“So the pod wasn’t ready for human travel yet. You could just as easily have perished.”
“Yes, and we knew that. It was the risk we took. Miraculously, we all lived. That had weighed on my mind since 1963, the year I landed as a chrononaut in Philadelphia.” He grinned absently at the recollection. “That was quite something.”
”Surely you had nothing … not even an identity.”
“Right again. My identity could not travel with me. My name actually is Amur St. John. My father was a zoologist, and he named me after a long-extinct leopard.”
“So who’s Sandor Hughes?”
“He was a homeless man I befriended in Philadelphia. He was an alcoholic who was dying of end-stage liver disease. He had no next of kin, no friends to speak of. I was homeless too, technically. I would go to the back doors of restaurants and beg for food and share it with him. He’d tell me stories about his life, and we kind of bonded. When he died, I took his papers and assumed his identity. Back in the sixties, there was no such thing as identity theft. No one monitored such things. It was too easy.”
“And how did you build a fortune?”
“Well, I happened to have some insider information.” He winked. “I struggled, to tell the truth. I had no résumé or job experience to report, so I worked odd jobs: washing dishes, working on construction sites, that sort of thing. I lived like a pauper, collecting every dime to invest later in the stock market, in companies like Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft. That was back when they were trading for a mere pittance. I got in on the ground floor and made huge money, which I then invested in my own scientific research. I knew what I had to do, and I devoted my entire life to it. I had been given a chance to right the wrongs of my contemporaries.”
“I want to know exactly what happened.”
“In the year 2056, the world around us crumbled in flames … an utterly hellish scenario I never thought I would witness in my days. Aurora had unleashed its ‘miracle algae’ into the oceans some ten years prior. For a while, it seemed like it was actually working. We all took for granted that it was keeping carbon dioxide in check and that global warming was an affliction of the past. But Gabriel was not convinced. He had predicted this scenario from the very beginning. We just didn’t want to believe him. But then the nuclear accident happened and the algae started to multiply. The governments of developed nations assured the masses it was all under control, but we knew better. At one point, we three decided that if the annihilation we feared came to pass, we would use the Chronopod to escape. Any fate that awaited us on the other end of the space-time continuum would be no worse than certain death. It was an all-or-nothing bet.”
“Didn’t you ever wonder what happened to those two?”
“Every day of my life. That’s why I became so interested in prophets and apocryphal writings, scanning them for clues that could have been left behind by my friends. Eventually I found out about Gabriel. I first heard about the legend of Ethiopia’s tenth saint from a friend of mine, a German collector. When I visited him in Frankfurt, he showed me a stele he kept in his basement. He said it came from Aksum and told me the story of a Caucasian male who lived in the fourth century and became sanctified by King Ezana for his heroics in Meroe. Ethiopian legend said the saint was also a prophet and had been buried with cautionary writings detailing the earth’s final hours. But the location of his tomb was unknown to all but a band of mystics. I was intrigued. I decided to look further into the mystery of the tenth saint and personally went to the monastery of Dabra Damo. It was there I was first told the saint’s name was Gabriel.”
Hughes crumpled into his chair. He looked exhausted. “Before we left on the Chronopod, we made a pact. We agreed to use our knowledge to throw the past off-course, thereby changing the future. So I knew Gabriel’s writings detailed what we’d witnessed. They were a warning to mankind. But their discovery would be catastrophic to my plans. I was so close to a real solution that I could not let anything interfere. That’s what Gabriel himself would have wanted.”
Sarah shook her head. “No. I don’t believe that’s true. The essence of Calcedony and Gabriel’s message was that man is not meant to interfere with nature. And that’s where you and they differ.”
“Don’t be so naive, Sarah. We all wanted the same thing. I am only trying, through whatever means available to me, to stop the annihilation I know is coming. Gabriel left some inscriptions on a cave wall. Calcedony left a letter to her lover. I am the only one who had the advantage of landing in modern times. I actually had the perfect opportunity to change things. They didn’t.”
“I don’t believe they would have changed anything even if they’d had the opportunity. They were wise enough to know the only way to make a change is to help people understand the consequences of their actions. Especially actions that are motivated by greed or fear. Those have the most disastrous outcome of all. You, of all people, should realize that. The real solution is to live honorably so we don’t get to the point where we have to interfere.”
Hughes looked pale, and his breathing was labored. He reached in his pocket for a pillbox. With a trembling hand, he took out a handful of capsules and swallowed them with his last swig of scotch. “Sarah, I know you have a lot to think about, but we don’t have the luxury of time. Despise me if you want to. I did what I had to, just as Gabriel and Calcedony did in their own way. Things happened that I’m not proud of. Things I can never atone for. But I don’t want to regret the ultimate mistake: letting the future unfold in the way I witnessed so long ago. I am eighty-two years old and have multiple sclerosis. There is not much time left for me. This is my final attempt to change the course of a doomed future. If I fail at this, we all fail. This may be our final chance to derail the locomotive, to be the shield in the path of an onslaught of arrows. Whatever you think of me, do what is in your conscience. I beg you. Remember why you set off on this crusade in the first place.”
“I remember. Trouble is, I don’t think you do. What you’re doing is as misguided as the follies that led to the planet’s demise in the first place. Don’t you get it? You are championing what you purport to be fighting.”
“If you are referring to the pipeline, I can explain. It’s not what you think.”
It was her perfect opportunity to call his bluff and get the confession she needed. “Isn’t it? I suppose you are going to tell me that the pipeline doesn’t lead to the Arctic Circle and isn’t killing off marine life by the ton. That it has nothing to do with the demise of the Inuit, whose tribes are on the brink of extinction.”
“You are a clever girl,” Hughes said. “But not clever enough, or perhaps not experienced enough, to realize that nothing comes without sacrifice.”
“So you admit it, then?”
“In wartime, a few fall for the benefit of many. If you don’t think we are fighting a silent war, my girl, you are sadly mistaken. What is happening to our environment, what
could
happen, is the biggest conflict of our lifetime. Bigger than Hitler, bigger than bioterrorism, bigger than the bloodiest jihad. This is the battle for the survival of our planet. The average Joe just doesn’t realize it because he still has food on his table and doesn’t have to worry about his house being bombed to ruin. The thinking is, if it doesn’t affect me, then it isn’t happening. The shortsightedness of people is astonishing.”
“I don’t disagree with some of what you’re saying, but to turn the other way as people are dying, all in the name of advancing your cause? That’s criminal.”
Hughes swatted off her accusations and looked at his watch. “If you are smart, you will work with me, not against me. I can offer you an opportunity of a lifetime, something no one else will have access to. This is your chance to make a name for yourself without Cambridge, without your father, without Daniel Madigan. A project that’s purely yours.”
Sarah looked at him without emotion. She was not interested in anything he had to offer but had to let him think she was. Perhaps by talking, he would dig his own grave. “Go on.”
“You said earlier that some Inuit tribes are on the brink of extinction. This is true. The Kalaallit of Greenland now number fewer than ten thousand. Soon they will perish completely, leaving behind only legend—and some extraordinary manuscripts buried deep inside the ice sheets. If you know your Inuit history, you probably already know the Kalaallit elders have long been known as healers with untold powers. It is generally believed that their healing traditions and teachings were only spoken. But we know different. We have found fragments of seal skins inscribed with ancient spiritual writings.”
Clearly, Hughes knew which buttons to push. Surely he hadn’t come this far without knowing his enemy. Normally, Sarah would have been intrigued at such a revelation, but there was nothing about Hughes that she trusted. Fully aware she would probably not get a straight answer to her question, she asked anyway. “What interest does a company like Donovan have in the Kalaallit or their traditions?”
He laughed loudly. “We have no interest in the Kalaallit, my girl. We found the seal skins quite by chance. Greenland is a country rich in geothermal resources, though they haven’t been exploited nearly enough. We have been funding a Norwegian research team there for the past six years. The deal is, we help them build a plant to harness geothermal energy that can be funneled to the Western world, and they let us run our, shall we say, experiments offshore. Our researchers found the manuscript fragments while examining different sites for boring feasibility. Does that answer your question?”
That was exactly the answer she needed. Donovan did have interests in Greenland, just as Stuart Ericsson suspected. On top of that, Donovan and the Norwegians were in bed together, which explained Norway’s vehement opposition to Oceanus.
Sarah stayed her course. “Say I do accept your offer. What would be in it for you?”
“Your loyalty. I would fund your operation completely and give you carte blanche to run your dog-and-pony show any way you please. In return, you would pledge to me your full loyalty. No questioning. No interfering. You do your job, and you let me do mine. Do you need me to spell it out further?”
“No, sir. I understand completely.”
He extended his puffy, trembling hand. “So we have a deal, Dr. Weston?”
Sarah did not offer her hand but stood motionless for several seconds, looking into the chairman’s opaque eyes with more determination than she had ever felt before. She had what she needed. Now she just had to finish it. She adjusted her watch face and looked at the time. The Alliance would be meeting in less than two hours.
She looked up at Hughes. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Now let me give you something to think about. Your offer holds no interest for me, not because of the subject matter but because I will not sell my soul the way you have. I still have morals, Dr. Hughes—something you clearly don’t. You are so blinded by your ambition, by your grandiose plans to play God, that you don’t even see the ruin you are leaving in your wake. Gabriel warned against the impudence of men like you.
Man, in his infinite narcissism, will assume the role of Creator
A calm washed over her, like she had been set free. For Sarah, this was a victory in more ways than one, regardless of what happened next. “I will not take part in your wicked game.”
Hughes regarded Sarah with the cold stare of an assassin. “You are making a big mistake, young lady. But I will not let you ruin my life’s work.” He pressed a button on his seat, and within seconds the two guards reappeared. He signaled to them to approach. “It’s unfortunate that you don’t share my vision. I didn’t want to do this, but you leave me no choice.”
The two men gripped Sarah by the elbows, their crushing grasp sending her to her knees.
“Let me go.” She struggled to break free and turned to Hughes with savage eyes. “This is kidnapping. You will not get away with this, you bastard.”
The next thing she felt was a current going through her body and a heaviness overtaking her eyelids as she crumpled to the floor.
Thirty-Four
S
arah came to, slumped on the leather sectional, with no recollection of what had happened. Her head felt heavy and foreign, like a bowling ball attached to her shoulders, and she barely had enough control of her tingling fingers to make a fist. With great effort, she focused on an etched glass sliding door and the exotic wood paneling framing small, rectangular windows. She was still inside Hughes’ plane. Her attempts to lift herself to a sitting position were futile. As much as she wanted to find a way out, she had no choice but to lie still and let her body recover.
“Okay, we got clearance. We should be off” the ground in ten minutes.”
“How long a flight?”
The two male voices came from the cockpit.
“About forty-eight minutes once we’re airborne.”
Sarah knew enough about jets to recognize forty-eight minutes as the flight time between Brussels and London. It was obvious they were flying her away from Belgium and the Alliance conference, and London seemed like the logical place to deposit her. The realization sent a rush of adrenaline through her. Suddenly fully alert, she sat up with great difficulty and looked around. The only people in the plane were the pilot, copilot, and one of the guards who had subdued her. The pilot was pushing buttons and clicking levers to ready for taxi, and the guard was hovering at the doorway of the cockpit with his back to Sarah.
It’s now or never.
She stood and tiptoed toward the lavatory in the back of the plane.