"Correct again. None of us was happy about Mr. Price's death, Doctor — but he'd decided to try to blackmail us. Then, when Larissa and Jonah went to warn him against such a course, he became violent. Actually knocked Jonah against a wall, and would have done worse, but — well, Larissa …"
All the pieces surrounding the mysteries of John Price's and Max's deaths were falling into place — but none of them explained why in the world Tressalian was doing any of this, and so I asked him straight out once more.
"Oh, I have my reasons," he said, sighing again; but the sound was heavier this time, and as it came, Tressalian suddenly winced. "I have my—" His eyes opened wide as the apparent attack of pain seemed to rapidly worsen. "You must — forgive me, Doctor. I seem to—" Suddenly he clutched his head and pitched over with a muted cry, bringing Colonel Slayton to his side even before I could offer any help. "I — think, Colonel," Tressalian said through gritted teeth, "that I'd better rest for a bit. If our guest will excuse me…" His breathing became labored as Slayton pulled one of his arms around his own neck and lifted his disabled body as if it were weightless. "I'm sorry, Doctor, I know you want answers," Tressalian gasped. "Dinner — we'll talk at dinner. For now — remember—" He brought his head up and, through his agony, gave me a look that I will never forget: it was full of all the mischievousness of his sister but at the same time conveyed a dark, terrible urgency. "Remember," he went on, "what you saw on the door…" And with that, Colonel Slayton whisked him away.
Tressalian's sudden attack, combined with the images on the screens at the table as well as the ongoing combat outside — not to mention the fact that I was now alone — served to turn my growing anxiety into the beginnings of what I feared would soon become panic. I tried to calm myself by focusing on what Tressalian had said, by forcing my mind to delve deeper into the Latin I'd learned so long ago in order to come up with an answer to the riddle of the legend on the door.
I don't know how long I stood there, watching Larissa decimate our pursuers and mumbling to myself like an idiot. "Mundus vult decipi," I repeated over and over, as bullets streamed around the ship. "Mundus, 'the world,' yes. Vult, 'wills'? 'Wants'? Something—"
And then I froze at the sudden sound of a pulsing alarm that echoed throughout the vesseclass="underline" not a harsh tone, exactly, but enough to let me know that something big was happening. I scanned the horizon in all directions, trying to catch sight of what might be prompting it — and looking forward, I got my answer:
The wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean had appeared on the horizon.
I spun around when a voice I recognized as Julien Fouché's began to speak over some sort of shipwide address system:
"Thirty seconds until system transfer… twenty-five… twenty…"
We showed no sign of slowing our approach to the water as Fouché continued to count down, in five-second increments, to "system transfer," whatever that might be; and then I experienced a startling chill as, in the midst of my mounting fear, I succeeded in translating the legend.
"Mundus vult decipi," I said aloud. " 'The world wants to be deceived'!"
Not yet realizing the potentially threatening connotation in the words, I felt a sense of triumph — one that quickly reverted to terror as the ship sped over the shoreline and dived into the open sea beyond.
CHAPTER 12
As soon as the vessel was completely submerged, a series of powerful lights on her hull's exterior came on, offering an extraordinary view of the coastal Atlantic depths as we turned north along the line of the continent. What I saw outside, however, was not an idyllic scene of aquatic wonder such as childhood stories might have led me to expect but rather a horrifying expanse of brown water filled with human and animal waste, all of it endlessly roiled but never cleansed by the steady pulse of the offshore currents. Sometimes the trapped filth was identifiable — great stretches of medical waste and the detritus of livestock husbandry were particularly disturbing — but for the most part it all blended into one indistinguishable mass that I, left alone to watch and ponder, found utterly disheartening. I knew, of course, that in the years since the '07 financial crash, environmental cleanups had been deemed unaffordable luxuries in most countries; nevertheless, to be presented with this sort of firsthand evidence was shocking.
After what seemed a very long time, I was escorted to my quarters not by Larissa Tressalian (who I assumed had joined her mysteriously stricken brother) but by the curious little man called Dr. Leon Tarbell. Alone among the crew, the "documents expert" Tarbell was unknown to me by either sight or reputation, a fact that made him all the more intriguing; for he was certainly treated as an equal by the others and behaved entirely as such.
"Do you enjoy the decor?" Tarbell asked pleasantly as we walked down the carved wooden staircase to the ship's lower deck. His accent was hard to pinpoint, and his manner was equally ambiguous: though clearly friendly, he seemed to enjoy my lingering uneasiness. He pulled out a pack of the new, smokeless, and supposedly "safe" cigarettes that the American tobacco industry, after a generation of pressure and lawsuits by a combination of East Asian nations, had recently started to market and offered me one. I declined, and as he lit his he said, "It is not to my taste, this particular area. I prefer the modern. Minimalist, athletic — sexual."
"Some might simply say 'ugly,' " I offered quickly, before bothering to consider whether Tarbell might take offense.
But he only laughed. "True! It can be very ugly. But ugly" — his fiery eyes grew even more agitated—"with sexuality!"
I would soon learn that the entire world, to Tarbell, was divided between people and things that were not "sexual" and those that had "sexuality!" Though a simple formula, it seemed as valid as any and a good deal more amusing than most, given the way he made his pronouncements with near-comic vigor; so I laughed along with him, relaxing a bit as we arrived at the door to what were to be my quarters.
Inside was a small stateroom that recalled images I'd seen of early-twentieth-century transatlantic ocean liners. The temperature was well above the forty-five degrees of the corridor, creating a welcoming atmosphere that was complemented by more wood paneling, a small, porthole-shaped transparent section in the hull that could be chemically tinted at the touch of a nearby button, finely crafted glass light shades, and marble-and-ceramic sanitary facilities that appeared to be genuine antiques. It was even more unlike the very high tech nose area of the ship than were the corridors, a fact that caused my confusion to spike once more.
"Past and future, side by side," Tarbell said with a nod. "You could say that time does not exist aboard this vessel. Such is Malcolm!"
I turned my thoughts to my host. "Is he all right?"
Tarbell nodded confidently. "They pass, these attacks."
"But what's wrong with him?"
"I am not entirely comfortable speaking about such things. Perhaps he will tell you. Or perhaps Larissa." Tarbell gave me his demonic grin. "She has fastened her eye on you — lucky man. A woman of rare brilliance, beauty — and sexuality!" As he barked the last word, he clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Yes, you will join our little company, I think!" Turning to go he added, "You will find everything you need — even fresh clothes. We dine forward, in one-half hour. Malcolm tells me that you enjoy vodka — come soon, and I will share my private stock!"
It was evident that these people already knew almost everything about me, from the size and preferred style of my clothing (there was nothing in the closet of my quarters that I could not or would not have worn) to my taste in liquor. I didn't wonder how they had attained such knowledge, any more than I wondered about the cost of building the ship on which we were traveling. Malcolm and Larissa Tressalian's father, Stephen, whose satellite system had made the modern Internet possible, had been one of the wealthiest men in the world. He'd also been a leader of the group of information technocrats who, during the '07 crisis, had put up their collective private and corporate assets to guarantee the solvency of the American government, just as the financier J. P. Morgan and his associates had done a century earlier. Tressalian and his allies had then used this timely support as a club with which to beat Washington into dropping any and all attempts to regulate information commerce, thus dealing the deathblow to, among other things, the already wounded concept of personal privacy.