Split second, p.34
Split Second, page 34
Cargill was ecstatic to receive his call, and was able to scramble a nearby military helicopter to pick him up only ten minutes after he had traced Wexler’s location. After a quick stop at Nellis Air Force Base he was ushered onto a jet and flown to Cheyenne Mountain, arriving less than three hours after he had teleported into the desert.
There were four people waiting to greet him on the runway just outside of the mountain, three men and a woman. Two of the men were unfamiliar, although he assumed one of them was the mysterious Lee Cargill. The other was Aaron Blake.
And the woman he would recognize anywhere.
Jenna Morrison.
She threw her arms around him as tears of joy streamed down her face, and he teared as well, both experiencing impossible emotions never felt by any others in history.
“So it’s really true,” said Jenna after they had exchanged a prolonged kiss. “Knight really did produce a duplicate. But how? And when?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” said Wexler, “but maybe I should meet your friends before I do. Although I do know this man,” he added happily, extending a hand toward Aaron Blake. “Or at least one version of him.”
Blake shook the physicist’s hand. “It’s an honor to meet you,” he said. “To meet you once again, as it would seem.”
Wexler smiled. “To say the honor is all mine is an understatement. I’ll tell you everything that happened, but I can say with absolute confidence that no man alive is braver or more heroic than you.” He paused. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“I appreciate that,” said Blake, “but no need. As you know, I’m not the man who managed to get you out of Knight’s control.”
“True, but we both know you and he have an equally heroic nature and deserve the same thanks.”
Blake nodded to acknowledge the compliment. “I’m just happy everything seems to have worked out,” he said modestly.
Wexler couldn’t help but frown. Yes, it had worked out, at least for this version of himself.
But the Aaron Blake and Nathan Wexler he had left behind were surely dead. And Knight still held uncountable members of what he called his Brain Trust on the island, which he could use as hostages to prevent Cargill from capturing him. The first thing Wexler had done was to give Cargill the location of Knight’s headquarters, but the man had not seemed to find this of urgent importance for some reason.
Wexler waited until Cargill had introduced himself, along with his second-in-command, Joe Allen, and then said, “Can I assume you’re planning to attack Knight’s compound immediately?”
Cargill shook his head. “We’ve sent a mop-up crew to get as many of his supporters as we can. But the octa-nitro-cubane made an attack unnecessary.”
“Octa-nitro-cubane?” said Wexler.
“You know, the explosive.”
Wexler shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Cargill winced. “Why don’t we postpone this conversation for a while. We all wanted to meet you and welcome you here, but I know you and Jenna have a lot of catching up to do. And recent events have left us quite busy. Jenna can fill you in and you two can get reacquainted. We can all meet tomorrow for a more complete exchange of information, and so we can all begin to get to know each other. Let me show you around inside the mountain and then let the two of you have some privacy.”
“Inside the mountain?” repeated Wexler uncertainly.
Cargill smiled. “Yes. You definitely have some catching up to do.”
59
Nathan Wexler reacted to Cheyenne Mountain with the same open-mouthed awe that every other person who had ever made this trip had displayed. After the briefest of tours, Cargill, Blake, and Allen shook Wexler’s hand warmly and took their leave.
Jenna knew how badly Cargill wanted the details of all that had happened at Knight’s headquarters, but had decided this could wait, that giving her and Nathan some quality alone time took precedence.
She was really beginning to like that man.
She wondered what the other her had thought of Edgar Knight before she had killed him—and herself. She shuddered once again just from the thought of how horrible it must have been for her to trigger the explosive, knowing she was taking her last breath.
When they were alone in her cramped quarters, Jenna melted into Wexler’s arms again, hugging him fiercely just to be sure he was real.
“So when did Knight copy you?” she asked again once they had separated, returning to the question she had posed on the runway.
“Three months ago. His men hit us with knockout gas while we were sleeping.”
“Us?” said Jenna in dismay. “You don’t mean to say . . .” For some reason, she found herself unable to finish the sentence.
“Yes. He copied us both.” Wexler paused, and tears began to well up in his eyes. “But after you and Blake arrived at Knight’s island, he shot the other Jenna to death. The one I lived with for the past three months. Right in front of me.”
“I am so sorry,” said Jenna softly.
“Thanks. But being here with you . . . I don’t know how to feel. I’m not sure the human mind is equipped for situations like this. I just saw the woman I love killed. But then here you are. The woman I love. And it’s like my subconscious is trying hard to convince me this other event never occurred. That it was nothing more than a vivid hallucination.”
Jenna sighed. Although he didn’t know it yet, no one understood how he was feeling any better than she did. It was insane. The Nathan Wexler she had lived with the past three months had been killed in front of her, and the Jenna Morrison he had lived with had been killed in front of him. It was bizarrely symmetrical, in a funhouse mirror sort of way.
And yet they were still Nathan Wexler and Jenna Morrison. They shared every memory until three months previously. And despite having witnessed Nathan Wexler’s death on Palomar Mountain, she knew she was in love with this one. Three months of shared memories had been erased, but that didn’t wipe out the chemistry between them, the years they had been in love before they had been separated by a madman.
Jenna told him what had happened to him on Palomar Mountain. Explained the circumstances.
For several long seconds after she finished he was too stunned to speak, and she wondered how he would react. Despite what had happened, she knew she could find a way to get beyond it all, to get back the relationship she was certain had been lost. But could he?
“Okay,” he said finally. “This is all truly horrible. And I don’t want to even begin to think of the philosophical and ethical dimensions of it. It’s too much for me to handle. The people we lost we loved deeply. And they died loving life as much as we do, and feeling excruciating pain.”
He paused and stared deeply into her brown eyes. “Yet the two of us remain,” he said finally. “The essential essence of us is unchanged.”
Jenna nodded. “I’ve never had so many conflicting emotions. I guess the trick is for us to find a way not to be haunted by what happened. Not to feel guilty about still loving each other.”
Wexler sighed and then nodded. “I agree,” he said. “So we both saw the other gunned down in cold blood. While this isn’t something they probably recommend in couples therapy,” he added wryly, a twinkle Jenna knew well returning to his eyes, “you do have to admit, not many couples have that in common.”
Jenna burst out laughing.
Part of her knew it was too soon for gallows humor, but she also knew they had desperately needed to lighten the mood to retain their sanity in the face of insane circumstances.
And Jenna now had her answer. The man she loved was back. They would always mourn for those they had lost, but it was human nature to compartmentalize, to move on. Months or years from now it would seem like the two of them had never parted. It would all be as distant as a bad nightmare from which they had awakened.
They instinctively began to reminisce about the many shared experiences they did have, and less than ten minutes later they felt almost as comfortable together as they always had. A few months worth of divergent experiences, as traumatic as they had been, had not changed what was at the core of their personalities, nor the palpable magnetism that drew them together.
Jenna wasn’t quite sure how it started, but one moment they were talking and the next they were making love with a mindless, animal intensity, unsure if five minutes had passed or five hours.
When they were both satiated, they turned onto their sides to face each other, a sheet pulled over them for warmth. Jenna wanted to just lie there quietly, without a care in the world, basking in Nathan’s closeness, but she knew she didn’t have this luxury.
She wasn’t entirely surprised that Aaron hadn’t told Nathan about the explosives they had smuggled onto Knight’s island. He had been busy turning himself into a one-man army. She also knew Nathan had guessed what Cargill had meant when he brought it up, but there had been too much to deal with, and Nathan had temporarily pushed it from his mind.
But it was time to bring him up to speed.
Jenna explained what had happened and the thinking behind it. That as long as Edgar Knight was still alive he would be a threat to the world, and no one named Nathan Wexler or Jenna Morrison could ever be safe.
Cargill had made some guesses about what she and Blake would encounter once they were captured, but he couldn’t be sure. So they had decided to use a dose of explosive that couldn’t miss, even if Jenna had been placed in a lead prison and Knight was in a distant room.
The explosion had destroyed all life in Knight’s building and the three that surrounded it, and had caused a number of deaths in buildings even farther away. She explained to Wexler that while he was flying from Nellis to Cheyenne Mountain, Lee Cargill had been working with others in the government to spin the explosion in the media, lamenting the tragic loss of life, keeping the underlying cause a mystery, and making sure it was clear that no radiation had been released and no one else was in any danger.
But before this happened he had sent a number of teams to mop up, locate any time travel devices still on the island, and capture anyone they could who had been working with Knight.
Wexler’s expression darkened as she spoke, and it was clear just how saddened and horrified he was to learn about the carnage the other Jenna had unleashed.
“The thought of this makes me sick,” he said when she had finished. “There were thousands of people in these four buildings,” he whispered. “Thousands. I worked with a number of them. You couldn’t have known about all the others Knight copied, in addition to me, but you probably killed every last one of what he called his Brain Trust. They were all brilliant scientists, from every field.”
“I know,” said Jenna softly. “Before you arrived here, Cargill’s early teams had already captured a few key players, and had learned that these scientists had been wiped out.”
“It’s a huge blow to the world. And I didn’t tell you, but apparently, Knight had made a number of additional duplicates of both of us as well, who were also killed.”
Jenna sighed. “I don’t know, Nathan. In this brave new world of time travel, nothing is easy anymore. Ethics take on a new dimension. We didn’t know for sure about Knight’s Brain Trust, but we figured if he had duplicated you before your breakthrough, you were probably one of a large number he had done this to. We also discussed the possibility that he would keep them close enough that the blast would kill them.”
“And?”
“And we didn’t know what to think. Not even what to root for. What if they had all lived? Now what? Do we free them all? And if we do, there are two or more copies of numerous scientists. The legal and ethical issues multiply exponentially. Who owns what? Who’s entitled to what job? Do all four versions of a man owe alimony to his ex-wife? Are three identical mothers all legally the parent of one child?”
A troubled expression crossed Wexler’s face as he considered these points.
“And could we really just release them?” continued Jenna. “Wouldn’t this let the time travel genie out of the bottle?”
“It would,” said Wexler. “Scientists around the world would work toward recreating Knight’s invention.”
“Exactly. And you saw how dangerous this is in the hands of one man. What if it were in the hands of dozens? Or hundreds?”
“You’re right. Nothing is simple anymore.”
“So if the scientists Knight duplicated hadn’t been killed, would we have been forced to imprison them the way he did? Turn them into hamsters in a gilded cage producing miracles for the world like so many elves?”
“The ethics are truly impossible,” said Wexler in frustration. “Because this really might have been necessary. And I was one of those imprisoned, so I don’t say this lightly. But if the imprisonment of a few thousand duplicated scientists would ensure the power of time travel remained largely bottled up, and their collective genius could lead to breakthroughs in science and medicine, improving the lot of billions around the globe, there’s an argument to be made it would be unethical not to do this.”
“I see you’re beginning to appreciate what we were struggling to deal with.”
“It’s a problem as thorny as they come.”
Jenna blew out a long breath. “In the end, we decided to eliminate Knight at all costs. If the duplicate scientists survived, we would cross that bridge later. As it turned out, none did. But as tragic as their deaths are, this might just be for the best. Hard to imagine I’m saying this, but maybe it’s true. Because all of these people still live. Somewhere else.”
Her expression turned even more thoughtful. “I know there have always been those who reject advances. Who think if man were meant to fly, he would have been given wings. As scientists, we’ve always believed the opposite. That if man were not meant to fly, he wouldn’t have been given a brain with which to invent the airplane.”
“But this case pushes that boundary to the limit, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. Because there is just something . . . unnatural about having more than one copy of a person running around. Certain benefits of human duplication are undeniable, but this time I’m not so sure. Maybe this time man really wasn’t meant to be able to produce multiple copies of himself.”
Nathan nodded. “Three months ago, only a single copy of each of us existed in the universe. And now this is true again. It’s hard for me to say this isn’t how it’s supposed to be.”
“Given what happened, we at least don’t have to make any impossibly hard decisions right away. We can give this weeks and months of extended thought. Try to come to grips with our new reality.”
“And I want to do that,” said Wexler, “no matter how complex the issues. But I have to admit, I’m excited to get a look at the discovery my other self ended up making. Knight had me working around the clock, but for the life of me I couldn’t come up with what insight I must have had.”
Jenna grinned. “Believe me, Q5 is drooling at the prospect of having you involved.”
“Q5?”
“We really aren’t going to get any sleep tonight, are we?”
“Because of all the sex?” said Wexler with a grin, knowing this wasn’t what she meant.
“Sure,” she replied, returning the smile. “That and all the catching up we still have to do.”
“Q5 is the name of Cargill’s group, isn’t it? I should have realized that right away. Q for quintessence and five for the fifth force.”
“Good. I was beginning to worry all this trauma had slowed you down,” she said in amusement. “Anyway,” she continued, “Q5 is dying to have you involved. You’ll be the only person who will understand every nuance of the work.” Her eyes sparkled in delight. “And just a few days ago, one of the physicists on the team had an exciting idea he needs you to help flesh out.”
“I can tell you’re pretty enthusiastic about it.”
“Absolutely,” said Jenna. “Your theory involves using dark energy—an ungodly amount of energy—to cause a fifth dimension to push along the time axis of space-time. But this guy asked the question, what if you could leapfrog space-time in the space direction instead?”
The physicist in question, Daniel Tini, had been in awe of Nathan’s work, and had insisted Nathan would have asked this same question if he wasn’t taken out of the picture just as he was finishing the underlying theory. Nathan had never gotten around to an in-depth analysis of the full implications of his theory, nor a consideration of possible extensions, which would have been the next step. Tini, on other hand, had spent more than a week studying Nathan’s finished work, a luxury Nathan never had.
“He’s convinced this is possible,” continued Jenna. “And that practical interstellar travel will be the result. But he thinks the complexities are so great that you’re the only one capable of extending the theory to make this happen.”
Wexler’s eyes widened and he bolted into a seated position on the bed like he had been launched from a catapult. Jenna had never seen him this excited about anything.
“Now that is something worth sinking my teeth into,” he said excitedly. “I have no idea what to think of all the implications of time travel. But I know for certain what I think about interstellar travel. I’m all for it.”
Jenna laughed. “I thought you might be,” she said.
“Think about what practical interstellar travel could mean. Humanity could spread to the stars. Spread out to infinity. Survive its adolescence. Even if an Edgar Knight destroyed an entire world, the species would thrive.”
“And who knows,” said Jenna, “this could be right around the corner. Tomorrow, after you get to know Lee, Joe, and Aaron better, and after a full debriefing, Lee is going to offer you a position on the team.” She grinned. “And by offer, I mean beg. And by position, I mean basically the Chief Scientific Officer of the organization, with unlimited resources.”
