When Bonasero walked onto the balcony he saw the world differently. Throngs of people lined up so thickly he could barely see an inch of space between them, the cheers maddening. And somewhere, he knew, Cardinal Giuseppe Angullo was entirely livid with the outcome.
As he waved to the crowd, Bonasero knew he was now within Angullo’s crosshairs.
The day was done and the ceremonies were over.
As the moon traversed the sky, Cardinal Giuseppe Angullo stood before the open window of his dormitory room at the Domus Sanctæ Marthæ watching its slow trajectory. His mind, however, was detached from the reality of actually watching the moon as different images played within his mind’s eye.
He had been so sure that his campaigning on the basis that he was a man ‘bathed in old tradition,’ would garner the guaranteed ballots needed. But he was wrong. Cardinal Bonasero Vessucci won, taking the post he coveted to the point of pushing Pope Gregory over the rail because it was God’s will to have him pave the way to the papal alter, for which he was to preside over. Now with Gregory gone and Pius the Fourteenth standing in the way, Angullo could feel something alien and familiar at the same time. It was the feeling of losing control, which was buffered with the need to do something about it in order to bring that back under his rule. Unknowingly, as he considered this, he clenched his right hand slowly into a tight fist as if grabbing something tight within his hold, the courses of blue veins tightening against translucent flesh as the knuckles of his bony fingers turned white.
Control was vacating him.
And he needed to curb this loss, this emptiness.
Stepping away from the window, the moon traversing overhead at a glacially slow pace, Cardinal Giuseppe Angullo began to outline a course of action against Bonasero Vessucci. He would have to be clever and sly. And he would succeed believing that there was a solution for everything.
Standing before the bathroom mirror, Angullo studied his reflection.
For an odd moment words punctuated his thoughts, words he had never considered in the past or why he thought them. They simply came: Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe.
He examined his features further without emotion or movement. He stood as still as a Grecian statue, looking with impenetrable onyx eyes that never wavered in their sockets.
Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe.
Finally, he traced his fingertips over his image.
Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe.
Yes, Bonasero, he thought. There’s a solution for everything.
Deep down he began to feel something very familiar.
Control was beginning to seep back into his soul, something that was black and twisted, something very ugly.
In the mirror his reflection took in a deep breath and exhaled in an equally long sigh. Yes, Bonasero, there is a solution for everything.
Behind him the moon continued to move in its guided path, albeit with the slowness of a bad dream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Leonid Sakharov did little to acknowledge the techs or Aryeh Levine. Instead, the old man focused more on the electromechanical components and hardware, showing more adulation toward the molecular assembler, the infrasonic equipment, probe microscopes and the vacuum environments created to avoid the scattering of bots. He catered lovingly to the most advanced Electron Optical System available, rather than the living tissue that surrounded him. This was his entire world — the world of science. Everything else was immaterial.
While Sakharov seemed oblivious to those around him, he walked with more spring to his gait. And Levine couldn’t help notice that the old man was sweating profusely while his hands shook with all the symptoms of a neurological disease. The old man was drying out, he thought, the spirit of his mind overcoming his constant need for alcohol.
As the lab techs worked the consoles imputing data, Levine stood back, arms crossed, watching the monitors and finding with great fascination the simulations being cast on the high-definition wall-screen. Chains of molecular nanobots were replicating and self-sustaining themselves, the program giving them the intelligence to learn from experience as they evolved, essentially giving them life.
As Levine watched the chains move in serpentine fashion on the screen, the glass door opened and al-Ghazi entered the lab with al-Sherrod behind him. Two Quds soldiers followed in their wake.
Al-Ghazi smiled when he saw Levine. He was wearing camouflaged attire and a black turban. “How are you, my friend?”
Levine greeted him, feigning a smile that looked uniquely genuine. “It’s good to see you. I had no idea that you were coming.”
“I’m here on a last minute invitation, Umar. I understand that the good doctor has performed all that was required of him, and that we are ready to proceed with the testing on live subjects.”
This was the first time Levine heard anything about this, al-Sherrod obviously keeping him in the dark.
“Testing?”
Al-Ghazi sported his dazzling white teeth in the form of a broader smile. “It appears that the good Dr. Sakharov is ahead of schedule and is excited to show us his program regarding the nanobots.”
Levine looked at the doctor, who was tapping instructions into the keyboard, noting that Sakharov chose to ignore those in the lab by remaining oblivious and cognizant of their presence at the same time.
“Doctor.” Al-Ghazi stepped toward the scientists with his hands clasped behind the small of his back. “This must be an exciting moment for you, yes?”
The doctor gave a cursory nod, nothing else, not even a flicker of emotion.
“Then let’s get started, shall we?”
One of the two techs went into one of the vacuum environments, a glassed-in room, with a canister the size of a liter bottle. It was cylindrical, the container metallic with a mirror polish. On top was a screen cap, an opening. He placed it gingerly on the table and left the room as the second tech brought a goat into the chamber tethered to a leash, the animal bleating. While removing the tie from the goat’s collar, the first tech returned with a cluster of indigent plants and placed them on the table beyond the goat’s reach. Once done they exited the room, the door closing behind them with the subsequent whisper of the seal tightening that made the room inescapable for anything living — including a single cell, virus, bacteria or nanobot.
“The canister, Doctor, will be larger for our purposes when the time comes, yes?”
“No,” he answered crustily. “The nanobots have been programmed to reproduce exponentially. But every succeeding life will have a half-time, which means that they will eventually shrink themselves to a time limit where they can do no harm. For the purposes of this experiment the bots have been given a primary lifespan of one minute, its replicated life form will be half that, thirty seconds; the third chain, fifteen seconds; and so forth until their span shrinks down to a point where they don’t exist long enough to do further damage. They will always exist since a trillionth of a trillionth of a nanosecond is still a measure of time, but too little to cause destruction. It’s a safety measure to keep the nanobots from creating Drexler’s theory of grey goo.”