The water shimmered and heaved, and before it went still again Kane saw the image of a cup, and a strange, curved sword, and finally the Fleece itself, the wool heavy with glittering particles of gold.
“Kane?”
The voice came from the spring, a woman’s voice, stirring something just out of the reach of his consciousness.
“Kane, snap out of it!”
He crawled toward the water, feeling the sand soften and pucker under him, light flooding his eyes, blinding him.
“Jesus, I thought I’d lost you for a moment there.What the hell happened to you?”
Kane focused, saw a woman with a dark, sculpted face looming over him. Fragments of the ancient sailor’s personality still clung to his own, making him feel drugged, dissociated from himself. Gradually he recognized Lena, remembered having brawled with Curtis in the airlock.
“Kane? Are you all right? Can you talk at all?”
He had trouble hearing her.The voices were filling all the unused spaces in his brain, had moved smoothly from the dream into this other reality with their echoing harmony.“What did you give me?” he asked, feeling a sudden wash of chemical energy shoot through his spine.
“Adrenogen,” Lena said. Kane nodded. He’d heard rumors of the stuff from his uncle’s chemists, a synthetic hormone that forced the body to produce massive quantities of adrenaline. He felt light-headed and barely in control of his emotions, alternately terrified, enraged, and moved nearly to tears by the music in his brain.
“You pulled me out of this,” he said.“Why? I thought you were with Curtis.”
“Yeah,” she said.“I was with him. He’s a psycho, Kane. Full of power—political, personal, sexual, you name it. But he’s hooked on it, and now his whole midway ride is starting to come apart on him.”
“The Russians,” Kane said, remembering.
“Yeah, the Russians.They’re going to laser this whole place into a junkyard at midnight.That’s like three hours from now. Maybe sooner, if somebody panics. It’s time for us to get the hell out of here.”
“No,” Kane said.
“Listen, man, there’s stuff you don’t know about.Your uncle did a number on your head. I’m not talking about brainwashing here, I mean some really serious shit, some kind of implant wetware that we don’t even know what it’s doing.”
“Implant,” Kane said.“Jesus.”
“Something about North Africa,Takahashi said.They had to put it in to get your brain to function at all, or something. He said they can swap programs in and out of it like changing cassettes.”
The sequences began to click into place for him: the years of stunted ambition, the phantom voices distracting him, the cryogenics briefcase with a new module to be installed, the subliminals to activate it, the headaches, the dreams, the music.“How long have you known about it?”
“Me? Just since last night. But Takahashi’s known all along, him and your uncle both.”
“Yeah, sure he would. But he’d have to. It’s just part of the Pattern, see?”
“See what?”
“My father died on the Gulf Freeway, an axle broke or something, and he went into a concrete embankment. I was seven, I was in the car, and I got thrown clear. I was wearing those Mexican sandals, huaraches, and one of them got blown away.When my uncle came to get me at the hospital, I was just wearing one sandal.”
Lena stared at him as if he were raving.
“Don’t you see?” Kane said.“That’s how Pelias was supposed to recognize the man that was going to kill him.Which was Jason. So Pelias sent him after the Fleece, thinking he would never make it back.”
“Greek mythology,” Lena said.“Do you know where you are? Do you understand what’s happening?”
“I’m on Mars.Where my uncle sent me to die. But that’s only a piece of it, it’s the entire Pattern that’s important. Separation, initiation, and return.Where we are now is the Penetration to the Source of Power.” Kane sat up, saw that he was on a bare stained mattress in a deserted living module. Empty bottles, hypos, and various plastic wrappers littered the floor.“What is this place?”
“Curtis calls it ‘Little Juarez.’ Charming, isn’t it?”
“We’re looking for a cave.That’s where it is, usually, like where Orpheus goes into hell to rescue Eurydice.”
“Curtis’s kid is in a cave,” Lena said.
“What?”
She looked startled, as if she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.“There’s some kind of a cave out on the slope of the volcano.A bunch of the kids moved out there, including Curtis’s little girl.”
“Why? What are they doing out there?”
“I kind of got the impression there’s something wrong with them. Birth defects, genetic damage, like that.There’s a couple of lifetimes’ worth of work up here, and they won’t even let me see those kids.”
“Then that must be where it is.”
“Where what is?”
“The source of power. Like the Fleece, or the Grail, or Susa-no-wo’s sword.”
“Kane, man, this is not a myth. This is happening. Real Russians, real lasers, real corpses, real soon.”
“But what if the other was real, too? Like some kind of tension in the universe, and it has to keep happening over and over again until somebody gets it right. See, because Jason got the Fleece, but he didn’t do it right and ended up all alone, an outcast. Percival gets to see the grail, but he doesn’t get to keep it.Yamato-Takeru was a great warrior, but his spirit was weak and that was what killed him.”
“And now it’s your turn? Is that it?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ve got a better idea.All this mythology crap, that’s what you did in college, right? So your uncle puts this implant in your skull because there’s something up here he wants you to do for him, and he doesn’t trust you to do what you’re told. Only the biotic circuit isn’t quite hooked up right. Or maybe it is but you’re fighting it too hard, and as a result all his orders are getting filtered through a layer of intellectual bullshit, and it comes out in these crazy fantasies of yours.”
“This isn’t just some intellectual exercise. I’ve been seeing all this, reliving it.”
“Those dreams, you mean.Where you woke up screaming.”
“More than dreams. It was like I was really there.”
“Yeah, okay, that’s fine, but none of that is any reason for us staying here. As soon as I can get Takahashi off the computer in the sick bay, we
should get the hell off this planet.”
“Computer? He said something about that.What’s he doing?”
“It looks innocent enough, but apparently he’s shuttling all the scientific data from their computer into a blind file where it’s being transmitted to the ship.”
“Doesn’t he need some kind of access codes to get into their files?”
“He’s got all the overrides.Who do you think built their computer?”
“Oh,” Kane said.“Yeah. Morgan. Does everybody but me know what’s going on around here?”
“Morgan had this all planned. Haven’t you got that figured out yet? He can trust Takahashi because Takahashi’s loyal to the company.You he doesn’t have to trust. He’s got you wired. He owns you.”
“And you?”
“I’m just desperate,” Lena said.“I don’t know enough to hurt him, and I don’t have anyplace else to go.”
“And Reese? What about him?”
“Reese is out of it.”
Out of it, Kane thought.There had been something in that last dream, something about Reese. He’d called Reese’s name. His stomach squirmed with unease, and the adrenaline amplified it toward panic.“I have to find him,” he said.“Where is he?”
“I haven’t seen him all day. I can’t tell you. But I think you should let him go. He’s off on some private trip of his own. Just let him play it out, and you and me and Takahashi will save ourselves.”