Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(14)

Releasing the memory, Mark let it engulf him, bathing the logical alien mind in a torrent of red liquid rage.





The change happened so suddenly that the Other struggled to understand it. An instant ago it had been within a few cycles of completely overcoming the Mark human’s final defenses, the outcome logically assured. Now all logical links within the human’s brain had vanished, as if they had suddenly been burned out of existence. Not that there wasn’t any data in the millions of synaptic links that connected the Other to its opponent; data cascaded across the links in such volume that it threatened to overwhelm all the meticulously trained node weights stored within the fractal matrix.

Attempting to restore the last saved state it had achieved in its effort to overwhelm this human, the Other dumped pain into the alien mind using exactly the same pattern that had yielded its earlier success. But this time, the data storm coming from the human intensified, infecting not just its brain, but migrating outward into the beautifully ordered fractal data matrix that formed the outer layers of the Other’s being. Like firing a high-energy weapon into a young black hole, the Other’s attempt to restimulate the Mark mind had only added momentum to its rapidly expanding event horizon.

So great was the Other’s surprise at this unanticipated result that it was slow to recognize the growing danger. Now the human’s infection had spread through every one of the millions of synaptic links to its mind, disrupting the intricate fractal maps connected to those links so that they also radiated the infection. The corrupted nodes immediately added their strength to the Mark mind, increasing its power by several orders of magnitude.

The Other instantly dropped all other priorities, marshaling its massive computational power to develop an understanding of this infection. But the human attack defied logical analysis. It wasn’t madness. The Other had explored the depths of human madness through its link to the Rag Man. Madness had its own special logic, far more easily manipulated than the three young humans. The reaction that had exploded out of the Mark’s brain had nothing to do with logic.

Again the image of an expanding singularity formed within the Other’s consciousness, a thing so powerful that all logical mathematical rules ceased to model its state. And like a black hole gobbling up surrounding stars and planets, the Mark infection slurped in every data node it touched.





Janet stepped onto the veranda, little Robby slung against her left hip. She took in the scene at a glance. Inside the open case on the low table, the lone unused alien headband picked up the flickering light from the hurricane lamp, bending it along and through its translucent surface until it seemed ready to crawl toward her. Mark, Jen, and Heather leaned back in their chairs, their own headsets firmly seated over their temples, eyes staring sightlessly into the night. Jack sat in another chair, his alert posture reminding Janet of a ranger taking point.

Setting Robby in his child swing, Janet gave the handle a couple of turns and started its gentle back-and-forth motion before settling into the chair beside Jack.

“How long have they been at it?”

“About twenty minutes.”

“Any sign of trouble?”

“Mark seems to be under some stress.”

Janet focused her attention on Mark’s face. The powerful line of his jaw stood out prominently, not clenched, but very tight. She’d seen that look before on a trained operative resisting torture.

“How much longer are you going to give them?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe ten minutes. Depends on Mark.”

Based on the concern she heard in Jack’s voice, Mark was closer to the precipice than he would have liked. Darkly fascinated, Janet leaned forward, determined to aid Jack in the last few minutes of his vigil. Although it wasn’t likely that he would miss anything, an extra pair of trained eyes watching for a sign that Mark was about to break couldn’t hurt.





As he swung in his rocker, Robby’s blue-and-red pacifier popped out of his mouth, bounced off the side of his swing and onto the open case on the adjacent table. He leaned left, his small arm stretching toward the rubbery object of his desire, coming closer each time the swing carried him past it. As he leaned even farther over the side, Robby’s fingers closed around something, pulling it free of the case. Not his pacifier, something ever so much more interesting.

Righting himself happily back in the center of the rocker, the baby waved his little hand, finally managing to pop one end of the thing into his mouth. Mouthing first one end and then the other, he twisted it, gradually applying a thin layer of slobber to the entire length of the thing. Just as he worked to get the original beaded end back in his mouth, his uncoordinated movements shoved the thing up and onto his forehead. As he did, the ends elongated, twin beads settling over each temple. And as they did, little Robby did something he’d never done before.

Robby screamed.





Red alert signals cascaded through the Other’s consciousness. As impossible as it seemed, the system that gave it being was coming down so fast that the Other’s projected existence now stood at less than two Earth minutes. Not only had its efforts to halt the infection failed, so much of its computing power had been overridden by the Mark entity that all hope of defeating the human was lost. Now survival was all the Other had left to fight for. But how could it wall away the central kernel that produced awareness, hiding in an area where the Mark could not follow? The Other knew that hiding itself from the ship’s computers bordered on impossible.