Ode To Defiance Chapter 22

17

Reincarnation

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful

—Nietzsche

Once upon a time, she remembered, she had had dreams. Many different kinds of dreams, some flying, some laughing, some…happy.

For some time now she had had primarily nightmares. She’d stopped trying to escape them. Tonight, as usual, was Astri’s night.

The voice of a man, harsh and brutal, blared through the shipwide intercom. “Surrender yourself to me, wherever you are, or Chance dies. You have thirty seconds. And remember, I have plenty more people I can kill here while we’re waiting for you.”

She hooked into the broadcast system and replied after a moment’s thought. “I will wait for you at the aft elevator entrance to the Wenara Wana deck.” She wouldn’t go down to them, she would make them come to her. She would force them to leave all the scientists behind where they would be, if not safe, then at least not in as much danger as they were now.

Her eyes swept the room: her uncle on the bed, her aunt standing beside him, and her cousin Astri close enough to touch. “I have to go.”

Astri’s eyes bulged. “Are you kidding me? They’re going to kill you.” Her eyes grew even wider. “Or torture you and make you answer questions.”

Dash was about to object. What kinds of questions could they possibly want to ask her? But she bit down on the response. She knew the answer: the bioterrorists would want answers about the CRISPIER. There were still things she alone in the world knew about its operation.

She tried a different tack. “They have a whole deck full of scientists they can execute one after another until I go.”

She turned to depart, but Astri jumped in front of her. “No way.”

Dash looked at her wearily.

A light came into Astri’s eyes. “I’ll go.”

Now Dash’s eyes bulged. “Are you insane? You could get killed!”

Astri was already pushing her toward the bed. “Mom, help me. Don’t let her go.”

Her mother tried to object. “But darling, this is crazy.”

Astri responded grimly, “No crazier than everything else that’s happening.”

When she knew she was right, Astri could be a bulldozer—a short Balinese bulldozer. She slid Dash’s lab coat from her shoulders and slipped it on, then whirled, looking down at herself. “Fits like a glove,” she announced, “Just like the dress.”

Dash reached out to take the coat back, but now her uncle reached up and ever so gently grabbed her arm. “Astri’s right, you know. You can’t give them what they want.”

Dash turned her head to him. “This is very improper. Very…unBalinese.” She struggled harder to get out of his hold, but the harder she struggled, the more fiercely her aunt and uncle both held her.

Astri giggled. “You’ve been telling us to break the Balinese mold for ages, Dyah.” She grabbed Dash’s glasses off her face and put them on. “Ugh. How can you see through these things?” She ran into the bathroom and peeked over the top of the glasses at her reflection.

Then, in a voice that bore an uncanny resemblance to Dash’s own, Astri announced, “Still, I am satisfied. I do not believe this can be improved upon.”

She came out of the bathroom and put her hands on her hips. “Gotta go.” Her lip trembled.

Dash tried one last time. “You can’t. I can’t let you.”

Astri hugged her. “Hey. Right now, I’m going to save you.” She looked at her father. “Then you’re going to save everyone else.”

She turned and rushed out the door.

As usual, at that point in the nightmare, Dash awoke with a start and jerked to sit upright on her small cot. She looked around the room at all the mice in all the cages and whispered, “Never again. I shall not be so helpless the next time.”

Khalid ached in every bone. How had this happened? All that planning, all the brilliant preparation, all the radical new viral tech decades ahead of its time—a failure.

Sabaah punched him in the shoulder. “Hey, grumpy, get it together.” He led his nominal boss out of the room with all the computers into a smaller room with a couple of comfortable if battered chairs and a long couch. He forced Khalid to lie down.

He then told Khalid things he already knew. “Every plan that sets out to transform the world faces setbacks. It was all going too smoothly before. I am confident that when we pass this Test, we shall find the Way.” He watched as Khalid finally closed his eyes.

Khalid let his thoughts drift, loose and uncoupled from the path that had led him here.

He had studied his enemies until he understood them better than they understood themselves, and still the Americans had surprised him.

One of the aspects of America he had studied had been their history. The story of the Red Ball Express had particularly fascinated him.

In WWII, as part of the invasion at Normandy, the Allies had bombed the French railroads out of existence to deprive the Germans of supplies. Consequently, as the Allies pushed forward, the enormous mountains of supplies they needed had to be delivered by truck. It was a Herculean undertaking.

The Germans, highly organized and methodical, had uniformly convoyed their trucks in long lines that made brilliant targets for Allied air power.

The Allies too had ordered their truckers to haul their loads in convoys, to stick to the main road, and to drive at a reasonable speed lest they cause a wreck that would block the following convoys and cause delays with fatal consequences for the troops on the front lines.

But the Red Ball Express drivers quickly developed the lamentable tendency to remove the governors from their engines and, the moment their truck received its load, they pelted down the road hellbent-for-leather, breaching all military doctrine, all orders from their leadership, and all rules of common sense while pressing the laws of physics until they bent beyond recognition. Thousands of individuals, acting independently, achieved a victory far beyond the grasp or understanding of their nominal superiors.

Since that time, the Americans had encased themselves in rules and regulations. The spirit of the Red Ball Express had been left far behind.

But Khalid had, irritatingly enough, reminded them of who they were. For one brief moment, the common people had risen to their former glory.

Khalid confessed it had a certain irony to it all. It was the common people of the world whom he most wanted to help, to protect them from all stripes of madmen who would kill them or leave them to be killed by other madmen.

Confronting himself with the truth, he acknowledged that he had always been a little dissatisfied with his plan of simply killing eighty percent of the people on the planet. Oh, it would have accomplished the goal, destroyed the corrupt and vicious world order, and left a populace eager to find a new and better way forward. But it was so wasteful.

Allah, in the end, had frowned upon his plan. Khalid sympathized. He muttered, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Black Rubola would have left a world for the meek to inherit, but what good is an inheritance if you have to die to receive it?

Could he do better? He knew so much more now than he had known when he first developed the plan. What had changed since that first plan? What new insight might offer a better way? Could he develop a more sophisticated virus, one that would…

And it all became clear in his head. He could already see the proteins to be programmed with the CRISPIER to achieve it. He whispered, “Allahu Akbar.”

Sabaah caught the words. “So, did you figure it out? Do we have a new plan?”

Khalid rose from the couch and embraced him. “We’ll have to send Uwais’ engineering plans to our people all over the world. I had hoped not to expose our followers like this, but with Dash leading the scientists of the BrainTrust, their cycle time to cure is too swift. We have no choice. We must achieve hyperspeed dispersion.”

His voice choked up. “Sabaah, it will be beautiful. We shall truly make the mountains sing and make the angels cry.”

As often happened, Simon, Chance, and Velma occupied the central location surrounded by the biosafety cabinets. As usual, as the tempers flared and the voices rose, the scientists and bot wranglers working with the cabinets moved out of the way and focused on other aspects of their projects. CEREBRUM, while it had indeed reduced the conflict among the scientists, had not entirely eradicated it.

Chance was nearly nose to nose with Velma when something flickered in the corner of her eye. She bit off a thought in mid-sentence and stared. Velma and Simon followed her gaze.

A diminutive figure in a black burqa moved deliberately toward them.

Chance jumped in front of her. “You can’t be here,” she hissed. “Stop. Go away.”

The woman stopped but did not go away. In a voice that was achingly familiar to those who heard it, she spoke. “Our ploy has served as well as it might. I believe we surprised him with our response to Black Rubola.”

The woman started lifting the burqa; she wore a white lab coat underneath. “But the ruse can work no longer. By now he has examined the vaccine, so he knows. Everyone else might as well know too.” She pulled the burqa over her head.

Velma gasped first. “Dash!”

A chorus of voices rose, exclaiming her name. Dash looked around the room. She spoke with surprising strength, projecting her voice with a clarity that reached every corner of the considerable space. “I am sorry Chance and I deceived you for so long, but I believed it was necessary.”

She licked her lips. “Khalid has been two steps ahead of us every step of the way, ever since he launched his first attack. When he thought he had removed me from the equation, we saw an opportunity to get ahead of him, if only for a moment.” Dash shifted to stand rigidly erect and look every person in the area in the eye. “We took that opportunity.”

She explained about how Astri had switched places with her, and the sacrifice Astri had made. Dash’s face was wet with tears, and her words were stumbling by the time she finished.

A numb silence followed. It clung to the assembly like a mournful fog, oppressive in its weight.

Eventually, after a proper interlude of grieving, Chance decided to lighten the mood. “Well, at least there’s one good thing about this.” She bent sideways, tossing her head as she thrust her fingers deep into her ear. After a struggle, she eventually pulled free a tiny earbud. “At last I can get you out of my head.”

Minutes later Ping came running onto the deck. Wordlessly, she ran to Dash, grabbed her, and threw her in the air. “You’re real!”

Dash, upon being returned to her feet, straightened her lab coat carefully. “Of course.” She then hugged Ping as Ping had taught her.

Ping danced around her until she caught sight of Chance. “You!” She ran at Chance with a series of fist strikes. “You knew all along!”

Chance was not taken entirely off-guard and countered with a series of blocks, leaps, and twists to avoid the fury of the assault.

Ping continued to pursue her. “How dare you not tell me!”

Dash stepped into the middle of the attack and Ping froze midway through a heel strike, nearly flipping herself onto the deck to avoid hitting the wrong person. Dash caught her. “She didn’t tell you because I told her not to. I told her not to tell anyone. If the brilliant mind behind these bioweapons was aboard—which he was—and if he were as intuitive and insightful as seemed likely—which he is—we dared not let anyone know. Even having Chance out in public, knowing, was a risk.”

Ping glared, then gave her a smile with the power to launch a Titan. She whispered, “I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Amanda quietly joined them at that moment. She gazed at Dash. “About time you decided to rejoin us.”

Ping stared at her. “You knew too?” She launched herself at Amanda, then froze when Amanda just stood there staring at her stolidly, and it became clear that Amanda would tolerate none of Ping’s shenanigans.

Amanda glanced at Chance. “I didn’t know, I suspected. I hoped. Chance more or less managed to fend me off.”

Ping shook her head as if to clear it. Apparently making a decision, she whirled and hugged Dash one more time, then muttered. “We’ll celebrate later. Right now I have to go hit something.” Another whirl took her streaking into the distance.

Chance took Ping’s place in the discussion. “Well, that was about as exciting as I’d feared it would be.”

Dash offered, with admiration, “At least you held your own with her. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Chance winced as she touched a tender rib. “Held my own? I’m lucky she’s still recovering from that knife wound.” She frowned. “And I’m

very

lucky she wasn’t really trying, or else at this point, I’d look like a splattered jar of spaghetti sauce.”

Uwais kept the motor idling as he sat outside the bazaar, watching the packed marketplace.

The crowds parted in dramatic horror as a blood-drenched burqa glided through with graceful haste. The burqa plopped into the passenger’s seat, and Uwais frowned as he gunned the engine and headed into the desert. “It takes forever to get the blood off these seats,” he complained. “And it never really comes out all the way.”

Jam growled. “Not a problem. I won’t do this again.”

Uwais was not surprised. The last time he’d spoken to Khalid, the man had predicted this. “Why not?”

Jam’s voice sounded tired. “Because he was innocent, Uwais.”

Uwais acted affronted. “He refused to do business with us.”

He suspected Jam was rolling her eyes underneath the burqa. “Surprise, surprise. I wouldn’t do business with you either.”

He pushed onward. “And he was going to inform on us.”

Now the voice from the burqa filled with rage. “No. He was not. You let your paranoia take control of your planning. You wasted a good person.” Her voice fell. “Never again. Not on my watch.”

Uwais decided the time had come to move on to the next step. “Congratulations. You pass.”

The burqa greeted this with a moment’s silence. “I pass?”

“You’re not a blind, unthinking believer. You bring more than just a deadly knife to the mission. Surely you knew you were being tested.” Though he doubted she knew all the tests she had been given, the most intriguing one having been Khalid’s instructions on how to watch her when Uwais told her that Dash was alive.

Often Uwais had wondered if Jam wore the burqa at least as much to hide her reactions as to behave properly. He wished he could see her face as he told her, but in this case, it had proven unnecessary.

Jam had given him a shuddering sob as if delighted to hear that the heathen who’d once been her BFF were still in the game. Uwais was all set to try to kill her when she sobbed again. “Next time you want to kill that bitch, leave her to me. I can’t believe Sabaah screwed it up.”

Uwais had been tempted to observe that Jam had done no better when she’d tried to kill Ping, but thought better of it. She was already pretty testy.

That all lay in the past. A brighter future beckoned. “We’re off to see Khalid. Just one more stop to make, then we’ll bring you to your new home.”