen it. But they never make any sense. You’re saying you were spontaneously given an intelligent language.”
“It happened. In time, we wrote down the words and realized that an intelligence greater than our own was trying to teach us things.”
“Like how to sterilize our milk and water by boiling it. How to build aqueducts to channel the water from the Nile so we could grow ten times as many crops. It even taught us how to build a thresher to separate our wheat kernels from the stalks.”
“Right. I suppose you ordered the parts from the steel mill it taught you how to build.”
“You don’t need steel to build a basic thresher. All you need is rope, lumber, a saw, primitive spokes and wheels, and some ingenuity. I add that last word deliberately because the knowledge we were channeling didn’t tell us everything. It was more a source of inspiration. It was for that reason we began to call the being who spoke through us the Source.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“You don’t look impressed with my story.”
“It lacks the scientific basis Sharp’s explanation does. His discovery was uncovered step by step. It produces results that can be mathematically measured. Your array sounds more like a revival meeting.”
“The creation of our spontaneous language is throwing you off.”
“Most languages are the result of a random searching for sounds to describe something. No, my problem with your tale is that you were taught so much so quickly.”
“Once again, it happened. Thanks to the Source, in a few short years our culture evolved tremendously. We discovered higher math, algebra and geometry, and used it to help develop engineering principles that allowed us to build huge structures.”
“Don’t tell me you constructed the Great Pyramid?”
Umara hesitated. “That came later.”
“I would hope so.”
“But not as late as you think.”
“You forget, I was in Egypt five thousand years ago, not long after Krishna died. That’s where I met Suzama. I know the Egyptians had pyramids even then.”
“Good.”
“But you’re asking me to believe they had them seven thousand years before that.”
“We did.”
I considered. “You were there. I can tell you’re not lying. But it’s hard to accept this channeled information—and that’s what it was—was of such practical value.”
“Nothing I’m telling you is really different from what Sharp told you. Your prejudice against our discovery is the form it took. So we didn’t use decks of cards and record hits and misses on calculators. The principle of using a group mind to tap into a faint ESP signal was identical. It didn’t matter that our information came us to after praying. It still took thousands of us listening together to understand what we were being told.”
“Could your people hear this voice?” I asked.
“In time, yes. After many years the most sensitive of us discovered how to link our minds together so we could hear the language as clearly as you hear me speaking right now. Come on, Sita, you have to believe that we could become telepaths. You’re a telepath yourself. Just look at how your mind melds with Seymour. He practically wrote your life story before he met you.”
“Seymour and I do have a special connection. And I can hear other people’s thoughts, from time to time. But I’ve never had the universe speak to me.”
Umara sat back in her seat and nodded to herself. “Ah. Now I see the problem.”
“Really? Why don’t you wipe that smug expression off your face and tell me what it is.”
“Your problem stems from the fact that Krishna has never spoken to you in five thousand years.”
“How do you know he hasn’t?”
“It’s obvious. Otherwise you wouldn’t protest how we came into contact with the Source.”
Her words stung. They hurt because they were true.
“Tell me more about how you linked your minds,” I said.
“Just as Brutran has the Array and the Cradle, we had a thousand of us who could sense the Source, a hundred who could channel information from it, and a dozen of us who could link our minds so they functioned as one. We called our inner circle the Link.”
“I assume you were the head of it.”
“My father was. But I was a member. I saw how it evolved over time.”
“How much time?” I asked.
“Now we come to the Telar’s deepest secret. How did we become immortal? It didn’t happen overnight. As a people, we were in contact with the Source for two decades before it gave us insights into how to extend our lives. These insights Brutran and her inner circle are already using. We were taught herbal formulas, yoga exercises, and breathing techniques that greatly slowed down the aging process. That’s why the scriptures talk about people who lived to be several hundred years old.”
“Umara. I’m the last person on earth who needs a history lesson.”
She ignored me. “But the secret of the Telar’s immortality came from the Link.”
I waited but she didn’t continue.
“So what was the secret?” I asked.
“A great white light came and blessed us.”
I groaned. “Now I know you’re a born-again Pentecostal.”
“You’ll have trouble with this part of my tale. But I suspect after you leave Brutran’s castle—if you manage to survive—you’ll have no trouble believing every single word of it.”
“Go on.”
“The Link grew in power with the passing years. As a group we aged very slowly. We were together perhaps a hundred years when we had a great breakthrough. We were sitting in silence in our largest pyramid. We had been fasting on nothing but water for weeks and our physical bodies felt as if they were made of air. Yet our Link kept growing stronger and stronger and with it we were able to peer into realms you can’t imagine. Prophets speak of angels and archangels and elementals and gods. But we actually saw such beings. We were able to communicate with them, learn from them, and at each step we were led higher and higher. Eventually we reached a point where we believed we might one day see God.” Umara paused. “It was then it happened.”
“A great white light came and blessed you.”
“Don’t ridicule me, Sita. You’re alive in your original body. One reason is because Krishna gave me his blood. The other reason is because of the light I experienced that day. The glory and power of it has never left me. It’s possible it’s the same light the Bible refers to when it speaks of the Holy Spirit. I don’t know, it can’t be described. I only know that after it came, and left, all of us in the Link, and the majority of the others who were able to contact the Source, were immortal.”
I took time to digest her words. I knew she was not lying. I would have detected the falsehood in an instant. But her tale was so fantastic, it created more questions than it answered.
“What went wrong?” I asked finally.
“Why do you assume something went wrong?”
“It always does. Never mind the fact that you’re the only one left of this Link.”
Umara’s expression was sad. “I think the light gave us so much joy it was hard to return to the physical world. Imagine, we felt as if we had been touched by God. But the next day, when we broke our fast, we still had to chew our food before swallowing it. We still had to urinate and move our bowels to get rid of our wastes. We still had to wash our skin to keep it from smelling. But it was difficult to go back to being simply human.”
“Were those in the Link the leaders of your people?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sure that created problems right there.”
“True. We were supposed to be leading our people but all we could think about was returning to the light. Because our breakthrough had come as a result of much fasting and meditating, that was all we did for the next few years. But it had the effect of separating us from our people and in the end they began to resent us just as we resented them.”
“Didn’t your better angels advise you to be more loving?”
“We continued to experience higher dimensions. Realms of light and bliss. But none led us back to the great white light. As our frustration grew, I think we began to attract beings that promised us they knew a secret way to the light.”
“Who were these beings?”
“Familiars. They came as the best of friends, and they looked very bright themselves. It was easy to believe what they said. But, looking back, I realize they never would have come if we had been more attentive to our people. We had become selfish, self-absorbed, interested only in our own level of achievement. We didn’t pray and meditate for the sake of our people. We hardly spoke to them, especially after we met the Familiars. To us, they were the most wonderful beings. We began to see them as almost as valuable as the great light. You see, they gave us powers.”
“What kind of powers?” I asked.
“All kinds. We discovered we could move objects with our minds. It didn’t matter how large or heavy they were, not if we were linked together. We learned how to bring walls of fire. This power proved especially useful when we were attacked.”
“Attacked? I thought you had no enemies.”
“We were attacked by our own people.”
“But you just helped make them immortal!”
“Those connected to the Source were made immortal. The rest of our people realized this and wanted to be given the same gift. We might have given it to them if we had control over it, but we didn’t. They turned against us and since they now outnumbered us fifty to one, we had no choice but to call upon the Familiars to protect us.”
“Did they save you?”
“All of us in the Link survived. But many in the Source died, despite their gift of immortality and the fact the Familiars were able to create waves of fire that flowed through the streets. It was a horrible time. Even though I hid deep in our greatest pyramid, I could still hear the screams of my people as they burned to death. It seemed to me, even then, that the Familiars liked to kill our foes slowly. Of course, I didn’t understand at the time that they actually fed off the agony they caused.”
“How long did this battle last?” I asked.
“Three days. When it was over, my father made himself king of all the land and set down stern laws everyone had to follow. We had never had a king before. We had never had a caste system. Now those who were in contact with the Source were the upper caste, while those in the Link were supposed to be treated like gods.”
“You must have enjoyed that.”
“I hated it, I knew it was wrong. I went to my father and begged him to let us return to our simple life, when everyone was treated as an equal. But he said that was impossible, the people would always be jealous of our immortality and would try to take it from us by force. Then I begged him to at least stop invoking the Familiars. I couldn’t stand the feel of them in our chambers, never mind what they had done to our people during the war. But again my father said we couldn’t go back. He believed we needed the Familiars for protection, and to continue our search for the great light.”
“It was a search for the divine that led to your damnation.”
“It’s ironic, isn’t it? Our goal was great. Our path was dark.”
“What happened next?” I asked.
“Horror upon horror. Now that the Familiars were our protectors, they began to make demands. They insisted on human sacrifices. At this my father finally said no. He would never do that. In his heart, he wasn’t a bad man, although he had clearly lost his way. But he wasn’t given a chance to redeem himself. A member of the Link named Hatram poisoned him and declared himself king. It wasn’t long after that we were slowly burning to death a dozen people in honor of every full moon. The victims were chosen at random. They could be mothers, children, it didn’t matter. The Familiars had to be fed. After all, they were going to show us the great white light.”
“Surely even Hatram didn’t believe that,” I said.
Umara looked out the window. When she spoke next, there was pain in her voice. “I was never to know what Hatram believed. Even when he raped me and ordered me slain.”
“The rest of the Link allowed this?” I asked, shocked.
“This was a thousand years after my father had been killed. Half the Link banded together to kill Hatram. There was no other way to stop him. But he became aware of our plan and plotted a horrible vengeance. The Familiars supported him and soon there were not many of us left. It was right after this I was raped.”
“How did you escape the death sentence?”
“Friends came to my aid and hid me. After Hatram completed his vengeance he discovered he could no longer link with anyone. He had sunk too low, he could no longer invoke even the Familiars. Eventually, I was able to catch him alone and I killed him with a knife.”
“But you had his child.”
Umara whirled. “How did you know?”
“I hear it in your voice. That child was Haru. He was never your brother or half brother. He’s your son, like Matt.”
Umara lowered her head. “Haru is nothing like Matt.”
I nodded to the road in front of us. We had exited the redwood forest and were staring down at the cliff’s rocky shore and the crashing waves.
“If everything goes according to plan,” I said, “I’m going to kill Haru in the next week or two. Are you sure you’re all right with that?”
Umara stared straight ahead and nodded. “It’s like when I slit his father’s throat. It’s necessary.”
There’s a knock at my door.
“Come in!” I call out.
Brutran opens the door. She has a FedEx box in her hands.
“This just came for you,” she says.
I nod to my desk. “Put it there.”
Brutran sets the package down. “I hope it’s not more of the virus.”
“Your problems with the virus are almost over. I have sent word for the permanent vaccine to be sent here, along with the man who invented it. He’s Telar but I want your people to show him every courtesy.”
“Of course. What do you want in exchange?”
“For your people to manufacture as much of the vaccine as possible, as quickly as possible. We’ll begin to strike the Telar this evening. Chances are they’ll strike back.”
“Our intelligence indicates the Telar are producing vast quantities of the virus in Rio and Tokyo. But they have yet to distribute it to other cities, at least not on a large scale. They may have operatives working on a small scale that are unknown to us.”
“We must assume Haru already has the virus out there. Does the IIC have connections to the Red Cross?”
“The president of the organization works for us. We are their largest donor. If an outbreak occurs, we can move fast.”
“Excellent. Anything else?” I ask.
“I wanted to know how your initiation into the Cradle went.”
“Is this room secure?”
“You asked me that yesterday.”
“Yesterday was yesterday.”
“You can talk freely. No one is listening except me.”
“It was amazing. Like a descent into hell. The whole experience left me with a splitting headache. Your Cradle is a piece of work. You should be proud of yourself.”
Brutran looks too tired to defend herself. But she tries anyway.
“I told you, I have almost nothing to do with it nowadays.”
“I heard you the first time. What are the kids doing right now?”
“What they usually do in their spare time. They’re feeding lines of code into a computer file they keep secret from the rest of us.”
I sit up with a start. “Do these lines of code have any relationship to the computer game one of your subsidiaries puts out? A game called CII or Cosmic Intuitive Illusion?”
Brutran hesitates. “How do you know about that game?”
“Let’s just say I have a friend who’s obsessed with it.”
“Paula Ramirez’s child?”
“Answer my question.”
“Yes. Our best hackers have determined that the Cradle is building up a massive online program that’s capable of moving in and out of almost any computer system. Each day, this program makes brief contact with the online game CII and adds lines of code to it, making it even more difficult to beat.”
“Have any of your hackers defeated the game?”
“No. They’re not even sure what the game represents. But we have noticed that hackers who spend a long time playing it begin to suffer from paranoia and delusions. Rumors about it have spread among my staff and I’m having trouble finding men or women who are willing to study it. The game is considered poison.”
“How can a computer game cause mental illness?”
“I have no idea,” Brutran says.
“How come you didn’t tell me about this earlier?”
“I knew you were joining the Cradle. I figured you had enough on your plate.”
“Don’t tell me you were trying to protect me.”
“I was,” she replies, and she’s telling the truth.
“Have you asked Lark or your daughter what’s the purpose of the program?”
“I tried broaching the subject and was warned to back off.”
“Can’t your hackers figure out a way to delete the program?”
“They’ve tried. It’s heavily protected and very sophisticated. I have heard several of my best people describe it as extraterrestrial.”
“That’s silly.”
“I’m surprised someone who just got a close look at the Cradle would have trouble believing in that possibility.”
“Contrary to what you may have been told, I didn’t see any aliens in that room.”
“Yet you refuse to describe what you did see.”
I wave my hand. “I don’t want to talk about it, not now. Tell the children I want to reassemble in six hours.”
“I’ll politely suggest that’s a good time for you.” Brutran retreats to the door.
“Cindy?” I call.
She stops. “Yes, Alisa?”
“I do understand how you lost control of all this.”
“But you should never have opened the door in the first place.”
She leaves and I quickly unwrap my package. Yaksha’s book. I called Shanti yesterday to send it down. I did not worry they would lose it, nor was I afraid Brutran would open the package behind my back.
While staying with Umara and Freddy in Santa Cruz, I sprayed a lot of its pages with my blood and uncovered several hidden messages from Yaksha. But the most important ones, I assume, the ones that deal with the Telar, I was unable to find.
Then it occurred to me that the book starts and finishes with blank pages. Picking up a bottle the staff uses to refresh plants, I bite the tip of my finger and allow a few drops of my blood to fall in the water, before I replace the cap.
I spray a faint mist over the first blank page. Nothing.
I spray it over the back of the last blank page.
A quote of Krishna describing the Hydra appears.
“The Hydra was the offspring of Echidna and Typhon. His mother, Echidna, had the head of a beautiful maiden and the body of a serpent. Typhon, his father, had a hundred horrible heads that could touch the stars and change their courses in the heavens.
“The Hydra lived in the swamps near the ancient city of Lerna, in Argolis. Like his mother, he had the body of a serpent, and like his father, he had many heads, nine, one of which could never be harmed by any weapon. If any of his other heads were severed, another would grow in its place. The stench from the Hydra’s breath was strong enough to kill any man or beast.
“The Hydra terrorized large sections of the earth for many years until man appealed to the gods for help. It was Hercules, the son of Zeus, the king of the gods, who volunteered to slay it. Hercules journeyed to Lerna in a chariot, and took with him his nephew and charioteer, Iolaus.
“When they finally reached the Hydra’s hiding place, Hercules told Iolaus to stay with the horses while he drew the monster from its hole with repeated shots of his flaming arrows. This stirred the monster’s wrath and Hercules boldly attacked. But he quickly realized that as soon as one of the Hydra’s heads was severed, another immediately grew in its place.
“Unsure what to do, Hercules called for Iolaus’s help, and Iolaus brought forth a flaming torch. This time, as Hercules cut off the Hydra’s heads, Iolaus quickly cauterized the open wounds with his fire. This stopped them from growing back.
“As Hercules fought the monster, he was almost killed by its deadly breath, but eventually he severed all but one of the Hydra’s heads. The last one could not be destroyed by any man-made tool, so, picking up his club, Hercules crushed it and tore it off with his bare hands. With Iolaus’s help, he wisely buried it deep in the ground and placed a huge boulder over it lest it be disturbed by the future races of man.”
“Fascinating,” I whisper as I finish reading. Since discovering that Krishna told Yaksha a parable about the Hydra, I had searched Yaksha’s biography, as well as the Internet, for any clues that might help me wipe out the Telar’s Source and the IIC’s Array. The many-headed theme obviously connected the Greek myth to my enemies.
Yet there were so many versions of the Hydra myth online, and Krishna’s brief comments on the story that originally appeared in Yaksha’s book didn’t say much. I find this longer version much more satisfying.
For one thing, here Hercules and Iolaus are dead ringers for Arjuna and Krishna. There are numerous parallels. Iolaus was Hercules’ nephew. Arjuna was Krishna’s cousin.
At the start of the battle with the monster, Hercules came dashing in with his fiery arrows. Arjuna, of course, was known as the greatest archer of his time.
Iolaus was Hercules’ charioteer. Krishna was Arjuna’s charioteer. And even though Hercules appeared to be the big hero, it was actually Iolaus who figured out how to destroy the Hydra. It was the same with Krishna and Arjuna’s relationship. Arjuna was supposed to be the supreme warrior of his time, but Krishna had to kick his butt to get him to fight at the Battle of Kurukshetra.
It was clear to me that Krishna was trying to tell Yaksha that he was Iolaus, and that Yaksha was destined to fulfill the role of Hercules. Just as Hercules is able to imprison the Hydra but cannot truly kill it, Krishna clearly knew that Yaksha would contain the Telar but not actually destroy them.
But what about this head that can’t be killed.
Who does that belong to?