Ground Zero Part 61

"The good thing is, she'll forget by this afternoon. The bad thing is, he won't."

Jack looked around again. Something else was missing. Then he realized what.

"Where's your dog?"

She shook her head. "He couldn't make it back."

"Oh," he said, feeling a stab of guilt. "I'm sorry. I did everything I could to stop-"

She lifted a gnarled hand. "He is not gone. He simply cannot be here. But you ... you must not feel you failed. You could not have stopped him. No one could have."

He knew she was right. He'd done everything possible with the weapons at hand. And even if he'd had a grenade launcher or a surface-to-surface missile, the end would have been the same. But that didn't make him feel any better. Not after how she'd been there for him, intervening when he'd had nowhere else to turn.

Weezy stepped forward and laid a hand on her stooped shoulder. "What happened? You disappeared. Where did you go? Where did that strange awful man go?"

"Mutual obliteration. The three of us died. I was nothingness. I did not exist. And then ... awareness returned. Somehow, for some reason, the noosphere was able to restore me. But only me. It should not have had the power to do that, but it did. It does."

Weezy frowned. "I don't understand. You aren't the noosphere, just a manifestation of it. Did your ... 'obliteration' damage it?"

"No. But don't forget, I grew as the noosphere grew. When the sentient biosphere was small, the young noosphere initiated my existence. I began as a spark that became an infant, that became a child, and so on. It took millennia for the noosphere to grow, and as it developed, so did I, finally developing into adulthood at the dawn of the First Age. An unforeseen, profoundly tragic consequence of my matured existence was that it signaled the sentience of this world throughout the multiverse."

Jack said, "Attracting the attention of the Ally and the Otherness."

"Exactly. The Conflict was very much in the open then, much more head-on. After the Ally gained the upper hand and the Otherness caused the Great Cataclysm, more oblique means were sought by the other side-such as shutting down the beacon. Thus I became a target, and Opus Omega was born."

Jack took his turn at the window and looked left. He couldn't see the Turtle Pond from here, but he could make out Belvedere Castle, which had overlooked everything that had gone down yesterday.

"So yesterday was the culmination of millennia of effort to destroy you. But if eliminating you wasn't going to hurt the noosphere that created you, why did they think the Fhinntmanchca Fhinntmanchca would accomplish anything? The noosphere would simply re-create you and put you back out there as the beacon." would accomplish anything? The noosphere would simply re-create you and put you back out there as the beacon."

"It is not that simple. Obliterating me should have required the noosphere to re-create me from scratch again-from that spark I mentioned. I can act as a beacon only when I am mature. My development wouldn't have taken as long as before, but more than long enough for the Ally to turn away and the Otherness to achieve a stranglehold."

"Why didn't it happen that way?"

"The only possible reason is that the noosphere is stronger and more resilient than I or anyone else ever imagined."

"But you're so ..."

"Weak and old? Yes. But that the noosphere could do even this is miraculous. I am here here-as an adult. And as such I remain the beacon. That is what is important. In the past, once I matured, I was able to appear at any age I wished. I often chose to be an old woman-no one feels threatened by an old woman. Now I have no choice."

"But at least you're back," Jack said.

She nodded. "Yes, I have returned. Barely. But I had to come alone. The noosphere did not have enough to send back my companion. I did not want to return without him, but I had no choice. I had to appear again, had to take human form, even if it is only this. I have just enough strength to keep the Ally aware of the sentience of this biosphere."

Weezy went to the window and gazed out at the city.

"They failed. Nine/eleven ... the Septimus Order and R brought down the Towers, killed all those innocent people ... for nothing."

"Not entirely for nothing." She fumbled with the hem of her cardigan, then lifted it to bare her belly. "I have been sorely wounded."

Jack saw what she meant: A second tunnel ran through her-this one to the left of her navel. Weezy stepped back from the window for a look.

"OhmyG.o.d!"

The Lady lowered the sweater. "I shall not survive another attack."

Jack thought of that ruined, leaking, deflated sack of ... whatever in the Lodge's subcellar. The "egg" in Diana's Alarm. Big enough to contain a man and hatch him as something else. But all the king's horses and lackeys weren't putting that thing back together again.

"There won't be another Fhinntmanchca Fhinntmanchca," he said. "The Orsa is dead. It's created its first and last."

Weezy said, "But you'll get stronger, won't you?"

The Lady nodded. "With time and an unbroken feed from the noosphere, I will soon return to my former strength."

Jack said, "How soon?"

"A year."

That long? pushed toward Jack's lips, then he realized that a century didn't qualify as an eye blink in her frame of reference. A year was barely measurable. pushed toward Jack's lips, then he realized that a century didn't qualify as an eye blink in her frame of reference. A year was barely measurable.

"I have never been able to influence the conflict itself," she added. "The Ally and the Otherness are far too vast. My importance has centered around my function as a beacon." She looked at Jack. "But as you know, now and again I have been able to intervene and provide a.s.sistance in earthly matters involving the Conflict."

Jack nodded. He'd never never forget how she'd stepped between Rasalom and him during his darkest hour, yanked Gia and Vicky back from the brink of death. He owed her for all that-and for what else? He wondered what she'd done for him without his knowing ... say, as Mrs. Clevenger. forget how she'd stepped between Rasalom and him during his darkest hour, yanked Gia and Vicky back from the brink of death. He owed her for all that-and for what else? He wondered what she'd done for him without his knowing ... say, as Mrs. Clevenger.

"And I will be forever in your debt."

She shook her head. "No need. And no more from me for a while. Until I'm fully restored, I can play no part in what goes on about me. Nor can I move so freely among you as I used to. All my focus must be centered on simply existing. The beacon must remain lit."

Weezy dropped to one knee beside the wheelchair and gripped her hand.

"You said you won't survive another attack. How might they attack you again?"

"It must be with something from the Other side-like the chew wasps from the cenote at the nexus point, or the Fhinntmanchca Fhinntmanchca. Nothing of this Earth can harm me."

Jack watched Weezy give a knowing nod. He'd explained what had happened in Florida last year.

"But Darryl was of this Earth," he said.

"No. He was no longer human. His very molecules had been changed to something Other, something from outside."

"What about R?" Weezy said.

"Even the Adversary himself is powerless in that regard. Though he has become something more than human, he is of this Earth." She patted the armrest of her wheelchair. "His minions could wire this chair with explosives and set them off, and I would not be scratched. So, unless they come up with something from the Other side-and I don't think they will-or complete Opus Omega-equally unlikely-I believe I am safe for now."

"So it's just a matter of time before you're back on your feet."

She nodded. "As long as the noosphere retains its present intensity, I shall be as new by this time next year."

Weezy smiled at him, and Jack did his best to return it. But he worried. Many signs pointed to a coming darkness, an endless darkness that would arrive next spring.

A year might be too long.

2.

"Success?" Jack said as Russ opened the door.

He'd turned off his phone while with the Lady, and when he turned it back on he'd found voice mail from Russ Tuit saying he had something for him.

Russ shrugged as he stepped back to let him in. "Tough job. I don't know if it's accurate, but it's as good as you're going to get with available software. Better, actually, since I went into the code and added a couple modifications of my own."

Jack nodded without saying anything. He didn't doubt that Russ had done exactly what he'd said, but the extolling of his own efforts tended to act as prelude to the pumping of his fee.

"I approached it from every angle I could think of. I shaved each indi-"

"Shaved?"

Russ smiled. "Well, you wanted the beard off, right? So that required me to give him a shave. Get it?"

"Got it."

"Anyhow, I shaved each individual image, then a.s.sembled a composite. I also made a composite of the bearded ones, and shaved that."

"And the result is?"

Russ's smile faltered. "Well, they're not really the same face."

"How's that possible?"

He sat before his computer and began attacking the keyboard with machine-gun bursts of taps.

"Just the way the software works. Take a look. This is the one where I shaved the composite and it's probably the lesser of the two as far as accuracy goes."

A black-and-white image appeared on the monitor-the face of a dark-haired, dark-eyed, thin-lipped man who looked vaguely familiar, but not enough to trigger recognition.

"Let me see the other."

Another face replaced the first and sparked a cascade of memories, all of them bad.

"s.h.i.+t."

Russ turned and grinned up at him. "I did it? You know him?"

"Yeah."

Jack couldn't take his eyes off that face.

"Well? Who is he?"

Jack continued to stare. "You don't want to know."

Jack too would have preferred not to know, but he did.

"The son of a b.i.t.c.h," he muttered. "The lousy-"

"You're looking a little scary, Jack. Who is is he?" he?"

He looked different from when Jack had seen him back in January-the nose was sure as all h.e.l.l different-but not different enough to prevent recognition.

All so clear now ...

Back in the nineties, after the Orsa became organic, the Order knew it was only a matter of time before it awakened, so they had to dig it up. To that end he'd infiltrated al Qaeda-probably not so difficult, considering his special abilities-and influenced the decision to attack America. Maybe he gave them the idea to use airliners as guided missiles. Perhaps they would have attacked the Trade Towers anyway-they'd already tried once-but he made sure they did.

He'd soaked his hands in the blood of three thousand innocent people and licked them clean.

Because during the attack Jack was sure he'd positioned himself close by, sucking up the terror, the panic, the chaos, the pain, the deaths, the grief and misery of loss. Same with the Madrid train bombings.

Him.

The man on the monitor screen.

The One ... the Adversary ...

He'd called himself Wahid bin Aswad. But he had a thing for anagrams, and that name didn't work as one.

Wait. Weezy had mentioned his full name: Wahid bin Aswad al Somar.

Al Somar ...

That nailed it. No doubt now.

Rasalom.

"Can you copy that file onto a disk for me?"

"Sure."

"Good. And after you do that, I advise you to erase the files and anything connected with them."

Russ looked worried. "Why? This a bad guy?"

Jack nodded. "Real bad. The worst."

He didn't want Russ caught in the middle of anything that Jack might start. And Jack intended to start something.