Fire with Fire: Chapter Eleven

Part Three
Earth
March–April, 2119

MENTOR

    Richard Downing took his customary seat on the west end of the conference table, which afforded the best view of the white dome of the Capitol building. It was only the first day of spring, so the light was fading fast, sliding down the spectrum from yellow to a tired amber that glowed weakly off the wind-rippled surface of the Reflecting Pool. No sign of the cherry blossoms yet: it had been a cold winter. Twice, snow had shut down the city, to the predictable delight of the children.

    Before Downing had finished settling in, the door opened, knob banging into the precisely dented wood paneling behind it: Nolan Corcoran’s usual entrance. Crossing the room, he tossed his deck-coat into a chair, kept moving in a broad arc around the table and toward Richard, smile growing as he came.

    His “Good to have you back, Rich” was accompanied by the usual hearty handshake — but there was a subtle thread of tension in the greeting.

    Downing smiled. “It’s good to be back. I presume you’ve already read the reports.”

    “Scanned them on the suborbital from Jakarta. Lucky thing you reached Junction in time to handle Riordan’s retrieval personally.” Corcoran moved toward his seat at the east end of the table. From there, he could look out at the Lincoln Memorial, now a gold-rimmed box of black shadow. “So, Caine’s going to be okay?”

    “Physically, yes. Psychologically — well, Riordan is less resilient this time.”

    Corcoran frowned. “Less resilient? To what?”

    “To the neural and mental traumas of being rapidly processed — again — out of long duration cryo-suspension. His recent experience of time is not as a steady flow, but as a disjointed set of abrupt, often painful changes. For instance, he enters coldsleep in 2105 with his two parents still alive; he comes out in 2118, and they’re both dead.”

    Corcoran avoided Downing’s gaze: he looked at the floor, then out at the Lincoln monument. Downing had the distinct impression that Nolan would not have been able to look full into the statue’s solemn marble face.

    Downing continued. “Clinically, Riordan’s reorientation was normative, but one thing puzzled me: do you have any idea why the psychologists inserted so many probes of Caine’s first short-term memory loss into the initial sessions?”

    Nolan glanced up from under his hand. “What? No, no idea; frankly, I didn’t notice.”

    And indeed, maybe Nolan hadn’t noticed — but then again, maybe he had. It was as if the measurements of Caine’s memory had been designed to surreptitiously assess where his earlier, lunar memory loss began and ended, with an a priori presumption of about one hundred hours. So, had Nolan expected a one-hundred-hour memory loss from the outset? If so, had Nolan instructed his Taiwanese contacts to do more than just ship Caine back to the US after they had swapped him out of their cryocell and into an American model, fourteen years ago? Had they taken “therapeutic” steps to ensure this greater memory loss?

    Downing stopped: steady, old boy. Look very carefully at where these inquiries are taking you: toward the notion that Nolan not only took premeditated steps to deny Caine information about what happened during his last one hundred hours on Luna, but that he kept me in the dark about doing so. But what would possibly –?

    Nolan’s voice severed that troubling line of thought: “While we’re on the topic of Caine’s cold sleep, I’ve been wondering if his memory loss might have been caused by the kind of cryo-suspension the Taiwanese used. Or maybe it was the rapid shift between their system and ours.”

    Downing managed not to flinch: so has Nolan started reading my mind, now? “That shift — is that why they held Caine for about a month after cold-sleeping him on Luna?”

    Nolan nodded. “The pharmacology of the pre-toxification approach is radically different from ours. They had to purge their chemicals out of him before ours could go in. It took about two weeks between partial rethaw and full resleep.”

    “Ah.” Nolan’s comments about Taiwan’s controversial pre-toxification cryotechnology were accurate, and Caine might very well have spent two weeks having his fluids exchanged. Or, Caine might just as easily have spent two weeks in a drugged stupor, inhabiting a twilit land where the mental fogs induced by serotonin derivatives were intermittently pierced by lightning strokes of electro-convulsive “therapy” sessions.

    Nolan leaned forward, his smile a little wider but less relaxed. Downing knew what that signified; the admiral wanted to get off the topic of Caine’s memory loss: “Any other concerns regarding Mr. Riordan?”

    Downing folded his hands. “Riordan has every reason to hate us — and to distrust us. I’m uncomfortable with our decision to let him present his own findings at the Parthenon Dialogs. He could decide that an international summit is exactly the right forum in which to expose IRIS, its manipulation of foreign governments, and his displeasure with it.”

    Nolan smiled. “We anticipated this risk from the first day we reanimated Riordan. Face it, Richard: the part of him that is a polymath is impossible to predict. They never do just one thing, or follow just one path, for very long. It’s not in their nature. Unless they become authors. Or troublemakers. Or both.”

    “You mean like Caine.”

    “You said it, not me.”

    “So how do we make sure he stays in line?”

    “By appealing to the part of him that is the Boy Scout, the straight arrow. By reminding him what’s at stake and then bringing him inside — all the way inside.”

    “Nolan, if we do that –”

    “If we don’t, he’ll only resent us more. And it’s the least we can do. Besides, as a purely cultural operative, he’d be invaluable. Once the publicity surrounding Caine dies down, he’ll have a dim, but permanent, halo of historical fame, which will get him through just about any door, into any party, onto any invite list.”

    Downing shrugged: there was no arguing that point. Riordan had a future — if he wanted it — on the lecture and book-signing circuit. He’d be sought after, but not a star, and his deeds would be much better known than his face: all advantageous for the kind of operative Nolan was envisioning. He shrugged. “Very well — and he probably won’t want to make a scandal out of himself along with us. He’s got the pluck to do it, but is prudent enough to know it’s simply not the best move for him, or for the planet.”

    Nolan smiled broadly. “You named him pretty well.”

    “Pardon?”

    “Odysseus — the code name you hung on Riordan. Odysseus was no coward, but he always looked before he leaped.”

    “Yes, I suppose, but that has nothing to do with how Riordan got his code name. It came from a play on words — on names, actually.”

    And suddenly, Downing was reliving the moment now one year past.…

    Caine was recovering from drowning himself during the circuitry training exercise: Richard brought him a towel and sat down.

    Caine shook his head. “This whole scheme of yours is nuts, you know. I’ve only written about the military and intelligence work — and now you think you can teach me to be a field operative in just a few weeks?”

    Downing made sure his nod was relaxed. “We’re simply asking you to collect information, just as if you were researching another book. And don’t think of me as a teacher; think of me as your mentor.”

    “Mentor, huh? And that makes me who? Odysseus?”

    Downing smiled at the Homeric pun. “If you like.” He leaned back. “We need a code name for you, anyway. Would ‘Odysseus’ suit you?”

    Caine shrugged. “Sure: I’m ‘Odysseus.’”

    Nolan’s voice startled Downing out of the recollection. “Anything else on Riordan?”

    “Just this footnote from the psychologists: this time, his recovery may also be complicated by feelings of guilt.”

    Nolan frowned, turned his face back toward the darkening windows. “How so?”

    “Yes. Over the loss of the Tyne.”

    “Has he said anything about feeling guilty?”

    “No, but he does seem a bit distracted…”

ODYSSEUS

    Caine took another sip of water to rinse out the faint fish-and-glycol aftertaste that followed reanimation. It was no good: the foreign tastes and smells kept seeping out of him, making Caine feel alien in his own skin.

    Downing laid his dataslate down on the black wire-frame table. “I think that’s enough for today. You’re doing very well.”

    What a lovely lie. “Great. So when do I get to ask a few questions?”

    Downing shrugged. “You may do so now, if you wish.”

    “When am I going to get my short-term memories back?”

    “So far as I can tell, your short-term memories from the Tyne are quite complete. In fact –”

    “Cut the bullshit: you know what I mean, Richard. I’m talking about the memories from fourteen years ago, on Luna: when am I going to get those one hundred hours back?”

    “Difficult to say. The loss may be permanent. The doctors speculate it was the duration of your suspension. Some speculate that the particulars of your deanimation may have played a role, also.”

    “What do you mean, ‘the particulars’?”

    “In 2105, the Taiwanese were still using a pre-toxification system.”

    “You mean where they almost kill you with poisons before they begin the cryo-suspension?”

    “Yes.”

    “So the toxins retroactively scrambled more of my memories than our slow-freeze method?”

    “That’s one hypothesis. Problem is, there simply aren’t any precedent cases: no one has spent thirteen years in suspension after starting with the pre-toxification method.”

    “I’d have been happy to skip the honor of being the first. And while we’re on the topic of oversleeping, why the hell didn’t you revive me as soon as you retrieved my lifepod from Junction last December?”

    “An unacceptable risk. You had to remain ‘lost, presumed dead’ until we conducted a full debriefing and arranged for a summit at Parthenon. And until that meeting is over, we can’t let you go out on your own. But after that, you’re a free man. And you will have your career back. Better than ever.”

    “Yes, but you’ll still have me under your thumb. Because when I agreed to carry out your mission, I became complicit in your schemes. So I can’t indict IRIS without also indicting myself.”

    “Well — yes.”

    Caine resisted an urge to retch: whether at the returning fish-and-glycol taste or at IRIS’s partial ownership of him, he wasn’t sure. “So my job is to stay alive long enough to speak at the summit.”

    “That’s it.”

    “Well, if I can’t be allowed out into the world, then I want a little of the world piped in here. You’ve got me cooped up in a room without a window, without a phone, without net access, without hard-copy newspapers.”

    Downing nodded back. “Fair enough. I’ll need until morning to arrange your net access. Acceptable?”

    But things were not acceptable. Someone was in the room with them. The figure hadn’t suddenly materialized; it was just standing patiently, as though it had been there all along, waiting to be noticed. Caine pushed away from it, back into his chair. His brow was suddenly wet, cold. The figure remained in the shadows, unmoving.

    Downing looked up, one eyebrow raised. “Something wrong?”

    Caine swallowed to make sure that his voice did not crack when he spoke. “Who’s that behind you?”

    Downing turned, gestured into the shadows. “That? Why, that’s Digger Mack.”

    Caine felt his damp hairline tug backwards. “What?”

    “Not what; who. It’s Digger Mack. You remember him.”

    The indistinct silhouette edged forward. “S’right. You remember me, mate — don’t you?” It wasn’t a question: it was an accusation.

    It was indeed Digger Mack — security officer Douglas Mackenzie, late of the transfer liner Tyne — his clothes scorched and tattered, his torso seared and blackened, three fingers gone from the left hand, slowly dripping half-clear plasma. His face — where Caine had pressed the stun baton — was half gone, an open gash splitting his cheekbone in two like a glacial crevasse, ending in the oozing hole that was his ruined left eye-socket. The remaining eye — a bright and cheerful cornflower blue — winked at him.

    Two other figures emerged from the darkness. The first was Captain Burnham, whose face was incongruously intact while the rest of his body was charred to an almost skeletal parody of human form. And lastly, the tippler from Zeta Tucanae, both arms missing at the shoulder, splintered shards of clavicle protruding out of his upper chest like bloody horn gibbets. Capering unsteadily, eyes no longer focusing on the same place, he stooped and searched in time with a giggling whine: “Want a drink? Need a drink. Want a drink? Need a drink. Want –”

    Caine’s lungs would not work. Could not breathe. He tried to jump up. Away from the haunts. Couldn’t. Could only jerk upright. But that must have chased them off: they were gone. Everyone was gone. Only darkness. Where –?

    He heard himself panting, felt the soaked pajama top clinging across the breadth of his forward-hunched back.

    Dream.

    Or was it? He held his breath, waiting to find out. It had seemed real, largely because of the part with Downing, which was a genuine memory from earlier today. Or was that “genuine memory,” and even this moment, just part of a bigger dream –?

    Or was this — finally — what it seemed to be; the mundane reality of a small, dark room, reminiscent of shipboard staterooms? Low bunk with built-in drawers overhead, full bathroom just to the left of the entrance, the room opening up to a kitchenette on the right, a commplex against the far wall. From the control panel of the stove, a dim blue nightlight stared at him like Digger Mack’s one remaining eye.

    This, this was reality.

    Probably.

    Caine shook off a shiver, swung his feet to the floor: time to put reality to the test. He crossed the room to the commplex, snapped it on, slid into the chair in front of the workstation. Rubbing his biceps against the chill, he glanced up to see if the system was ready — and saw a dim, spectral face staring out at him from the screen.

    He lurched backward reflexively — and then noticed that the spectre had reacted similarly. Distant and small in the still inert screen, the ghostly visage was now just a vague silhouette, without any discernible features. A closer look and he recognized it: it was his own reflection.

    The computer toned once. “Ready,” it said, as the same word scrolled into existence on the screen. Caine stared at it: so, he decided, was he. Ready to start searching for any thread of information about what had occurred during his one hundred lost lunar hours.

MENTOR

    Nolan pushed back from the mahogany tabletop, started rummaging around in the lower drawers of the small credenza behind him.

    Downing cleared his throat. “If Riordan is to be a long-term asset, he will need long-term security. And not an entourage: it has to be a single person, one who isn’t associated with the Institute. Tricky.”

    Nolan lifted a decanter and two glasses out of the credenza, poured a finger of Delamain into one of the snifters. “Actually, I think I’ve found an excellent guardian angel for our Odysseus.”

    “I wasn’t aware you had started reviewing dossiers.”

    “Only did it yesterday. It was a pretty short list.”

    Downing let the first sip of the long-legged cognac burn away the sting of being left out of the process: after twenty-three years, there were still times when he absolutely hated this business.

    Like right now.

ODYSSEUS

    Caine leaned away from the glowing computer screen: if, fourteen years ago, he had entertained secret hopes of leaving a discernible, enduring mark on the legacy of humankind, he was now fully disabused of them. After his disappearance at Perry City, there was no further mention of Caine Riordan. And certainly nothing that helped detail the events of the lost one hundred hours that preceded his first, fateful cryosuspension.

    But that didn’t mean that Caine had to sit on his hands. He knew there would have been at least two independent attempts to reconstruct his time and activities on the Moon. Firstly, Caine’s father would have continued to search for him long after he was declared missing, and those inquiries would necessarily have focused on retroactively establishing Caine’s movements while at Perry City. Also, once they hit a dead end, IINN would have made inquiries of its own, and would probably have run an article that was half-obituary, half exposé. Logically, those two leads formed the nexus from which Caine could expand his own investigation.

    Caine entered the necessary search parameters –

    – And the touchscreen went dark, followed by a shrill klaxon — two strident hootings — which stopped abruptly. Just as all the lights went out.

    Shit: did I cause that? Caine dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. That klaxon wasn’t in his room; it was down the hall. And it wasn’t just the lights that had gone off: he could hear the data-access heads spinning down, heard the hum of the refrigerator fading. It was a power outage — but in a secure intelligence facility? Then the two wall lights came back on, but were dim red: emergency lights.

    Not good. A government facility wouldn’t usually be part of the local power grid, and if it was, it would certainly have its own generator, running low as a constant ready backup. Which meant –

    The reflexes he had learned from his hypervigilant months aboard hab module DPV-6 came back along with the cool spine-and-outward rush of an adrenal surge. Time seemed to move more slowly as he snatched the biggest knife in the kitchen. Then he grabbed a towel and ran it under the tap for a second, in the event he’d have to move through smoke or gas. Next, he’d want –

    Quick steps, just outside the door. Not the drumlike pounding of charging rescue personnel: a fast, gliding patter. He looked around: no time to find anything better than the knife. He flipped it over on the move, flapped the towel out like a flag to cover one of the wall lights. He brought the flat of the knife handle down firmly against the towel; the light within made a sound like a Christmas ornament dropped on a flagstone floor: a thin tinkling. The footsteps had stopped by the time he eliminated the second light. Without stopping, Caine swung around into the kitchenette, his back flat against the cabinets. Knife hand back, he crouched down, and heard the door’s lock snap over: opened.