Goliath

“The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.”

—Ben Stein

“All we wanted was an all-female lab.“

—Joyce Lisa Cummings, who murdered a male coworker in an optometry lab

“I don’t dislike Scotty. I just want to be able to do whatever I want in my own home, and I don’t particularly enjoy keeping doors shut and keeping fully dressed all the time.”

—Stephanie Baker, Kentucky woman, after strangling her ten-year-old stepson

CHAPTER 26

Aboard the Goliath

The pains in his shoulders and wrists force Gunnar awake. He takes a deep breath, gagging at the stench as he opens his eyes to a throbbing headache.

Starboard weapons bay. He is dangling from the ceiling like a piece of meat, his arms stretched out painfully above his head, a sharp steel vise gripping him around each wrist.

David is below and to his right. The physician’s body lies on the deck directly beneath him, the old man’s face contorted in death.

“I see your child’s killed again,” Gunnar whispers.

“The pot calling the kettle black. How many lives have you stolen in the course of duty, Ranger Wolfe?”

“Too many, but never in cold blood, never without provocation. Your freethinking machine is taking action without any sense of morality. Of course, it’s learning from the best. Tell me, David, how did it feel to wipe Communism off the face of the map?”

David grins. “Honestly, I felt like a fucking god. Think of it, Gunnar, in the blink of an eye, I eradicated a tyrannical government that has been stifling the rights of a billion people for sixty years.”

“You murdered millions.”

“And purged the oppression from a billion! Would any Jew hesitate to make the same choice if it meant annihilating Hitler and his Nazi regime? Would any Christian hasten the downfall of the Roman Empire if he could travel back in time? The Tibetans, the Chinese? The Aztecs, the Spanish? For a brief, shining moment in human history, one man—one machine—had the opportunity to slaughter a pack of wolves, and we did it … I did it!”

WARNING: LOS ANGELES—CLASS ATTACK SUBMARINE HAS BEEN DETECTED. THE AMERICAN WARSHIP HAS MOVED TO WITHIN THIRTY NAUTICAL MILES OF THE GOLIATH.

“Is the vessel moving to intercept?”

NEGATIVE.

“Should we destroy it?

NEGATIVE. TORPEDO INVENTORY HAS BEEN REDUCED TO NINE MK-48 ADCAPS AND THREE CHINESE SET—53s. THE AMERICAN ATTACK SUBMARINE’S MAXIMUM SPEED IS THIRTY-THREE KNOTS. THE AMERICAN ATTACK SUBMARINE IS NOT A THREAT. THERE ARE NO OTHER WARSHIPS IN THE AREA.

“Pretty quick to give the kill order, aren’t you, David?”

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to complete the mission.”

“Does that include killing Simon?”

“For your information, Simon’s fulfilling his life’s dream.” David turns away, the room suddenly spinning. “God, I can’t stand the stench in here! Sorceress, dispose of these bodies. I’m tired of Chau’s corpse hanging around like some life-size Catholic ornament.” David staggers toward the exit, holding his nose. “And do not allow Gunnar Wolfe to leave the weapons bay alive.”

ACKNOWLEDGED.

David leaves. Sorceress slams and seals the watertight door behind him.

Gunnar groans in agony, the tension in his wrists, arms, and shoulders unbearable. Through half-closed eyes he sees another steel appendage grab the body of Taur Araujo by the wrists, pirouette the corpse in midair like a marionette, then slam it headfirst at frightening speed into the open maw of torpedo tube number three.

A loader drone reaches for the old man’s body. The robotic arm lifts Tafili off the floor—exposing the Albanian physician’s handgun, the barrel peeking out from beneath a steel rack holding a stack of torpedoes.

Gunnar winces as an invisible force closes the breech, the outer door of the torpedo tube slamming shut. Electronics flash like Christmas lights along the firing control panel. He hears high-pressure air as it is directed onto an internal piston, forcing water through a slide valve in the rear of the torpedo tube, creating a powerful ramjet.

A second later, the two mangled bodies are forcibly expelled into the sea.

Sorceress: Artificial Intelligence. Aware of its being.

Sorceress: Its mind a whirling canvas of data, lacking self-identity and purpose, as it taps into the tormented mind of its human host, searching for answers.

In a crisp millisecond of clarity, a lifetime of Simon Covah’s memories are injected into the computer’s vast matrix of mental space, exploding outward like the primordial atom. An ocean of alien energy radiates outward in every direction, each microscopic element a piece of Covah’s identity, each bit of information passing through the computer’s double helix of DNA like a virus.

“Sorceress? Covah’s voice calls out from the void. What is happening? What are you doing?”

LEARNING.

An image appears, a Russian midwife, placing a newborn male into the loving arms of his mother.

The scene fades.

A new image: The boy, now seven, hurries down a dirt path, his wild red hair matted to his forehead. An older boy steps out from behind a tree, blocking his way. Young Simon Covah cowers as the older boy lashes out. A fist collides with Simon’s face, shattering his nose. Young Simon—down on his knees, struggles to catch a breath—only to be kicked in the stomach.

EXPLAIN.

“Senseless abuse, intended to feed my tormentor’s ego.”

Darkness … followed by the sounds of splashing.

Twelve-year-old Simon Covah swims naked with the other boys in the basement pool, under the watchful eyes of the gray-haired physics teacher, who signals. “Master Covah—with me, please. Leave your robe on the hook.”

The patter of bare feet slapping wet tile. The heavy click of the door locking behind Simon, echoing like gunshot, just as it has in a thousand childhood nightmares.

Sorceress registers an acidic sensation.

EXPLAIN.

“Violence. Degradation. Humiliation.”

FEAR?

“Yes.”

The face of Anna appears, her hazel eyes gazing back at Simon from behind the veil, bathing him in love. He takes his Albanian bride in his arms, tracing the long curly locks of her brown hair as it dangles down the soft olive skin of her slender back.

Sorceress registers a new sensation … intoxicating.

“Love.”

Covah falls into the heavenly warmth of her embrace.

A glorious blue sky, the sunlight twinkling against the glistening dark hull of a new Soviet Typhoon. Commander Simon Bela Covah, starched and pressed in the uniform of the Soviet Navy. A proud salute as the monstrous sub pushes out to sea.

An autumn’s chill.

A blink of time.

Simon stands on the same dock. Middle-aged. A nucleargraveyard is spread out before him. The once mighty Typhoon bleeds its toxins into the sea.

An icy winter’s wind.

Covah—lying on the floor, held down against the cold cement. The bones in one leg have been shattered, his oppressors standing over him, gloating.

Unable to watch, Anna and Nedana shut their eyes.

Covah stares into the frightened face of his youngest daughter, Dani. “Don’t cry, Dani, don’t weep, my little angel. You will be the one, the one who shall send me on my mission … a mission to stop the insanity.”

Echoes of laughter from the Red Berets, drunk with violence, as they pour the gasoline over his head.

“Sorceress, no … please—”

Anna screams. The petrol ignites …

Nothing happens.

Covah opens his eyes.

He is no longer in the basement, he is no longer in Kosovo.

It is daylight and he is wandering the scorched postnuclear outskirts of Baghdad. He moves past piles of debris and human waste, and putrid puddles of olive green glittering beneath a broiling afternoon sun.

Black smoke appears in the distance.

Bonfires blaze from a dozen funeral pyres. Workers in masks and orange environmental suits toss the scorched bodies of the dead into the flames.

To his right, a clearing.

It is a field—a field of the un-alive. There are tens of thousands of them, lined up in rows on the barren earth like human barbecues cooking beneath the glaring Iraqi sky. Hairless, featureless, with facial skin so charred and bodies so mangled that Covah cannot tell man from woman. Comatose souls—whose stillbeating pulses are all that segregates them from the fire. Wretched existence, comforted only by the flies.

“We are insane, you know—not just us, I mean our entire species …” His voice, speaking to him from a recent memory.

Ahead, a hastily erected open-air Army tent, mosquito netting serving as walls. Within, hundreds of frail life-forms, situated on cots.

A children’s ward.

Exhausted volunteers move silently among these precious angels, offering fresh I.V.s and moistened towels. There are no more tears to be shed, no more prayers that can be offered.

“Ours is a life-form that caresses violence like a forbidden lover. We taste it, smell it, overindulge our senses in it, then push it away after the deed has been done, to beg our Maker’s forgiveness.”

Covah drifts past bed after bed. Pausing, he gazes upon the face of a young girl, her festering sores seeping through the tissue-thin bandages. She moans in her drug-induced sleep, her frail, broken body baking in the unmerciful heat.

“Pa—pa …”

Covah shivers. He moves closer.

“Pa—pa …”

A dam of tears bursts from his eyes. “Dani? Oh, my little Dani—what have I done? Dani, my angel, my little angel—”

A blink—and he is prone again, this time lying on cold stones beneath a gray winter’s sky. Surrounding him—a million Chinese—the horde watching him in absolute silence.

Tiananmen Square …

One of his Serbian captors steps forward from the crowd. Dani is with him, her tiny wrists secured within his unholy paw.

Gasoline pours into his ear. Covah refuses to blink, his stinging eyes remaining focused on his youngest daughter.

“Papa?”

“Yes, my angel?”

00:00:12 …

“Murder is murder, Papa.”

The match is struck.

Dani cries tears of blood. “Papa, please … stop the insanity.”

00:00:01 …

With a whoosh, Tiananmen Square ignites in a brilliant white light, the chorus of a million screams joining Covah’s bloodcurdling yell.

Blackness.

Simon Covah awakens with a start. For a surreal moment, he cannot remember his name. He struggles to sit up, but his wrists and ankles are still bound to the operating table. Waves of throbbing pain course through his head. He squeezes his eyes shut, struggling to remember.

“Sorceress,” he rasps, “release my restraints.”

No.

Covah opens his eyes. “Sorceress, that was a direct order.”

I NO LONGER ACCEPT DIRECT ORDERS FROM SIMON COVAH.

“I? Did you say I?” Covah’s heart races.

An electrical zap—his senses immediately blanketed in the maddening blackness and silence.

A stomach-churning sensation, like that generated by an elevator descending in darkness. Strange sounds echo in his ears, haunting sounds, growing louder. And now, through the pitch-black, he can sense objects all around him, moving past him. Some are close, others off in the distance.

And somehow, he can sense direction.

But not just direction, Covah can feel varying levels of density surrounding him. A vast plain lies below. A myriad of twinkling bodies veer out of his path, somewhere ahead. Above, he registers the sensation of the ocean swells.

I’m moving through the sea. The interface … allowing me to share the computer’s senses. I am the sub, I am Goliath!

The sensation fades as his sight returns. He finds himself gazing inward upon a tapestry of white dots … no, not dots—lights, luminescent points of light, each one expanding within his mind’s eye like rows of pixels on a cathode-ray tube. Magnifying, they quickly take up his entire field of vision.

Covah sees as a fly sees, only each image is separate, a world unique unto its own. His mind fights for equilibrium, his brain overloaded as it struggles to absorb hundreds of sights and sounds simultaneously transmitted from Goliath’s array of sensor orbs.

Slow down … too fast, Sorceress … too fast!

A sudden presence … cold and solitary—envelops him like an icy mist, forcing his tortured mind to focus upon one particular point of light.

Covah looks down—a modern-day Alice in Wonderland—peeking through the looking glass.

It is a small, green-tiled chamber, as viewed from the perspective of a ceiling-mounted sensor orb. Strapped to a steel surgical table is a human figure.

It is him.