Stones (Data) (13 page)

Then he catches himself going down the same path of fear and paralyzing worry. To counter it, he repeats a mantra as he watches the airport recede in his rear-view mirror.

Matt will remember everything. He will be smart. He will be safe.

R
yzaard is stretched out on the red sofa lost in dreams. Violins from a Gorski opera whisper through the dark, carried on a delicate fragrance of fresh marzipan.

He is eight years old again. The sweet smell of newly mown hay hangs in the air. Gripping a bat, he swings hard at the pitch, feeling the joy of wood connecting with the ball and sending it deep into center field. Through the roar of cheering children, he hears the high-pitched tones of his mother’s voice calling him to dinner. Without running the bases, he drops the bat and jogs across the street to the family home, bursting through the open door and taking in the aroma of his mother’s pastries and the music of his father’s favorite record playing in the next room.

The grandfather clock on the opposite wall strikes 12:00 noon. A full minute passes before the blackness drains out of the windows, giving way to a brilliant summer day in Midtown Manhattan.

His eyes float open, and he sits up on the sofa.

Walking to the window, the opera music and the smell of pastries lingers in his mind like a sweet aftertaste.

The tweed jacket slips off the back of the chair and finds its way onto his shoulders. Moving past the desk, his fingers scoop up the blue Stone at the feet of Zeus. The office door glides open, and he walks into the stainless-steel corridor connecting to the lab at the opposite end. He has the immediate sense that something has changed. He stops and turns back.

A black metal plate hangs on the wall. He reads the words on its glossy surface.

Mikal Ryzaard, President and CEO, MX SciFin Corporation.

He recognizes it. The metal plate has languished at the bottom of his desk drawer for the last two years while he perfected his plans for MX Global. No doubt Alexa put it on the wall outside his office while he slept.

It is only fitting. As president and chief executive officer, he has no superiors and answers to no one.

At the far end of the corridor, the white door glides out of his way, and he walks into the lab without any break in stride through a transparent tube to the center of the floor where there is a single large mahogany table. Seven empty chairs hug its circular edge. Shaped like a sphere with ceiling and walls made of glass, the meeting area is sealed off from the chaos that rules the rest of the lab.

Ryzaard stands in the silent bubble, hands behind his back, and surveys the bustle of activity in every direction. The outer area is divided into five pie-shaped compartments, each a collection of tables, chairs, bluescreens, slates, holo projectors, cluster systems, electronic equipment and young lab assistants in ivory coats. Except for splashes of color from the screens on the walls or suspended on long arms above the desks, it’s all glass and chrome, silver and white.

The faces of five young people, one from each of the lab subsections, look up from their work in the direction of Ryzaard. Carefully selected and mentored by him for their exceptional abilities, they look like children catching a glimpse of the father they worship.

They drop their work, pick up their slates and move to the central conference room. Oblong holes slide open in the glass bubble as they enter.

Ryzaard greets the young hotshots with a smile as they take seats at the table and turn their attention to him.

After all are seated, Alexa enters from the corridor, dressed in black leather pants and a top, and stands to the right of Ryzaard.

His gaze travels the circumference of the table, locking eyes one by one with the young prodigies. Fatherly concern settles on his face as he muses about the care with which he has found, selected, nurtured and trained this team of gifted youth.

The fingers of his right hand rest on the table, wrapped around a blue object familiar to them all.

“My friends, you’ve all heard the news.” He works hard to suppress a beaming smile. “Scientific and Financial have been merged into one, and both are ours. We’re walking away with the core assets of the corporation. No more begging for spare cluster systems. No more written requests, budget applications and endless meetings with idiot bosses. And one more thing.” He looks over at Alexa. “Effective immediately, I’m making each of you an Executive Vice President of MX SciFin.”

From the looks on their faces, the six young people can barely conceal their elation.

“You’re an elite group. But never forget
this
is the source of everything we’ve achieved.” Ryzaard lifts his right hand off the table and drops the blue Stone. It makes an audible thud and sticks to the table like a magnet on metal.

All eyes focus down on it, and then back up to Ryzaard.

He bends forward and leans on his palms. “Most people live out their lives in utter obscurity. Their deaths pass without notice or meaning. Once in a generation, a rare person makes a difference in their community. Once in a hundred years, fate grants a lucky individual a chance to alter the course of a nation. Once in the lifetime of a planet, a precious gift is bestowed on a select few to remake the world in a new image. You are that select few, and that gift is now yours. It starts here and now.”

Ryzaard pauses to measure the impact of his words. His eyes move around the table.

The young people stand erect, working to suppress large smiles, trying to appear somber and serious.

His fingers drop to a control panel in the table. The glass sphere encircling the room fills with color until it is a sky-blue opaque wall. The surrounding lab seems to fall away and fade from view. The seven of them are alone in an intimate setting.

“I scoured the planet for each of you, poring over the Mesh, reviewing test scores, aptitude profiles, genetic algorithms, rap sheets. Some of you I pulled from abject poverty. Some of you are children of privilege. Like the fingers on a hand, you work together with seamless efficiency. I know your hearts. I know you want what I want. To bring Paradise back to the world. Together, with the power of the Stones, we
will
do exactly that.”

Ryzaard stops. Across the table, a Tongan boy in his late teens opens his mouth wide and yawns. His eyes are red with lack of sleep.

“You’ve worked hard for months, with only a partial knowledge of the details of this project.” Ryzaard’s fingers wrap around the Stone and hold it up to the ceiling lights as if appraising the value of a rare diamond. “This Stone is at the center of all we do, and you know bits and pieces about it. You’ve been patient with me. I know you want to know more. Today I’ll give you the full picture.”

In his mind, Ryzaard reviews the unique histories of each of the young people. Faces and names flash through his mind.

Without warning, he lobs the Stone into the air and across the table to Elsa Bergman, a Nordic woman with short blonde hair, intense blue eyes and a genius for stock trading. The daughter of a Swedish tungsten billionaire put out of business by MX Global, she is the only surviving child of her father’s plan to kill himself and take the rest of the family with him.

Bolting upright, she opens her fingers to catch the Stone. Before she can get to it, another hand shoots out from the right and snatches it away.

“Good catch, Jerek Grey,” Ryzaard says. “I’m sorry that none of you have been allowed to examine the Stone directly until now. I think it’s time you all get to know it a little better. Feel free to handle it and pass it around.”

Jerek is a lanky young man in his early twenties with straight red hair, residual acne and the honor of becoming a full professor of physics at Harvard while still in his teens. He runs his fingers over the surface of the Stone with reverential awe and then slips a tiny cone-shaped device off a chain around his neck.

“Interesting.” Jerek stares into a holo screen that jumps above the apex of the cone. “No molecular structure, no atomic signatures.” The fingers of one hand play across the cone’s surface while the other turns the Stone over and over. “It’s not made of any known material.
Other-worldly,
in the true sense of the word. But it’s not entirely unknowable. I see it generates a field in response to electro-magnetic stimuli.” He swivels in the chair, putting Elsa Bergman squarely to his back, and then tosses the Stone on a high arc in the general direction of her forehead.

She grabs the Stone before it makes contact and passes it back and forth between her hands as if trying to determine its weight and internal contents.

“Looks like a petrified claw from an oversized bear.” She ignores Kalani Maki, the Tongan boy, pulling on her right shoulder to get a closer look.

Kalani is a self-taught Mesh-runner from the Independent Republic of Tonga who never finished high school and bristles at the idea of wearing shoes. A long wooden club with embedded shark teeth leans against the table at his side. He likes to warn people that he was raised to be a warrior, and he always keeps a dagger or spear within easy reach.

Eleven months ago, he was caught downloading military encryption-ware from the MX Global Priority-One data matrix with nothing but a discarded slate and a homemade satellite connection. Management wanted to turn him over to INTERPOL for prosecution. Ryzaard offered him a job instead, dropping the charges and flying him to New York. He has an uncanny ability to navigate the nether regions of the Mesh just like his ancestors sailed the open ocean in outrigger canoes centuries before, finding new islands with nothing to guide them but luck and intuition.

He stares at Elsa with open hands, white palms up, waiting for her to toss it to him. Never one to pass up an opportunity to torment the island boy, she launches the Stone up to the ceiling with just enough arc to come down on his head, if he waits.

But he doesn’t.

Grabbing the club in one hand and planting a bare foot on the table, he shoots out of his chair and seizes the Stone inches away from the ceiling. He comes back down and lands softly in a crouching position, guarding his prize like it’s the last piece of meat in an army of starving zombies. His black hand brings the Stone close to his nose for a careful sniff. Then he looks up at Elsa Bergman, smiles broadly and licks it from end to end with his bright red tongue.

“Not rock, metal or plastic.” Kalani has the hint of a frown. “No taste at all.”

The boy’s manic actions cause a fit of laughing to roll over the others. Ryzaard sits down and leans back in his chair, stroking his chin and observing the reactions of his team to their first tactile encounter with the Stone.

He motions for Kalani to pass the Stone on to Li Jing-wei on his right.

With her small stature, round face, tiny nose, long black hair and huge dark eyes, the data-flow specialist born in Shanghai is the exact opposite of Elsa Bergman. Raised in London, Jing-wei is the only child of a high-ranking family descended from the legendary Mao Zedong. While still a teenager, Jing-wei’s father was killed by secret assassins from China after it was discovered that he was passing secrets to the United States from the Red Army’s hi-tech encryption labs. She escaped with her mother to New York City and poured herself into her studies.

Kalani pretends to toss the Stone high in the air as Elsa and Jerek had done, but then, kneeling and bowing deeply, he offers it up on outstretched palms to Jing-wei.

With hesitation, she pulls out a red handkerchief and accepts the Stone, still wet from Kalani’s tongue, wiping and polishing its surface. Then she reaches into the pocket of her lab coat and takes out a jeweler’s loupe to examine it as if grading a diamond.

Her lips move and mutter soft words in Chinese.

Ryzaard stands up. “Can you see anything of interest on the Stone, Jing-wei?”

Everyone turns their attention to her large eyes.

She looks up and blushes at being the focus of attention. “Incredible. It has no micro markings on its surface. It’s entirely smooth, unbroken, perfect.” Her eyes drop back down to the blue shape in her hand. “Very rare for a rock of this size and shape. It must be synthetic, manufactured.” With a subtle bow, she hands the Stone to Diego Lopez, the twenty-something mathematical prodigy from Chile with curly black hair and matching eyelashes sitting on her right.

“Yes, very perceptive, Jing-wei,” Ryzaard says. “You may be right, although I’ve never been able to discover the origin of the Stone.”

Diego holds the Stone like one would a dagger, the large end grasped in his fist and the point sticking out past his little finger. Rotating his wrist, he makes a few playful thrusting motions with it, and then deposits it into Ryzaard’s outstretched hand.

Ryzaard leans back in his chair, satisfied that the Stone has traveled full circle around the table, giving all a chance to touch and feel it. He brings it up to his eyes. “Ancient artifacts have always been a matter of intense interest to me. Especially those with sacred or magical powers.” His voice drops to almost a whisper. “All cultures have legends about holy stones. The Jews have their
Urim
and
Thummin
. Christianity has its white stone in the Book of Revelation. The Japanese have the sacred
Magatama
stone, said to have come from the Sun Goddess herself, and which is still rumored to pass from emperor to emperor. The list goes on.”