He’d expected to see Burnofsky’s ugly face. This was worse. Far worse. Because there on his screen were the Twins: the freak of nature comprising Charles and Benjamin Armstrong.
He masked the look of revulsion on his face. He’d met the Twins face-to-face on two occasions. This was an improvement—he couldn’t see that three-legged body—but not much of one. Not so long as he had to look at the nightmare that was their heads. The image barely fit on the screen. Two heads melted or melded or something into one.
“Anthony,” Charles Armstrong said. He was the one on the left. He usually did more of the talking.
“Yeah. I mean, good evening, sirs.”
“We are sorry to intrude. You deserve rest and relaxation after the important work you did earlier today. Truly, we are grateful, as all of humanity will someday be grateful.”
Bug Man’s mouth was dry. He had long since stopped giving a damn about the Armstrong Twins and their vision for humanity, all that Nexus Humanus bullshit. He was a twitcher, not an idealist. He loved the game. He loved the power. He loved the beautiful creature in his bed. The rest was just talk. But you couldn’t say that to Charles and Benjamin Armstrong. Not unless you had a much bigger pair than Anthony Elder happened to have, because Twofer—as the Twins were called behind their back—it, or they, or whatever was the correct way to say it, scared the hell out of the Bug Man.
“It seems that Vincent is in London,” Benjamin said. “As well as at least one other. We don’t know who.”
“Okay,” Bug Man said guardedly. The earbuds were crackling. Bad connection. He pulled them out and let the voice go to speaker. It wasn’t like Jessica would understand or care.
Charles smiled. When he did, the center eye—the eye they shared—swerved toward him.
Jesus. H. Christ.
“Time to press our advantage,” Charles said. “We are going ahead with our great plan, Anthony. Our latest intelligence is that the main target will be in New York.”
Bug Man rewarded his freak bosses with a sharp intake of breath. Jessica was suddenly forgotten. It had been all depression and frustration when word came that POTUS—the president of the United States—would skip the UN General Assembly and send the secretary of state instead.
“I thought she was Burnofsky’s target,” Bug Man said.
In order to shake their conjoined head, Twofer had to move its, his, their entire upper body. The effect could have been comical. It wasn’t. “No, Anthony. Burnofsky has other duties as well. And as it happens, we’ve for the moment lost the pathway to your original target.”
Pathways were the macro means to a nano end. A nanobot couldn’t cross long distances. They didn’t fly. They didn’t go very fast in macro terms. In the nano a foot was a considerable distance. So pathways had to be found—carriers, people who would, wittingly or not, carry a nanobot to its target. For the kind of targets they had in mind the pathway had several steps, each step a person who would take the nanobots one stage closer.
Bug Man stared at that massive indented forehead. Tried not to look at that eye that so should not be there. But tried to imagine what was going on inside that creepy-ass head. People whispered that Twofer actually shared a part of their brain, just like they shared that center eye and, if legend was true, at least one other part as well.
The faces were framed against night sky and the green-lit spire of the Empire State Building, in what everyone called the Tulip. The Tulip was the top five stories of the Armstrong Building, what would have been floors sixty-three through sixty-seven, except that the pinnacle of the Armstrong Building was made of a polymer nano composite that was transparent looking out, and rose-colored frost for those looking in. The Twins lived their entire lives within that space, high above the city, invisible to outside eyes but wide open to spires and sky.
Bug Man’s original target had been the British prime minister. It had seemed right, what with Bug Man being British by birth.
But what had happened to the pathway? They’d had a clear one to the PM.
Anthony had been studying up on Prime Minister Bowen, looking through the man’s well-documented history, searching for the triggers he could pull in the old man’s brain. Oh, you like horses do you, Mr. Prime Minister? And you had a bad experience with your sister’s drowning? And your favorite chocolate bar is a Flake? All of that data was stored up in that wrinkly wad of goo called a brain.
A lot of wasted schoolwork, that, if someone else would be taking Bowen.
“What happened to the pathway?”
“As my brother mentioned, Vincent was in London.”
“It was not done at the nano,” Benjamin said, correctly guessing Bug Man’s thought. “Our friend Vincent did it the old-fashioned way. He stabbed her in the brain, Anthony. You should remember that. Because these are the lunatics we are fighting.” The Twins leaned forward, which put that third eye right up way too close, way too close, to the camera. The Bug Man leaned away.
“They are ruthless in a demonic cause,” Benjamin said, getting heated, getting worked up. “We would unite humanity! We would create the next human, the next step in evolution: a united human race! They fight to keep humanity enslaved to division, to hatred, to the loneliness of a false individuality.”
The sound of a fist pounding. The image wobbled.
“It begins as soon as you can come in,” Charles said. Calmer than his brother. “There’s a car waiting out front. You will come?” A simultaneous Twofer grin. “As a favor to us?”