Fire with Fire(87)

“You mean that we have to keep fighting the megacorporations by using their own tactics against them?”

Nolan stared off into the blue. “I mean that you’re going to have to think about how even the best-intentioned states and leaders occasionally have no choice but to fight fire with fire. I’ve lived that truth. Yet, having lived it, I just don’t know that our ends, no matter how worthy they are, can ever justify the means—the ‘fire’—we’ve used.”

“Seems to me you had little enough choice, most of the time.”

“Maybe, but we—Rich and I—could have chosen not to get involved.”

“And then who would have achieved all this?”

“Caine, there’s always someone else. No one is that indispensable.”

“No? That’s what I used to tell myself—before the Tyne. Sometimes, we get to choose if we’re willing to be a link in the chain of history—but sometimes, history chooses us. Puts us in a position where we have no choice but to act.”

Nolan looked over at Caine abruptly, as though his companion had, without warning, jabbed a needle into him. Caine looked closely at the seamed face and he suddenly realized how all Nolan’s secrets had started. “Because that’s what happened to you, isn’t it? You found yourself in a position where you had no choice but to act, because you knew—knew—that there are exosapients. You’ve known from the very start.”

Nolan did not look at Caine, but turned his eyes back toward the blue-on-blue horizon where the Mediterranean met the cloudless sky.

“When did you learn about them—and how?”

A number of others—Ching and Downing among them—were approaching. Caine guessed he had about twenty seconds before they were in earshot. He put a hand on Nolan’s still-considerable shoulder, felt no startled flexure in the smooth expanse of trapezius. “When did you learn? And how?”

Nolan turned, then smiled. The gentle curve of his lips and relaxed creases in his forehead and around his eyes suggested that he was not merely about to share a secret, but jettison it, cut it loose as he would a millstone. He opened his mouth—

CIRCE

He finished counting across the columns and found the silhouette he was looking for. His face relaxed, his shoulders almost slumped, as if he had lost awareness of himself. However, almost visible through his shirt, his heart began to quake, to race, gaining speed, like an engine building up to overload—

ODYSSEUS

Nolan’s lips and eyelids flicked open a little wider. His head went back slightly, as though someone had surprised him by poking a finger into his back. The olives went tumbling out of his hand.

Caine grabbed toward him, but Nolan’s body was already in motion, falling backward, slamming down against the foot ramp and rolling off to one side.

Caine was around the ramp and kneeling beside him while everyone else on the promontory stood immobile for a moment that seemed to stretch on and on and on—

Caine roared: “Call a doctor! Now!”

As if released from a trance, the gathering crowd burst into a criss-crossing rush of chattering and yelling activity. Caine propped Nolan up, felt and saw his chest spasming irregularly, the shocks centered on the sternum. Oh, Christ—

Nolan, eyes wide, was trying to gasp out words.

Downing half stumbled over the ramp, almost pushing Caine out of the way, desperate to ask a question: “What were you trying to tell me, Nolan? What? What?”

For a split second, Caine could not make any sense of the question, then he shoved Downing back in disgust. Always business with you, isn’t it, asshole? Caine looked down. “We’re getting help. We’re—”

Nolan swallowed, closed his eyes as his chest continued to buck irregularly. When he opened his eyes again, he was able to gasp words between the spasms. “Sorry, Trevor . . . Elena . . .” His eyes—uncertain—sought Caine. “You. Too. Sorry.”

“It’s okay, Nolan. They’ve got doctors on the way. They—”

Nolan interrupted with a smile that seemed more rictus. He lifted his hand toward Caine—who had the fleeting impression that the redoubtable warrior and canny statesman was attempting to touch his face. But no: his eyes were losing focus. He couldn’t see. He’s alone with the pain, with the approach of death.

Caine reached up with his right hand, intercepted and held Nolan’s faltering one in a firm, and he hoped soothing, grip. “We—I’m here,” he said.

Nolan’s eyes roved, then closed. He smiled faintly, nodded, tried to breathe, seemed unable to do more than gasp in a shallow breath. With which he said, “Trev.”