7th Son, page 12
—that Caine pretended not to hear. He kept waving and nodding as the Secret Service agents and his aides walked up the hospital’s gray steps. Caine could spin with the best of them. The message was clear: the vice president was going to a civilian hospital—not a secret facility—for his physical examination. Yes, public places were safe in this time of murder and terror.
This footage would undoubtedly be followed by clips of the press conference after his examination, the doc giving a bland synopsis of Caine’s good health, then Caine delivering his sound bite: I feel right as rain, and ready to help President Hale and this great nation in any way I can.
Trite. Lame. Clichéd. Safe. As American as apple pie and freedom fries.
The story might not lead the national newscasts, but it’d certainly be mentioned. Face time is good time. Having the physical at a public hospital and not a military post or classified location had been Caine’s idea.
Bred confidence in the system.
Secret Service agents flanked Charles Caine as he nodded hellos to the lobby security guards and strode toward the elevators. The media had been banned from the lobby, but Caine could still hear the camera shutters snapping through the scratched glass.
Sigler followed, cell phone pressed against his angular face, barking orders to a subordinate about the upcoming press conference. Sigler didn’t care if the so-called reporter from that blog had a press pass—he wasn’t in the pool, his name wasn’t on this list, he wasn’t cleared . . . so he wasn’t getting in. It was elementary, Sigler said into the phone. Fucking elementary.
The cluster of suits worked its way to the elevator bay. Two of the elevators were already open, guarded by more Secret Service. Caine and two agents stepped inside one of the lifts; Sigler and the remaining staff went into the other. The ride to the top floor was swift and smooth.
When he stepped out of the elevator, Caine couldn’t hear the army helicopter on the roof above him, but knew it was there, its blades whirring in standby mode, waiting for evac orders if necessary. When Caine had been prepped by Secret Service on the escape route this morning, he’d nodded solemnly at the news and said something that rang of authority, like “Very good” or “Excellent plan.” Frankly, Caine thought it was all a little silly; he wasn’t used to this presidential fuss (not that he hadn’t earned it, with all the years he’d dedicated to the party and to the Hill). He’d missed plenty of his daughter’s birthdays for the GOP. But for God’s sake, it was just a physical.
They walked down the hall, past more agents and awestruck nurses and doctors. He smiled amiably at them. Face time was good time.
He met his physician at a doorway near the end of the hall. Dr. Jared Blackwell shook his hand.
“Good to see you, Charlie,” Blackwell said, smiling. “How’s the old lub-dub?”
“Well, I’m here, so I guess it’s still ticking. And when I’m not in an office with bulletproof windows, I’m on that damned treadmill. Just like you ordered.”
“Good for you,” the doctor said, and they entered the examination room. It was bright and spacious. The examination table was well cushioned, the cabinets made of cherrywood. Clearly, Caine wasn’t the first VIP to visit here.
“You just keep doing what the sawbones tell you, and you’ll get along just fine,” Blackwell said, motioning for Caine to sit on the table. “Besides, you’ll have fewer co-pays that way.”
“Huh. Whatever happened to ‘an apple a day’?”
“These days, Johnny Appleseed works for Aetna.”
They laughed. Then Blackwell’s expression turned serious. This was the “doctor” face. Break the ice, then down to business.
“Seriously, Charlie. How’re you feeling? With what’s happening out there—Griffin dead and Hale stepping up, and you being appointed—how’s the body reacting? You sleeping well?”
“Jared, I’m seventy-seven,” Caine shrugged. “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in fifteen years. I wake up at three every morning, like clockwork, to take a piss. Sometimes twice a night. I always manage to stump a toe or bump into a wall because I won’t turn on the light. Jean’s a light sleeper—and a real grouch when the light comes on.”
Blackwell smiled. “You didn’t answer my question. Consummate politician.”
Caine sighed. “How’m I feeling? I’m feeling like a big, heavy bar of gold has been chucked into my lap. I’m thrilled to have it—the position, the opportunity. The other side of me can’t believe how badly my lap hurts.”
“Because that’s one heavy bar of gold.”
“Exactly. I’m sitting in the number two spot before Griffin’s blood is dry on the pavement. They needed to move fast, they wanted me to step up, I understand that. But it feels so . . . big. That chair. That bar of gold. Christ, they’re telling me about launch protocols for nukes, SDI satellites, the works.”
“Heavy is the head that wears the crown.”
Caine nodded. “Something like that. But it’s more than that. It ain’t right, Jared. Little boys want to be the president. They don’t want to kill the president. It’s a goddamned mess. I feel like the shovel crew at an elephant parade.”
Caine looked from the floor to Blackwell.
“Confidentially?”
Blackwell nodded. “Of course.”
“The body’s pooped. The brain’s working overtime. I miss spending time with Jean. I haven’t had a second to spare to talk to my kids—much less my grandkids. Since the appointment, I’ve been surrounded by strangers who are scrambling for attention and are a little too free with their advice. Alone in a crowded room, that’s how I sometimes feel.”
The doctor nodded again.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m doing the best I can.”
“That’s all anyone asks.” Blackwell placed his hand on the VP’s shoulder. “Listen. This physical, it’s routine. I’m no headshrinker, but it sounds like you’re dealing fairly well with the life changes. Keep dealing with the stress the best you can, keep running that road to nowhere on that treadmill.” Blackwell walked over to the window and closed the vertical blinds. “You know the drill. Lose the shirt. The nurse will come in and do the stuff that I got the MD to avoid doing.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows.
“You’re in luck, Charlie. She’s young, firm, and has a chestful of personality, if you catch my drift.”
Caine grinned.
“I provide only the best for our great leaders,” Blackwell said, stepping into the hall. “You know our rule, of course.”
“Don’t shit where you eat,” Caine said, nodding. “I’ll behave.”
At that moment, forty miles away and two thousand feet underground, Dr. Kleinman was giving a history lesson to John, Kilroy2.0, and the other Beta clones. The group was in Ops, sitting at the mahogany table. Kleinman was explaining the implications of NEPTH-charge technology, and how Dania Sheridan had taken its secrets to the Department of Defense.
Kleinman was now saying that Dania Sheridan had apparently made significant improvements to the technology since she began working for the DoD. He didn’t tell the clones how significant those improvements might be.
And he certainly didn’t know those improvements were now in the hands of the enemy.
When the door opened again, Charles Caine was suddenly certain he was not looking at a human being. This was an earthbound angel. A mirage, somehow given three dimensions. He had never seen a woman this . . . this . . . what? Words failed him. Exotic? No, but it was the only word his mind could conjure at the moment.
She was in her early thirties. Slender. Athletic. Her eyes were black pearls. Her skin was a creamy brown, her features certainly of Indian ancestry. She wore no makeup; it would have compromised her somehow, Caine marveled, like a colorized black-and-white film. A waterfall of black hair soaked her shoulders. Her bosom pressed against the fabric of her white uniform. A plastic name tag hung from her uniform, over her heart, its lower edge dangling just off the slope of her breast. MIRA SANJAH, RN, it read.
She stepped into the room and closed the door. Caine fought the urge to lick his lips.
“Good morning, Mr. Vice President. He was lost in her dark brown lips. “How are you feeling today?”
Better. Christ. So much better.
“I’m doing well, thank you.” Caine was beginning to blush. When was the last time he’d blushed in front of a woman?
“Good to hear it.”
There’s the slightest hint of a British accent in there, Caine thought. Was she born in India and raised in the UK? Or here, in the States? Where had she come from?
Nurse Sanjah smiled again, as if she’d read his mind, and stepped over to the cherrywood cabinets. She plucked two latex gloves from a small cardboard dispenser and pulled them over her hands—an effortless, methodical act. Caine suddenly imagined her face below his navel, unhooking his belt with her teeth.
Can it. You’re old enough to be her granddaddy. He shifted on the table. Don’t raise the flag here, you old sonuvabitch. Think of anything else. Anything. Football. The Titans. Jean. Think of Jean.
The nurse turned around, holding an electronic thermometer. “I’m just going to take a few readings, Mr. Caine. We’ll start with your temp, then blood pressure. We’ll wrap up with something new.” She smiled. “Don’t worry. I won’t bite.”
Too bad. “Sounds good to me.”
“Great. Say ah.”
The old man opened his mouth, and she placed the thermometer under his tongue. He could smell her now, an intoxicating rush of lavender and jasmine. He saw the fuzzy blur of the thermometer sticking out of his mouth and felt like a fool.
As he sat there, the nurse went back to the cabinets and bent over to open a drawer near the floor. She pulled a black, phonebook-size metal box from the drawer and placed it atop the cabinet. The nearly featureless contraption had only a few buttons on its top. Caine spotted special ports on one side of the machine; they looked like tiny headphone jacks, the kind he’d seen on Walkman radios.
Nurse Sanjah switched on the machine and offered him another smile. Caine felt himself blushing again—Goddamnit—and sheepishly smiling back.
She slipped the thermometer from his mouth, looked at the reading, looked at him, blinked (or was that a wink?), and said, “Normal,” as if it were a white lie only they would share. Which it was, Caine suspected. How’s the old lub-dub? Oh, baby, it’s doing the bebop.
She took his blood pressure without comment, though Caine nearly sighed when her right breast slid against his biceps. Caine told himself that was an accident, told himself to think about Jean, told himself that he never shat where he ate.
The nurse took the reading and wrote it on the sheet clamped in the metal clipboard.
“Lie down,” she said, and Caine did . . . knowing that if his body was going to betray him, it was now. He lay on the cushioned examining table, stole a glance down at his flat crotch—Thank you, Lord—then stared up at the ceiling. Caine exhaled.
Nurse Sanjah brought the small black box to the table now and placed it next to his legs. She connected thin wires to the small ports on the side of the machine and connected the wires to circular foam electrodes. Caine watched with interest. Her gloved hands were small, but completely confident.
She looked into his eyes and smiled again. “Don’t worry, this is a recent addition to the physical. It’s a twofer: an EEG and EKG all in one. I’ll put these electrodes on your head first. They’ll pick up neural information and send it to the box. Then I’ll remove the electrodes and place new ones on your chest. Again, the results go into the box. Dr. Blackwell will pull the data and make a note of the results.”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“State-of-the-art.” Sanjah leaned over him, her hair sliding off her shoulders. “I’m going to put these on you.”
He nodded and watched her tongue slip out of her mouth in concentration as she grabbed the first electrode.
My God, I need a drink, he thought.
Mira Sanjah placed six electrodes on his head: two on his forehead, two on his temples, and two near the base of his neck. Her perfume was intoxicating. She then tapped several buttons on the machine, and the device made a strange, high-pitched whine, like the sound of a charging camera flash. Caine was about to ask about that noise when the goddess gazed down at him. Her eyes were different now.
“Ready?” she asked.
Caine began to frown. Different how?
Her eyes were cold.
Wait. Something’s wro—
Mira Sanjah pressed another button.
As Charles Caine tried to shriek, to scream for help, to breathe, to blink, to reach up and tear those electrodes from his head, a tsunami of voices, images, sounds, and emotions—none of them his, none of them his, noneofthemhis—surged into his mind, invading, conquering, slipping across his brain like an eel, screaming over the geography of hemispheres and lobes, funneling into the place where his memories lived, his consciousness, his self, his
—soul Jesus Christ Almighty my soul somebody help me—
tearing arcs of wildfire across his mind, something crushing his singularity under its incredible weight, reshaping it into something else, something
—damned—
frozen, cryogenic, obsidian, predatory, uncompromising, unflinching, unfathomable.
Charles Caine did not see the ceiling tiles above him now. He did not see the smirking woman with the raven hair. He did not feel the spasms jigging his muscles, did not feel his fingernails digging Cheshire moon-grins into his palms, did not feel his teeth grinding against each other. He did not hear the air surging from his nostrils in sputters of guttural, manic snorespeak.
He did not see. He did not feel. He did not hear.
And yet, he did.
An iron glove was closing around Charles Caine’s mind. He was reliving moments, thoughts. He could feel a shimmering, alien precision overwhelming his mind neuron by neuron
—dancing in mother’s parlor to “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” doesn’t Mary Jean look wonderful in her dress, Charlie, her curls bouncing with the music THIS IS MINE NOW—
enslaving him, overtaking his thoughts, his memories
—married the childhood sweetheart, you bet I did, and did I mention I was running for YOU county ARE comMINE—
pushing him inward, pushing him aside, pushing him deep
—ly in love with you, baby, that’s wonderful news, sounds like we need a house with another roo—
—EVERYTHING YOU ARE—
compressing them, making them
—MINE—
like files in a cabinet, like a cards in a Rolodex, like
—Jesus Christ what’s happening to me God help me God help me God help me—
words in an open book
ALL MINE
information on a disk drive, spinning round and round and round and
—i’m sorry Jean so sorry so so sorry I can’t see—
YOU
—God can you hear—
ME
—Lord, Holy Lord beginning—
ALPHA
—and end—
OMEGA
—I—
WE
Eeeeeeeee
Me.
When Caine’s body stopped its tangled marionette dance, Sanjah’s smirk twisted into a sneer . . . then a triumphant smile. She covered her face with a gloved hand, suppressing an outburst of laughter. Her eyes were still black ice. Killer’s eyes.
The old man’s eyes fluttered open. They scanned the room, the woman, cataloging what he saw. Caine lifted his hands and held them in front of his face, examining first the palms, then the withered backs. He lifted his head and looked down at his chest and stomach, his mouth slipping into an unconscious frown. His eyes followed the wires connected to his chest and head down to the black device near his legs. A sly grin spread across his face.
“Success,” he said.
Sanjah’s smile vanished. She raised her eyebrows. “Almost,” she replied coolly. “Let’s do it. Vermilion.”
Caine nodded. “Quantum.”
“Methuselah.”
“Mission,” he said.
Sanjah’s eyes glimmered. “Propagate.”
Charles Caine sat up, swung his legs over the examination table, and took in a deep breath as if it were his first. He closed his eyes and placed his hands on his face; his fingertips gently trailed down and across his nose, mouth, and cheeks. He dragged one hand down over his mouth, over his chin, and onto the small wattle beneath it. Caine’s eyes opened and brightened. He flicked the flesh there with his index finger.
“So this is what being old feels like.”
Sanjah snickered. “You should try being a woman.” She held her hands out to either side of her breasts and moved them back and forth, comically emphasizing her bosom.
Caine surveyed the nurse’s body and shook his head in appreciation. “If I had scored your gig, I never would’ve left the house.”
“You did score my gig.”
Caine raised an eyebrow. “So I did.”
Sanjah looked at her wristwatch and sighed. “You know the plan. We have two more minutes, then I get the doctor. You saw him last. Does he suspect anything?”
Caine shook his head. “Nothing.” He watched intently as Sanjah scribbled several comments, many of them Normal, onto the clipboard sheet. He chuckled. “I think he wants to fuck you.”
Sanjah’s nose crinkled in disgust. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a test tube. She removed its rubber cap. “So give me the run-through. What do you know?”
Caine closed his eyes again. The surface of his eyelids rose and fell as the orbs behind them rushed side to side, like a sleeper’s in REM sleep. He opened them. The pale flesh above his cheeks crinkled into well-worn laugh lines.
“Everything,” he said. “I know everything. His daughters’ birthdays. His Social Security number. Emergency bunker locations. Access codes to the intranetwork. His favorite movies—all John Wayne. Every dirty little secret. Names of his wife’s pets. Pet names for his wife.”
