“And now we’ve come,” he said. “Just as they knew we would.”
“Exactly. Men have always been drawn down here to the Pole, haven’t they? And if what Gates is saying is correct, then it’s been more than a sense of exploration. As a race we would be drawn to those places where our memory was strongest.”
Cutchen was sweating now and couldn’t help himself. The idea of it all was terrifying. Like the human race had never, ever been in command of its own destiny. It was shocking. “It’s like we’re… what? A seed planted in a fucking garden? Cultivated, cross-bred, enhanced… until they got the proper strain, the proper hybrid they desired.” He just shook his head. “But what do they want, Elaine? What do they have in mind? To conquer us? What?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure and neither is Gates. But one thing’s for sure, it’s our minds that they want, our intellects they need. They are of a single mind, a single consciousness, a hive mentality. That is exactly what they intend for us to be. For us to be them but in human form.” She scrolled through a few pages on her laptop. “According to Gates, they’ve bred certain characteristics into us. There are probably latent gifts we all carry in our minds, our carefully engineered minds, that they will now exploit. They’ll reawaken faculties that we’ve long forgotten about, but have been buried in us all along…”
“Like what?”
“Abilities they planted in us long ago. Abilities that would make us like them. Mechanisms seeded in our brains, special adaptations that have been passed on through our genes… wild talents that occasionally make themselves known like telepathy, telekinesis, prophecy… talents that, when the time was right, would make us like them — a single, ominous hive mind. That coupled with an overriding instinct, a blind compulsion to serve them. An all important seed they would have planted in our primitive brains and is still there today.”
Cutchen said, “So everything we are, our entire history and even our destiny… these Old Ones were the architects of it? We’re… synthetic?”
“Yes and no. Our culture, our civilization is our own, I think. Though much of it might be based upon archetypes imprinted upon our brains eons ago. Even our conception of a god, a superior being, a creator… it’s no doubt based upon some aboriginal image of them placed into our subconscious minds. They would have seen themselves as our gods, our masters… then and now… and we, in essence, were designed to be their tools, an extension of their organic technology, to be used for what plans we could never even guess at. But it might be in us, that knowledge, lying dormant in our brains until they decide to wake it up. And when that happens… when that happens, there will be no more human race, Cutchy.”
Cutchen’s face was beaded with sweat, his eyes were wide and tormented. “We have to stop this, Elaine. We have to stop this madness.”
“If we can. If we can,” she said, her voice filled with a bitter hopelessness, a dire inevitability. “Lord knows what they planted in us, what buried imperatives and controls that they might be, right now, getting ready to unlock on a global scale to bring us to our ultimate destiny.”
“Which is?”
But Sharkey could just shake her head. “I don’t know and I don’t think I want to find out.”
“We’re fucked, Elaine. If Gates is right, we’re fucked.” Cutchen kept trying to moisten his weathered lips, but he was all out of spit. “I really hope Gates is a lunatic. I’m really hoping for that.”
“I don’t think he is,” Sharkey told him. “And the scary part is, nobody’s heard from him in over forty-eight hours now.”
33
The way Hayes was seeing it, he’d paid for this dance and LaHune was going to have a cheek-to-cheek waltz with him whether he liked the idea of it or not. And LaHune most certainly did not like the idea. But he knew Hayes. Knew trying to get rid of the guy was like trying to shake a stain out of your shorts.
Hayes was tenacious.
Hayes was relentless.
Hayes would hang like a tattoo on your backside until he got exactly what he wanted. No more. No less. But LaHune, of course, had had his merry fill of Jimmy Hayes and his paranoid bullshit. Had it right up to his left eyeball and this is what he told Hayes, not bothering to spare his feelings one iota. In his opinion, Hayes was the rotten apple in the storied barrel. The bee in the bonnet. And the cat piss in the punch.
“I’ve had my fill of you, Hayes,” LaHune told him. “I’m so sick of you I could spit. Just the sight of you roils my stomach.”
Hayes was sitting in the administrator’s office, his feet up on his desk even though he’d been warned a half dozen times to get his dirty, stinking boots off of there. “Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. LaHune? Because I’m getting this funny feeling in my gut that you just don’t like me. But maybe it’s just gas.”
LaHune sat there, really trying to be patient. Really trying to hang onto his dignity which had been chewed up, swallowed, and shit on by this man from day one. Yes, he was trying to hang onto his dignity and not come right over the desk at Hayes, that smarmy, bearded dirtball.
“No, you’re reading me fine, Hayes. Just fine. And get your goddamn feet off my desk.”
Hayes crossed one boot atop the other. “You saying it’s over between us, then? No more quickies behind the oil tanks in the generator shack?”
“You’re not funny, Hayes.”
“Sure I am. Ask anybody.”
LaHune sat there, sighing heavily. Yes, Hayes had pissed all over his dignity, his authority, and his self-respect. But that would come screaming to an end one way or another. LaHune wasn’t used to dealing with working class hardcases like Hayes. Guys like him buttered their bread on the wrong side and spawned in a different pond. Maybe he was good at his job, but he was also smartassed, disrespectful, and insubordinate.
“I’ll tell you what you are, Hayes,” LaHune finally said. “You’re reckless and childish and paranoid. A man like you has no business down here. You’re not up to it. And when spring comes… and it will come and no aliens, flying saucers, or abominable snowmen will stop it… when it comes, I’ll see to it that you never get another contract down here. And if you think I’m joking, you just fucking try me.”
“Hey, hey, easy with the profanity! Remember my virgin ears, you fucking prick.”
“That’s enough!”
Hayes pulled his feet off the desk. “No, it’s not, LaHune. And it won’t be until you pull your over-inflated head out of your ass and start seeing things as they are. We’re in trouble here and you better start accepting that. You’re in charge of this installation and the lives of these people are in your hands. And until you accept that responsibility, I’ll be riding you like a French whore. Count on it.”
LaHune said nothing. “I don’t what to hear about your paranoid fantasies, Hayes.”
“That’s all it is? Paranoia?”
“What else could it be?”
Hayes laughed thinly. “Where do they put your batteries, LaHune? I think they’re running low.” He sat back in his chair, totally frustrated, folding his arms over his chest. “Those goddamn mummies are making people go insane. You’ve got three men from the drilling tower, that Deep Drill Project, that are missing. You’ve got three dead men… what more do you need?”