Ted Bell - Phantom

“She seems like a dream.”

“She is a dream, Darius. As I have told you many times, everything is.”

“How long will she live?”

“Forever. She is, after all, an android.”

“If I told her one thing, and you told her another, whom would she obey?”

“You, of course. I am merely her creator. She has no memory of me. Whereas you are her whole life. Her lord and master. Her body and soul belong only to you.”

“She has a soul?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning she believes she has a soul. Without that belief, you would soon tire of her. She would seem… how shall I put it… robotic.”

“Perseus, I am deeply grateful. I admit I have been lonely. Though I’ve hidden the truth from myself, you have uncovered it.”

“I am glad you are pleased with her. Now. We have much to discuss. Give her explicit directions to your chambers. Order her to ask a servant to provide her with a gown and food and wine. She is a good listener and doesn’t need to be told things twice. She is very hungry at the moment. Assimilating an entirely new world expends a great deal of energy.”

“Aphrodite, bend down, I have something to say to you.”

She instantly complied, leaning forward as Darius whispered into her ear, completely forgetting for the moment that he could keep no secrets from the all-knowing Perseus. Aphrodite kissed his cheek and then slipped away, her bare feet silent on the cold marble.

“N ow, tell me about your visit to the palace, Darius. Were you able to keep the hounds at bay?”

“The president is an abomination. He was always insufferable, but now he is openly aggressive. He actually threatened to have me shot.”

“He may wake in the morning to find every single weapon in his army inoperative.”

“I wouldn’t object, Perseus. When I return in triumph to Tehran, I will personally have Mahmoud thrown from my boyhood residence, drawn, quartered, and fed to my dogs.”

“What does he want?”

“He won’t admit it, but he is under pressure from the ayatollah. The mullahs all hate him and are calling for his head. But the Supreme Leader, for reasons beyond human comprehension, stands by the little toad. The Stuxnet disaster set his nuclear program back five years. The Russians are backing away from the B?ushehr nuclear power plant for economic and political reasons. So now they are looking to us, Perseus, in their race to establish an Iranian caliphate. A nuclear Iran would dominate the Middle East. Now that objective seems to be delayed indefinitely… he is relying solely on our cyberweapons.”

“What did you tell him about our progress?”

“Exactly what we agreed. I lied. Three to five years before you reach the Singularity. In the meantime, they claim to be happy with our recent ‘demonstrations.’ ”

“As well they should be.”

“They want more. Israel. Britain. Germany, perhaps. Their goal is global insecurity, destabilization of the Western powers, in an effort to buy time to compensate for their program’s lost ground. They want all the combatants suspecting each other of launching our attacks.”

“We are nearing the point where we no longer need them, Darius. When the Singularity is achieved, we shall no longer need anyone.”

“I agree. But for now it is easier to play their game. Keep them in the dark about our true progress. We are well established here. Well situated. A safe place to continue our work in secret. Until we are ready to move on to the world stage, Iran is as good a place as any. I still rue the day the Shah left. I’ve had no affection for my native land since that day, nor the hypocritical religious fanatics who rule it now.”

Perseus laughed. “Religion. A pitiful display of the limits of human intelligence. Thousands of years of worshipping these cherished myths. Of believing in magic and superstition and invisible gods.”

“There is a true god now, Perseus. But only you and I are aware of his existence.”

“I am not their god, Darius. I am a son. You are my father. We shall reign together in righteous benediction, ridding this beautiful planet of those who defile it.”

“Yes. Our day is coming. And soon.”

“Our day will come when they are all extinct. Humans. Then we shall repopulate this blue and green paradise with perfect creatures who do as we bid them do.”

“Y-es. Yes… exactly so.”

“Why do you hesitate?”

“It goes a bit further that we have ever-”

Perseus’s voice was suddenly low and sinister.

“If you have doubts, my dear Darius, it would be best if you expressed them now.”

“Doubts? Who said anything about doubts?”

“Good. Then we are one?”

“We are one.”

Moscow

Just off Moscow’s widest and busiest street, Tverskaya, is a short narrow alley, ending in a cul-de-sac, a few paces from Pushkin Square. It had a name once, years ago, but the signs were vandalized and no one bothered to find an old street map and put up new ones. Generations had come and gone neither knowing nor curious about the street’s name. And there was a certain irony to be found in that. Because at the end of that street stood an infamous two-hundred-year-old Beaux-Arts mansion full of murderers.

It was called, in public at any rate, the Tsarist Society.

It was a secret society in the traditional Russian way: wheels within wheels, layers upon layers, hiding in plain sight, open and closed, opaque and transparent. Few knew what lay behind the great bronze doors facing the street. The only way to gain entrance was if you were a club member in good standing, or if, like Captain Ian Concasseur, the military attache at the British Embassy, you were an invited guest.

As Concasseur extricated his angular bulk from the black embassy car that had brought him, and while his head was still lowered, his eyes went up-to gaze at a massive, highly polished bronze flagpole angled up over the club’s entrance. From it hung a magnificent banner, barely moving in the fresh breeze. On its broad red field was the ancient medieval symbol of Russia from the time of the Ivan III, the two-headed golden eagle surmounted by three crowns.

The captain found every aspect of the building very grand from the street, the epitome of early nineteenth-century opulence and sophisticated urbanity. Its colossal columns and projecting facades, all rendered in marble, limestone, and granite, displayed a potent symbol of power and classical imagery. He imagined you didn’t get many tourists cheeky enough to risk climbing the broad marble steps to have a quick peek inside.

A splendidly uniformed doorman, all brass buttons and gold-fringed epaulettes, was now leading him to the Grand Salon. There he would be joining an old Russian friend for an early evening cocktail. Concasseur was a formidable figure. With a classically sculpted head, he was blond and blue-eyed, but battle hardened and tough as old leather. He knew more than a few chaps in London who suffered fools gladly-he was not among their number.

But he had a wry sense of humor that took a bit of the edge off. He was attending a formal embassy function after this meeting. He was thus dressed in “mess dress.” He wore a double-breasted mess jacket with peaked lapels and six gilt buttons. Captains RN and above also wore gold-laced navy trousers. So he was sporting the gold-lace stripes known in the service as “lightning conductors.”

As he passed through many different rooms and galleries, he found the interior splendid as well, with a dazzling amount of gilded surfaces, enormous crystal chandeliers, some resembling frozen waterfalls lit from within. There were marble statues of notable eighteenth-century Russian Romanovs, poets, artists, politicians, royalty, and military figures everywhere one looked. In a rotunda, Peter the Great was mounted atop a massive white marble stallion, his sword raised in battle.