“It will be a constant battle,” Eichmann agreed. “But not different from the one we’ve been fighting for millennia. Some people will try to spread the truth and others, lies.”
“Eventually the liars and destroyers always win.”
Eichmann didn’t respond and his old friend seemed content to sip at his drink for a time. It was strange to have him there. The years they’d spent together when they were young didn’t seem real anymore. It was hard to associate what he’d become with the much more human figure he’d been in his youth.
“My father was religious for much of his life,” Dresner said when he finally spoke again. “Even the concentration camp and the Soviets couldn’t take that from him. Slowly, though, he began to question how it could be that we were made in the image of God. Eventually, he came to believe that we were just another of God’s animals — no greater or more favored than any other.”
He tapped the thumb drive in his pocket. “But it took you to show me that even this was a fantasy.”
“You’re reading to much into my conclusions, Christian. It would be arrogance to think that my work has allowed either of us to see into the mind of God.”
“The mind of God,” Dresner repeated quietly. “I’ve wasted more than a billion dollars trying to find some spark in us that would prove — or even just suggest — his existence. No, we’re nothing more than computers made of meat. And not even well-designed ones at that — ones haphazardly slapped together over millions of years to deal with random environmental changes.”
“But ones capable of great…and terrible things.”
Dresner shook his head. “Even the most virtuous brain functions are just an illusion created to help our species survive. We don’t love our children because of nobility or God. We love them because people who felt compelled to care for their offspring spread their genes more effectively. The illusion of fear makes us avoid dangerous situations. Greed keeps our bellies full. Violence and hate allow us to protect what is ours. Nothing we see or feel is anything more than millions of neurons fabricating a universe that doesn’t exist.”
Eichmann wasn’t sure how to respond. While it was true that Dresner’s conclusions were much more drastic than his own, it was also true that he was probably right. Giving up entirely on the idea of reality — accepting that everything was just a chimera created by selective pressures — was a step into a very dark and very lonely abyss. What was certain, though, was that humans were creatures much more of instinct than of culture and education.
People were born who they are and little could be done about it. Intelligence, personality, and behavior were largely programmed into every individual at birth.
“And the experiments at the North Korean facility have confirmed your beliefs?” Eichmann said, probing. He’d been indirectly involved in designing the general controls for some of the work done there, but was largely in the dark as to what that work was. Perhaps now he could finally get his old friend to speak of it.
“There are no more questions to answer,” Dresner responded, his gaze turning distant. “The facility is being dismantled.”
27
“Harder!” Randi shouted over the sound of rotor blades chopping the air behind her. Deuce and the medic threw their full weight on the levers dug in beneath the boulder pinning Billy Grant and raised it a few critical centimeters.
“Sorry about this,” she said, grabbing him beneath the shoulders and heaving back. He let out a stifled scream and looked like he was finally going to lose consciousness from the pain, but she managed to get his leg clear before the boulder slammed back into place.
Arterial blood spurting from his leg suggested that they’d done the right thing leaving the stone in place until the evac arrived. Randi dropped to her knees and pressed a hand against the wound while the medic put a tourniquet in place.
“I’ll clamp it when we’re in the air!” he shouted, indicating for them to lift the injured man. “Now let’s get the hell out of here!”
Randi felt the same guilt she always did when one of her people was injured and remained silent as they slid him through the open door of the chopper. The leg would never be the same, assuming the docs were even able to save it. She should have anticipated the grenade. She should have held Billy back…
Deuce jumped in behind the medic and Randi looked up at him for a moment before backing away a few steps.
“Where are you going?” he said. “Get in the chopper!”
She shook her head. “You guys go. I’ll find my way back.”
“Now, hold on, Randi. We were under orders to get the sons of bitches who attacked your base. And by my count, the asshole behind that rock was the last one.”
“Yeah. But there’s something else I want to check out.”
Deuce rolled his eyes and said something she couldn’t hear over the accelerating rotors, then jumped out with his gear.
“Seriously, Deuce — go with Billy. I’ll be fine.”
He waved at the pilot who immediately lifted the aircraft off the ground and began gaining altitude. They watched it recede into the horizon, not speaking until it was out of sight.
“So what the hell am I doing here, Randi?”
“I said I could handle it.”
“Yeah, like I’m going to go back and tell everyone I just left you. If you got killed, I’d never live it down. Now tell me what we’re interested in here, because it looks like the middle of nowhere to me.”
She didn’t respond immediately, instead turning her gaze to a cliff about twenty kilometers away. The sheer rock was pockmarked with tiny caves starting at about the sixty-meter mark and becoming more plentiful above. She focused on the largest and highest of them, finally pointing.
“Remember the survivor from Kot’eh I told you I caught up with?”
“The one you took down outside his village?”
She’d given Deuce — and everyone else — a less-than-honest report about what had happened. When Fred Klein was involved, it was always better to let go of as little information as possible.
“He told me—”
“Hold on. You talked to him?”
“Did I not mention that?” she said innocently.
He scowled deeply. “Must have slipped your mind.”
“Well, he told me that they put the heads in that top cave.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Sarabat again? That was three months ago, Randi. Let it go already.”
“I did let it go,” she said, reattaching the damaged XM25 to her pack and slipping the straps over her shoulders. “But now here we are. I figure it’s karma.”
“Karma my ass. I don’t suppose you’ve noticed that the sun’s going down and the terrain between here and there is pretty much one crappy scree field after another.”
“We have about another hour of good light. We’ll use it and then hunker down until dawn.”
He looked at her like she was a slow child. “Are you kidding? We’ll be standing at the mouth of that cave in three hours. Maybe less.”
She shook her head. “I left behind my night-vision gear so I could bring the rifle.”
He made a show of running a hand through the short hair just below his carbon-fiber helmet. The studs screwed into his skull were clearly visible — colored the matte black that had become fashionable with combat soldiers. “Pull yourself into the twenty-first century, bitch.”
She scratched her nose with an extended middle finger. “Then you’re on point, Ginger.”
In the end, Deuce’s time estimate was a little on the optimistic side — though Randi had to admit that it was her fault. For one of the first times in her life, she was experiencing what it was like to be the weak link.