Carson Evolved Ch. 06

The girl took her drink, and turning her head to make eye contact with him, she raised her glass in a toast before taking a sip. Carson nodded and took a sip of his own cocktail.

"Oh, she's cute!" said Sam. "Should I go reserve a room for you two?" she asked playfully.

"I don't know," said Carson. "I get the feeling that there's something else at work here."

Mila glanced over at the object of the conversation. "What makes you say that? She looks like she'd be a lot of fun." Slipping into her submissive role, she lowered her voice and asked, "Can I watch, Sir?"

"Probably not the first time," he answered with a chuckle. "If there is a first time."

"Why don't you scan her to see what she wants?" asked Mara. "Wouldn't that be a lot easier?"

Carson smiled. "Easier...yes. More fun...absolutely not. You've got to understand that half the fun of a relationship is figuring the other person out." Carson was surprised when he realized that he was already thinking in terms of a relationship with this young woman he hadn't even spoken with. "You might not think so now, but I doubt that you'd really enjoy it if I were constantly reading your minds. It takes all the romance out of the equation. I'm just old-fashioned enough to enjoy the chase, even if I don't capture the quarry. Besides," he said, nodding in the direction of the mystery girl, "I think she's trying to decide what she wants to do. I want to see how this turns out."

Sitting back, Carson did his best to ignore the girl. He couldn't help but glance at her vantage point occasionally to see what she was doing. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought she was having a conversation with herself, maybe discussing the pros and cons of acting out her inclination. After a short wait, maybe ten or fifteen minutes, he caught movement from her direction out of the corner of his eye. But as he turned his head to watch her, she froze in place, staring over his shoulder with a look of shock on her face. Quickly she settled back into her seat and turned away from Carson's group. Carson turned in the direction she'd been looking. He was surprised to see Jordan van Heuval approaching their group.

"What do you want, Jordan?" asked Sam with more than a little venom.

"Yeah, you've got a lot of nerve walking into this group uninvited," hissed Mila. Carson was surprised at the reception the women gave him. He thought the guy was slimy, and he knew that there was history between Jordan and each of the women, but the intensity was higher than he expected. Mara didn't say anything, but the undertaker would already be fitting Jordan for a coffin if looks could kill.

For his part, Jordan actually looked abashed, perhaps even remorseful. "Uh, yeah. I'm sorry to intrude. You all have every right to hate me; I don't blame you." Turning to look at Carson, he said, "I guess you know who I am. I was hoping that I might be able to talk with you, Carson. Can I call you Carson?"

From the stunned expressions on the faces of his wives, this was a side of Jordan that they'd never seen. Based on the limited interaction that Carson had had with the younger man, he was inclined to believe the same. Nevertheless, it showed a depth of character that Carson had to admire for the man to approach him like this. "Sure, call me Carson. Should we go somewhere more private?" he asked Jordan, his eyes narrowed in suspicion.

Jordan looked at the women nervously. "No. What I wanted to talk about, I guess it affects them too, in a way. If you trust them, then I will too." Jordan glanced around at the crowd. "And if it turns out that I can't trust you, I guess I'd rather be in a group of people than alone."

Carson was getting some bad vibes, especially seeing how uneasily the normally cocky and arrogant man was sitting. He glanced around himself to see if anyone was showing any undue interest in their gathering. He noticed, to his disappointment, that his mystery girl was no longer in sight. Her drink was still sitting on the table next to her chair, so she couldn't have left long ago. Pity, he thought. Just when the game was getting good.

Clearing his throat, Carson offered to get Jordan a drink. "That would be great, thanks," answered Jordan. When the waitress took his order, Jordan ordered a shot of Scotch and a rum and coke. Carson's hackles raised a little higher. When she returned, Jordan slammed the shot, showing at least enough sophistication to savor the smoky flavor before swallowing. Then he sat back and took a sip of his cocktail before beginning.

"What I'm about to tell you is going to sound crazy," he began. "But I swear to you that it's true."

He proceeded to relate what he'd seen on the video of his father and the other members of the cabal. As he spoke, his audience members glanced at each other nervously, as if trying see just how seriously they should take this tale.

Once he finished, Carson leaned forward. "So, if I've got this straight, your father is in league with at least two other members of the project council to force the sterilization on a large portion of the male population. To what end?"

"I've been wracking my brain to figure it out, but I am not sure. I haven't been able to find anything else out, and I'm too nervous to snoop around much. I honestly don't know what my dad would do if he thought that I knew what they were up to."

Sam had a thoughtful expression on her face. "You said that Salvatore Clemonte asked about a treatment on the video?" Jordan nodded his head. She looked at Carson. "Imagine this scenario: The world is struggling to figure out why men are going sterile, when all of a sudden, a virus is identified as the culprit. There's no cure for the virus, no vaccination that will prevent infection. But. What if there is a treatment that will prevent the symptoms of the infection? Can you imagine how much wealth and power you could accumulate by controlling who gets such a treatment, and at what price? You'd have every man on the planet under your thumb, and by extension, all the women too. How much would you pay to keep from going sterile?"

The horror of the scenario that Sam painted couldn't offset its plausibility. It was exactly the kind of thing that an organization bent on world domination would work towards.

The group sat, stunned into silence, for several long minutes. Finally, Jordan said, "So, you can see why I needed to tell someone who has no reason to trust me. I have no idea who's involved, and I'm scared to death that I'm going to get found out and turned into a sculpture at the bottom of the bay."

"So what are you asking of me?" asked Carson. "I'm new to the project. I don't have any power or connections. What am I supposed to do?"

Jordan smiled. "Don't sell yourself short. I get the impression that my dad really, really hates you. I don't have any proof, but I am beginning to think they were behind the attacks on you last year."

"That's another thing. Why would they be interested in me at all? I get a vote on the council, true, but I'm only one of twelve. I can't be that important."

Jordan looked down at his feet. Quietly, he said, "I don't think that it's really what you can do now, or who you are; I think it's who you could become." Looking around at the women before his gaze returned to his feet, "I'm a lot of things, but to my father I'm mostly a disappointment. The life you are living, that's the life that my father envisioned for me. He says it's so that I can have a great life, maybe become Director, but I think he only wants that so he can rule by proxy."

He looked up at Carson. "This has been a shock to me, but it's also made me grow up a little. I've spent almost eight years playing games and treating people like they were unimportant role players in my life. I'll never have the kind of respect that you have, and I'm going to have to live with that. Hell, you've been in the project for a year and you have three wives, and I don't know how many other women, who all want to have your babies. I have one wife, and she hates me. Aria only married me because her father forced her to, and I think that was only because my dad orchestrated it as a first step towards qualifying to be Director. I'm pretty sure she's keeping herself from getting pregnant, too.

"But as bad a person as I've been, it doesn't mean that I can stand by while my dad tries to commit genocide. We have to stop him, no matter what."

Carson was watching the man carefully, looking for signs that this was all an elaborate deception. He had to admit, it sounded as if Jordan had emerged from the cocoon that he'd woven around himself as, if not a beautiful butterfly, at least something more useful than a caterpillar. He needed to probe the young man to gauge his commitment. If they embarked on this quest to topple Eisenfaust, things could get nasty. The last thing he needed was for someone to get him overextended, then leave him high and dry in the heat of battle.

"Let me ask you a question, Jordan. How much are you willing to sacrifice? Because, unless I miss my guess, this is going to be ugly, and if we fail, it could cost us everything. So, I need to know right up front, are you prepared to lose it all?"

Carson watched as Jordan turned things over in his mind. He had a little bit of sympathy for the guy. He'd spent his whole life as a coddled, spoiled brat. Now, he was being asked to make big-boy decisions with real world consequences. It was a drastic change that would throw anyone for a loop. Thus, he was pleased and surprised when Jordan looked up at him with a new-found steely resolve in his eyes. "Absolutely. They're monsters, and monsters can't be allowed to destroy the world."

Leaning forward, Carson said, "The good news is that your father and his cronies haven't gone as undetected as they think they have. I happen to know someone with connections that's suspected something like this for a while. Get me a copy of that video and I'll get it to someone who can marshal some resources.

"For the time being, though, we have to try and maintain the status quo as far as anyone else knows. After all, you can't let the enemy know your true strength if you want to win the war. Right now, they think we're weak and ignorant. They're wrong. But Sun Tzu said, 'Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.' So we'll continue to pretend that we're weak until it's time not to."

Later that night, as Carson lay awake in his bed, he asked himself the same question he'd asked Jordan: How much are you willing to sacrifice? For the first time in his life, Carson wondered if the price would be too high.

Sleep eventually came, but it didn't come easily.