Suvorov signaled for his men to advance. He knew that this time, things were going to get ugly. With only the three of them, the mere threat of violence would not suffice to control the situation. They would have to take decisive action. They had removed the sound suppressors from the Uzis; there would be shooting, and this time, noise and chaos-not stealth-would be their greatest ally. Suvorov had made it clear that they weren’t to waste any ammunition on warning shots.
But before the team could make their presence known, all hell broke loose on the party deck. Suvorov halted the team as the silence was broken by a chorus of frantic screams, followed by noise of a rushing mob. An instant later, the deck leading along the side of the superstructure was filled with dozens of passengers, men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns, all running headlong from whatever had triggered the stampede. Suvorov’s team was completely exposed but none of the passengers seemed to give them even a second glance as they pushed past, seeking the forward section of the riverboat. Off to the side, splashes in the river’s surface indicated that some at the rear of the pack had chosen to simply jump overboard. Behind the frantic crowd, about fifty feet from where the Spetsnaz team stood frozen in place, the source of the panic came into view.
The thing defied description. It seemed at once both insubstantial, like a cloud of black smoke, and as solid as granite. Towering above the fleeing horde, at least ten feet high, its mass filled the narrow gap between the bulkheads of the superstructure and the deck railing. Long black tendrils squirmed out ahead of it, grasping the deck to draw it forward, yet the whole thing moved as smoothly as a bead of quicksilver.
What happened next left Suvorov almost paralyzed with disbelief. One of the tentacles abruptly shot forward, stretching out like a frog’s tongue snatching a fly out the air, and speared into the fleeing crowd. Several of the passengers-everyone in the path of the snaking protrusion-simply evaporated, vanishing from existence. Nothing remained; no shreds of clothing, no blood, not even ashes. It was as if every molecule of each person touched by the tentacle, had come apart in an instant.
But not all of them.
One man, who had almost reached the Spetsnaz team’s position, was caught by the tendril and instantly snatched back-alive and evidently unharmed-into the main body of the thing.
Then it happened a second time.
“Down!” Suvorov shouted, throwing himself flat.
A tentacle shot past, missing him by scant inches though he neither heard nor felt any disturbance. Two men and a woman, all of whom had already pushed past the commandos, vanished in a puff, and then the snake-thing reached through the space those victims had occupied, gripped another man who was climbing the railing in preparation to leap overboard, and yanked him back. Suvorov felt something brush his back, the unlucky man’s thrashing feet, and then he was gone, enveloped completely by the dark mass.
The thing continued to move forward. Thirty feet away… Twenty… It towered above them like a tornado. The advancing tendrils that drew it onward, each one as thick as a tree trunk, were only inches away.
A crescendo of gunfire erupted beside Suvorov. One of his men was firing his Uzi into the thing.
There was no sign of damage. The bullets vanished into it without any visible effect, but remarkably, the shape halted.
The gun fell silent as the magazine ran out.
And the monster moved again.
33
Julia closed her eyes. This has to be a nightmare, she thought. When I open my eyes, I’ll be in my bed, and there will be an empty Haagen Dazs carton on the nightstand.
She knew better. Even in her wildest dreams, she never could have imagined miniature black holes coming to life, destroying the Louvre and turning people to stone. And when she opened her eyes again, nothing had changed.
Carutius was examining the petrified boy while Fiona and Sara stood a few steps away, hugging each other. The black shape was long gone, sliding noiselessly around the corner of the museum and headed to God only knew where.
“That thing…” Fiona shuddered. “It’s like a basilisk.”
Carutius glanced back quizzically, prompting her to add, “It’s from Harry Potter. A snake that can turn people into stone just by looking at them.”
“I’m familiar with the mythological creature,” he rumbled, with what almost sounded like approval. “In this case, our basilisk triggered a strange matter reaction. It changed the atomic mass of every particle in his body, and he was literally turned to stone. Mostly silicon if I’m not mistaken.”
“Why?” Julia asked. “I mean, this doesn’t make any sense. Black holes are just supposed to suck everything in. They’re not supposed to wander around turning people to stone.”
“Black holes don’t ‘suck,’” Carutius said. “They exert a gravitational influence that attracts matter and causes it to fall into the event horizon. But you are correct. Something else is going on here. Everything that we know, or rather think we know, about black holes is based on theories. It may be that there is some kind of consciousness at work here.”
“That thing is alive?” Julia said.
“Not in a conventional sense, but yes, it is conceivable.” He put a hand on Fiona’s shoulder. “And it might be that you can communicate with it.”
“Me?” Fiona squeaked, but then a look of understanding came over her. “You mean using the mother tongue.”
Julia gaped at them but withheld comment. Carutius and the girl both seemed to know a lot about what was going on, and that scared the hell out of her. Who are these people?
Fiona’s brow creased and she shook her head. “But I don’t know the mother tongue. I barely knew enough to stop the golem.”
“You know more than you realize. Remember what you told me before? How the artwork in the museum and the fragments of the Buddha statues spoke you? The knowledge is within you, and I believe that together, we can unlock that knowledge and use it to control this thing.”
“Control it,” Fiona murmured. “I could sing it to sleep again, like the monks did.”
Carutius seemed to frown but then nodded. “Yes. It will be difficult. You will have to trust me implicitly, and do exactly as I instruct.”
Sara shook her head. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand by and let you take her chasing after that thing.”
“Dr. Fogg, the fate of this world is in the balance, and Fiona might be the only person who can tip the balance in our favor.”
“We don’t even know where it is.”
As if to punctuate Sara’s reply, a loud crump echoed from the museum and reverberated through the ground beneath their feet. Carutius gazed back at the ruined building and raised a hand to silence further comment. He listened for a moment then turned back to them and said: “I don’t think we’ll have to go anywhere.”
The entity’s awareness of itself and the world in which it existed increased exponentially as the disparate fragments of its consciousness were assimilated. It had begun this process knowing nothing more than the impulsive need-an attraction as basic as magnetism or nuclear force-to bring those pieces together.
The manifestation had been drawn inexorably to those pieces, sensing that they were together in one physical location, even though the concept of location had no meaning to the entity, at least, not at the beginning. Obstacles lay in its path, an utterly alien environment of which it was not even truly aware, but like a bead of water following the path of least resistance, it moved around these, or when that did not suffice, changed them. The latter was no mean feat; there was a price to be paid for altering the substance of reality.
It comprehended all of this now. As the fragments of the consciousness-the mind-were gathered by the manifestation, its awareness of the environment and its grasp of causal relationships blossomed into existence. No longer was it driven purely by physical forces; no, now it guided the manifestation purposefully. The pieces of the mind lay scattered before it, moving to and fro in an effort to avoid assimilation, but the entity guided the manifestation intently, focusing on collecting each one in turn. The entity sensed another piece of the mind added, and its awareness leaped forward again. It was nearly complete. Only three more remained.