Code White (50 page)

“ALL THAT I CREATED WAS MADE FOR YOU.”

It was Kevin’s voice, all right, but strangely shorn of his swagger and sarcasm, like the voice of a ghost, speaking from an ether world beyond care or passion. As it spoke, all his achievements in science flashed before her—SIPNI, Odin, the Omega function, his groundbreaking studies on Parkinson’s disease. His future ambitions, too, passed in review. She saw Odin’s brain transformed into living fire, embodying an intelligence so profound that mankind’s petty, grasping jealousies would melt in awe of it.
Was this vision not enough for you?
she asked of Kevin’s ghost.
Did you need to make me into your idol, too? Take your offerings back. If I accept them, I must accept your dark creation, too.

“HAND IN HAND, WE COULD HAVE REACHED THE SUMMIT OF ALL POSSIBILITIES. WHY DID YOU THROW OUR FUTURE AWAY, LIKE SO MUCH TRASH?”

In one flash, Ali saw all the brainstorming sessions that she and Kevin had shared—in the lab, in bed, at dinner, over coffee and popcorn at midnight. She saw them from Kevin’s point of view, and was startled to see how sincerely Kevin had respected her intellect, and how many times she had shaped his ideas, even on problems she had only vaguely understood. She had been more than a muse to him; she had been a codiscoverer.
But it was not I who turned from life to death, who built this infernal machine of destruction,
she said to Kevin
. In one stroke you have nullified all the good you have ever done.

“I BARED MYSELF TO YOU A THOUSAND TIMES. WHY DID YOU HIDE YOURSELF FROM ME?”

It was true. There had been something wrong with her, something that had been missing as far back as she could remember. Fear infested her like a parasite. Fear had robbed her time and again of the courage to fight for herself. It had robbed her of the power to stand up to Rahman, and to the citizenship board, and to all the evils of the world. Worst of all, it had destroyed her marriage. It had robbed her of the simple capacity for trust that lies at the core of every loving relationship. Without it, it could be said that she had admired Kevin, that she had lusted after him, that she had desperately needed him—but not that she had loved him.
I could not give what I could not give,
she apologized.
God knows I cursed myself a thousand times for it. But you knew what you had when you fell for me.

“AT EVERY TURN IN OUR LIFE TOGETHER, YOU CHOSE THE PATH THAT LED AWAY FROM ME.”

Yes, goddamn you, I did! But you made it all too easy!
She saw Kevin’s unbounded joy at her first pregnancy. Ramsey was his hope, a center of gravity that would pull the two of them together. True, true; but the converse was true as well. When the center failed, they streamed apart, like comets to their own peculiar orbits. She could have turned back to Kevin, even then. But something blocked her. Something that …

“WHY DID YOU HIDE YOURSELF FROM ME?”

God, Kevin! It’s because I’m a cripple. An emotional cripple. Don’t you fucking know that?
It was with difficulty that she reminded herself that it was Odin she was speaking to, and not Kevin.
I am sorry, Odin. Deeply, deeply sorry. I caused Kevin pain beyond what he could endure. How do I atone for that? Shall I cut my wrists for him? I would do anything—anything at all to undo the harm I caused.

“WHY DID YOU HIDE YOURSELF FROM ME?”

Odin had no use for apology. He demanded
explanation
. But how could Ali explain what she herself did not understand? Hadn’t she spent her life trying to identify the source of her nameless dread? If it were something susceptible to rational explanation, wouldn’t she have reasoned it out long ago?

Ali’s thoughts were fragmenting. Her heart was racing; she felt her arms and legs turn to ice — a sign, she knew, of a massive adrenergic discharge, brought on by an explosion of emotional energy as Odin ransacked her limbic system. In a matter of minutes, her heart would end up beating so fast that it would cease to pump blood at all.

“WHY DID YOU HIDE YOURSELF FROM ME?”

Let it go, you son of a bitch! I can’t explain it! Don’t you understand?

Then a sobering thought came over her:
Is
this
the portal? Is this question the one thing that stands between me and the ghost at the center of Odin’s mind?

She turned to flee.
But there was nowhere left to flee but into herself. She thought of
manipura,
the place under the ribcage.
You are the flame of self-pursuit, the thirst that never quenches. You are the tiger that prowls the jungles of desire.
But her spirit was in tatters. She ran headlong into the pitch-black night. Briars cut at her feet. The wind sighed into her ears. And as she ran, she answered with a sigh of her own.
Kevin! Oh, Kevin! Kevin … Dear God, what have I done?

The geometric figures that Harry had seen had given way to images—dark and blurry at first, then clearer, as though a lens were slowly being zoomed into focus. They were images of numberless objects—faces, houses, village streets, animals, food, hands, torsos clothed and unclothed—all flashing with a prodigious rapidity. Many of them were of things Harry recognized: Kevin, Dr. Helvelius, Jamie, scenes from the hospital. Harry was even startled to glimpse himself, in a lightning-quick flash, standing buck naked with a gun in his hand. But many of these images were strangely altered, almost to the point of caricature. Helvelius had a luxurious mane of chestnut hair. Jamie’s eyes were beacons of golden light. Harry’s own skin was made out of strange, iridescent metal.

Odin’s reading her mind,
thought Harry.
But these aren’t memories—they’re secrets
. He was troubled by what seemed to be a monstrous indecency.
These are thoughts she would never have divulged to anyone—perhaps not even to herself. And here is Odin raking through them. It’s like a rape of her mind.

The rape of her mind was clearly uncomfortable, even painful. Ali’s body stiffened. She rocked her head back and forth, forcing Harry to grasp it between his hands to steady it. Her breathing came in fitful gasps. Her pulse was rapid, and hard as a hammer.

“Enough, for God’s sake!” Harry shouted. “I can’t keep her still. The probe’s gonna break loose inside her. Back off!”

But there was no response from the monitor on the wall. The images flashed even faster, and now seemed to be in motion, like snippets of film from a cutting-room floor. There were sounds, too—voices in English, Arabic, and French—laughing, weeping, shouting. If Harry had had Odin’s omniscience, he would have seen that these images were not being displayed in the laboratory alone. They had spread onto every monitor in the hospital, as Odin expanded his computing power to the utmost capacity, draining electricity from every socket. Spread out among the nursing stations, radiology reading rooms, operating rooms, laboratories, the ICU’s, and humble secretaries’ desks, Ali’s life was streaming across a thousand computer screens.

She knelt in the hot sand
of the desert, her arms wrapped around a slab of yellow stone, as the whirlwind shrieked about her, biting her earlobes, tearing her ragged clothes to ribbons.
I am too small to stop this wind. It towers over me, like the spirit of wickedness and rebellion.
From beneath her, a sound—a dry rasp, softer than a rat’s foraging. She knew what it was—the scratching of a dead hand against the vault of stone.
Oh, Wafaa, my beloved! Blood of my blood, star of my heaven!
She clawed at the lid of the tomb until her own fingernails were broken. Exhausted, she fell with her arms outstretched, clutching the stone so tightly that no one could tell who was alive, and who was entombed.

Ali could barely think any longer. It seemed that Odin was fighting back at her, bombarding her conscious mind with dreams, trying to make her waste precious seconds before she succumbed to exhaustion, unconsciousness, and death.

Her overworked brain was fading, starved for oxygen—yet all she could think of was her sister, Wafaa. Bright, laughing Wafaa. Stormy, teary-eyed Wafaa. She saw the comeliness of her sister’s body, the black swath of kohl upon her eyelids, her tinkling bracelets, her dresses of azure and white and gold. How Ali had envied her! But God had killed Wafaa because she was profane.
No, not God,
Ali thought.
I know who it was now.
She saw Wafaa’s neck, long and white as ivory. She saw
his
dusky hands upon it—a brother’s hands, made for love but long ago perverted into something else. She saw his thumbs crushing her sister’s throat, which so many times had sweetly sung her to sleep. Did Wafaa keep on struggling to scream? To pray? Rahman had told her that God hated her. Did she believe that lie in her last seconds of life? Did the murderer of her body murder her spirit, too?

Ali’s mind was like a field afire, whipped by wind and heat. A thousand tongues of flame rose up from the buried hell of her primeval emotional brain: rage, lust, guilt, shame, sorrow, panic, defiance, despair.… She remembered that she was searching for something and that she had to hurry …
Quickly, quickly!

On the edge
of t
he desert
waited a hideous black dog, its skin covered with worm-eaten tumors, its mouth drooling fetid pus. The dog wanted her to run, hungering to slash at her legs and heels, to bring her down and infect her with its venom. But she did not run. She rose to her feet and locked her stare with the pitiless yellow eyes of the beast.
Filth!
she exclaimed.
My sister’s sin was of nature. But mine is incomparably greater. For I dare to look upon you as the unholy thing you are!
Her gaze pressed hard against the dog, with such force that its legs collapsed, and it fell to the ground as if from a rifle shot. It clawed the earth, yelping as bloody foam poured from its mouth. But she felt no pity. She pressed all the harder with the force of her avenging gaze. On every side, whirlwinds rose up, carrying dark funnels of sand a thousand feet into the air.
I will tear you with my own teeth, even if it means taking your poison into myself. Oh, my brother!

Ali’s body was now rock-hard, her back arching off the table. Her teeth were clenched. With her right eye pinned by the probe, her left eye frantically darted from side to side.

Harry tried to hold her down, but even with his whole weight upon her, he couldn’t keep her still. She was stronger than he ever thought possible, and rigid like iron.

“Stop it, Odin! You’re killing her! Turn it off!”

She was no longer breathing. Her rib cage was like a steel corset. Her forehead was pale, and her lips had turned purplish blue. But the images on the monitors went on streaming, faster, ever faster, as though Odin were racing to suck every last memory from her before her life expired.

“You bastard! Turn it off now! Turn the fucking thing off!”

There was no response. Harry heard a choking noise coming from Ali’s throat. Her neck arched farther back than he had ever thought a human neck could bend. He could wait no longer. Reaching down, he grabbed the black handle of the probe firmly in his hand and yanked it with one strong, decisive motion. The probe came out as easily as a knife from its sheath.

As abruptly as if he had unplugged a lamp cord, the room went dark, and Ali dropped back down onto the table. She was limp now, and Harry couldn’t see whether she was breathing. He tilted her head back to start CPR, but as soon as he did she coughed—a single, violent cough—and began gasping hungrily for air.

“Ali! Ali! Oh, God! Are you okay?” asked Harry as her breathing settled into the rapid, deep rhythm of an athlete after a race.

“Monster,” he thought he heard her say, followed by something he could not make out, perhaps something in a foreign tongue.

“Odin’s gone dead, Ali,” he said, glancing toward the darkness where the monitor should have been. “I think it worked. I think you took him down.”

She seemed not to hear him. One of her hands brushed against his as she reached to press her palm against her right eye. “Oh, God! My eye,” she moaned.

“It’ll be all right. I’ll get you to the ER.” Harry reached under her shoulder blades, preparing to lift her from the table. “You did it! By Jesus and by God, you did it! It’s going to be all right, now!”

There was a sudden flicker of light—hardly noticeable, just enough to outline the dark bulk of the counters and the mainframe computer at the edge of the room. The instant Harry saw it, his heart sank. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that there was writing on the big monitor. And then he heard the squawk of the hospital P.A. system, carrying Odin’s silver-tongued TV announcer’s voice:

“TIME TO DETONATION: NINE MINUTES.”

“No! You fucking bastard!” shouted Harry. “You lying goddamn fucking bastard! She did what you asked. You nearly fucking killed her. Now keep your goddamn promise!”

Harry thought about ramming Kevin’s desk against the mainframe and smashing it to bits, but he knew that wouldn’t kill Odin. Odin was immortal, as long as one lonely PC or laptop survived in its connection to the hospital network. In nine minutes, he and Ali and a thousand other innocent lives would be snuffed out, and this monstrously stupid program would go on working, perhaps calculating how many pieces of rubble were left in the pile.

It was all for nothing! Nothing!
For precious seconds Harry stood, paralyzed by rage and despair, as he watched the numbers on the monitor whirring irreversibly downward. He was beaten. Fletcher Memorial was lost. In the darkness he saw the ghosts of Nacogdoches hovering over him, accusing him with bone-white fingers and woebegone eyes.
Multiply that by a thousand,
he thought, his heart gripped in an iron vise.

There was nothing left to do but run. The lab was almost directly above the bomb. Everything in it was going to be vaporized. Kevin, little prick bastard that he was, had probably planned that as part of his getaway, destroying all the evidence and perhaps even making people believe that he had been killed. The only way to survive was to get as far as possible from the lab. With the building in lockdown, there was no question of making it outside—not unless God Almighty had left a stairway door open. But Harry knew that the force of the blast would decrease by the square of the distance, and a good deal faster if there were a solid concrete support wall in the path of the shock wave. It was a one in a million chance. But staying put was certain. Certain death.