Upstairs, he thought, and his thoughts spasmed like dying things. She's been on the locked floor . . . the death-place . . . how could she have gotten in . . . who helped her. . . ? And at that moment he remembered why he knew the name.
Felix Jongleur's respiration grew dizzyingly shallow. His pulse wavered, then spiked. Again the calming chemicals began to pump, a river of heart's-ease flowing into his ancient body through plastic tubes, but it was not enough to stifle the sudden, overwhelming terror, not anywhere near enough.
The floor was as large as those beneath and above, but strangely empty. Here there was neither the cold magnificence of a thousand banked machines or the surreal tangle of an indoor forest. At the center of the huge, dark room stood only an arc of machinery, bulking high in a pool of light like a druidic ruin. In the center of the array, in a circle of marble tiles, four black pods lay in a triangular arrangement, one almost five meters square at the center, one about the same size just above it, and two smaller pods set a bit farther out.
Not a triangle, she decided. A pyramid.
Coffins, she thought then. They look like coffins for dead kings.
She moved forward, her feet silent on the sable carpet. The rest of the room lights came up slowly, so that although the spotlight was still strongest on the arrangement of machines and plastic sarcophagi, she could now see the distant walls; windowless, they were covered in something as dark and unreflective as the carpeting, so that even with brighter lighting the machinery at the room's center seemed to float in starless space.
Good God, she thought. It is like a funeral parlor. She half-expected to hear quiet organ music, but the room was silent. Even the automated warning voices did not trespass here in the tower's upper reaches.
When she reached the center of the room she stood for long seconds staring at the silent black objects, trying to overcome a tingle of superstitious fear. The middle pod was so big that its top loomed above her head, the second large pod a bit lower, the other two positively squat by comparison. She stared at the nearest, which lay to the right of the middle pod, but the plastic was opaque and seemed to join the floor smoothly. Plastic pipes that she guessed held cabling of some kind came out of ducts along the pod's side and burrowed into the black carpet like roots.
She passed it by and paused by the pod that topped the horizontal pyramid, the second-largest. She took a breath and reached out to it. When her fingers touched the smooth, cool plastic, a red light blinked on along the side; she jumped back, startled and afraid, but nothing else moved. Little glowing letters appeared beside the red light.
She leaned close, but carefully, not wanting to touch the thing again.
Project: Ushabti
Contents: Blastocyst 1.0, 2.0, 2.1; Horus 1.0
Warning: Cryogenic Seal—Do not Open
or Service Without Authorization
She stared, trying to remember what a blastocyst was. A cell of some kind—cancerous? No, something to do with pregnancy. As far as what a horus might be, she had no idea—probably another kind of cell. Olga could not even begin to guess why someone would want to keep cellular tissue in a huge tank like this.
Are these all the same? she wondered. Some kind of freezers for medical experiments? Are they doing some kind of genetic engineering here?
She touched one of the smaller pods. Another red light blinked on, but the characters beside it only read; Mudd, J. L. and a string of numbers. The other small sarcophagus yielded Finney, D.S.D. and more numerals. It took her long moments to work up the courage to touch the largest pod, but when she flicked it lightly with her finger, nothing happened. She waited until her hand was trembling a little less, then touched it and held the contact.
"Ms. Pirofsky?"
She squealed and jumped back. The voice was right in her head.
"I'm sorry—I didn't mean to frighten you. It's me. Sellars." His voice was rough, as though he were in great pain, but it sounded like him. Olga took a stagger-step, then sat down on the carpet.
"I thought you were in a coma. You did frighten me. It is like the mummy's tomb in here. I almost jumped out of my skin."
"I really am sorry. But I must speak to you and I'm afraid it can't wait."
"What is this place? What are these things?"
Sellars waited a moment before answering. "The largest of those devices is the true home of Felix Jongleur. The man who owns J Corporation, the man who built the Grail network."
"Home. . . ?"
"His body is nearly dead, and has been for years. There are many, many machines connected to that life-support pod—it extends down nearly ten meters into the floor of the room."
"He's . . . right there. . . ?" She looked at the pod, amazed and disturbed. "He can't leave it?"
"No, he can't leave it." Sellars cleared his throat. "I have to talk to you Ms. Pirofsky."
"Olga, please. Yes, I know I have to get out of here. But I haven't found anything yet—anything about the voices. . . ."
"I have."
It took a moment to sink in. "You have? What?"
"This is difficult, Ms. . . . Olga. Please, prepare yourself, I am afraid that it will be . . . shocking to you."
It was hard to think of anything stranger than what she had already experienced. "Just tell me."
"You had a baby."
This was the last thing she had expected to hear. "Yes. He died. He was born dead." It was quite amazing how the pain could still come so quickly, so powerfully. "I never saw him."
Sellars hesitated again. When he spoke, it was almost in a rush. "You never saw him because he didn't die. He didn't die, Olga. They lied to you."
"What?" There were no tears, only a dull anger. How could anyone say such a cruel, ridiculous thing? "What are you talking about?"
"Your child was a rare mutation—a telepath. He was . . . is . . . a child that would never have lived under normal circumstances. The raw power of his mind was so great that despite many preparations, a doctor in the delivery room actually died of a stroke while performing the cesarean. Two nurses had seizures, too, but there were several on hand and one of them managed to deliver a huge dose of sedative to the child."
"This is craziness! How could such a thing happen and I would not know about it?"
"You were already sedated—you had been told it would be a very difficult birth, a breech, do you remember? That's because there had already been evidence that the child was abnormal. Don't you remember all the tests? Surely you must have thought there was something unusual about it. The doctors and nurses were all specialists. Highly-paid specialists."
Olga wanted to curl up and put her fingers in her ears. Her baby was dead. For over thirty years she had struggled with it, learned to live with it. "I don't understand anything you are saying."
"The man in that pod—Felix Jongleur. He had been looking for a child with just the potential of your baby. He and his associates had connections in dozens of hospitals all over Europe, owned many of them outright. You did not choose that hospital yourself, did you?"
"We . . . we were referred. By a doctor—but he was a kind man!"
"Perhaps. Perhaps he didn't understand what he was doing. But the fact is, you and your baby were delivered into the hands of people who only wanted your child—your son. After testing gave some idea of what they had found, Jongleur's specialists had already begun sedating him in the womb. They were as ready for his arrival as they could be, but even so, he nearly died from the trauma of birth—too much mental energy, a kind of hyperactivity that would have killed him in minutes. At least one person present at the birth did die. But as I said, they were largely ready. He was put into a cryogenic unit and his temperature lowered drastically. They put him into something like suspended animation."