Histories of the Void Garden, Book 1: Pyre of Dreams (38 page)

West knelt over
Cobb’s chest and pinned his hands to the floor too easily, “Shut up
man! Just shut up and stop begging.”

Cobb looked up
into the turbulent depths of West’s eyes, expecting to see anger or
hatred, but instead, written in the curvature of his eyebrows, he
saw sympathy, or at least pity.

“Give him the
cure.” West seemed to indicate McMahon with a nod of his head. The
cure? Cobb felt the panic mount again; what did that mean? Was she
about to kill McMahon?

“You have it on
you?” Stanwick asked casually.

West let go of
Cobb’s right hand, raising his eyebrows in an unspoken warning,
then he appeared to reach into the back pocket of his pants. He
threw a small phial of liquid to Stanwick and held down Cobb’s hand
again.

Unseen by agent Cobb,
Stanwick knelt over McMahon, with the weight of her knees on his
arms, she waited. She watched as the wounds of his face healed
completely, as she felt the bones of his rib cage, those bones she
had shattered with her knees a few minutes before, knit together
and become whole once more. Only when she was sure that he was
healthy enough to survive did she part his lips with her fingers,
spilling the contents of the phial into his open mouth. She threw
the empty phial to the side and closed McMahon’s mouth shut,
massaging his throat with her fingertips and lifting his head
forward. McMahon wouldn’t wake for a while, and when he did, he
would pose no threat to them.

Cobb turned his
head as much as he dared, “Is she poisoning him?”

West slapped
Cobb’s right cheek gently, “Look at me.”

Cobb closed his
mouth tight, and looked straight up at West, frightened that he was
about to administer this ‘cure,’ but West still looked calm and
pitying.

“You have a
choice, and you need to think about this before you answer.”

Cobb’s eyes
opened wide in anticipation.

“What’s your
name?”

“Cobb … Brad
Cobb.”

West spoke
quickly now, “Brad, there is no evil here. There are merely
decisions and consequences. For actions to be defined as evil,
there needs to be a context, do you agree?”

“Y …” Cobb
couldn’t even get out the word. “You’ve killed them.”

“Your
colleagues are fine. Temporarily trashed, absolutely, but they’ll
recover. You have no context and I’m not about to tell you the
people you are working with are evil. I’m no judge or arbiter, but
I can tell you this; you are working for the betterment of a cause
that is morally ambiguous.”

Stanwick stood
beside West now, looking down at Cobb, “West, you’re being way too
polite about this. Tiernan’s not evil in the biblical sense, but he
is a self serving dick.”

Cobb’s derisory
laugh was involuntary.

West raised his
eyebrows reproachfully, “You have something to say?”

Cobb licked his
lips and swallowed, desperate not to antagonize the two any
further, “He’s a politician right? I haven’t seen many who weren’t
self serving pricks.”

West smiled
warmly, “Which brings us back to your choice Mr Cobb …”

Cobb wanted to
retreat into the depths of his imagination once more. Whatever the
choice was, he would let his starlet guardian decide.

West let go of
Cobb’s hands and stood over him, “Brad, either you are with us, or
you are against us.” He held out his arms, as if to suggest that
Cobb should observe the chaos of the destroyed apartment, “Which is
it to be?”

Stanwick
cleared her throat, and West suddenly became aware that she had
been tapping her foot impatiently. He cast his eyes in her
direction and noted the bemused expression with which she was
regarding him, “What? What’s wrong?”

She shrugged,
“Is this the way of it now? You just recruit everyone who stumbles
into your path?”

West looked
crestfallen, obviously needled by her remark. She bit her lip, “If
you really think it’s necessary, fine.”

“We don’t have
time for this Stan. Either we leave a path of destruction with new
found enemies frothing in our wake, or else, yes, we recruit
everyone who is willing to join us.” Stanwick nodded and offered
Brad Cobb a hand, helping him to his feet. She brushed his
shoulders off, “Well Brad, there you have it. Either I kill you now
or we leave this place, dragging you into our merry little shit
storm. Do you know which way your bread’s buttered?”

In the
distance, Cobb could make out the sound of sirens, no doubt drawn
by the fallen body on the streets below, or perhaps even by the
sounds of gunfire. He tried not to look expectant, but he could
tell from the woman’s expression that he was an open book right
now.

“Don’t think
they’re going to save you man … Death, or the company of madmen.
Rescue by NYPD is not an option.”

Now that he was
on his feet, Cobb had a chance to look at the bodies of the other
agents. They didn’t look dead. They weren’t exactly lively, but he
was willing to concede that they might not be deceased.

West walked
over to the window and watched the first of the squad cars pulling
up.

“You’re coming
with us.” He stormed away from the window, stepping through the
mess of bodies, walking the length of the hallway. He stopped at
his bedroom door and knocked.

“It’s
time.”

There were already six
police officers in the lobby of the apartment building and they
started to look twitchy when the elevator pinged to announce its
arrival. Two agents stepped out, jostling a handcuffed man.

“Agent Brad
Cobb.” Cobb dropped the handle of a suitcase which he was dragging
behind him and reached into his jacket to pull his ID.

One of the
police officers stepped forwards, glancing at Cobb’s ID, “Your boy
on the street’s lucky to be alive.”

The other agent
glanced towards the building’s front doors, “He’s on his feet?”

“No, he’s
unresponsive, but he’s breathing. Paramedics are en-route.”

Cobb nodded his
head, jostling David Beach, “You wouldn’t think he’d be capable.
It’s a mess up there.”

The officer
floundered between confusion and disgust, then he noticed the other
two agents coming from the stairwell, one of them holding a young
child at their side. He looked at David Beach again, “Just
him?”

Cobb
nodded.

“Jesus, how
many of you did it take to bring him down? He buzzed?”

Cobb kicked the
suitcase behind him, “Four suitcases full of the shit, but as far
as I can tell he’s clean.”

The officer
lowered his head, trying to look into David’s eyes, “Nah man, he’s
tweakin’.”

Cobb shrugged,
“We’ll see when we get the bloods back.”

The officer
stepped aside, “I suppose this is all over to the feds now?”

Cobb shrugged,
“Some kind of mess upstairs. Make of it what you will. We have our
hands full.” He yanked his prisoner’s arm once more, smiling
broadly.

As Allan Tiernan
walked up to the small podium, he wished he had broken from
tradition and installed a grandiose pulpit in the White House press
room. It would have been more befitting the occasion. The glaring
staccato of the flashes from all of the cameras frustrated him, but
he knew that their presence was a necessary evil. His return to the
role of president of the United States should be one of the most
documented events in recorded history. Not all eyes would be on him
of course. Throughout the world, all of the announcements would
happen at the same time, and in fact Tiernan had agreed that
America’s central and West coast audiences would take a hit rather
than pulling the timing on China and Japan’s announcements.

Although early
indications were that the American people were in a state of elated
awe, Tiernan knew that things were not going as peaceably for his
fellow conspirators. Moments before he’d stepped into the press
office, he’d word from his father that there were riots and talks
of military intervention in both Bulgaria and Romania. It was of
little consequence to Tiernan. He knew that once the full impact of
the day’s events had an opportunity to reverberate around the
world, there would be such a tide of emotion that nothing would be
able to stop him.

Tiernan scanned the
crowded room and picked out the camera of one of the major
networks, allowing himself a genial smile straight into the lens.
But he waited. The applause died down and he waited. Men and women
shuffled papers, recording equipment, clothes against seat backs,
and still Tiernan waited. He touched his palm against the top
corner of the podium, gazing at his fingernails which curled
thereunder. Then the room was silent.

“No parent
should live to watch their children die. No parent should live to
see the scorched and ruined skies of their ambitions choke the very
air that their children breath. No parent should live to see their
children scurry and pick through the ruined corpses of cities lain
bare by the wanton selfish hedonism of their forebears. No parent
should be made to watch, hands tied behind their backs by
bureaucrats as their children’s souls are crushed under the weight
of jobless, hopeless, helpless lives. No child should live to see
their future sold for a song, futures stolen from the hands that
built them, torn from the hands of parents that toiled their whole
lives under false promises as politicians and bankers grow fat and
bloated on the milk of the land.”

There was a
quiet babble from around the room, reporters moving their mouths
almost silently as each of their commentaries were recorded by
vocal chord and lip-synch transmission.

Tiernan waited
for the silence to blanket the room again before he spoke, “The
system doesn’t work. We all know it. Politicians on the take know
it ... Parents working sixty plus hour weeks to put food on the
table know it. Mom and pop store owners have been feeling it for
years. Factory workers the whole world over sweating blood so we
can all have our televisions, our phones, our computers, our
clothes … they sure as heck know it. Millions of children around
the world, dying of dysentery, malaria, starvation and every form
of depredation known to humankind … They know it, and they feel the
effects of the world’s inequity before they draw their first
breath.”

“I stood before
you on March 10th of this year, with fifteen leaders of the free
world, prepared to take this country forward in a commitment to
political reform and a radical re-evaluation of the global economy.
I experienced something on that day which may take years to fully
explain; a spiritual metamorphosis which was shared with those
world leaders. I have learned something from that experience,
something vital and urgent. I have an understanding now that those
reforms which had been previously proposed, fell far short of what
is necessary to take this world into the twenty-second century of
the modern era.”

Tiernan worked
the room as he spoke, making sure he gave each news network an
occasional glance, a nod of the head or a wagging finger of
emphasis. He didn’t look down at all, he had no notes to work from
and no TelePrompter. He’d known for years now what he would say and
he’d rehearsed these moments down to every lick of the lips, every
blink of his eyes.

“We have limped
through the last two hundred years with a system which was
fundamentally flawed from its inception and which was itself
founded on a network of inequities, immoral practices and
loopholes. The ownership of land, the distribution of wealth …” He
thumped his fist down on the podium, “All the while, the promise
that the meek shall inherit the earth, uttered as if it will be a
permanent salve to centuries of hurt, or better still, a barrier
between the meek and those whose needs they service.”

“All about you,
there are politic men and women, saying the right words,
campaigning on lies, kissing your hands and then returning to their
old ways. It’s such a common thing that it’s really a profound
absurdity that any of you put up with it. It’s an abusive
relationship; one partner wishing that the abuse would end, wishing
they could believe their partner’s words this time. Every four
years they tell you that things will change this time … this time
it will be better. None of us presume that you don’t know the wool
that has been pulled over your eyes. You have spent your entire
lives carding, pulling twining and weaving the very fabric of that
wool.”

He stopped
again, listening to the growing hubbub.

“I believe that
there is an intrinsic value to all things. Supply and demand has
become part of that value, but it is an illusory and manipulative
mechanic. When faced with the reality of supply and demand, none of
us really mature beyond infancy. If we are told that we can have
something, but not quite yet, not until we have saved, not until
the next paycheck, not until it’s ready to hit the market, not
until the supply chain has caught up; when we are told those
things, we want it now, whatever it is. I’m not just talking about
you, the citizens, I’m referring to we the people. The governments
of the world have acted like spoiled children, hording things they
can’t truly claim to own, craving things that they have no right
to, demanding things they can’t wait for.”

“Let me ask you
a question … I know that this isn’t a gathering of the world’s
greatest minds, but these are things we all think upon from time to
time. If I know that there is only five grams of gold left in the
world, what value should I put on those five grams? How much money
would be enough money? How would I quantify that?”

The question
was greeted with stunned faces and silence, but Tiernan waited
patiently. “I understand why you would think that’s a rhetorical
question. Believe me it’s not … Any volunteers.”