“No,” said Hoshino. “That was Howard’s dream. He and his toady, Mr. Bones, closed me out of the T-craft program’s real aims.”
“So… you disapprove of what they tried to do?”
“Fear of a conqueror is one thing,” Hoshino said carefully, “however, to conquer the world — this world — would be to make enemies or, worse, fearful slaves, of eight billion people. It would end open warfare, but it would not end war.”
“Why not?”
“Because in the face of overwhelming military force, the weaker side will fight back using guerrilla tactics. These tactics are why we have not beaten ISIL, why America has failed to defeat the Taliban or al-Qaeda. It was hard enough in the pre-Internet days to beat a guerrilla resistance; now it is impossible. The army becomes a virtual one, connected through e-mails and the Internet. Their weapons become man-portable rocket launchers, drones, and other small but potent weapons. With a conquest of China and Russia, and the resulting de facto subjugation of all other military powers, you would create a network of nuclear states that also have access to advanced biological weaponry. You could not defeat that kind of opposition even with a fleet of T-craft. It would be the equivalent of fighting disease-carrying mosquitoes with carpet-bombing. The weapons you can bring to bear are too large for targets so small and maneuverable.”
“Did you ever say as much to Howard Shelton?”
“I tried, but he was never interested.”
“And yet you helped him build the T-craft…,” prompted VanOwen.
“We all wanted the craft built. We had different reasons, as it turned out.”
VanOwen leaned forward. “What was your reason?”
“Power.”
“Power?”
“Yes. To use the T-craft as this generation’s ultra-advanced reconnaissance aircraft. Just as the Lockheed U-2 was the breakout technology of its day, and later supplanted by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, and so on, the T-craft would give us another big jump forward.”
“Only that?” asked VanOwen with a crafty smile.
“That, and to provide the next generation of stealth fighters and bombers. However, we were not the only country actively developing T-craft. Russia, China, North Korea, Japan, Great Britain, France, Brazil… there are — or maybe were — similar programs around the world. We were closer, though. We solved the problems they could not solve.”
“The biomechanical interface?”
Hoshino nodded. “Without that, every engine exploded upon firing.”
VanOwen’s smile lingered. “In your estimation, how close were the other countries to solving that same problem?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“Maybe five years? Possibly less.”
“A lot of that time burned off,” observed VanOwen.
Hoshino said nothing.
VanOwen picked up the first of the two sheets of paper. “This is a presidential order, endorsed by the directors of Homeland Security and National Security, and countersigned by the attorney general. It effectively ends your status as a citizen and orders that you be sent to a special facility so remote that it has no name, appears on no map, and none of the prisoners who have gone there have ever returned. Not one.”
The blood in Hoshino’s veins turned to icy slush and she felt vomit burn in the back of her throat.
VanOwen picked up the second sheet. “This is a special executive order that includes a pardon for all past crimes and will effectively seal any legal matters involving you. Neither paper has yet been signed by the president.”
“I… I…,” began Hoshino, but her mouth had gone too dry to speak.
VanOwen stood up and walked around her desk. She was tall and lithe and beautiful, and it made Hoshino feel small and breakable. The woman sat on the edge of the desk, one leg dangling as she swung it back and forth.
“The president of the United States is frequently referred to as the most powerful man on Earth,” she said quietly. “He gets that nickname because of the financial and military power he wields. It’s my job to make sure that he truly is the most powerful man. I want this to become clear to everyone else in the world. I want it to become clear to the people of this country. We are not looking to use T-craft to start a war. What we want is for the rest of the world to know that the age of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction is at an end, and a new age has begun. You, Dr. Hoshino, can help this president earn his place in history as the greatest American president since Washington. Tell me now… which of these papers should I send to the president for his signature, and which should I run through the shredder?”
INTERLUDE SIX
Dr. Marguerite Beaufort crouched in the dark and watched the snakes disappear, one by one, through a crack in the wall. Ten of them at least, and likely more that she had not seen. The soft rasp of their sinewy bodies was the only sound in the cave except for a distant slow drip of water. Work lights were strung on wires and she had a strong LED light on her metal hard hat, but the cavern was so vast that the darkness seemed to devour the illumination with rapacious hunger. The walls were slick with moisture and there was a faint rotten-egg stink of sulfur in the damp air.
“What the hell?” cried her assistant, Carlton Wrigley, known as Rig, a gnomelike graduate student who looked like he belonged on someone’s lawn, or maybe in one of the lower-income Hobbit holes. “Hey, where are they going?”
At the sound of Rig’s voice, the last of the snakes paused and turned its head toward them. There, frozen in the stark glow, Marguerite could see the glassy markings more clearly, and it startled her. Instead of true markings, they almost appeared to be flecks of Lemurian quartz embedded in its skin. That, of course, made no sense at all. Partly because the snakes all had them, and none of them looked to have been injured by some rockfall; and partly because the placement of the chips was orderly. Like something natural instead of accidental. And it would also be the greatest find so far in an otherwise disappointing dig, because the only green quartz they’d found were fragments left behind by some unknown miners in the distant past. For weeks now Marguerite had been trying to figure out the best way to tell Valen and his friend Ari that they were likely wasting their money. Wrangling snakes with shiny green markings was not what she was paid to do.
“What kind of snakes are they, Doc? Think they’re poisonous?”
“I don’t know, but don’t touch them.”
“As if.”
The snake studied her with its dark eyes, and its tongue flicked out as if it could understand her through what it tasted on the still air. As if it took secrets from her that she did not want to share. Then it turned and slithered after the others and was gone.
“Jee-zus,” breathed Rig. “Where do you think they went? You think there’s a nest back there? I thought the walls down here were supposed to be solid. That’s what Dr. Svoboda said, right?”
George Svoboda was a top geologist at the University of Chicago.
“That’s what we were told,” she replied, but there was as much doubt in her voice as his. She touched the wall. “This is strange, Rig. I don’t remember seeing these cracks before. Do you?”
She told Rig to set up a portable light stand topped by a wide LED panel. He turned it on and angled the panel so that the light etched every bump and crack. Marguerite stepped toward the wall and used her fingertips to trace a crack that ran crookedly from the rocky ceiling to the stony floor. A dozen smaller cracks to her left were where the snakes had vanished; but this one was different. Not only because it was much longer, but because there the edges were crusted with some kind of plant life. A kind of moss with unusually long stalks and bulbous heads flecked with dots of red.