But a new group of Piranypa invaders had arrived, and they crawled and crept within the stony bosom of Mount Uluru, infesting it, infecting it, corrupting it. And if they corrupted the Uluru, they corrupted life itself.

  She was flung headlong on the swirling gales, the clean, fresh wind of hope filling her lungs with an intoxicating purity. She raced upward toward the sun, exulting in its life-giving radiance.

  A voice, a single one, not the mixture, spoke gruffly. "Make a choice," it said. "Dream and live or awaken and fight."

  The image of the sun faded and Brigid was back in the void, a black so deep she knew she was at the far, far end of Dreamtime. She also knew she had a choice, of whether to awaken or continue to dream.

  Then she felt a throbbing pain, and a moment later she became aware of her body and she knew she had decided to awaken; or that's what she fervently hoped.

  Chapter 22

  When Erica van Sloan finally woke up, moonlight peeped in through the polarized sheet of plastic covering the crack in the cavern ceiling. She sat up quickly, looking around the rock gallery converted to living quarters. She was quite alone. Not even Abbott and Costello, as she called her Baronial Guardsmen, were in attendance and she wondered briefly if Baron Beausoleil had ordered them away.

  Sloan went to the bathroom and took a long hot shower. When she was finished, she dried herself in front of the mirrored squares glued to the stone wall and inspected her body for any sign of changes, as she did at least twice a day; particularly since she had discovered the streak of gray in her hair. As far as she could determine, it had not widened or lengthened, which was a small comfort. No new lines or wrinkles marred the sculpted smoothness of her face. She didn't murmur a thanks to Sam, as she had been most to do before finding the sign of aging.

  For over thirty years following her revival from stasis, Erica van Sloan had almost never looked at herself in a mirror. Confined to a wheelchair, she avoided her reflection with such a single-minded diligence it was almost a superstitious obsession. As far as she was concerned, her identity had died during her century and a half in cryo-suspension.

  Of half-Latino and half-British extraction, Sloan had inherited her dark hair and eyes from her Brazilian mother, but she possessed her father's tall frame and long, solid legs. God only knew from which side of her family her 200 point IQ derived, but she knew she received her beautiful singing voice from her mother.

  At eighteen years of age, the haughty, beautiful and more than a trifle arrogant Erica earned her Ph.D in cybernetics and computer science. She wanted to pursue a singing career, but within days of her graduation from Cal Tech she went to work for a major Silicon Valley hardware producer as a models and systems analyst.

  Eight months later, she left her six-figure-a-year salary to accept a position with a government-sponsored Ultra Top Secret undertaking known as Overproject Whisper. Only much later did she realize Whisper was a major division of something called the Totality Concept, and she was assigned to one of its subdivisions, Operation Chronos. In the vast installation beneath a mesa in Dulce, New Mexico, she served as the subordinate, lover and occasional victim of a man who made her own officious personality seem mousy and shy by comparison.

  Torrence Silas Burr was brilliant, stylish, waspish and nasty. He excelled at using his enormous intellect and equally enormous ego to fuel his cruel sense of humor. The word love had never been part of Sloan's emotional vocabulary, so she substituted for it the word submission, and Burr took full advantage of her devotion. He delighted in belittling and degrading not just her, but other scientists assigned to Overproject Whisper.

  The one scientist he could not deride was Mohandas Lakesh Singh, the genius responsible for the final technological breakthrough of Project Cerberus, which permitted Operation Chronos to finally make some headway.

  When the world blew out on noon of January 20, 2001, she ceased to think about Burr at all. Like everyone else in the Anthill installation, she prayed the safety measures would kick in like they were designed to. But despite all of their precautions, radiation still trickled in. Bomb-triggered earthquakes caused extensive damage.

  Since the military and government personnel in charge had no choice but to remain in the facility, it took them a while to realize they were just as much victims of the nukecaust as those whom they referred to as the "useless eaters" of the world. Erica van Sloan couldn't help but laugh to herself over the grim irony.

  Like their less educated counterparts, they had no real grasp of the scope of the global devastation. None of their painstaking calculations regarding acceptable losses, destruction ratios and the length of the nuclear winter bore any resemblance to the terrifying reality. When this select few, this powerful elite, finally did come to terms with reality, it was too late to do much about it. They had assumed that after five years or less of waiting inside the Anthill, a new world order would be in place. Now the schedule appeared to be closer to twenty.

  Sloan didn't feel she was sacrificing much when she volunteered to enter a stasis canister for a period of time, to be resurrected at some future date when the sun shone again and the world was secure. When she awakened, more than a century had passed. During her long slumber, the Anthill installation suffered near catastrophic damage. A number of stasis units had malfunctioned, hers among them. Due to that malfunction, she was resurrected as a cripple. Worse than finding out her long, shapely legs were little more than withered, atrophied sticks, was learning the plans made for her while she slept. Sloan was briefed on the unification program and the baronial oligarchy. She was told that to be of optimal use to the Archon Directorate and their hybrid pleni-potentiaries, she needed to be as fit as it was possible for a human in her physical condition and chronological age. Moreover. Sloan was informed she was only one of several pre-holocaust humans, known as "freezies" in current vernacular, resurrected to serve the baronies and she should consider herself fortunate to be among their number.

  In other words, she was not to grieve, mourn, weep or otherwise feel sorry for herself. She was to concentrate only on what her technological skills could contribute to the furtherance of the Program of Unification. Otherwise, she would be put out of her misery.

  She learned quickly not to question. Over the years of Sloan's long life, due to the creativity and skills of her intellect, she had undergone many organ transplants, so as to extend her value to the united baronies. Despite the pain and suffering that had gone with each successive operation, Sloan never regained the use of her legs, and the neurological degeneration grew no acute she became a complete cripple. She hadn't realized how much she loved being young, beautiful and vital, until all of it was taken from her. Then Sam, her precious son, a mixture of her in-vitro genetic material spliced with that of an Annunaki, had given it back; or at least returned the promise of it. If she could enlist Lakesh to Sam's cause, Sam would restore her youth.

  Sloan ran her hands through her wet hair and tried to put the echo of Sam's words out of her mind. She was taking action, after all, putting into motion a plan that would eventually cause the imperator's path to cross that of Lakesh's again.

  "Don't worry, we're still beautiful." Baron Beausoleil's soft voice startled her.

  "Where have you been?" Sloan asked coolly, on willing to show surprise by turning.

  "Observing our guest." Baron Beausoleil stepped closer and her reflection slid across the mirrored squares. She was wearing the black imperial uniform, the satin tunic stretched taut across her breasts and cinched tight at her narrow waist.

  "How is she?" Sloan asked.

  She ran her hands over Sloan's bare shoulders. "Comfortable but confused. Not a mental state she is accustomed to feeling."

  Sloan repressed a smile. Confusion was not an emotion any of the hybrids, particularly the barons, dealt with easily. She easily recalled their bewildered reactions when first they came to the realization the Archon Directorate did not exist, and then when they had first met Sam, who had been introduced to them by Balam.

  At the time, Sloan could only imagine the thoughts careening and colliding within the oversized craniums of the barons. For the entirety of their artificially prolonged lives, the barons believed they served the will of the Archons; or they convinced themselves they were the Directorate's servants and therefore any action they undertook to safeguard their positions as the overlords of humankind was justified.

  But their probing intelligence needed proof, and without it, doubt inevitably ate away the belief structure. Although none of the barons spoke of it, they had ceased to subscribe to the belief in the Archons. In which case, they were no longer content with their roles as the plenipotentiaries of a higher, grander authority.

  They had reached this conclusion tentatively, by degrees over a period of time. When they finally did, they were as absolutely certain of it as they had been certain of the existence of the Archon Directorate. Now, dealing with the appearance of Balam, their minds were in utter turmoil, fears, desires and thoughts all crashing into each other.

  Baron Beausoleil had proved to be more resilient and adaptable than the others of the oligarchy, but Erica can Sloan still wasn't sure how she felt about that. As the baron continued to caress her, her arms and belly and breasts broke out in gooseflesh, but it was not from arousal.

  "Does Quavell know why she has been brought here?" she asked.

  The baron laughed, a musical fluting with notes of cruel mockery within it. "She suspects. How could she not?"

  "I want to speak with her." Sloan stepped away from Baron Beausoleil's touch, reaching for her uniform hanging from a hook on the wall.

  The baron's role as seducer hadn't fooled her, but the woman's willingness to please her was a surprise. She had not thought it possible for a new human, much less a baron, to subsume her inborn arrogance and stratospheric sense of superiority to serve the needs of another—certainly not the needs of an old human.

  Sloan remembered her own submission to Burr and how she had done anything necessary to stay with him, at least for a while. She had been tremendously attracted to the sheer animal dynamism of the man, but now the memory of that devotion revolted her. Glancing into Baron Beausoleil's smiling face, she wondered how long it would take before she assessed the depth of her submissiveness to the imperial mother—and turned against her in order to add this far empire to her own holdings.

  Chapter 23

  Quavell was hungry. Her head had ceased throbbing, but the sharp pangs of hunger remained. She put her hands on her belly, surreptitiously examining the chrome bracelet locked tight around her right wrist. A long, slender chain was attached to the bracelet, and the other end of it was secured to an eyebolt in the wall.

  Standing, Quavell started going over the area of her confinement in detail. The only furniture was a cot and a chair across the room, near the door. As she paced, she went through her memories of the past few hours, looking for anything useful that her conscious mind might have overlooked but her subconscious noticed.

  She remembered the hyper-dimensional transition as an onslaught of crazed sensations, wherein she felt sounds, tasted colors and smelled sights. The patchwork of experiences boiled in her mind like a cauldron of pitch the size of the universe itself. Her awareness slowly returned, in bits and pieces and in no particular order. She heard a strange bass hum, as of a musical note refusing to fade, and only then did she become aware of her body again.

  When Quavell opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was a rock-ribbed alcove in which she lay. Her first thought was for the safety of the child in her womb, but she sensed nothing amiss. Men in black uniforms pulled her to her feet and marched her through rocky passageways lit by naked light bulbs. Above a certain height the walls were unfinished stone, but below that they were sheathed in polished alloy. She was escorted past wooden crates, a collection of picks and shovels and other tools, and she guessed wherever she was, the installation was still a work in progress.

  Quavell was brought into a cell and chained to the wall. Shortly afterwards, a human male who she assumed was a medic gave her a swift, almost perfunctory examination, then she was left alone. Except for the hunger pains, she hadn't minded the isolation. She needed an undisturbed period of time to process what she had experienced, seen and overheard in order to reach a provisional hypothesis.

  Judging by the uniforms the soldiers wore, she knew she was a prisoner of the imperator's forces, but she also knew she was not in the Xian pyramid. Regardless, the power that had swept her out of the Cerberus gateway unit and materialized her in the alcove fit exactly with the kind of hyper-dimensional manipulation Lakesh attributed to the imperator. She was fairly certain why she had been abducted, and that knowledge allayed her anxiety to a certain degree.

  Quavell stepped to the door, but the pull of the chain against her arm stopped her a foot short of it. She walked in a large half circle, examining the smooth stone of the floor, looking for loose rock. She found none, so she reached up and grabbed the chain with both hands. She threw her full weight against it, but the eyebolt held without budging even a fraction. Returning to the cot, she sat down and took a deep breath, calming herself. She concentrated on a breathing pattern to control her hunger. Then she felt a stab of sudden fear and she swung her head up and around, toward the door. An instant later, it swung open. Two women walked in, both attired in imperial black. Quavell recognized both of them instantly. The taller of the women smiled at her patronizingly. "Hello, Quavell. Are you comfortable?" Quavell nodded, not speaking.

  "Answer the imperial mother when she asks you a question!" the other woman snapped.

  "Yes, my lord baron." Quavell's response was automatic, by rote, but Baron Beausoleil's eyes widened just a trifle in surprise.

  "You know me?" she demanded.

  "Yes, my lord baron. Both of you. I have seen you at Area 51."

  Understanding glinted in Erica v. Sloan's eyes. "Ah. I confess I was unaware of you until recently." "That is to be expected," Quavell replied smoothly. "Until recently, I was just another drone of the Quad-Vee genotype."

  Baron Beausoleil came nearer, her eyes never wavering from Quavell until she was standing right in front of her. "And what are you now?"

  Quavell didn't look at her. Instead, she kept her eyes downcast as she had been conditioned to do, fixing her gaze on the baron's boots. "I appear to be a hostage, my lord baron. Or perhaps a lure would be more appropriate.”

  Erica van Sloan chuckled. "Or flypaper. Do you know why you are here?"

  "I can only speculate."

  "Please do."

  In a flat, neutral monotone, Quavell stated, "Dr. Singh informed me of the imperator's desire to enlist his aid in his undertakings. He feared that if he utilized the Cerberus network, the imperator would sense it and redirect the matter stream. Apparently the imperator took this fear into account and developed a secondary choice."

  Quavell paused and Sloan said, in a voice purring with amusement, "Do go on."

  "Obviously I was that secondary choice, particularly after it became known I had been impregnated by a human. Due to the signals transmitted by the subdural transponder I was injected with upon my permanent reassignment to Area 51, the imperator was able to lock in on me during a mat-trans dematerialization. Now you expect Dr. Singh to come after me.”

  “No," Sloan said bluntly.

  Quavell raised her brow arches in surprise. Erica van Sloan's smile was almost pitying when she explained, "Neither I nor my son ever envisioned Mohandas Lakesh, I mean; gating here to the rescue, offering his services in exchange for your life and that of your child. He is not that gallant."

  Quavell nodded. "I comprehend. You expected Kane to some after me. And more than likely Grant, and perhaps even Brigid Baptiste would accompany him. You would have all three of them, as well as myself. Gallantry aside, Dr. Singh would not sacrifice all of them just to save himself. Logical. Almost flawlessly so."

  Erica van Sloan arched an ironic eyebrow. "Almost?"

  "You overlooked one important fact—Kane wants nothing to do with me."

  Baron Beausoleil frowned. "He is a human male. You carry his child. You love him. Therefore he feels responsible for you and the child in your womb." Quavell gazed into the baron's face. "I do not love Kane. Nor does he love me, or feel responsible for me in any way. I am sure if he feels any strong emotion over my abduction, it is relief."

  Baron Beausoleil's lips twisted in a sneer. "You are foolish. I saw the record of your seeding sessions with Kane. You were completely enamored of him. Your responses were not fabricated."

  "I did what Baron Cobalt bade me to do," Quavell retorted stolidly. "Because I might have learned to take pleasure in the sessions does not mean I love him.”

  The baron gazed at her in baffled anger for a long moment. Then she bent over and put both hands on either side of Quavell's face, clasping her tightly. "Show me."

  Quavell started to struggle, then subsided. She hastily tried to empty her mind, visualizing an impregnable brick wall around her memories and store of knowledge. A drill bit of pain seemed to bore into the cranial bone at the center of her forehead. She winced.

  "Your simple defenses are a waste of energy and time," Baron Beausoleil said. "At best they are a temporary diversion. We are biologically and mentally linked, and you cannot hide your thoughts from me—and even if you manage to resist, I will leave your mind destroyed. You will have nothing—and we will still have you and your child as hostages." With a sinking sensation of resignation, Quavell realized the baron spoke the truth. She stopped erecting the mental harrier. Baron Beausoleil's eyes widened and held hers captive, peering deep, deep through them into the roots of her soul. She felt her memories being rifled, examined, weighed and judged.

 

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