Stones (Data) (39 page)

She views the reply from Ryzaard and knows no one can change his mind.

Now is not the time to resist him. Ryzaard has an uncanny sense about people. It may be the Stone that gives him insight into the thoughts and feelings of others, but whatever it is, he can tell when they are lying, when they are trying to hide information from him. If she isn’t careful, he will begin to sense her feelings of resentment and stop trusting her. And then it will all end. He has no toleration for anything other than strict, unquestioning loyalty.

She remembers what happened to the others that came before her. All of them are dead now, victims of Ryzaard’s wrath, punished for questioning his genius.

Reaching for another wine bottle, she tries to clear her mind.

He’s a good man. He knows what he’s doing. He has a plan. A glorious plan for a new world, to end the suffering of all humanity. I trust him without question.

She repeats it over and over as the warm liquid burns her throat.

T
here is burning in his eyes, and Kent bolts upright. The morning sun stretches along the floor from the window to his bed. As usual, he did not set his jax alarm and slept longer than planned. And as usual, he reminds himself that it is worth the price of being late to face the day with a well-rested mind and body.

He’s out the door in exercise pants and drops down fifty floors to pay a visit to a hot yoga studio he saw the previous night. Two hours later, he is back in the rented space with a light sweat on his brow and some groceries.

He sits down for a quick bowl of fruit.

Now that he’s taken care of his body and mind, the next priority is to secure his office from outside electromagnetic snooping, especially the routine robotic sweeps conducted by law enforcement that move through all buildings in Manhattan. He is a lawyer, not an anti-intel expert, but he has picked up a few tricks during the last twelve years. All he needs is an absorption field to soak up incoming signals, coupled with a ghost generator to spit out fake data. Any attempt to pierce the electronic perimeter will be repelled, and the snooper will get readings for a generic business office.

The message will be simple, but effective.

Nothing interesting here, move on.

Kent pulls out the Chinese Long Dun units, twelve slender tubes of white plastic, from one of the packing crates on the floor. With the latest downloads, they should be impregnable, at least for local law enforcement. He spends the rest of the morning and the early afternoon calibrating and placing them in a precise geometric pattern around the floor, walls and ceiling of his office. To anyone on the outside looking in, he’s a simple one-man law firm with a specialty in overdue account collections. Just another blood-sucking lawyer in a town full of them.

That is the easy part.

The hard part is dealing with MX Global. Like all large corporations, it has a complex of defenses to protect its own data and communications. How can one man penetrate those defenses for data harvesting? The answer is technology. Find a robust tech-solution only available to the government or the military. Get the most recent upgrades. Learn to use it. Improve it. Repeat.

But the problem is obvious. Kent’s target is in the tech warfare business already. If he’s right, it has hundreds, maybe thousands, of employees dedicated to spying on other corporations and governments. It has ample access to the latest anti-snoopware, some of it developed in-house and unknown on the outside. As one of the most profitable multinational corporations, it has a lot to protect and the will and means to protect it.

It would be difficult or impossible to win a war of technology versus technology against such an adversary.

The solution? Asymmetrical technology, something so far off the beaten path that it will be completely unexpected. A way into the core that will go undetected.

At mid-afternoon, he finds himself standing at the window and looking across a void 750 meters high and 60 meters wide separating him from the skyscraper that is the home of MX Global world headquarters. He admires its surface, a single unbroken pane of opaque glass that moves through the full-color spectrum every twenty-four hours. All his information tells him that MX SciFin has its offices on the 175th floor. To spy on it, he needs a good idea of the layout of the entire floor, but the outside skin of the building betrays no hints. A thorough search of the Mesh reveals no internal plans.

His only choice is to penetrate the building’s outer skin and construct his own interior map.

It takes the rest of the afternoon to fine-tune the thermal-imaging apparatus, a decades-old technology that few people care about anymore. He picked most of it up in Mexico from an old drug lord turned vigilante who spied on the cops who were spying on him. There are three deep-field scanners, each calibrated to read a different heat spectrum, each with upgraded stereo lenses. They sit near the window on tripods six feet apart and slowly sweep back and forth across the 175th floor of the MX Global building, providing a constant data feed to a single Turing Box processing unit. The hi-res scans will take forty-eight hours and should yield a detailed view of the interior.

It is time to work on the delivery device.

R
yzaard leans back in his chair. “So, you see, the Stones play a key role in moving history along. That seems to be their purpose, to be a catalyst. Providing a crucial advantage here and there to a lucky few, resulting in the rise and fall of empires and dynasties. Preventing stagnation.”

Keep him talking
, Matt thinks.
Wait for another opportunity.

“And causing an incredible amount of human misery and death along the way.” Matt toys with the Stone in his hand, holding it up to the light, peering into its translucent interior.

“Yes,” Ryzaard says. “But you get the idea. A handful of Stones are scattered through a world. Centers of power rise here and there, endure for a time, and then fall. History progresses to the next level. Or not. Two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes three steps back. A rather messy business.”

“But isn’t that exactly what you’re doing? Gathering power. Building an empire.” He looks down at the floor and lets his voice drop to a whisper. “More misery and death.”

For a time, Ryzaard says nothing. Silence floats between them.

“You’re right,” Ryzaard picks up his own Stone. “If they’re used the same way, the same result will follow, over and over.”

Lines spread across Matt’s forehead. “Is that what you want?” He turns and glances at the motionless figures of Jessica and Professor Yamamoto and then back to Ryzaard.

“Of course not. And it’s not what I intend to do.” He stands, takes off his jacket and starts to roll up the sleeve of his right forearm. “It may come as a surprise to you, but I have personal experience with suffering and death. More than you might imagine.” When the sleeve is rolled up to the elbow, he shows the tattoo to Matt. “I take it you have studied history. Perhaps you know where I got this.”

Six numbers in faded green ink. 159604.

Matt’s eyes open wide. “You’re a death camp survivor? Over a hundred and fifty years old? And a smoker too. Impossible.”

“It is true. Auschwitz. As for my age, the Stone keeps me strong.” Ryzaard rolls down his sleeve. “I know suffering and death. It has made me who I am.”

“Then why are you doing this?” Matt senses the anger rising in his throat again.

“To put an end to it!” As Ryzaard jumps to his feet, his voice explodes to fill the office. His eyes are bloodshot, and the same vein bulges in his neck. “To free mankind from the endless cycle of misery. To finally bring peace to the world.” His face blazes red, and his hands form into shaking fists. “Don’t you understand? That is what we can do, you and I.”

Matt looks up at the man standing before him. “Sorry. You’ve lost me.”

Ryzaard drops back into the chair. “There’s so much you don’t know. You’ve tasted only a small fraction of the power.” He leans forward, reaches out a hand and lays it on Matt’s shoulder, pulling him in closer, looking him in the eye. His voice drops to a whisper. “The Stones are most powerful when they are bound together, when the Stone Holders work as one, toward a common goal. An incredible synergy takes place. They become orders of magnitude stronger.”

Keep him talking.

“You want me to join you?” Matt says. “With all due respect, how I can trust you? How do I know this isn’t some sort of trick?” He pulls back.

“Because I’ve seen it,” Ryzaard says.

“Seen what?”

“The future. They came to me, showed it to me.”

“Who came to you?” Matt stares at Ryzaard. “The Allehonen?”

Ryzaard sits back and laughs. “No, not them.” His hand slides into the suit and pulls out the black box. “I saw them, in the beginning, just like you. But not anymore. They’ve stopped bothering me since I started seeing through their tricks and deception.” He puts his lips to the box and pulls out a cigarette. “No, I’m talking about the
Others
, not part of the Allehonen. The
Others
opened my eyes, showed me what can be achieved with the Stones.” The cigarette dances in his lips.

“What do you want me to do?”

Ryzaard relaxes back into his chair and surveys the cherry tree on the other side of the window. He seems to be aware for the first time that he has a cigarette between his lips and pulls it out to lay it on the table, unlit. “Come with me. I’ll show you what I’ve seen. Then you can decide.”

“Where?”

Ryzaard stands up and takes a step closer to Matt. “To the future.”

“A
re you sure that’s where he is?” Little John looks up from his camp chair inside the tent.

“Yes, according to the Children. They’ve been tracking him since he left.” The tall man with the aviator sunglasses stares down through mirrors.

“It looks like you were right. He’s directly across the street from MX Global’s mother ship. Maybe he really does think he can fight against the Complex. Crazy.” Little John leans into his chair and listens to the aluminum frame and cloth webbing strain against his weight, stroking his chin with his hand. “Any idea
who
exactly his target is?”

“Hard to say. He’s got an office suite on the 176th floor.”

Little John brings a hand up to his ample chin. “Interesting. He doesn’t seem like the type to select a floor at random. Any idea what might be in the upper reaches of the MX Global building just across the street?”

“Of course. It’s all right here in the Children’s Book.” The tall man fingers his jax. “Floors 100 through 141 are the old MX Financial offices, and from there on up to the 175th floor is the old MX Scientific subsidiary.” He looks up from the jax. “Of course both subs were merged into one entity, MX SciFin.”

“I know. The Mesh was ablaze with the news. Happened just a few days ago, right? Maybe that’s why our friend decided to make a move. Catch MX Global in the middle of a transition.”

“Could be.” The man takes off his sunglasses and rubs the open sockets where his eyes should be. “The new company has a new president.”