The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (26 page)

[161]
Takagi looked extremely uneasy about this prospect. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” he hedged. “Are you sure you don’t need a break first?” He offered this feeble alternative so hopefully that it was almost painful to watch. “There’s a pretty good cafeteria on Level Three. Maybe we should go there before we hit anyplace else?”

Roberta’s stomach rumbled treacherously, reminding her that it was past lunchtime already, but she stood by her guns. “No more stalling, Walter, unless there’s something you’re really trying to hide.”

“Of course not!” His denial came out shriller than intended, and he chewed nervously on his bottom lip, looking more and more flustered. He shrugged and flashed Roberta a sheepish grin, in a vain attempt to postpone the inevitable. “It’s just that, well, maybe we should check with Dr. Kaur first?”

In a contest of wills, the affable and ingratiating young scientist didn’t stand a chance, not against a woman who’d been known to hold her own against time-traveling Starfleet officers.
Isis hardly has a monopoly on stubbornness,
Roberta thought, knowing that Takagi was bound to cave if she just kept the pressure up. “Look, you’re supposed to show me around, right? How am I supposed to feel like a full-fledged member of the Chrysalis team if you’re excluding me from vital data already?” She stared back at him resolutely, her arms crossed upon her chest, making it clear she wasn’t going to budge an inch until she got what she wanted. “For pete’s sakes, Walter, I’m a scientist, not a tourist. You don’t need to give me the cleaned-up, rose-colored version of the project.”

“Okay, okay,” he surrendered at last. “I don’t suppose you want to take your cat home first?” Roberta just scowled at him in silence. “No, I didn’t think so.” Frowning, his head drooping miserably, the cowed biochemist changed course at the very next intersection, leading Roberta down yet another lengthy corridor past a series of numbered doorways. Unlike the attractively decorated reception areas where she had met with Sarina Kaur, this section of Chrysalis rapidly took on a more utilitarian, institutional feel: stark white walls, scuffed floor tiles, and closed gray doors with small glass windows installed at eye level. “There’s an elevator just around the corner,” Takagi promised as Roberta shuffled after him, Isis draped over her shoulder.

[162]
Suddenly, just when Roberta thought she had the situation under control, the bored and seemingly boneless cat upon her shoulder came to life. Letting out a high-pitched yowl right next to the young woman’s unprotected left ear, Isis squirmed free of her human partner’s grasp and launched herself off Roberta with enough force to send the cat soaring into the air and onto the floor several feet behind the two startled humans. Isis hit the ground running, making kitty tracks down the hallway.

“Hey!” Roberta cried out indignantly. The recoil of Isis’s explosive exit had left painful scratches in her shoulder, but she was more worried about the cat’s unexpected behavior, not to mention Takagi’s reaction to the animal’s headlong flight.
What in the world has possessed that gosh-darned cat this time?
she wondered frantically as she took off in pursuit of her uncommunicative feline accomplice, taking only a second to give Takagi an embarrassed shrug and abashed expression before racing after Isis. “Wait a second! Come back here, you infuriating feline freak!” she hollered even as she heard Takagi’s sneakers pounding the floor behind her.
I swear,
she fumed,
that cat loves to make me look stupid!

If Isis heard Roberta’s cries, the cat (as usual) paid them no heed. Reaching an intersection at the opposite end of the corridor, she made an almost mathematically exact ninety-degree turn to the right. Trying futilely to catch up with the running cat, Roberta watched a sinuous black tail disappear around the corner, heading for only Isis knew where.
That tears it,
Roberta vowed angrily, heart pounding, legs pumping.
I don’t care what Seven says. That purring prima donna is getting a leash.

“Don’t let her get away!” Takagi shouted as he struggled to keep up with her. He sounded more agitated than Roberta would have liked, no doubt envisioning the berserk animal getting into one of the labs and ruining some vital and extraordinarily delicate experiment. She could hear him breathing hard, and guessed that this was probably more physical exercise than the nerdy scientist had undergone in years.

Roberta, who was in a lot better shape, thanks to an exceptionally strenuous lifestyle, quickly left Takagi far behind. She rounded the corner at top speed, gaining steadily on Isis, who appeared to be
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head
ing for a closed gray door at the far end of this new corridor. “No way,” Roberta muttered under her breath. “You’re not getting away from me this time.” Her outstretched arms reached out for the fleeing feline, ready to yank Isis back by her tail if necessary, but not before Isis slammed her front paws against the door hard enough to sending it swinging inward. The determined cat disappeared into the room beyond, with Roberta chasing so close behind her that she barged through the open portal before the door had a chance to swing back into place.

Roberta skidded to a stop just inside the room Isis had invaded. “Omigosh!” she gasped out loud, transfixed by what she discovered on the other side of the seemingly innocuous door.

She had found Gary Seven at last: locked inside a cage like an animal at the zoo. He looked like hell, too, and far from his usual immaculate appearance. His disordered hair fell over his eyes, while his shirt and trousers were rumpled and soaked with sweat. There was blood on his lips and an alarming brown stain on his shirtfront. He squatted inside the cage, sagging against the metal bars with both arms stretched uncomfortably over his head. Stunned by the shocking sight, it took Roberta a moment or two to realize that his wrists were handcuffed to the cage.

Seven was alone in the cell, but not in the room, which Roberta now saw was stocked with a wide variety of caged animals, including a full-grown tiger, which growled and bared its fangs menacingly. Sarina Kaur knelt outside the cage, along with three guards and a dumpy-looking, middle-aged man Roberta had never seen before. They all stared at Roberta in surprise, obviously caught off guard by her abrupt arrival. Kaur dropped a ceramic mug, which shattered upon the concrete floor. The tiger’s snarls were joined by the clamor of yapping dogs and shrieking apes, excited by the sight and smell of Isis and her human pursuer. The din raised by the animals rapidly reached ear-punishing proportions.

Under the circumstances, Roberta felt free to act almost as thunderstruck as she felt. “What in the world?” she exclaimed, a hand over her mouth in horror. “I don’t understand.”

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Two of the guards stepped forward, looking as though they intended to escort her physically from the premises, but Kaur waved them back with a curt gesture. The startled director regained her composure with impressive speed. “I’m sorry you had to see this, Dr. Neary,” she said coolly, rising up from her kneeling position beside the cage. Despite her unruffled demeanor, Roberta heard a definite edge of frustration in Kaur’s voice.
What exactly did I interrupt just now?
Roberta wondered.

Isis, standing her ground defiantly on the floor between the two women, hissed angrily at Kaur. The cat’s ebony hackles bristled all along her spine, so that she looked nearly as ferocious as the irate tiger caged only a few feet away. Moving quickly, before the justifiably enraged feline could blow their cover for good, Roberta darted forward and snatched Isis up off the floor. She held on to the tense pussycat as firmly as she could while stammering awkwardly. “Um, I was looking for my cat,” she explained.

“So I see,” Kaur said dryly Her companion, the pudgy white guy, looked Roberta over dubiously.

“But who is that man?” she protested in a suitably appalled fashion. In her arms, Isis gave up trying to escape Roberta’s grip and contented herself with merely glaring at Kaur instead. “What are you doing to him?”

“This
spy
,”
Kaur began, emphasizing the epithet, “attempted to infiltrate Chrysalis, for purposes we are now striving to determine.” She gestured around her, calling Roberta’s attention to the veritable menagerie of lab animals on display. “As you can see from our surroundings, we’re hardly in the habit of holding human beings against their will. This veterinary storage area is the closest thing Chrysalis has to an actual prison, I assure you.”

Kaur raised her voice, so as to be heard over the squawking menagerie, but neither her nor Roberta’s words elicited any response from the caged prisoner, whose head remained drooped and silent, his chin resting mutely upon his chest. Roberta hoped that her consistently crafty boss was only pretending not to acknowledge her presence, for the sake of the mission, and that he was not really as wiped out as he appeared, but it was impossible to tell for sure.
I haven’t seen
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him look this bad,
she thought,
since that time his life force got sucked into the Fourth Dimension.

She fingered the servo in her pocket, strongly tempted to try to liberate Seven right there and then. The odds were against her, though. Three guards, Kaur, the Brit; even counting on a little assistance from Isis, she was still outnumbered nearly three to one. With surprise on her side, she might be able to zap one, maybe two, of the guards before Kaur and the others realized what was happening, but somebody was bound to disarm her before she could tranquilize the whole crew, meaning she would have blown her cover for nothing.
Now is no time to get servo-happy,
she concluded reluctantly, hating to leave Seven in such an awful state for at least a little while more, but not seeing any other alternative.
I’m good, but I’m no Quick Draw McGraw.

Behind Roberta, the door swung open once more, admitting a disheveled Takagi. “Did you catch it?” he blurted, panting, only to shut up in a jiffy once his gaping eyes absorbed the bizarre tableau he had just intruded upon. “Dr. Kaur!” he ventured a moment later, once he got over his initial dumbfoundment. “I’m sorry, I never intended—”

“That’s all right, Walter,” Kaur interrupted. “We’ll speak of this later.” She glanced back at the mute and pathetic specimen in the cage and sighed regretfully. “I must say, though: your timing could not have been worse.”

Watching the embarrassed and out-of-breath scientist, Roberta wondered once more what exactly Kaur had been up to before she’d burst onto the scene, then tried to assess just how taken aback Takagi was by the ghastly scene Isis had led them to. Was he genuinely shaken by Seven’s harsh treatment, or merely appalled that Ronnie Neary had accidentally stumbled onto the truth?
What did he know and when did he know it?
she thought.
To borrow an ever-so-topical phrase.

She wished she could be sure that the friendly Takagi had been kept in the dark about Seven’s imprisonment and obvious abuse, but knew that she had to assume the worst. If nothing else, Takagi’s arrival meant that she was now even more outnumbered than before. “How long has he been a captive here?” she asked Kaur, looking anxiously at her supervisor’s slumped figure.

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“A day at most,” Kaur insisted soothingly. “In fact, we suspect he stowed away on the very same jet that brought you to India.”

“He must have done so,” the other scientist said, revealing an upper-crust British accent. “How else could he have gotten from New York to Delhi in so short a time?”

Guess you’ve never heard of the Blue Smoke Express,
Roberta thought. After all she had seen at Chrysalis, it came as a comfort to recall that she and Seven still had a technological edge over all these assembled mad geniuses. “New York?” she asked innocently.

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Kaur answered, deflecting her query. “What’s important is that our uninvited visitor has clearly gone to great lengths to penetrate our security.” She took Roberta gently by the arm and attempted to guide the younger woman toward the exit to the storeroom. “I know that what you’ve seen appears quite barbaric and upsetting, but you must understand that it is also absolutely necessary. There are forces in the world that would readily undo everything we’ve accomplished, and, more importantly, everything we hope to achieve, so we have no choice but to defend ourselves against spies and saboteurs like this man.” She looked back at Seven, more in sorrow than in anger, before returning her attention to Roberta. “To surpass nature, Veronica, one must sometimes be as ruthless as nature. This is a cogent truth that you will come to understand as you become more familiar with our work.”

Roberta was appalled to see both Takagi and the English scientist nodding in agreement. “I don’t know,” she said, feigning uncertainty while resisting Kaur’s efforts to ease her out of the room.
I need to play this scene carefully,
she realized, striving to strike the perfect balance between conscience and complicity:
protest too little about Kaur’s draconian methods and the shrewd director might get suspicious, object too much and I might end up in the cage with Seven.
“You can’t just turn him over to the authorities, I guess,” Roberta equivocated in what she prayed was a convincing manner, “but what’s going to happen to him in the long run?”

Kaur did not answer the question directly. “Don’t worry,” she told Roberta. “Our guest is bound to cooperate with us eventually. One way or another.”

THE PERSONAL QUARTERS
Chrysalis had provided for Roberta were cozy enough. Peach-colored walls brightened the room, while fresh flower blossoms, no doubt garnered from some well-lit subterranean garden, floated in a porcelain dish upon the bedstand, which looked hand-carved from rich brown teak. The very comfortable bed had been neatly made in her absence, suggesting that the project employed maids as well as Nobel Prize-winning geneticists. In short, it was a nice place to visit, but Roberta wasn’t planning on staying much longer.