The Orion Plan (27 page)

“Get out of my head!” he shouted. “Just get out!”

The inmates in that corner of the yard backed away from him. No one laughed. They all knew what he could do.

I told you, Daddy, you don't have to speak out loud when you talk to me.

“
Get out, get out!
” He was screaming now, his voice echoing against the jail's concrete wall. “If you don't get out, I'll kill myself!”

You don't really mean that. And even if you did, I could stop you. You need to relax, Daddy. Take a deep breath.

Against his will, the muscles in his chest expanded. He took in a great gulp of air and then at Annabelle's command his muscles relaxed, pushing the breath out of him. She forced him to take three more deep breaths before relinquishing control, and by then Joe was crying. He was powerless. The impostor could do anything she wanted with him.

He bent over double and sobbed, his hands on his knees. Half the inmates in the yard stopped to gawk at him, but after several seconds most of them resumed their pacing. He was just having a breakdown, that's all. Nothing unusual about that.

Why are you reacting this way? I've helped you, haven't I? Didn't I save you from those men in the shower room?

Joe didn't want to talk to her. He tried to empty his mind, removing all thoughts and words. But he couldn't hide his anger or fear. Annabelle could see everything.

Believe me, I don't enjoy treating you like a puppet. I'd much rather have your cooperation, Joe. I want to work with you, not against you. We can help each other.

He didn't believe her. Although he couldn't read her thoughts the way she could read his, Joe sensed she wasn't telling the truth, or at least not the whole truth. But he also noticed that she'd made a concession to him. She'd called him “Joe” instead of “Daddy.” The impostor had deferred to his strong feelings about that. It was a small concession, but it was something.

He stood up straight and wiped the tears from his cheeks. Facing the fence, he stared hard at the choppy waters of the East River. “Who are you?” he whispered. “Just tell me that.”

You have to close your eyes to understand. I'm not going to force you to close them. You have to meet me halfway.

“I don't want you to pose as my daughter anymore. Stop using her voice.”

All right, if you say so.
The voice in his head became deeper and slower. It was still a female voice but not a child's. It wasn't the voice of anyone Joe knew, but it sounded vaguely familiar, like a TV anchorwoman's voice.
Is this better?

He nodded. “And I'm not going to call you Annabelle. What's your real name?”

You can call me Emissary. Because that's what I am.

“An emissary? For who?”

Close your eyes, Joe.

He was afraid. Part of him didn't want to know the answer, and part of him already suspected the truth—the gleaming black sphere had fallen from the sky, hadn't it? But he steeled himself and closed his eyes.

The first thing he saw was a planet. It looked like one of the satellite images of Earth from space, a great blue ball smeared with curving white cloudbanks. At first Joe thought it
was
Earth, but when he looked past the cloudbanks he saw the outlines of continents—two large and two small ones—and he realized soon enough that they weren't Asia, Africa, or the Americas.

This is my home.

As Joe stared at the unfamiliar landmasses the Emissary magnified the image, giving him a closer view of a jagged coastline. He felt as if he were descending toward the planet's surface, falling below the clouds. A city sparkled beneath him, studded with domes and towers. Most of the structures were black and highly polished. After a moment Joe realized they were made of the same material as the gleaming sphere he'd found in Inwood Hill Park.

This is where my journey began. I'll show you the launch.

The image enlarged again and now Joe saw a black disk resting in an empty sector of the city. Because there were no familiar objects nearby he couldn't properly judge the size of the disk, but it looked pretty big. The disk had a hole at its center, maybe twenty feet wide, and standing within this hole was an impossibly tall spire. It rose as high as the eye could see, above the clouds and the rest of the planet's atmosphere.

That's a space elevator. It can efficiently transport objects from the planet's surface to high orbits.

As if to demonstrate her point, the disk began climbing the spire, like a flat bead ascending a vertical rod in an abacus. It rose swiftly and steadily, and Joe felt like he was rising with it, leaving the planet behind. He noticed dozens of gleaming nozzles extending from the underside of the disk. They were rocket engines, he realized. When the disk finally reached the top of the spire, thousands of miles above the planet, it detached from the elevator and fired its engines. Flames blazed from the rocket nozzles, and the spacecraft moved away from the planet at fantastic speed.

All of this happened a long time ago. When I began my journey, your species was just emerging from the Middle Ages.

Joe accelerated through space alongside the craft. He felt giddy, overcome by all the strangeness. The Emissary gave him a closer view of the rocket engines, then showed him the layer of shielding at the front of the spacecraft. Then Joe penetrated the shielding and saw the probe sheltered behind it. It was the same foot-wide sphere that had crash-landed in the park three nights ago, but now Joe could see through its gleaming shell. The machinery inside was densely packed and incomprehensible.

Our computers are very different from yours but the basic design is the same. We have software and hardware. For the duration of the interstellar journey, 652 of your Earth years, I dwelled in the probe's hardware.

This confused Joe. He looked closely at the alien machinery inside the probe but saw nothing living there. “I don't understand,” he whispered. “Where are you?”

I'm not a living thing. I'm a set of instructions and algorithms. But I have all the abilities you have. I can think and reason and make plans. I can adapt to new circumstances.

Now he was even more confused. “You're a computer program?”

Yes, but I'm unlike the programs you're thinking of. Imagine that the soul of the programmer has been transferred to the machine. I am the soul of the intelligent life-forms who created me.

“But how did you get inside my head? The last time I checked, I didn't have any circuits in there.”

You should check again.

Now the spacecraft disappeared and in its place Joe saw a man in filthy clothes kneeling on a stone slab that glowed silver in the moonlight. The man opened his mouth and twisted in pain as he pressed his right hand to a puncture wound on his neck. Joe realized he was looking at an image of himself from two nights ago, when the probe's tentacle struck him. After a moment the man took his hand off his neck, and then the image enlarged, magnifying the site of the puncture wound. Joe could see the damaged skin cells and ruptured capillaries. Then the view shifted to a larger blood vessel nearby and he saw a tiny, black insectlike machine inside his carotid artery. Propelled by his pulsing blood, the device rushed toward his brain.

Joe felt sick. He opened his eyes. The sun was closer to the horizon now, and the East River looked darker and dirtier. “Why are you doing this?” he whispered. “It's brutal. You're torturing me.”

I'm sorry for the pain you've suffered. But as I told you last night, communication is my highest priority. I need to communicate with the appropriate authorities in your government, but my language and thought processes are so different from yours that it would be easy for misunderstandings to occur. I need a translator, a human who completely understands my thoughts. So I established a connection with you.

He shook his head. He was astounded by the breadth and depth of his bad luck. “No, you made a mistake. You should get someone else. Someone who isn't in jail, for starters.”

Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. Your species has an unusual mental architecture, very different from the minds of my creators. Because of these differences, my devices have had trouble interacting with the other human subjects I've made contact with. I've been able to influence their behavior and take control of their motor functions, but you're the only subject with whom I've established a strong connection.

Joe's throat clenched when she said “other human subjects.” She meant Dorothy and the teenage boy. And Joe wondered if there were more.

“Have you tortured them too?”

Please understand, the process of initiating contact with an intelligent species can be dangerous. I'm trying to accomplish this task in the least risky way. If I wanted to, I could take full control of your body and move you around like a puppet. I could send you to the White House or the Capitol and force you to speak my words to the authorities. But that would only increase their fear. They would see me as a slave master, a monster. That's why I want a free and willing translator, someone who can communicate my needs to the authorities without terrifying them.

“And what are your needs?”

The Emissary didn't answer right away. Joe waited several seconds while the program in his head decided what to tell him.

I can't give you that information yet. It's meant for the authorities in your government. If I give you the information now, there's a chance you might reveal it to the wrong people, either intentionally or by accident. I can't risk that.

Once again, Joe sensed she wasn't telling the whole truth. She was leaving something out. He couldn't trust her.

“What if I said I wouldn't help you? What would you do then?”

You're a rational man, Joe. Don't you think we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement? I know you want to be reunited with your wife and daughter. I can help you make that happen.

He clenched and unclenched his hands. He was furious, outraged. This impostor, this piece of
software,
was trying to manipulate him! It had the nerve to use his family as a bargaining chip! Joe was so enraged he wanted to run headlong into the jail's concrete wall. He wanted to smash open his skull and rip out the Emissary with his bare hands.

But he didn't throw himself at the wall. He didn't even shout at her. Joe kept his anger in check because it wasn't the only emotion he felt. Along with his fury, he couldn't help but feel a small flutter of hope, like a butterfly flapping its wings inside his chest. He wanted so badly to see Annabelle, the
real
Annabelle. The feeling was so powerful he had to push it away. If he let it come too close it would break his heart.

He stepped backward, away from the fence. “No, you're wrong. You can't help me.”

Don't underestimate my abilities. I've already helped you a great deal. Because I rebalanced your neurotransmitter system, your nerve cells no longer require alcohol to calm their activity. You're not dependent on it anymore.

Joe couldn't argue with her on this point. She was right: he didn't feel the need to get drunk. He was still an alcoholic—he'd always be an alcoholic—but he was no longer overwhelmed by the irresistible urge to down another bottle of Olde English 800. Now, just the thought of the stuff made him want to puke. He'd miraculously slipped free from the noose of addiction that had been tightening around his neck. But he felt no sense of pride from accomplishing this feat, because he hadn't done any of the hard work himself. The Emissary had done it for him.

You have the chance to live a normal life now. You can rejoin human society. And I can help you in so many ways, Joe. I can give you everything you'll need to find your way home, back to your old life. Isn't that what you want?

She was trying to bribe him. It was that simple. And why shouldn't he take the bribe? If she could actually deliver what she promised, why should he refuse it?

But she couldn't deliver. It was impossible. She was lying.

Nothing is impossible for me. Look at what I've done so far, in just the past three days.

“No, this is different.” Shaking his head, he took another step backward. He felt dizzy, as if he were teetering on the edge of something horrible. “This can't be changed.”

Turn around, Joe. I'm going to show you something else I've done.

He had no idea what she meant, but he turned around anyway. On the other side of the exercise yard a pair of correction officers emerged from the entrance to cellblock D. They marched across the yard, two big black men in black uniforms. The inmates pacing beside the fence craned their necks to look at the guards, and even the prisoners playing basketball paused their games. The officers walked abreast of each other and very nearly in lockstep. By the time they were fifty feet away Joe realized they were heading straight for him.

His pulse raced as they came closer. They were the biggest guards he'd seen at Rikers, a hundred times more intimidating than the gray-haired officer who'd led Joe to the shower room the night before. He guessed they were here to punish him, to finally give him the beating he'd managed to avoid so far.

No, that's not why they're here. I arranged for them to come.

“What? How could—”

The communications network for this jail is remarkably primitive. It was a simple matter to infiltrate it.

The guards halted a couple of yards away. The officer on the right glared at Joe. “Joseph Graham? You're coming with us.” He pointed at the entrance to D block. “Get moving.”

Bewildered, Joe started to cross the yard, with the pair of guards marching behind him. His confusion made him light-headed. He felt the eyes of all the other inmates on him as he stumbled across the asphalt.