Though both tunnels could be booby-trapped, Snick entered them. Both ended in piles of rock. If there were continuations of the tunnels beyond the tumbled masses, they were blocked off.
That meant that the entrance or entrances to the cavern complex were elsewhere—if Caird were inside this mountain.
She slept the rest of the night in a sleeping bag on an inflated mattress. Her watch alarm woke her up an hour before dawn. It was still raining, but the thunderstorms had passed, and the wind was not as strong. After eating, she took the airboat into the forest. She filled her backpack with food and water and other items and then climbed a pine tree. Halfway up, she found a reasonably comfortable perch and tied herself to it. The next six hours were miserable, but she was a veteran of long, boring, and uncomfortable stakeouts.
At six minutes to ten in the morning, she saw through her binoculars something moving in the brush. This was not the first time. Two deer, a fox, and a bear had attracted her attention. But this was a movement of the pine-needle covered ground. It was between two trees the branches of which interlaced.
She had figured that any underground tunnel Caird made would have an exit not too deep inside the woods. And it would emerge somewhere in a small area just about here.
The trapdoor, covered with needles and branches glued together, rose up. Though the branches between her and the trapdoor hindered her view, she could see a man raise his head from the hole. He looked around cautiously. There were probably sensors at that spot and elsewhere close by to detect anybody above-ground before he came out. Nevertheless, some one beyond the range of the sensors might be looking his way. Having satisfied himself that no one was in the neighborhood, he climbed out and began to lower the camouflaged trapdoor. Snick had untied the rope securing her to the trunk and was already climbing down.
Two minutes later, she came up behind the man, who was wearing a camouflage suit and helmet. He held a combination laser rifle and parabolic sound-detector. On his back was a small cylinder attached to a long flexible hose at the end of which was a smaller cylinder open at one end. This, she was sure, was a sniffer set to catch the molecules of deer odor. He was hoping to bring back the makings of venison for Caird’s dinner table.
Snick said, “Freeze!”
The man obeyed. At her next command, he slowly placed the rifle on the ground, then moved ahead several feet. Having picked up the rifle, Snick said, “Turn around.”
He did so, his eyes widening slightly but his face impassive, his hands clasped behind his neck.
“Don’t try to use that knife hidden under the neck of your jacket,” she said. “But I’m not here to arrest you. My name is Panthea Pao Snick. Do you recognize it?”
The man smiled. “I recognized you. I’m Sherban Shi Mason,”
Snick said, “Take me to your leader.”
She could not help grinning as the man guffawed.
Then she said, “I’m not here to harm you or anybody in Caird’s band.”
“I believe you, Caird has said more than once that you’d find him some day. Or vice versa.”
A few minutes later, they were in the bottom of the shaft to the trapdoor and going slowly in the low and narrow tunnel. This led gently upwards between walls of solid rock. He led, his hands still on the back of his neck despite his protests that she was in no danger from him. Her flashlight brightened the way ahead. Then they were climbing on the metal rungs set on the wall of a shaft. The rifle was slung over her back. Though her handgun was holstered, she had told Mason it would be out before he could try anything. She did not think he would, but she had not lived this long by trusting strangers. Or even long acquaintances.
She had gone first up the ladder, the flashlight held in her teeth. He was to follow her when she got to the top of the rungs. He could run away toward the other end of the tunnel, she said, but he would be shot before he reached the other shaft below the exit.
“I believe you,” he said. “Anyway, I’ve no reason to run.”
She pushed up the trapdoor and, with one hand, probed the beam around the rockwalled room. It was empty of people and furnishings. When Mason got to his feet in the room, they proceeded along another narrow tunnel, he in front. Then he opened a door, and light flooded out.
“It’s O.K.!” he called. “It’s Mason! I’m with Panthea Snick!”
She was startled when a woman’s voice spoke behind her.
“Your turn to freeze.”
The hard bulb of a handgun was jammed into her back.
“Damn!” Snick said softly, and she dropped her gun and locked her hands against the back of her neck.
She had seen no thin lines on the tunnel wall to indicate that a door was there. But there must have been one, and the woman had come through it to get behind her. She was glad that she had not tried to invade this place with intent to kill.
Three men and a woman stepped out from behind the door as Snick entered it. With Mason now behind her and the others flanking her, relieved of her gun and hunting knife, she was directed through the tunnel into a very large cavern with stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites projecting from the uneven floor. Several large lamps gave a dim illumination. They went through some other caverns to the left. There were a few people there, most of them sleeping in bags.
Mason said, “You wouldn’t be here, you know…excuse me, most probably don’t know…if it weren’t for Caird. He’s the one put pressure on the government to exonerate you and to reinstate you in the organic department.”
“No,” Snick said loudly so that Mason could hear her clearly. “I didn’t know that.”
“Caird got word to the World Council that he had firm evidence of the dirty dealings of some of their members. He guaranteed to reveal those to the public unless you were reinstated.”
“How did he do that?” Snick said. “And how would he get the data to the public?”
Mason did not reply directly to that question.
“One of our group is a computer genius.”
Snick noted that their route did not include any places containing the large machine needed to interfere electronically with the satellites. Everything she saw could be quickly bundled up and carried away by their owners. They were obviously ready to move at a minute’s notice.
Then they were at the end of a tunnel and before a doorway from which hung a heavy curtain. Mason told her to halt, and he pushed the curtain aside while he entered the room. She glimpsed a well-lit room with rock walls. She sucked in her breath when she saw a large photograph on the wall. Her face, looking straight ahead, was in the frame.
When she had been told that Caird had taken a photograph of her when he had fled Denver, she had considered the implications. Caird, as Baker No Wiley, had no memory of her. But he had seen the many tapes of him taken in his previous personae. She had appeared in some of them, and he had doubtless then obtained tapes devoted to her. Why?
She could only find one valid answer. Whatever his selves, he was attracted to her. Even a tape summoned up that feeling deeply lodged in him. He must be in love with a picture. But that image resonated with unconscious memories.
Though she was not at all romantic, she was very touched by this and her breast warmed.
His identities, she thought, were like differently shaped and colored beads on a string. The string was the basic person, the primal identity. It continued, smooth and unbroken and always of the same density and material, in the center of every bead. The original Caird was the string. Those others, Tingle, Dunski, Repp, Ohm, Zurvan, Isharashvili, Duncan, and the present Caird, were the beads.
The string had always been a rebel, though a very canny one, a trickster.
Mason pushed through the curtain, muttering, “I’ve never seen him like this.”
He looked at Snick. “Though I might’ve expected it. You can go in now. Alone.”
Though it was not her nature to hesitate, she paused a few seconds before pushing the curtains aside. Then, breathing d
eeply, she went into the room. The curtains closed behind her with a very slight swish, like a sword cutting through the air.
Caird was the only one in the large but low-ceilinged chamber. Against a far wall was a big silvery cylinder, probably a power supply. Cables tentacled over the floor everywhere. Wallscreens flashed with words, numbers, and formulae and news channels from many places, Zurich, Shanghai, Sydney, Cairo, Chicago, Buenos Aires.
Caird, standing before a workstation but facing her, was smiling. Then he strode toward her, his arms out. He enfolded her in them and kissed her, enmeshing their lips for many seconds.
She had not expected such a warm greeting, but she welcomed it.
When he released her, he said, “I’m assuming too much, I know. I was overcome for a moment.”
“You’re not a stranger to me,” she said. “And even if you don’t remember me in the flesh…”
“Have you come to stay? I knew you’d always find me one way or the other. But I wasn’t sure in what role you’d come. I mean…”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I wasn’t quite sure, either. But, yes, I’ve come to stay.”
Dayworld Breakup Page 30