Armen Gharabegian - Protocol 7

“It’s an entrance. A secret entrance, really. The fact is, there are much easier ways to get here, but this is the only one without cameras.” He belched quietly into his fist. “I think.”

“Hayden, what the hell are you talking about?”

The scientist looked him up and down as if he was making some kind of final decision. After a moment he nodded his head and pushed open the far door.

Simon took one step inside and stopped in astonishment.

The space was as big as a football field and taller than a four-story building. The ceiling was curved into a high dome, buttressed by arcs of dull gray material that looked like steel and plastic at the same time. The floor was concrete, but the vehicles and devices that filled it-cranes, haulers, transformers, and machines he couldn’t begin to understand nearly filled the space.

Above him, suspended from the domed ceiling, were three huge cradles. One cradle was empty; the other two filled, at least in part, with unfinished technology-a vehicle, Simon thought, and one that looked strangely familiar. Cables and scaffolding connected the two constructs; robots rode the cables and flitted through the air between them, in the midst of completing some impossibly complex assignment.

“This…this…”

“This is what I like to call the Spector safe house,” Hayden said with ill-conceived pride. “I invented it.”

Simon tore his eyes away from the panorama to look at his father’s close friend. “Spector,” he said. “The experimental submersibles. But I thought-you told me the project wasn’t even half-finished.”

“Oh, come along, Simon,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for more than twelve years. I’m the recipient of a Nobel Prize, I’ve received the Renssaelaer Award twice now, and I’m a Fellow at the most prestigious robotics college in Europe. Surely you don’t think I’ve gotten this far by lying around waiting, do you?”

He dowsed the flashlight and strolled easily farther into the room. He was clearly comfortable here; it was his home.

The robots and technology hummed and twittered around him as if they weren’t there at all. “The outer project-the one you knew about-is roughly seven years behind the inner project-this one. Over three hundred scientists and engineers from seventeen countries are working on the outer project. Inside? Only thirty-two people even know it exists.” He stopped and turned, then smiled, almost embarrassed. “Well…thirty-three now.”

Simon was nearly speechless. “But…why? Why keep it a secret?”

“Good Lord, Simon. Think it through. Do we really want the Chinese to know we’re this far along? Or the Russians for that matter? It’s vital that they think we are as far behind as the outer project seems to be. This isn’t going to be like the development of the A-bomb after World War II, or the space race-done in public, so unsecure that everyone knew what we were doing, where we were doing it, how far along…”

He stopped, pulling himself up. Simon wondered how many times Hayden had given that speech. “But…it doesn’t matter anymore,” he said. “Not now.”

“Why not?”

He blinked in surprise, as if the answer was obvious. “They shut it down. All of it.”

“What? When?”

“Three weeks ago. Right after the Antarctic Quarantine. Right after they told us both that Oliver was dead.”

He wandered into the room, tortured by the memory. “They took it all-the files, the fabricators. Cancelled the assembly contracts, diverted the shipments. They pushed me out, Simon. Me, the one who created it all! The one who built the entire Spector Project literally out of a hole in the ground! Twelve years of my life, six of yours, and the work of hundreds of other scientists, gone.”

“Why, Hayden? Why stop it when you’re so close?”

He shook his head, absolutely despairing. “I have no idea. None. Maybe because all they ever wanted from me was a prototype. Maybe because of something Oliver and the others did on their ‘special assignment.’ All I know is…they stole it from me, Simon. And god help me, I want it back.”

Simon’s mind was whirling. He had seen the plans for the Spectors. He had often wondered why it was taking so long to make one, even as he marveled at the capabilities these newly combined technologies could offer. He moved closer to the vehicle in the far cradle-the one being completed even now by the robot workers.

“What’s the crew component?”

“Twelve. Fifteen in a pinch.”

“And all the specs I’ve seen apply? The fueling system?”

“Virtually inexhaustible. Might need to be rebuilt every five years, but I doubt it.”

“Depth limitations?”

Hayden snorted. “Go on, now. Aren’t any…maybe at ten thousand feet.”

The closer he moved to the submersible, the more he realized how massive the vehicle really was. The skin of the vehicle seemed to be deep blue and black at the same time and glittered insubstantially when he didn’t look directly at it. It seemed, somehow, to be both reflective and translucent at the same time. He reached out to touch it, completely in awe. The massive frame resembled a cross between an insect and a submarine, with heavy, unusual treads. It was an amphibian vessel that collapsed into a smooth submarine when the treads retracted into its main body. The reflective outer skin was unlike a submarine. It resembled a digital display that was both semi-transparent and reflective. These outer surface modules were the “intelligent skin” that mimicked the environment, making the vessel look invisible.

“Careful,” Hayden said. “It’s charged.”

Simon pulled his hand back and looked at his colleague. Hayden had somehow found a half-empty bottle of scotch and was pouring a liberal portion into a chipped white mug. “You’re kidding,” he said. “You worked out the invisibility modules? I thought you were having problems.”

Hayden took a healthy sip and smacked his lips. “Simon, you don’t realize how much you’ve contributed to this project. While you were still playing with your theories, we were adapting them into the prototypes.”

“Are you saying this thing actually works and can become partially invisible?”

“Almost entirely, actually. To radar and sonar it looks like a golf ball.”

He simply couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean to tell me,” he said, “that all these years, in all those seminars and papers and reports…you were hiding this?”

“Well…yes. But it wasn’t a waste of time, Simon. Not at all. The discoveries you made were immediately integrated into the work. Your exotic materials advance? They are real, Simon. Right here, in this vehicle, and the others like it. I chose to keep you away from this part of it for your own safety.”

“Safety?” Simon echoed, feeling the anger rise in him. “You lied to me, slowed me down, and crippled my research for my own safety? What the hell did you think was going to happen if you’d brought me in, Hayden? If you’d told me the truth?”

The scientist’s eyes bored into his own. “The same thing that happened to your father, Simon. Or worse.”

That stopped him. For one moment, he had forgotten everything that had happened in the last few days and weeks, and for the first time he understood the hell that Hayden must have been going through, all alone.

He put a hand on the older man’s shoulder and squeezed. “All right, Hayden,” he said. “I understand but…”

All the scientist could do was nod. He didn’t trust himself to do more.

Simon walked deeper into the facility and tried to look everywhere at once. “Where’s Teah?” he asked. “I thought she was by your side at all times.”

“I sent her on an errand,” Hayden said. “Thought you might want to see this for the first time all by yourself.”