Something whirled down at the top of the dust cloud. Two large birds fluttered above, buzzards expecting carrion.
As the dust settled in the moonlight, Minerva realized the Boeing had managed to stop at the end of the rampway. Even more incredibly, it hadn’t caught fire and its landing gear was still upright.
She began to run toward it, coughing from the dirt in the air. The plane bore no markings, not even registration numbers.
What an incredible thing, she thought; if she had been more superstitious, she would have sworn it was a sign from heaven.
A stairway opened with a tart whoosh from the rear belly of the plane.
Minerva unholstered her pistol, waiting as two members of her security team joined her. Then she stepped onto the stairway, peering up at the dim red interior of the plane.
As she did, the vultures fluttered down nearby. They weren’t birds at all; they were sleek black aircraft unlike any Minerva had ever seen. About the size of small automobiles, they seemed to her some odd offspring of a mating between F/A-18’s and UFOs. A small series of LEDs blinked along their noses, the lights flashing in a pattern that seemed to imply the planes were watching her.
There was a noise behind her. Minerva spun back to the airplane, holding up her pistol. A man in a black flight suit staggered down the steps.
“Help me,” he said before collapsing in her arms.
VI
GODDESS OF WAR
Chapter 58
It was different than Zen remembered — much different. Better. He strode across the plain, a light wind brushing his face. He walked — walked! — to the edge of the mesa and looked out over the valley.
“You’re in Theta,” said Geraldo somewhere far behind him. Jeff laughed. He spread his arms, then coiled his feet. His knees felt so damn good.
He wriggled his toes for the first time in a year and a half. He knew, or thought he knew, that he wasn’t really moving them — it was a hallucination, a dreamlike, vivid memory enhanced by ANTARES.
But what if the process somehow did make it possible for him to feel his toes? ANTARES made unused portions of the brain available — maybe it could do that with nerve cells and the spinal cord as well. One of the doctors who had examined him in the hospital thought the cord wasn’t one-hundred-percent severed; he thought it might be theoretically possible for Zen to feel something, if not today, then in the future.
The day he’d heard that he’d felt so much hope. Then he’d crashed back down as other experts disagreed and it became more and more obvious he felt nothing at all.
“Jeff?”
He leapt into the air and began to fly. The light pressure he’d felt from the wind increased exponentially. Pain shot through his head.
Stay in Theta, he told himself.
The bony plates of his skull tore apart. His head spun and he fell. When Jeff opened his eyes, he was back in the ANTARES lab.
Geraldo stood in front of him.
“Good,” she said. “You were in Theta for two hours.”
“Two hours?”
The scientist smiled.
Jeff waited while the others recorded his vital signs and brain waves now that he was out of Theta. The changes in the system since he’d been involved in the program the first time were incredible. It wasn’t just the circuitry or the drugs or even Geraldo’s preference for using Eastern-inspired mental-relaxation techniques. Connecting to the ANTARES gear in the past had been painful — this was extremely pleasurable.
He could walk. He knew it.
ANTARES, or perhaps the drugs that helped enhance his connection with it, stimulated the crushed nerves in his spinal cord. The damn thing was going to make him walk again.
“Let’s work with the Flighthawks,” he suggested as Geraldo’s assistants began removing the body monitor wires.
“No, Jeff, not today. It’s not on the agenda. You said you wanted to start slow, and I agree.”
“Well let’s take another turn in Theta,” he told Geraldo. “Let’s go for it.’’
“Major. Jeffrey.”
Geraldo’s frown reminded Jeff of his grandmother’s. She glanced at her two assistants; without saying anything they left the room.
“Jeff, you know we have to go slow,” Geraldo told him after they had gone. “For one thing, Colonel Bastian hasn’t given his approval for you to devote anything beyond minimal time. And I do have other subjects. Besides, the drugs are only starting to reach potent levels in your system. They’re very new, and since you didn’t use them before, I’d like to have a good, firm baseline to use as we proceed.”
She had obviously conspired with her assistants against him, Jeff realized. Why? What was she up to?
“Is there something you want to say to me?” the scientist asked.
“In what sense?”
“In any sense.” She folded her arms in front of her chest, studying him.
“Uh, no. You staring at me for any particular reason? I got boogers coming out of my nose or something?”
Geraldo finally laughed. “No, Jeffrey, not at all. Come on. Have some tea.” She turned and walked across the large room, going through the open doorway and entering the small lounge area. Light jazz played in the background, music that Jeff had selected last week before his first attempt — failed — to get into Theta.
She’s trying to seduce me somehow, he realized as he rolled his wheelchair toward the table area. Geraldo took a bag of cinnamon-apple herbal tea and placed it in a cup as she waited for the kettle to boil. She didn’t disapprove of coffee or “real” tea, but she advised against it. As a physician, she said, she had some doubts about the long-term effects of caffeine.
“Jeff, do you remember the accident when you lost your legs?”
“I didn’t lose them,” he said. “I have legs just the same as you.”
“They’re not the same. Though I did misspeak,” she said, correcting herself.
Geraldo was a viper. She came off like a grandma-type, but beneath it she was always plotting.
“I remember the accident,” he said.
The electric teapot whistled. She poured out two cups. “Do you think about it often?” she asked, waiting as the tea steeped.
“No. At first, sure. But not now.”
“Would you say you’ve accepted it?”
“Who the hell accepts something like that?” Zen struggled to keep his anger in control. Geraldo was trying to provoke him. “The thing is, see, you don’t accept it. Not really. Never. But you, it’s like you move to the next problem. A pilot, see — a pilot knows there’s a checklist.”
“Losing your ability to walk isn’t the same as missing an item on the checklist.” She stopped stirring the tea for a moment. “Do you think you’ll ever walk again?”
The bitch must have some way of reading his mind while he was hooked up into the machine.
They’d always said that was impossible. They’d claimed they could only see waves.
But hell, if it meant walking again, he’d put up with it. He could put up with anything.
“The doctors have been pretty much universal that I won’t walk. And, yes, it seems pretty evident, don’t you think?” He reached for his tea. He smelled it, could tell from the steam rising that it would be too hot, held it in his lap. “Everyone is in agreement that walking isn’t in my future.”
“But you don’t agree.”
Zen laughed. He really did like her; she really did remind him of his grandmother. “The fact of the matter is, Doc, even if I thought I could walk — hell, if I wished to right now — it wouldn’t change a damn thing. I’d still fall flat on my face and you’d laugh your ass off.”