Fire With Fire

Alnduul’s voice was slow, deliberate. “The organism you found in your father’s chest was not the cause of his death at Sounion.”

Trevor gaped. “What? But-how do you know that?”

“Because we introduced the organism into his body to assist him. It did not malfunction.”

“You-?”

“Enlightenment unto you all, gentlemen.”

Trevor turned red. “Damn it, you had better enlighten me some more, you-”

But the almost inaudible carrier signal was gone: Alnduul had departed.

Chapter Fifty-One

MENTOR

Debarking from the Russlavic Federation shuttle inside one of the Pearl’s subsurface hangars, Caine found himself mere meters away from military hardware he’d only read-and written-about. Downing impatiently gestured for him to catch up, leading them towards a bank of gray, yellow-stenciled elevators beyond the security scanning pad. “I am scheduled to brief and be debriefed in ten minutes,” he tossed over his shoulder, “then back up here to catch a clipper to the outbound shift-carrier Borodino. If I miss it, I’ll have a thirty-day wait.”

Personnel in Federation gray-green and Commonwealth blue-black mobbed the three of them with scanners, sniffers, and snoopers, reprising a similar dance of detection that had swirled around the trio when they had first transferred to the shuttle just over an hour ago.

Downing went to the smallest elevator, ran his security fob over the sensor. The door opened and, hand extended, he urged Caine and Trevor to enter.

Caine stepped forward-and stopped. For the briefest moment, he felt-what? A profoundly sharpened awareness of his surroundings: edges seemed more crisp, sounds more clipped. Time itself seemed to narrow down into a tunnel of many rings, rather than a pervasive, shapeless flow. Yet it all felt more like a premonition than an experience, as if these sensations were important only because they presaged the moment to come-

Caine backed away from the open elevator. “No,” he said.

Trevor blinked, then stared. “Caine, are you-are you okay? Problems from the decompression, again?”

“No. I–I think we should use the stairs.”

Downing, still holding the elevator open, was studying him: Caine could feel the assessing gaze. “It’s six flights down, you know.”

“I didn’t know. But the exercise will do us good.”

“Caine, are you quite-?”

Caine, feeling foolish, shook his head and yanked open the door to the staircase. Maybe Trevor was right; maybe it was all some after-effect of having nearly been vacced a few hours ago.

But it sure hadn’t felt that way.

He started down the stairs.

CIRCE

The tall man, who wore his sunglasses even in this dim room, made a gesture of annoyance and leaned back. To his left, a small cube with one open side emitted vapors and a pungent, musky stench. Near his right hand, a bowl of olives stood forgotten.

“This is most inconvenient,” he murmured.

His assistant, unsure if the utterance had been meant for him, or was simply his superior thinking out loud, asked, “You mean, that Riordan chose not to enter the elevator?”

The man paused as if mildly surprised to rediscover that he was not alone in the room. “No. It is not his failure to enter that troubles me. It was his reason.”

The assistant looked at the screen: the three men-Riordan, Downing, Corcoran-had disappeared into the staircase. “But how could you possibly know why he-?”

“I know,” said the man sharply. “How I know does not concern you. But you should report to your superiors that, in Riordan’s case, my abilities will be less efficacious now.”

“Mr. Astor-Smath will want to know why.”

The other man sneered. “And so the quizzical dog tasks his master to tutor him in cosmology. Very well, relate this: your employer has now had me exert my abilities many times in Riordan’s immediate vicinity. Consequently, Riordan is starting to detect the onset of the Reifications.”

“Reifications? What do you mean? Is that what you call your-?”

“You are familiar with the principle of quantum entanglement or-perhaps more suitable to your perception- Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’?”

“Yes, of course.” The assistant overcame the impulse to cross his fingers as he answered.

“Very well. Now imagine what might be achieved if it was possible to impose a limited amount of order on that statistically-predictable chaos for just one moment, and in a small volume of space.”

“So you can focus-I mean, ‘reify’-the phenomena of quantum entanglement to produce a desired outcome?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“But how-?”

“For now, all you need to understand is that when a person has been proximal to numerous Reifications, that person may begin to have the ability to detect their onset. A crude analogy would be how some animals know when they are approaching a magnetic field.”

“Is that because the Reification manifests as a wave front, or a-?”

“Silence. You now know enough to explain why Riordan could be harder to kill.”

“But surely, the occasional accommodations you have provided for Mr. Astor-Smath have not affected-”

“‘Occasional,’ you say? Let me remind you of just how ‘occasional’ the Reifications have been.” The tall man flicked olive pits off the table with his long-nailed finger to punctuate each incident: “First there was the sustained influence required to ensure that the second engineer on board the Tyne would carry out his suicidal sabotage of its engines. Then there was the disabling of the enemy’s security systems and independent power plant in Alexandria. And let us not forget the need to compel the attackers to wear the self-destruct vests provided by your employer. Then, in the space of three days, two Reifications were required to kill Nolan Corcoran and Arvid Tarasenko. I have also learned, within the hour, that my colleagues failed to assassinate Riordan with a technical malfunction at the Convocation Station. And now, he avoided the elevator which would have dropped him to his death-along with two other troublesome adversaries. You call this battery of requested accommodations occasional?”

The assistant shrugged. “Well, it was necessary: your success rate has not been as high as you guaranteed. But be assured that Mr. Astor-Smath has been happy to overlook that.”

The man turned his shaded eyes upon his smaller assistant. “You are certainly not implying that these failures were in any way my fault.”

“Oh no, no; I was just-”

“Your employer has involved me in actions that were routinely inelegant, rash, and unprofessional. Had your employer been less intemperate, he would have fared far better, and Riordan would not be sensing the Reifications. Indeed, he would be dead.”

“Is there any way to distract Riordan during future attempts? To ensure that he misses the warning signs of-?”

“The only warning you should be interested in,” said the tall man quietly, “is the one I am giving you now: cease your inquiries regarding the nature of Reification.”

“My apologies,” answered the assistant, whose anxiety compelled him to babble on. “I do not understand why Riordan is still important to us, anyway. He revealed all his crucial information at the Parthenon Dialogues: he is no longer worth killing.”