Takahashi was not much better off. His eyes kept flickering toward the figures moving below them.“You were dying.The implant operation saved your life.” His sincerity was urgent, frightened.“As to the programming that went in it, that’s Morgan’s doing.”
“What’s the difference? I’ve seen your file.That whole corporate loyalty thing. Morgan owns you just as much as he does me, only he doesn’t need any chips in your brain to do it.”
“Kane.There isn’t much time...”
Kane turned the gun so that the dim light rolled and shimmered off the metal.“Right now all you’ve got is the time I let you have. I could kill you right now.”
“I’m not your enemy, Kane. Neither is the company.”
He had shifted into a sudden, intense calm that Kane found more frightening than his earlier display of nerves.
“In Japan,”Takahashi said,“the company was my mother and father. You think Pulsystems is big in Houston, but that’s nothing compared to Japan. It was the Japanese division that supported the entire corporation for the last ten years.
“And over there we didn’t just work for a paycheck.The company fed me and gave me my house and clothes and car, and it gave me something to believe in and work for and devote myself to. Morgan doesn’t do that. Morgan is an egotistical, devious incompetent.”
Kane’s gun hand began to tremble. Bright filaments of pain glowed inside his skull and sweat ran down the sides of his chest.“I don’t understand.”
“I’m loyal to the company, not to Morgan.There are factions that believe this transporter and this antimatter power grid are too valuable to let Morgan have.They got me onto this mission to protect them, and when I get back Morgan will be replaced.As soon as they can find a successor that the Board will accept.”
“Successor?”
“Don’t play coy with me.You know who I’m talking about.”
“I don’t...”
“You’ve wanted it all along.You’ve been maneuvering yourself toward it since your first summer job in the mail room.And Morgan knew it. He’s used the implant to keep you down since North Africa, and he sent you up here because he didn’t think you’d ever come back, or if you did you wouldn’t be in any position to fight him.”
“Maybe he’s right.This thing in my head...”
“Once this is over with, once the program has terminated, it won’t make any difference.You can just leave the current rom in there, or you can make it work for you.”
“How? What are you talking about?”
“You could set up a direct brain link to the Pulsystems computers, and access all their storage.You could expand your mental powers, your senses.The possibilities are endless.”
Kane rubbed his sweaty, throbbing forehead with the glove of his left hand.“You’re an optimist,Takahashi. First we have to live through tonight, and the Russians...”
“There’s more than the Russians to worry about. Curtis is out of his mind, and he’s down there right now trying to start World War III.”
“Curtis,” Kane said.
“With him out of the way, we can take the panel and get back to Houston.Then nothing can stop us.”
“The Return,” Kane said.
“What?”
“The Pattern, man, the life-enhancing Return...”
“Forget this pattern shit.There’s no time.” Takahashi’s calm was visibly eroding.“Stop Curtis. Get the panel.You’ve got to be the one to do it.You’ve got the gun, the reflexes, all that berserker shit they taught you in the mercenaries. I’ll tell the Russians we’re ready to deal, stall them long enough for us to get to the ship and get out of here.”
“That is the Pattern, man. Slay the monster and return with the Ultimate Boon.That is the Pattern.”
Takahashi looked as if he wanted to smash the wall with his fists. He’s starting to believe what I said about the implant, Kane thought. He really is starting to believe I’ve lost it.
“I’m sorry, Kane,”Takahashi said,“I didn’t want it to be like this. But I can’t take him all by myself. None of us can.”
“What are you—” Kane said, but Takahashi had already closed his eyes and begun to recite.
“ ‘When I am grown to man’s estate/I shall be very proud and great/ And tell the other girls and boys/Not to meddle with my toys.’”
Kane was paralyzed. Part of his brain recognized the nursery rhyme his uncle had read to him as a child, before his father died, but another, distinct part read the words as a lock reads a key and opened under them.
He watched as his left hand wrapped around his right, steadying his grip on the pistol, both thumbs cocking the hammer, a shining, live cartridge moving into line with the barrel.
Program, he thought, watching helplessly as his feet took him toward the ladder. Last-ditch program.Takahashi. Bastard. Didn’t believe I could do it.
He put one foot onto the ladder, carefully brought his left hand from the Colt to the railing.
He took a second step, and a third. His shoulders were level with the floor of the catwalk.
A blast of sound nearly blew him off the ladder. He jammed his hands over his ears and the revolver fell into a pile of plastic sheeting below him.
Alarms were going off all across the cave. Reese had drilled them on the three different sound patterns; this one, the shrill, one-note siren, was the signal to abandon the dome.
He could think again, had some voluntary control over his body. But the compulsion remained, the driving, overwhelming need to point the gun at Curtis’s face, to squeeze the trigger, to watch him die.
The alarm shrieked at him from less than five feet away, from a metal horn mounted on the catwalk support, battering him with sound. Frenzied, disoriented, he thrashed from side to side on the ladder, trying to see where the gun had fallen.
He felt the slick plastic elbow joints of his suit begin to slide off the rung of the ladder and lunged for the handrail, but he was too late.
He tumbled backwards off the ladder, his scream of terror lost in the maelstrom of noise.
What’s it?” Curtis asked. “That’s it,”Verb told him.“Type .run xlaunch, hit newline, and the machine does the rest.”
She looked eaten up inside, Molly thought, worse than she’d ever looked before. She stood near Curtis now, and refused to even look in Molly’s direction.
Curtis turned away from the keyboard with a look of regret and picked up the phone.“You still have the Russians on the screen?...Yeah, fine...Oh really?...What were they saying?...You what? Jesus Christ, you asshole, why didn’t you tell me you don’t speak Russian? Get somebody in there who does, for Christ’s sake, and replay those goddamn radio signals!” He slammed the phone down and turned to Alonzo.“Those fucking morons—”
The abandon alarm cut him off.
Christ, Molly thought, momentarily stunned.They did it, they hit Frontera, they didn’t even wait for the deadline...
She saw Curtis lunge for the crt and knew her options had run out.
Iain was half turned toward Curtis and didn’t see her until she was already coming off the floor. Her first punch caught him in the throat, and he went down choking.
She didn’t have time to try for his gun.
Curtis stood in front of the keyboard, legs spread. He was typing, carefully, one letter at a time.
“Curtis!” she screamed, but her voice was drowned in the shrilling of the alarms.
Curtis reached for the newline key.
She had nothing to throw, no weapon to use but her body. She hurled herself at his legs, knocking him off balance, and as they fell over together, she saw his right hand come down.
Curtis had fallen underneath her. She got to her hands and knees, saw green letters scrolling up the screen of the crt.