Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(66)

Noticing his rising heart rate, Raul turned his attention back to the task at hand. He could daydream later.

With the new matter conversion cell operational, he’d been able to recharge the ship’s energy storage units. With that reserve power added to what was produced by the two operational matter conversion cells there should be enough to create a larger worm fiber, one that could serve as an optical pinhole. Maintaining the worm fiber viewer for several minutes should be possible.

The problem was that Raul didn’t have enough power to do that and to completely mask the external effects such a worm fiber would produce. The best he could do was to reduce the gravitational signature to a minimum.

Raul reached out with his mind, his neural network bringing the power cells up to maximum as he began the worm fiber generation sequence. A tiny gravitational wave pulsed outward as the singularity came into existence, its extraordinary potential well contained by the alien technology that brought it into being. It hung there in front of him, so tiny that no human eye could see it, no broader in diameter than a molecule, a place where here and there touched.

No longer aware of his own body, Raul’s mind manipulated the massive computing power of his neural network, viewing and correcting for the changes in the singularity so that it stabilized despite nature’s best efforts to destroy the microscopic abomination.

Raul shifted the controlling fields, drawing much more heavily on the power available to the system. Once again a gravitational pulse swept outward, this one larger than the last, possibly even detectable by Dr. Stephenson’s instruments. The worm fiber bulged, quickly expanding to the size of a visible pinpoint as Raul fought to reestablish control, something that required him to divert all available computational resources to the task. For several seconds the outcome of his efforts remained in doubt; then, as if it had just given up the fight, the new, larger worm fiber stabilized.

Without hesitation, Raul focused on the pinhole, changing the visible zoom level until he could see through it to the far side. It was a perfect peephole, one side of which was here in the ship while the other side was wherever he chose. Raul recognized the outside of the building that housed Rho Division, but he did not have time to linger. Shifting the containment equations slightly, Raul experimented on moving the far end of the worm fiber. The first shift took him too far, the dense evergreen forest outside producing a momentary disorientation as he recalculated his position. British Colombia.

Three more jumps provided the necessary calibration of his equipment. Raul shifted the fiber back to central Los Alamos, moving it along rapidly now. The view froze on a familiar house, the windows now broken out by vandals, the flowers that had once graced the window boxes long since dead.

A momentary pang of remorse surged through Raul’s mind at the thought of his dead father. Where was his mother? As Raul lingered, a sudden awareness of his rapidly dwindling power supply caused him to reassert self-control, once more moving the viewer along the highway at a speed no car could match. Reaching White Rock, Raul positioned the worm fiber outside another familiar house. It passed through the front door as if it had no more substance than a dream.

The living room was empty, as was the kitchen. A peek into the garage revealed that the family van was missing. So Heather must be out with her mom and dad. A wave of disappointment assaulted Raul, but he refused to allow it to slow him. Moving the viewer upstairs, he once again passed through a door, this time into Heather’s bedroom.

Her bed was a double, the pillow covers and duvet done in beautiful hand-stitched floral patterns. As the power alarms sounded in his mind, Raul lingered just an instant longer, feeling his heart thumping in his chest as he stared at the place where Heather slept.

Allowing the worm fiber to collapse in upon itself as he powered the system down, Raul smiled. It would take several days to restore the energy reserves he had just used up. But when he did, he would be looking in on his old girlfriend once again. And next time he would make sure it happened around bed time.





70


With only the dim glow from the twin flat-panel computer monitors to combat it, the darkness crept through the room, a physical presence reminiscent of fog swallowing the Golden Gate Bridge. At the inner edge of the battleground where light and darkness struggled, the mahogany furniture was barely visible, the outlines blurry and indistinct. The smell of furniture polish hung in the air, adding a thickness that enhanced the room’s claustrophobic contraction.

Dr. Donald Stephenson, deputy director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, leaned back in his chair, studying the recorded video stream from the starship’s inner sanctum. Raul was performing as well as he had hoped, possibly even better.

Initially, Dr. Stephenson had been disappointed by the amount of time it took Raul to access and begin repairing sections of the starship’s neural network. By the time he had gotten around to performing a self-modification to his own umbilical connection, Stephenson was beginning to wonder if he had made a mistake in selecting Raul as his subject. The lad was certainly bright enough to come to terms with his newly enhanced mental powers. The only question was the depth of the boy’s psychosis, something that could either drive him to incredible achievement or could leave him paralyzed with phobias from which there would be no recovery.

The operation that removed Raul’s legs had been entirely unnecessary. That and the crude manner in which the umbilical connections had been established were done to provide motivation for change. Dr. Stephenson had been hoping to see Raul drive himself to redo the operation much sooner than he had. But now that the self-upgrade had been completed, the pace of Raul’s advancement had quickened in a most gratifying manner.