Read Online Killing Time by Caleb Carr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Caleb Carr
Tags: Fiction, General, Psychological, Science-Fiction, Thrillers, Technological, Presidents, Psychology Teachers, Assassination, Twenty-first century
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risking any visual contact.
We'll move west along the thirty-fifth parallel into the Hindu Kush, then north
to the valley of the Amu Darya. The camp is strung out along the Afghan side of
the border with Tajikistan. We'll arrive just past dawn, right on schedule. The
apparatus will already have engaged."
"Good." Tressalian
turned away from the transparent hull just as a black strip of coastline became
faintly visible in the dark distance and fixed his gaze on me. "Then
there's time, yet, for the doctor to ask the rest of his questions."
"Questions," I said,
trying to focus. "Yes, I've got questions. But there's one thing I've got
to know right now." I moved over to stare down at him intently. "How
many other lies like the Forrester assassination story am I believing without
even knowing it?"
"You mean," Tressalian
answered, "how much of the information that makes up your reality
is utterly unreliable?" I nodded and he opened his eyes wide, raising his
brows as if to prepare me for what was coming: "Certainly more than you'd
suspect, Doctor. And, quite probably, more than you'll believe ..."
CHAPTER 16
How can I describe the hours that
followed? How do I explain my transformation from skeptical (if fascinated)
observer of Malcolm Tressalian's outlandish, even mad, schemes to full-fledged
participant in them? There were so many factors involved, not least the lingering
trauma of having seen my oldest friend murdered before my eyes, along with the
lack of any meaningful sleep in the days since that event. Yet mere emotional
and physical exhaustion would be inadequate hooks upon which to hang my swift
spiritual metamorphosis. No, the cascade of intellectual, visual, and physical
stimuli that continued to rain down on me in those predawn and morning hours
would, I think, have converted the strongest and most doubting of souls, and I
say that not simply to excuse my reaction; rather, it is a testament to all
that I heard, saw, and felt as we passed over the Pakistani coast and
penetrated to the interior of the subcontinent. As Larissa had said, the valley
of the once-proud Indus River, mother of one of the mightiest and most
mysterious of ancient civilizations, had been turned into a nuclear wasteland
during the still-raging war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. But my
beautiful companion's further statement that the valley was uninhabited was
not, strictly speaking, correct. As we sped along above the surface of the
water, past riverbanks strewn with rotting bodies and bleached skeletons, we
occasionally saw groups of what were perhaps the most desperate people on
earth: farmers and villagers whose bodies and ways of life—whose very chances for life—had been terribly damaged as a result of the vicious nationalism and
religious zealotry of both their enemies and their countrymen. They were
moving down the hillsides in limping, shuffling lines, those weakened wraiths,
moving down by the light of the moon to fill buckets with the river's poisoned
waters, which they would later boil in a futile attempt at purification so that
they might try to go on for a few more days or weeks in the only way that, given
the decimated condition of their nation and the unwillingness of the rest of
its citizens to accept such nuclear lepers, was possible for them.
The sight hit all of us hard,
suspending even my urgent curiosity about my companions; but it seemed to take the
greatest toll on Malcolm. It was well-known that the development of India's
rabidly bellicose new breed of nationalism in the years since the turn of the
century had coincided with the rise to economic and social primacy of
information technologies and networks in that country; and Larissa would later
tell me that Malcolm had always held their father and his ilk personally
responsible for the fact that the systems they had designed could be and were
used to disseminate lies and hatred among such peoples in as unregulated a
manner as characterized the
We'll move west along the thirty-fifth parallel into the Hindu Kush, then north
to the valley of the Amu Darya. The camp is strung out along the Afghan side of
the border with Tajikistan. We'll arrive just past dawn, right on schedule. The
apparatus will already have engaged."
"Good." Tressalian
turned away from the transparent hull just as a black strip of coastline became
faintly visible in the dark distance and fixed his gaze on me. "Then
there's time, yet, for the doctor to ask the rest of his questions."
"Questions," I said,
trying to focus. "Yes, I've got questions. But there's one thing I've got
to know right now." I moved over to stare down at him intently. "How
many other lies like the Forrester assassination story am I believing without
even knowing it?"
"You mean," Tressalian
answered, "how much of the information that makes up your reality
is utterly unreliable?" I nodded and he opened his eyes wide, raising his
brows as if to prepare me for what was coming: "Certainly more than you'd
suspect, Doctor. And, quite probably, more than you'll believe ..."
CHAPTER 16
How can I describe the hours that
followed? How do I explain my transformation from skeptical (if fascinated)
observer of Malcolm Tressalian's outlandish, even mad, schemes to full-fledged
participant in them? There were so many factors involved, not least the lingering
trauma of having seen my oldest friend murdered before my eyes, along with the
lack of any meaningful sleep in the days since that event. Yet mere emotional
and physical exhaustion would be inadequate hooks upon which to hang my swift
spiritual metamorphosis. No, the cascade of intellectual, visual, and physical
stimuli that continued to rain down on me in those predawn and morning hours
would, I think, have converted the strongest and most doubting of souls, and I
say that not simply to excuse my reaction; rather, it is a testament to all
that I heard, saw, and felt as we passed over the Pakistani coast and
penetrated to the interior of the subcontinent. As Larissa had said, the valley
of the once-proud Indus River, mother of one of the mightiest and most
mysterious of ancient civilizations, had been turned into a nuclear wasteland
during the still-raging war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. But my
beautiful companion's further statement that the valley was uninhabited was
not, strictly speaking, correct. As we sped along above the surface of the
water, past riverbanks strewn with rotting bodies and bleached skeletons, we
occasionally saw groups of what were perhaps the most desperate people on
earth: farmers and villagers whose bodies and ways of life—whose very chances for life—had been terribly damaged as a result of the vicious nationalism and
religious zealotry of both their enemies and their countrymen. They were
moving down the hillsides in limping, shuffling lines, those weakened wraiths,
moving down by the light of the moon to fill buckets with the river's poisoned
waters, which they would later boil in a futile attempt at purification so that
they might try to go on for a few more days or weeks in the only way that, given
the decimated condition of their nation and the unwillingness of the rest of
its citizens to accept such nuclear lepers, was possible for them.
The sight hit all of us hard,
suspending even my urgent curiosity about my companions; but it seemed to take the
greatest toll on Malcolm. It was well-known that the development of India's
rabidly bellicose new breed of nationalism in the years since the turn of the
century had coincided with the rise to economic and social primacy of
information technologies and networks in that country; and Larissa would later
tell me that Malcolm had always held their father and his ilk personally
responsible for the fact that the systems they had designed could be and were
used to disseminate lies and hatred among such peoples in as unregulated a
manner as characterized the
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