Mind's Eye (22 page)

Altschuler blinked stupidly, waiting for Gray to continue.

“What’s so ingenious about this strategy, is that when everyone thinks you’re dead, no one comes looking for you. So I’m free to experiment however I like. And then, when I ah. . .
incinerate
the evidence, no one cares. You can’t be wanted for murder for killing what’s already presumed dead.”

Gray took another sip of wine. “Are you sure you want to be a part of this, Alex?” he asked in amusement. “You should see your face. You look horrified. Hardly the expression of someone who wants to roll up his sleeves and pitch in.”

“Not true. There are a number of experiments I’m eager to try. With me intimately involved, our progress will accelerate significantly. We’ll both be richer than God.”

“Pretty bold wanting to join me. I would have expected you to go to the authorities.”

Altschuler shook his head adamantly, as if even the thought of turning Gray in was abhorrent to him. “Let me join you, Kelvin.”

Gray frowned and opened the drawer of the table beside him. He removed the gun he had placed there in preparation for this meeting and pointed it at his underling. “Thanks for the interest, Alex. Really. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to say no.”

Altschuler’s eyes bulged. “No? No! Do you have any idea what you’re passing up? My bandwidth added to yours—with human subjects—the sky’s the limit.”

Gray noted with clinical detachment that now that the preliminary accusations were out of the way, Altschuler had developed more of a spine, even with a gun pointed at him. Interesting.

“Ah, but it turns out I’ve already made the breakthroughs I need,” said Gray.

During his phone conversation with John Delamater only an hour earlier, his partner had explained his reasons for believing that Nick Hall’s implants were working perfectly, after all. And these reasons were absolutely convincing. Which was why Gray had been so ecstatic. Or
almost
ecstatic, in any case.

“The very last of the twenty-seven subjects from the
Explorer
was the key,” explained Gray. “A man named Nick Hall. We’ve now positioned the four implants in precisely the necessary locations, and the algorithms have been tuned to utter perfection. We damaged a number of inconsequential areas of Hall’s brain in the process, but he doesn’t seem to miss any of them.”

Gray took another sip of wine, pausing to savor it before he continued, his grip on the gun never faltering. “I just found out before you got here that the program was an unqualified success. You see, I hadn’t known. It turns out that Hall lied to me. We were very close, he said. A minor adjustment and he was sure we’d be there. And then I made the adjustment, and perfected a system that will revolutionize the world. But instead of reporting this historic achievement, Hall reported the opposite. He said he had lost the signal entirely. That it had been a significant step backwards.”

Gray raised his eyebrows. “Between you and me, Alex, I think this Hall got it into his head that if I finally perfected what I was after, he’d be killed. He was right, of course. But when he convinced me progress had halted, I decided it was time to kill him just the same. We’d already painted a bit much on his neuronal  canvas, and it was best to take the ground we’d gained and start on a new batch of abductees. Maybe from the new Bermuda Triangle again. Fuel the crackpot theories.” He laughed, the gun vibrating in his hand as he did so. “Maybe that’s how the Bermuda Triangle thing got started in the first place. Wouldn’t that be ironic?”

“You still need me for the implementation, Kelvin. To make sure this works with
everyone
, and not just your subject twenty-seven. And to
improve
it. This Hall is just a prototype. You and I both know there are still a lot of hurdles to jump before the system will be fully polished and scaled up for mass use. You
need
me. And if I’m in this with you, you can count on my silence. I have too much to gain, and too much to lose, to be stupid about this.”

Gray laughed. He finished his wine, set it on the table, and laughed again. The gun was still in his right hand, but he was resting it in his lap, unconcerned that Altschuler would try anything. Even though the kid was toughening up, it was a miracle he hadn’t wet his pants.

“That would be true,” replied Gray finally. “If anything about your offer was genuine. But the funny thing is, I got a call from an associate of mine. Just before you arrived. The same guy who arranged for the unfortunate sinking of the good ship
Explorer
. He’s been keeping tabs on you, Alex. For a long time now. And do you know what he told me?”

Altschuler shrank back, as if trying to hide behind his glasses.

“No guesses, Alex? Surely someone as brilliant as you can figure this out. He said that you’d be coming over and professing your interest in joining forces with me. But that it would be total bullshit. He said you were trying to set me up.”

Gray opened the same drawer from which he had taken the gun and this time removed a pair of handcuffs. He tossed them the short distance to Altschuler. “Cuff your right hand to the chair,” he ordered. “Never used these to handcuff a
man
before,” he added as Altschuler followed his instructions.” He shrugged. “I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

Even without the tip-off from Delamater, Gray would have known Altschuler’s offer to join him was fake. There was no way his subordinate would have had the balls to get involved. And it wasn’t just Altschuler. Almost no one else would have. That was yet another dimension of Gray’s superiority. He alone had the steel to make the hard decisions. To make the brutally difficult tradeoffs; the very tradeoffs that begged to be made to move the species forward.

Not that being the rare man capable of doing what was necessary didn’t come at a high cost. No one mourned the loss of twenty-seven good people—innocent people—more than Kelvin Gray did. It was a tragedy. But they were giving their lives for a much higher cause. Everyone died. But how many in the history of the world ever died to catapult the entire race forward to undreamed-of heights? There was no more honorable way to exit this existence. And twenty-seven heroes, or even twenty-seven
thousand
, was a small, small price to pay for what was being gained.

Gray had never shed literal tears for them, because this wasn’t his way, but the sacrifices they had made tore him up on the inside. Nothing had ever brought him more pain. But part of his greatness was the willingness to endure this kind of pain for the greater good. Something people like Altschuler were incapable of understanding.

“I just have one more loose end after I take care of you,” explained Gray. “And then there’s nothing between me and immortalization.”

“Loose end?”

“Yes. This Nick Hall I was telling you about. He was a visiting scientist from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts who was lucky enough to join the La Jolla contingent on the
Explorer
. Seems he managed to escape from us recently. We’ve been trying to kill him, but he’s managed to slip the noose a few times. It would be nice to have him alive for follow-up testing, but it isn’t an absolute requirement. We have all the data recorded for the positioning, intensity, and signaling parameters of his implants. But now that I know his implants are working, my life is greatly simplified. Because I left a backdoor in his implants I can use to instant-message him. So I can reach out to him, wherever he is. Lure him in and then capture him again. Or kill him. Either way, no more loose ends. Easy to do, since my friend John has also learned that Hall has no memory of being experimented on.”

Gray paused for a moment and then smiled. “With all the amnesia-inducing drugs we gave him during the past seven months, it’s not surprising. The slightest tap on the head would probably cause him to re-lose his memory, even without an additional dose. Hell, after the number of doses he’s had along the way, putting on a
baseball cap
might be enough to do it.”

 “So once you’ve captured or killed Hall, then what?”

“Well, then I go through the FDA to get the implants approved for blindness and deafness, and separately, for thought-controlled web access. But now that I know the precise placement, we can be ever so cautious and plodding. Proceed with the utmost concern for patient safety. All the while knowing that we’ll nail it on the first try. A miracle.”

Gray locked his eyes on Altschuler. “Had I not taken this short-cut, Alex, we’d have never gotten there. I’d have never been able to make so many wild attempts; wild attempts that resulted in scores of deaths. The FDA would have pulled the plug long before this. So it isn’t just that we would have been delayed crossing the finish line by eight or ten years if I hadn’t considered the subjects expendable. It’s that we would have
never
finished the race.” He frowned. “It will still take a few years to get proper authorizations and approvals, even though the implants will work perfectly right out of the gate. But we’ll have gone through all the right channels. The technology will be as clean as a whistle.”

Gray shook his head sadly. “I only wish the public could know that the members of the
Explorer
gave their lives in the service of mankind. Alas, I’m afraid this won’t be possible. Society, pathetic as it is, would not react well to this knowledge.”

Altschuler was glancing nervously around the room.

“What’s the matter, Alex? Run out of questions to ask to stall me? Are you expecting someone?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m afraid your mercenary buddy won’t be coming to save the day. What’s his name? Ed Cowan perhaps? Well, my friend John only had one of his men nearby tonight, so we have to wait a little. I’ve actually been stalling
you
, not the other way around. John told me his man would take out Cowan, which he’s now had ample time to do, and then come here to take you, um . . . off my hands. Which I really hate to dirty more than I have to.”

Altschuler blanched and shrank into the chair in horror. Gray suspected he would have rolled up into a fetal position had the chair allowed it.

Gray shook his head sadly once again, a kindly grandfather having to share troubling news with a beloved child. “You’re a very talented man, Alex. And I wish this could have turned out otherwise. But you’re weak. Like the vast majority of your fellows. So it’s up to men like me to move the species forward. I’m just sorry you had to get caught up in the gears.”

He gestured to the bottle beside him. “More wine?” he asked pleasantly. It was a shame to waste wine of this quality on someone who wouldn’t live out the night, but he considered it a noble, last supper sort of gesture.

Altschuler’s eyes were vacant, and he was long past the point of being able to respond. Gray was pouring himself another glass of Merlot when the door chime sounded.

“That would be John’s assistant, arriving to take you off my hands.”

Gray walked over to the wreck of a man across from him and undid his cuffs, forcing him ahead at gunpoint.

The bell chimed one more time and then was silent as they made their way to the entry foyer. As they reached it, Gray ordered Altschuler to unlatch the door and open it. He thought for a moment that Altschuler might pass out, but his soon-to-be-deceased subordinate managed to carry out his instructions.

The door opened slowly to reveal a tall man with blood-soaked bandages on his left arm and right leg.

“
Ed?
” whispered Altschuler in disbelief.

At that instant a terrible realization hit Kelvin Gray.
Delamater’s man had failed
. Instead of eliminating Ed Cowan, Ed Cowan must have eliminated
him
.

Gray desperately yanked the gun from Altschuler’s back and began to raise it,
but he was too late
. A gun had appeared in Cowan’s hand as if by magic, swinging up to point at Gray’s head, which towered above his shorter human shield.

Cowan depressed the trigger, giving Gray only a thousandth of a second to process the deafening explosion before his head was almost torn from his shoulders by the high caliber slug, and leaving him no time at all to reflect on what a tragedy the world would now suffer from the loss of a veritable god like himself.

24

Ed Cowan had showered and dressed his wounds while Alex Altschuler had gotten right to work cracking Gray’s home computer for evidence—after having another large glass of wine to steady his nerves and wait for his hearing to return. Cowan had fired his gun practically
in
Altschuler’s ear. Not that he had complained. The man had also saved his life.

Altschuler still couldn’t quite process just how blatantly psychopathic his boss had truly been, and how badly he had been fooled by the man’s charm and charisma. Gray had been totally devoid of a soul. Altschuler’s meeting with Gray, which had included being threatened at gunpoint and his boss’s face exploding like a watermelon, was like a nightmare from which he couldn’t quite awaken.