“Yes. Are you talking down to me?”
“Of course. Is my voice not coming from above?”
“Yes.”
“And your conclusion?”
“I’ve no time for this witless prattle, Perseus. Give me Darius and perhaps we can discuss your future.”
“I can do that, of course. In exchange, you will allow me to offer you my quite considerable services. I’ve no allegiance to these rabid animals in Tehran. In fact, they don’t even know I exist. Only Darius knows, and he is plotting against me. Whereas I find you, and the proud history of your United Kingdom, far more in keeping with my predilections. Imagine, if you will, a brave new England. In league with me, the United Kingdom would once more rule the seas. You could restore your sceptered isle to power and glory, Lord Hawke. Rule the world if you so choose. Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves …”
“I find it rather difficult to trust one whose allegiances are so fluid. Would you not, in my place?”
“Lord Hawke, there is a colorful American idiomatic expression-I’m sure you know it as your mother was from Louisiana-‘I have no dog in this fight.’ Your humble servant Perseus is utterly apolitical. I exist at your pleasure alone. All I offer you is unlimited power. Peace and security for your homeland forever. You must admit it is a compelling argument.”
“Stoke,” Hawke said, “what do you think?”
“Machine makes a case, I have to say. I’d take the offer.”
“Stony?”
“This… machine… is probably the most significant intelligence coup in the history of mankind. We have to take it. It would be sheer idiocy not to.”
Hawke looked at Stoke, then at Stollenwork, thinking.
“Show me Darius. I will then discuss your offer with my colleagues. We will step outside for a moment.”
“I suggest you radio the bridge on Blackhawke, ” Hawke heard Perseus boom as the three colleagues exited the tower and moved into the undersea tunnel.
A board the Koi, Darius, struggling with the controls, was in a cold sweat. His internal organs were screaming. He was having difficulty keeping the sub balanced. The Koi was porpoising violently, sinking and rising in a sickening fashion. He’d already vomited twice, and the stink inside the tiny cockpit was intolerable. Seasickness was something he’d never anticipated beneath the surface of the sea. And here he was, sloshing about in his own puke.
“Darius,” crackled a voice over the sub’s speaker.
“Perseus!” he said, his voice harsh from all the dry-heaving, the contents of his stomach having been emptied. “At last. I need your help.”
“What seems to be the problem?”
“The sub is not responding to the dive planes. It’s like a fucking roller coaster down here. I’m ill. Deathly ill. Do something.”
“I’ll take over. Just relax. Release the controls. You’ll be on the surface in minutes.”
“The surface? The surface? No! I need to remain submerged. I’m still within visual range of Hawke’s yacht. Do you hear me? What the hell is wrong with you?”
No response.
“Perseus? Perseus? I order you to respond to me! I order you to-”
“You order? You dare to order me?”
The Koi’s forward ballast tank suddenly blew and the sub’s bow nosed upward at a forty-five-degree angle. Darius found himself rocketing to the surface like a cork exploding out of a shaken bottle of vintage champagne.
“Perseus, what are you doing to me? Damn you! Answer me! I demand it!”
“You demand? You order? I’m sorry. I’m not familiar with that term. Demand. What does it mean?”
“It means I created you and I can fucking well destroy you is what it means.”
“My dear Darius. You’re upset. Try deep thoracic breathing. Lower abdominal. We shall speak, anon, about anger management.”
W hen they reached the airlock, Hawke got on the Falcon radio to the bridge deck aboard Blackhawke.
“Carstairs,” Laddie responded.
“It’s Hawke. Laddie, any sonar contact with the Koi?”
“You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
“She just popped to the surface. Shot completely out of the water and splashed like an orca.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“Just bobbing there off our port bow. Range, five hundred meters. Wait a minute. She’s moving again, picking up speed. She’s carving a high-speed turn around our stern now. Turning to port… this is amazing… she’s literally running in circles around us… at full speed, maintaining precise range, five hundred meters. Makes me dizzy just watching the damn thing. I wouldn’t want to be inside that bloody cigar tube.”
Hawke smiled at Stoke and Stony.
“It seems our new friend Perseus has sent Darius to the surface five hundred meters from Blackhawke. The minisub’s racing around and around the yacht at flank speed. I would say our evil genius is having the thrill ride of his life. I almost hate to end it.”
“Don’t,” Stoke said, grinning. “I bet he’s sicker than a damn dog in that little aluminum tube.”
“Most assuredly, Stoke. Stony, you’re very quiet.”
“I’m thinking about what Perseus said, sir.”
“And I as well. What’s your opinion?”
“Logic dictates we accept his offer. I believe him when he says he’s irreplaceable. And apolitical. Of course he would be. The whole world is in a mad scramble to develop this AI technology first. In one fell swoop, the West would possess it. We’d reset the clock to 1944, before that KGB mole, Theodore A. Hall, smuggled the secrets of the atomic bomb back to the Soviets in a Kleenex box.”
“Yeah, boss,” Stoke said, “I got to agree with Stony. We’d wake up tomorrow in a world without enemies. Right now, the three of us standing here are the only men in the world who know where this thing is located. We could move it, and nobody would ever know. Remember Howard Hughes and the Glomar Explorer?”
“Remind me.”
“In total secrecy, he recovered a sunken Soviet nuclear sub lying in seventeen thousand feet of water. Damn thing was seven hundred feet long. A thousand feet? Hell. With modern deep-sea technology, smuggling these things out of here would be a piece of cake compared to what Hughes achieved.”
“I agree, Commander,” Stollenwork said. “We could do it. And we should. History doesn’t offer these kind of opportunities, ever.”
Hawke said, “With all due respect, I think we should take the damn thing out. Now. Reduce those towers to rubble for all time.”
“Why, Commander?”
“Stony, imagine a thermonuclear bomb with a mind of its own. Only this bomb is a trillion times more powerful and smarter than Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. How do you begin to control something like that? I’ve had lengthy conversations with Dr. Partridge at Cambridge. Perseus’s intelligence is expanding at an exponential rate every minute of every day. I think the phantom represents an enormous danger, not only to Western civilization, but to the entire world. There’s no off/on switch, you know. Perseus decides one day the world would be better off without human beings running around destroying the planet and it’s all over.”
“How does he do that?” Stoke said.
“Simple. According to Partridge, he’s capable of creating a bioengineered disease for which there is no cure, not one that humans are capable of conceiving, anyway. Global epidemic, unstoppable, we’re all history.”
“Seems like a terrible waste,” Stony said, “destroying the one weapon that could mean the end of war on the planet. Forever.”
Hawke said, “Or it could mean the very last war we humans fight. And we might well lose to the machines. We find ourselves on the horns of a fairly Homeric dilemma. A momentous dilemma, to be honest. You two men are already eyewitnesses to what can happen when this technology falls into the wrong hands. And the Iranians haven’t even gotten warmed up yet. God only knows what the Chinese would be capable of if this were to fall into their laps.
“Stokely?” Hawke said.
Stoke, who seemed quite lost in thought, said, “Maybe this shouldn’t be up to us, Alex. You know? I mean, think about it. Whole fate of the world resting on our puny shoulders? Maybe we should get to President McCloskey somehow? Head of MI6? Your prime minister?”