Recovering from his initial shock, he shoved back his chair and rose, drawing his sidearm as he did so. But during his brief hesitation Kira had snatched the heavy stapler from off his desk, and in a blur of motion she tomahawked it two-handed at his head, before he could get off a shot.
He slumped to the floor, dazed.
She moved around his desk and was on him in seconds, prying the gun from his hand and shoving it against his forehead.
She then turned a small fraction of herself into a dimwitted avatar, so she could communicate slowly enough to be understood. “Pounding your desk doesn’t impress me!” she shouted, in case any of the guards beyond the closed door had heard the commotion and needed reassurance that it was benign. “And don’t you dare touch me like that again,” she added for good measure. That should give the guards something to think about.
Jake’s eyes were only half open and he was just clinging to consciousness. “But how?” he whispered. “We checked every inch of you for a hidden gellcap.”
“You pathetic idiot!” she whispered with a sneer. “So worried about high-tech inventions that you forgot about a technology that’s been around for decades. I took a controlled release capsule, dumbshit. Timed to release its contents in eight hours. I swallowed it before entering the ravine.” She shook her head in contempt. “I hid a gellcap in my stomach, you fucking moron.”
With that she lowered her gun and maneuvered behind him. Despite having to keep her hands together, she was able to lock one slender arm under his chin in a chokehold, and slowly increased pressure to his neck until he bridged the short gap that separated him from unconsciousness.
25
Earth was home to almost two hundred sovereign countries, including dictatorships, democratic republics, theocracies, and constitutional monarchies, among others. And in every one of these countries, within every government, a frenzy of activity was taking place.
No one knew exactly what the alien craft would do once it arrived at its destination. But it was clear that whichever country controlled it might well control the secrets of the universe. It could contain a computer with blueprints for technology thousands of years more advanced than human technology. Even if it only—only—yielded the secret of zero point energy, the advantages this would give the country who discovered it were immeasurable.
So if it did come down to earth, where would it land? If its landing were random, it would most likely end up in the sea, which covered more than two-thirds of the planet’s surface. If it came down on land, the largest countries by land mass were Russia, Canada, the United States, China, Brazil, and Australia.
But even the largest countries were well aware that the chance of it landing inside of their borders was small. For all anyone knew, it might set down in one of the smallest countries, like Tuvalu, Macau, or Monaco. The cosmos had a way of playing absurd statistical tricks on mankind. And if it happened to land in the world’s smallest country, Vatican City—which comprised less than a square kilometer of the earth’s surface—what would that mean? Or the Western Wall in Jerusalem? Or the Taj Mahal? Would this validate the religious beliefs embodied by these locations?
The level and intensity of communication between allies and enemies alike was unprecedented. Each government jockeyed for position. None held back a single card in whatever hand history had dealt them. Seen by an omniscient observer, the maneuverings would look like a two hundred piece game of chess, played in fifteen dimensions. Only more complicated.
Endless simulations were run. If the ship landed within the borders of a major military power, all other major powers would almost certainly ally in an attempt to take it away. If it landed in a small, helpless country, the world would be thrown into chaos as all other nations battled to take it by forging complex alliances, or using their own economic, political, or military power—like two hundred starving hyenas fighting over the scraps of a wildebeest.
In the end the complexity of trillions of possibilities quickly boiled down to an elegant simplicity. Regardless of where it landed, and what alliances were struck, the ending would be the same: chaos and disaster.
There was only one simulation that worked. If all the countries of the world agreed beforehand to cooperate. If every government—Islamic fundamentalist, socialist, and democratic republic alike—agreed that wherever the alien ship landed, it would be the property of the world, examined by representatives of each of the world’s countries.
Different countries arrived at this conclusion at different speeds, but they all got there eventually. As more and more governments signed on, even the most independent, reluctant regimes had no choice but to do so as well. No nation could stand alone against the world. Or take the chance of not being a part of first contact with an envoy from an advanced alien species.
26
Kira found a paperclip in the top drawer of Jake’s desk and unwound it. With her hands so close together, cutting through the hardened plastic around her wrists was nearly impossible, even if she found a knife or scissors, but Desh had taught her how to remove these restraints with a paperclip or pin. Some magicians had incorporated this more modern mode of handcuffing into their acts, since freeing oneself from metal handcuffs had been done so many times it was no longer interesting. Success required a high level of skill and precision, but Desh had drilled her on the technique until she could perform it even with her normal intelligence.
Plastic handcuffs were simple in design. They were slipped around a prisoner’s wrists and ratcheted tight by threading the ends of the plastic straps through a centered retaining block. But the ratchet system housed in the sugar-cube sized plastic block could be disabled by shoving a paperclip inside in a precise way, between the roller lock and the teeth on the straps. Once this was done, the straps would slide out, almost as easily as they had slid in.
Kira calmly freed herself and dropped the intact plastic handcuffs on the floor. She lifted the photograph Jake had not wanted seen, although she was nearly certain of who it depicted. As expected, it turned out to be a young girl, probably ten or eleven years old. It didn’t take an amplified intellect to figure this out. This was the daughter Jake spoke of to Kolke. The colonel didn’t wear a wedding ring, and his divorce had probably occurred years earlier. He was in a line of work that made marriage very difficult, and any man who had five offices spread out across the country was never home. The failure of his marriage had been all but preordained.
Kira sat in Jake’s chair facing his laptop, and her fingers flew over the keypad and touch screen at a furious pace. She digested entire screens of information as fast as they appeared before jumping to the next. In minutes she had hacked into the base’s personnel files, which weren’t all that secure, and found what she needed.
Her escape plan set, it was time to leave. She just had to decide how to accomplish the simple task of getting by the three highly trained men outside. She could lure them into Jake’s office and shoot them, but this would likely result in their deaths. And if all three didn’t enter, the last could close the door and call in reinforcements and she would lose the element of surprise.
If she exited, however, all three guns would be trained on her before she finished opening the door. She calculated she would still have a ninety-four percent chance of taking all three men out before one could get off a shot, but these odds weren’t high enough.