Ship of the Damned Page 12

  “The couple claiming to be FBI agents knew about my previous work,” Wes said, “and they claimed to have heard about Ralph from someone in the foundation.”

  “But you’ve published your results, and there was quite a bit in the news—with the deaths and injuries. Surely, that’s where they got their information.”

  “They had details that could only have come from my reports to the foundation.”

  Daly looked disturbed, uncrossing his legs, then recrossing them. Finally, he said, “Perhaps one of your assistants spoke of your research.”

  “I trust my people one hundred percent,” Wes said.

  “And I have equal confidence in my people,” Daly said.

  They were at an impasse.

  “Wes works only with a handful of people, Mr. Daly. The foundation must employ a hundred.”

  “Two hundred and twenty-seven, actually,” Daly said in crisp syllables.

  “The chance of a leak goes up exponentially with the number who know,” Elizabeth suggested.

  “Only a fraction have access to the records,” Daly said. “We’re security conscious here. As you know, we fund cutting-edge science and maintain close relationships with our researchers. Leaking results would harm that special relationship and open them, and us, to exploitation.”

  The foundation funded “fringe science,” or what mainstream scientists called “pseudoscience.” Wes suspected that much of the research ended with null results. Wes’s success had made him the wonder boy of the foundation.

  “I know my assurances won’t satisfy you,” Daly said, then waved his hand in dismissal when Wes started to protest. “I wouldn’t be satisfied if I were you. I’ve never met Ralph, but I read your reports and he sounds like a very special man. Here’s what I will do. First, I will have our security office begin an investigation to see if we can find a leak. Second, I’m prepared to commit the foundation to helping get Ralph back. Would a reward help?”

  “Yes, I suppose it would,” Wes said.

  “Let’s start with fifty thousand dollars,” Daly said. “If that doesn’t turn up a lead in a week or so, we’ll double it.”

  “Thank you,” Wes said.

  Daly looked at his watch.

  “I’m afraid I have another appointment,” he said.

  He walked them to the door, shaking their hands and ushering them out.

  “Don’t worry, if it’s humanly possible, we will find Ralph,” Daly assured them.

  Then they were out the door and walking to the elevator.

  “I don’t trust him,” Elizabeth said.

  “He promised to investigate,” Wes told her.

  “The foundation is going to investigate itself,” Elizabeth said. “That’s like having the police investigate the police.”

  “If he’s trying to cover up something, then why offer the reward?” Wes asked.

  The elevator doors opened, and they stepped in. There was one other man inside who got out at the next floor. When the doors closed again, Elizabeth picked up where she had left off.

  “Fifty thousand dollars is nothing to the Kellum people. Especially if you know you’ll never have to pay it.”

  “What do you mean?” Wes asked.

  “Maybe he knows where Ralph is, and maybe he knows Ralph is never coming back.”

  The doors opened and they were in the lobby, passing through security and then out into the hot Chicago sun. They walked to the parking lot in silence, Wes worrying about where Ralph was and what was happening to him.

  DALY

  Robert Daly dropped two ice cubes into a tumbler, then added lemon-ade-flavored Snapple. Taking the drink to his chair, he turned to face the window behind his desk and looked out at the Chicago skyline. He sipped the lemonade, then swirled the ice cubes in the tumbler as he used to do when his drink was bourbon. He missed drinking, especially at times like these. Booze relieved stress—at least temporarily.

  He hadn’t been completely truthful with Dr. Martin and Elizabeth Foxworth. He didn’t know anything about what had happened to Ralph, or how the kidnappers had found out details about Dr. Martin’s research, but there might be a leak at Kellum. There had been other incidents, and the trustees suspected that an intelligence agency had penetrated the foundation. In turn, they had their own moles in the intelligence community, thus maintaining a balance of power. Daly was convinced that they gained more than they had lost in the spy game.

  The Kellum Foundation was named after its founder, Dr. Walter Kellum, who had earned his fortune as a pioneer in radio and television technology. When Dr. Kellum was declared dead after World War II, his fortune was sufficient for a small foundation; the revenue stream had increased exponentially in lockstep with the television industry. Now the Kellum Foundation was ranked as the fifth largest foundation in the United States, but in fact its pockets were the deepest of any private foundation in the world. With resources hidden in a dozen nations, the foundation operated much like the intelligence community, with a public budget open to scrutiny and a black bag budget used to fund projects the trustees euphemistically labelled “controversial.” Daly knew that most of the black bag projects wouldn’t pass the scrutiny of university ethics committees, and certainly would be lightning rods for the media and social activists. Some were clearly illegal. However, the black bag projects were often the most promising, and Daly and the other trustees wouldn’t let archaic laws and outdated sensibilities keep them from their goal.

  Like its budget, the foundation’s charter had both a public and a private component. The public charter reflected Dr. Walter Kellum’s lifelong commitment to modernism—the belief that through science and the scientific method, the human condition could be steadily improved. Consistent with that public mission, the foundation funded basic research, primarily in the natural sciences, but occasionally in soft-science psychology projects like Dr. Martin’s mind-linking experiments. Daly had seen the early potential in Dr. Martin’s work, and the success of his project had been beyond the foundation’s expectations.

  Dr. Kellum had written the foundation’s charter during the Second World War, and because he knew of the horrors of the Nazi extermination camps, he had also written a shadow charter, not to be seen by the public. According to the secret charter, the trustees were to find ways to protect mankind from itself before its nihilistic tendencies led it to self-destruct. A Darwinian evolutionist, Dr. Kellum had set aside his fortune to be used to stave off human extinction and promote human evolution in the hope that an improved human being would emerge. To Dr. Kellum, humanity was like a child, needing the protection of a parent. The foundation existed to fill that paternal role.

  While the mission to promote human evolution would be seen by most as benign, there were passages in the shadow charter that could be misinterpreted. These passages argued that the general social good might occasionally require the sacrifice of society’s members. Some would argue that Dr. Kellum’s paternalistic views were much like those of the architects of the Holocaust, but Daly believed that there was a critical difference between them and that the difference justified the foundation’s actions.

  With an original board of trustees named in Dr. Kellum’s will, and careful selection of subsequent trustees, the foundation had stayed true to its mission through the Korean conflict, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the social revolution of the sixties, the economic crises of the seventies, and the collapse of the communist world in the eighties and nineties. Each crisis served to validate the mission of the Kellum Foundation and reinforce the trustees’ support of covert activities that prevented any of the crises from developing into worldwide conflict.

  Through the years it became clear to the trustees that fulfilling their goal meant more than simply funding research, since development and application of technology required stable social structures and a receptive culture. Shortly after its founding, the Kellum Foundation had begun funding political campaigns, as well as subversive political
movements that the trustees judged likely to produce the kind of social stability they desired. Donations, bribes, and loans usually accomplished their goals, but on occasion assassination had been necessary. Committed to promoting the general welfare, the foundation had not balked.

  Swirling the ice in his drink, Daly considered the implications of Ralph’s kidnapping. The fact someone had penetrated deep enough into the foundation to access Dr. Martin’s work was worrisome, particularly so because of the timing. Daly had just initiated a project that was dependent on Dr. Martin and his mind-melding technology, and Dr. Martin had been making good progress with the dreamers. While Daly could see no immediate connection between the project and Ralph’s kidnapping, the coincidence was troubling, and he wasn’t a man to leave anything to chance. After another sip of lemonade, Daly picked up his phone and punched a single number, then asked his secretary to find the Chief of Security.

  PLEA

  When they returned to Eugene, Elizabeth had a dozen messages, three from Anita’s mother. Elizabeth called her first.

  “She’s worse, Elizabeth. I’m afraid … she’s confused a lot, and she’s hallucinating. She hardly eats enough to stay alive and she’s stick thin. I took her back to the doctor, but he just prescribed vitamins and more sedatives. They don’t stop her from dreaming.”

  “The same dream?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Yes,” Anita’s mother said.

  Then she was silent, sniffling. Elizabeth pictured tears streaming down her face.

  “Can you help her? Can Doctor Martin do something?”

  “We’ll try.”

  Now Anita’s mother cried openly, sobbing thank-yous into the phone. Elizabeth let her pour her emotions into her gratitude before promising that she would call as soon as possible. Elizabeth was still worried about Ralph, and worrying about Anita again, too, only added to her emotional burdens.

  She found Wes in his lab, scrolling through program code. She stood in the doorway watching him. The lines of code flew past, and she wondered if he was actually reading them or just mesmerized by the pattern, his mind somewhere else. Abruptly he stopped the scroll, used the mouse to highlight a line, then typed in changes—he was reading the code, even at that speed. Did his focus mean he wasn’t worried about Ralph? She knew him well enough to know that he was good at burying his emotions. He turned at her knock and asked about Ralph immediately.

  “I’ve heard nothing,” Elizabeth said.

  Wes looked disappointed, despite his claims not to like Ralph.

  “Anita’s declining, Wes. She’s disoriented and hallucinating. She has to have a normal night’s sleep and dream again.”

  “Maybe after they find Ralph.”

  “There’s nothing we can do to help find Ralph,” Elizabeth said. “But we might save Anita.”

  Wes frowned, again staring at his screen. The lines of code were stationary now. When he spoke he didn’t look up from the screen.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said about each of the dreamers getting bits and pieces of the same dream. When we integrated you with Anita, she said that the dream had more detail. Maybe Anita is a receiver picking up a transmission from somewhere.”

  “Like our theory that some schizophrenics are actually picking up thought transmissions.”

  “Exactly. When you were added, we improved Anita as a receiver. Since you don’t dream the ship dream, we can assume you are a poor receiver, but even your presence improved Anita’s reception. It stands to reason that if we brought together the other ship dreamers and integrated them to make one receiver, we might dramatically improve reception.”

  “Put me in the dream again, Wes.”

  Wes winced at the thought of risking her life again. Elizabeth felt his hesitation and hurried to reassure him.

  “Anita needs me to be with her, and I want to look in that mirror again.”

  Wes nodded, reluctantly agreeing.

  Thinking of the faint reflections she had seen, Elizabeth wondered what she might see this time. They had been calling the nightly walk on the ship a dream, but she wondered if it wasn’t really a nightmare they were about to bring into focus.

  RAINBOW

  New Mexico in August was a hellish place. The land was barren, the animal life invisible, all creatures hiding in deep burrows to avoid the heat by avoiding daylight. Vegetation was sparse—deep green and gray over red earth baked hard by a relentless sun. The mountains in the distance were rugged, jutting into pure sky. They had an Indian name, but Jett couldn’t remember what it was. Everything here had an Indian name. Thunderheads were building by the mountains, but from the dusty smell of the air Jett knew it hadn’t rained in weeks, and wouldn’t. There was a stark beauty to this land, but aesthetic appreciation was something akin to emotion, and Jett couldn’t experience it. What he did appreciate was the challenge of living here.

  There were snakes out there, coiled under rocks, and rabbits and mice in burrows. He thought there might be bobcats too, and certainly hawks, but he had no hope of seeing them. Not in this heat. It wasn’t even noon, and already the day was over a hundred degrees. The animals who survived here were tough, disciplined, and well adapted to the rigors of the climate. He respected the humans who met the challenge of life here, too—not those who brought air-conditioning and swimming pools, but those who had come first and lived without modern conveniences. There was a Navajo reservation nearby, he knew. He respected those people and the white men who had followed, displacing them, fighting for the land. The reservations here were huge, testifying to how worthless the land was. Crossing the fought-for land in an air-conditioned van, he felt pampered, and had an urge to turn off the air-conditioning and roll down the windows.

  “Want some gum, Nate?” Ralph asked.

  Compton was driving, wearing white shorts and a white tank top with a blue Nike swoosh over her left breast. Jett was in the passenger seat of the van, and Ralph rode behind them, his head between the seats, loudly smacking his gum.

  “What kind, Ralph?” Nate asked.

  “Spearmint. I chewed all the Juicy Fruit. I think I gots one piece of that pink stuff if you want it.”

  “Not that pink stuff—that stinks. Pee-yew!” Jett said, holding his nose.

  Ralph gave a little snort that passed for a laugh and broke into a huge grin. Ralph and Jett had been repeating that routine since they had first played it out on the airplane. Compton glared. She hated the routine, Jett knew, so he kept playing his role with Ralph just to needle her.

  “Are we there yet?” Ralph said, head still between the seats, gum smacking loudly.

  “Yes, Ralph, we’re almost there,” Compton said tersely.

  Jett was amused by her irritation. Until they had picked up Ralph, she hadn’t shown any more emotional depth than Jett had, but in Ralph’s presence she was a different person; an emotional person.

  “I was just asking cause I’m gonna have to go again,” Ralph said.

  “You couldn’t possibly have to go again already,” Compton said.

  “I didn’t say I had to go,” Ralph said. “I said I was gonna have to go.”

  “We all have to go sometime,” Jett said.

  “When you gotta go, you gotta go,” Ralph said.

  Then together they said, “And we really gots to go!” Ralph snorted again, and smiled so wide that you could see his wisdom teeth. It was another of their routines, and Compton shook her head in disgust.

  Jett found that he enjoyed Ralph’s company. Ralph reminded him of his brother, Jason.

  Jett’s relationship with his brother ended after eighth grade. Jett’s father had taken the call from the principal, having ignored repeated requests to visit the school. When his father’s work boots pounded up the stairs, Jason cowered on his bed while Jett took position between his brother and the door. Storming in, belt in hand, his father paused, seeing the look on Jett’s face. Jett wasn’t the physical equal of his father yet, but his father was perpetually drunk, and if it
came to a fight the outcome wasn’t assured. Realizing this, his father held the belt in his hand, making no move to use it on Jason.

  “That was your principal,” his father shouted. “Your idiot brother ain’t going to high school. They’re sending him to a school for retards. He’s damn stupid, and ain’t good for nothing, and he won’t learn nothing at that school except to wipe his ass and tie his shoes! That’s all retards can learn.”

  Feeling the belt in his hand, he looked past Jett again, longing to use it, but stopped by the steel in Jett’s eyes.

  “Just like his mother. Damn stupid,” his father said, then stomped out.

  Jett held his brother through that night, listening to him cry off and on. Jett didn’t cry, but for one of the few times in his life he worried—worried what would happen to his brother without him.

  Jett went to high school, excelling in class and standing out as an athlete. His father came to games occasionally, where he watched Jett score touchdowns and hit home runs. He bragged about his son, too, although he had never played ball with his boys or coached them in any way. Jett and his brother’s first baseball gloves were bought with money Jett had earned mowing neighbor’s lawns.

  Jason didn’t fare well at his new school. He became morose and withdrawn, not coming out after school to play street ball, hiding from the shame he felt about being different. One day Jason wasn’t on the city bus that he took to and from his special school. Jett went looking for him, riding his bike along the bus route. When Jett saw the flashing lights of the police cars and ambulance, he knew immediately it was for his brother. The emergency vehicles were at the railroad crossing; a train was stopped on the tracks. Jett pushed through the crowd and past the police to see the pieces of his brother’s body being zipped into a yellow rubber bag. For the one and only time in his life, Jett shed a tear.

  The police called it an accident when they took Jett home and told his father. “He wasn’t good for nothing anyway,” his father said, and Jett snapped, jumping him. Jett beat him senseless before the police managed to pull him off and cart him off to jail. The football coach took him in after that, and he went to Boston College on a football scholarship. He never saw his father again. Now he seldom thought of his long-dead brother, but being with Ralph brought back those memories.