The Burning Skies (61 page)

“It has to do with consciousness.”

“Yes. Obviously.”

“It was a specific process.”

“Or more than one.”

“Was it used on me?”

But Sarmax only smiles.

“Or am I Rain myself?” asks Spencer. “Goddamn it, Leo—”

“You’re just a guy who ended up running with the big dogs. Far as I know, anyway. Carson managed to hook you up to the Manilishi, but that was only thanks to software the Throne gave him to implant in you.”

“Rain software.”

“Presumably.”

“From the original tests?”

“Who knows? I’m just telling you what I was told. But the master process—whatever it was—was refined with the second team. They weren’t like us. They weren’t modified. They were—”

“—
created
. For that purpose.”

“They were hell on bloody wheels, Spencer. They put us in the fucking shade.”

“And now they’re in the shade forever.”

“She told you that?”

“And more besides.”

T
he final descent is under way. The last of the engines are firing.

“You shouldn’t have trusted Sinclair,” she says. But Carson just grins. “Who said I trust him?”

“Then why the fuck are you carrying out his orders?”

“Sinclair came to me two days before the Elevator went down. He restored what the Praetorians had stripped from me. My memory of those times. The training I’d received. The training I’d given. Said he was worried that his protégés were getting out of hand. Said he might need me to run some interference. Sarmax had left the service with his memories intact. His little secret. Arranged by Sinclair without the Throne’s knowledge. After the Elevator blew, I went to Leo. We struck a deal. We dealt Lynx in on the way back to Earth.”

“And after the naughty little children were defeated, why didn’t you just seize everything on that ship on the way back?”

“Because we needed you to find and destroy the rest of those fucks. Seizing control of everything with them still out there would have made
us
the target.”

“If Sinclair’s in prison, then how are you in touch with him?”

“I don’t need to be.”

“What?”

“You still don’t get it, Claire, do you? Sinclair’s sitting in his fucking cell watching the universe spin around him.”

“He’s reading minds too?”

“Have you sensed him? On any level?”

She shakes her head. “Not as far as I know. All I’ve got is Spencer’s and a shade or two of yours. Have
you?”

“I don’t think it works that way,” says Carson. “It works like this: when he restored my memory, Sinclair explained to me
exactly what would happen
. Exactly what levers I would need to pull—and when. He laid the whole thing out—said how it would go down if I gave it the right set of shoves. Said it all led up to something that’s coming up, something past which he can’t see. He’s on a whole different level, maybe even
your
level, and I don’t even pretend to understand—”

“That’s why you’re so crazy to be dealing with him.”

“That’s why I need your help.”

“He went through the Rain process himself. He must have.”

“I’m convinced he saw it as the best way to get the drop on Harrison,” says Carson.

“Is he
really
on this ship?”

“Harrison? Absolutely. And by the way, he’s going to remain president, no matter what the head of SpaceCom thinks.”

“As a figurehead.”

“As an expedient.”

“A
temporary one?”

“Everything
is, Claire.”

They look at each other.

“Because that’s the core of it,” says Carson. “Harrison and Sinclair. Lifelong partners, lifelong rivals, and the guy you thought of as the old man always had to play second fiddle. He and the president cooked up the Autumn Rain scheme together, back when they were both admirals.”

“Before
they ruled the country.”

“Why so surprised?”

“Morat told me it was after Harrison assumed power.”

“Second-generation team—
your
team—sure. Not the first. Not us. Besides, Morat was a low-grade punk. He never knew the half of it. How the fuck do you think Harrison and Sinclair took over? Me and Lynx and Sarmax took out everyone opposed to them. But Sinclair was keeping his own options open the whole time. And by augmenting
himself
, he must have figured he’d be ready if the shit ever hit the fan.”

“But why did he let them put him in the L5 prison?”

“I’m pretty sure he thinks that’s the safest place to be.”

“I’d rather be within some kind of rock when the shooting starts,” she says.

“Makes two of us,” he replies.

She nods. The ship drops toward the Moon.

W
e were seduced,” says Szilard.

He steps away from Linehan, steps out onto the lunar map that dominates the floor. “That’s far enough,” says Linehan. Szilard stops. Looks back at him. Holds up his hands in what looks almost like a protest. “But we were,” he says.

“Perhaps Sinclair was, too. Because it wasn’t just their lack of inhibition. Any sociopath can do as well. What made the Rain so lethal was a radioactive creativity. Seeing patterns where ordinary people see only chaos. An ability to grasp opportunities invisible to anyone else. It wasn’t just the telepathy either. Look at the games they’ve been playing. So twisted you can’t even follow the threads. They’ve got all of us wrapped up in the same fucking web and all they need to do now is suck out the goddamn juice.”

“Why are you telling me this?” asks Linehan.

“Because you’re just one of the victims,” says Szilard.

“Yeah?” asks Lynx. His voice echoes from an open hatch in one of the mainframes. “Is that a fact, Jharek?”

“It is. You’re using this man.”

“I’m giving him the chance to kill you.”

“And I wish you’d let me go ahead and do it,” says Linehan.

“You’re just a jackal on a leash,” says Szilard.

But Linehan only laughs. “I’m riding shotgun on history, and I’m about to put the head of my original boss all over that
wall
. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

“Maybe you should ask your drug-snorting Rain razor what he intends to do with you once I’m dead.”

“Hey Lynx,” says Linehan, “what’s next?”

“We unleash the war.”

“And what’s my rank?”

“My bodyguard.”

“And what’s yours?”

“I thought I’d start with commander of the L2 fleet.”

“Fucking cool,” says Linehan, “let’s do it.”

• • •

T
wo men sit in a room in some structure beneath the Himalayas. The pieces of that structure are like a grid within Spencer’s mind. He’s trying to grasp the nature of this place. He’s trying to focus on the face of Sarmax, but it’s as if the walls are blurring around him—as if the floor is undulating beneath his feet. Everything’s starting to swirl inside his head.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Don’t fight it,” says Sarmax.

“Ayahuasca,” says Spencer. “It’s resurging—”

“Is that what it feels like? Being mind-melded with the Manilishi can’t be easy—”

“Fuck’s sake—”

“—especially now that bitch has been trying to pull your strings. And all the while we’ve been pulling hers.”

Spencer stares at him. But he can no longer speak. Pressure keeps on growing in his chest. The images of the pages of the book pulsate within his head. The face of the Manilishi blazes like some dark sun inside him.

W
hat the hell are you doing?” she mutters. “Having my way with you once more.” Though really he’s just holding onto the wall right in front of her while the ship shakes about them, dropping through ten thousand meters. The dome of Congreve is visible below. Haskell’s struggling to remain calm. Carson’s smile isn’t helping. Nor is what he’s doing to her mind.

“You miss the essence of the problem,” he says. “The Rain weren’t some mythical force. They were just men and women who had been engineered to think without fetters. The solution to an equation no one had even dared to postulate. Not a question of ends—”

“But means. Carson, I
know
this. But—I—
fuck!”

“Sure you do. But you were never asked to prove it. You were kept within the system and everything stayed nice and simple. And all the while the ones with whom you were bred were out in the cold thinking like normal humans never could. Putting together a plan more convoluted than a goddamn Gordian knot.”

“Which was
nothing
compared to what you were doing.”

“Which just proves the point,” he says.

“Even though none of it was your fucking idea.”

“At least I know a good one when I see it.”

“Christ, Carson, you’re hurting me.”

“Someday you’ll forgive me.”

“I’m damned for ever having known you.”

“But let’s try to make the most of it, anyway,” he says. “Some kind of process, right? But what? What was it that the Rain were made of? Sinclair knows it all, and everyone else is in the dark. But somewhere in you—”

“
No one
besides Sinclair? Not even the Throne? Or you?”

“I know only fragments.”

“What did you use to bind me to Spencer?”

“Death.”

“What?”

“We killed you. When we got back to Earth.”

“That was a risk.”

“The Throne said you’d have to be executed anyway unless we could find a way to harness you. And the Praetorian med-teams know what they’re doing: simultaneously flat-lined you and Spencer and then shocked you back while your minds were wired together on the zone. Sinclair had already given me the sequence and Harrison was the one who gave the order but I’ve no idea how he—”

“And why not Lynx?”

“Too risky. It had been done to him once already, right?
And Spencer’s mind had been dosed with ayahuasca, which made him particularly receptive. But the real question isn’t what was done to him a few days ago or what was done to me and Lynx and Sarmax more than two decades back; the real question is what was done to you and the rest of the Rain when you were in the fucking
incubator
. The first team was jury-rigged and the second was created wholesale. And only Sinclair knows
that
formula—”