Wormhole - 03

by Richard Phillips

  It would just take time. And time was something he had in abundance.

  Janet’s slender fingers slid along the back of Mark’s neck, her delicate touch sending shivers of pleasure down his spine. His own hand responded, fingertips barely touching the hollow of her back, lingering there, the nerves so alert that it seemed each contact produced tiny sparks from her skin to his. He felt her ear touch his, the scent of her bare throat filling his nostrils.

  Her body moved against his in perfect rhythm, the feel of her full breasts against his chest robbing him of whatever self-control he still retained. Janet’s skin shone with sweat in the dim light and her breath came in small pants of exertion, barely audible above Mark’s thundering heart. Her bare right leg encircled him and her body swayed. As Mark’s body writhed within her entangling limbs, Janet’s back arched until only his right arm kept her from falling. Then, in a thunderous, climactic crescendo, it ended.

  Hearing shouts of approval echo across the room, Mark raised his head to see Jennifer and Heather applauding vigorously.

  Even Jack nodded his appreciation. “Now that’s how the tango is supposed to be danced.”

  “Wonderfully done,” Janet said as Mark pulled her back to her feet. Turning to Jennifer and Heather, she continued. “You’ve practiced these dances many times. Now I want you to play that dance back in those perfect little memories of yours. Then, one at a time, I will call you up. I want each of you to dance with Mark, exactly as I did.”

  “With Mark?” Jennifer sputtered.

  “Exactly as I did,” Janet continued. “Everything we do here has a purpose. We’ve been teaching you all the Latin and classical ballroom dances because if you can dance them with abandon, you can dance anything. In the world of which you are now a part, dancing will open a surprising number of doors for you. But first, you must look like you’re having fun and you must be convincing. People should see you dance and wish they were your partner.”

  Janet cast a wicked smile at Mark that made him look away. “Just now, I believe you were having fun. I want you to repeat that with Jennifer, then Heather. And I better not notice any difference, or it’s going to be a very, very long night.”

  Jennifer sat on the grass, flanked by Mark and Heather, watching the glorious sunset paint the western sky in steadily darkening shades of magenta and purple. Less than a hundred yards up the hill behind them, Janet played with Robby as Jack leaned over the smoking barbeque grill.

  “I’m worried about Mom and Dad.” Jennifer surprised herself by saying what she’d been thinking.

  Beside her, Heather tensed. “I know. It’s driving me crazy. I’ve been so homesick. But for them...not to know we’re even alive. It gives me nightmares.”

  Mark glanced over his shoulder, a quick look to see if Jack and Janet remained out of earshot. “We always talk about it, but we never do anything.”

  “Jack told us not to,” Heather replied.

  “We never should have asked him,” Jennifer said. “We knew what he’d say.”

  “He’s right, you know.”

  “I don’t. Not anymore.”

  “Me either,” said Mark. “It’s been too long.”

  Jennifer felt a lump rise in her throat, leaving her voice husky. “I’m just so scared. If we do it, hack our way onto their laptops, leave them a message. It might get them killed. It might give away our location.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “That scares me too.” Jennifer wiped a tear from her cheek. “How long can they go on, not knowing we’re OK?”

  Lately, images of her mom sobbing inconsolably had begun crawling through her mind.

  A shrill whistle from the direction of the house cut off the conversation.

  “Guess dinner’s ready,” Mark said, rising to his feet. “Don’t let Jack see you crying.”

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  As they walked up the hill toward the waiting dinner, Jennifer pulled forth the required memories, letting her mask settle in place. As hard as it was, the decision could be put off for a while longer.

  In the meantime, they’d gut it out and be the people Jack and Janet expected them to be.

  A curly wisp of smoke wafted up from the table. An acrid odor emanated from the soldering iron and irritated Heather’s nose, causing it to crinkle as she sniffed away the oncoming sneeze.

  “Waiting on you, Mark.” Jennifer’s jibe barely registered, though, as Mark remained focused on bridging the last delicate trace.

  Setting the iron back in its spring stand, Mark leaned over and snapped the plastic cover in place. “That’s it.”

  He reached across the laptop, plugging the dongle into the forward USB port.

  “It hasn’t cooled,” Jennifer said. “You’ll break it!”

  “Trust me.”

  “You said that last week,” Heather said, although she had considerably more faith in his electrical craftsmanship than her comment indicated.

  “Power spike. Not my fault.”

  Heather laughed. “OK. OK. Let’s just finish this off and test it.”

  Despite the banter, she could see Mark was excited. They all were. If this worked, it marked a revolution in the capabilities of their computer lab, intelligence center, or whatever they chose to call the thatch-roofed outbuilding that housed the Frazier computer and communications complex. They had already modified the circuit boards in all the laptops to add built-in subspace receiver transmitters, but this would enable them to add subspace communications capabilities to any computer, just by plugging in a small USB device.

  Heather let her gaze wander the room, pausing at the sealed door leading into the adjacent “clean room.” It represented the culmination of their efforts these last three months. Still, as amazing as their electronics work had become, it only formed a part of Jack’s sci-fi weekends, the other part being their ongoing headset exploration of their starship’s data banks.

  When they’d arrived at the Frazier hacienda, it had been mid-January, Bolivian summer. They hadn’t recognized the pressure cooker in which they were about to be immersed. To be fair, Jack and Janet had clearly laid out the training program, and Mark, Jen, and Heather had all volunteered. Knowing what she knew now, she would still have done it...just not with the same degree of enthusiasm.

  She still missed her parents, and worried about them constantly. Only fear that contact would place them in danger had prevented communication, that and the fact that Jack had strictly forbidden it. But Heather’s visions had taken on a darker tone of late, bringing her to the brink of a decision that could knock Mark, Jen, and herself from this perch they had worked so hard to attain. Had it been any other topic, she would have consulted Jack and Janet. But not this. It was too important, too personal. Mark and Jennifer were the only ones she would divulge her fears to. But not yet. Not while hope remained.

  “Helloooo. Anyone home in there?” Mark nudged her.

  “What? Oh, sorry. Lost in thought.”

  “Let’s fire it up.”

  Jennifer opened the laptop, took a deep breath, and pressed the power button. The Windows logo replaced the black-and-white BIOS screen. From her position behind and to the right of Jennifer, Heather found the 7,204 rpm drive noise disconcerting; still, six hundredths of a percent’s variance from the drive spec was well within tolerance: nothing to worry about. Though Heather succeeded in banishing the small worry from her thoughts, her mind replaced it with another. Would the USB oscillating circuit deliver the required performance? It would if the printed circuit thin film resistors performed within tolerance. Christ. Chinese components.

  “So far so good,” Jen said. “Now let’s see if our super Wi-Fi dongle works.”

  Mark cracked his knuckles. “After all that effort, it better.”

  “It will.” Heather hoped she sounded more confident than she felt. A probability of 73.65847 percent was far from a certainty.

  Jen began rattling off the steps from her mental checklist.


  “Entering coordinate. Identifying available networks. Selecting network. Sniffing packets...verified. Inserting TCP packets...verifying responses.” Heather found herself grinning even as Jennifer thrust her hands into the air. “Yes!”

  Smacking Mark’s hand in a quick series of high fives, Heather finally released the breath she’d been holding.

  Mark leaned down for a closer look at the display. “You know what this means? Our bag of tricks just got a hell of a lot lighter.”

  “Plug ’n play.”

  Mark placed his hand on Jen’s left shoulder. “It’s dinnertime. Let’s shut it down. We’ve got a long night ahead.”

  The vision tugged at the mind curtain Heather closed to block it. Mark had no idea how right he was.

  “Are you ready for this?” Jack’s voice held an edge nobody without the neural augmentations Heather, Mark, and Jen enjoyed could have detected.

  “Why shouldn’t we be?” Mark replied. “We’ve been linking with the Bandolier Ship headsets every week.”

  “True, but up until now you’ve only browsed the ship’s unprotected data banks. Today, I’m going to ask more of you.”

  “Such as?”

  Jack turned away to stare out the window that filled most of the living room’s western wall. For perhaps a minute he remained perfectly still, his lithe form silhouetted against the sunlit hills that rolled away from the ranch house to the horizon. When he turned once more to face them, his face formed an unreadable mask.

  “Fair enough. It’s time Janet and I made you aware of our concerns.” He pointed toward the comfortable chairs and couches arranged around the low coffee table.

  Heather sat down, as did Mark and Jen. For some time now she’d been expecting this talk. She’d seen it coming in her visions, different versions, but always the same topic. Suspicious thoughts hovered around Jack and Janet like ghostly halos whenever they mentioned the Bandolier Ship or the four alien headsets.

  As if on cue, Janet entered from the kitchen and paused to set little Robby in the baby rocker, winding the handle several times and setting it in motion before sliding onto the love seat. Jack settled in beside her.

  Heather glanced at the baby. Robby already bore a striking resemblance to his father, especially in the eyes. But there was something else about the child that both fascinated and unnerved her. For one thing, the little boy never cried. Whenever Heather looked into those eyes, the feeling he was studying her rose within, as though she were a zoo animal on the far side of safety glass. Heather knew it was ridiculous to think this way about a three-month-old, but as she looked into those eyes, she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Jack’s voice brought her out of her reverie. “Throughout your training here, we’ve made it clear that everything we have you do is voluntary. And although you’ve done everything Janet and I have asked of you, you can’t have helped noticing a certain amount of distrust on our part. It’s time for you to know just how strong that distrust is.”

  Having Jack say aloud what she’d long suspected slapped Heather in the face as if he’d struck her with his open hand. From the silence that hung in the air, she knew Mark and Jennifer felt the shock just as strongly. For several long moments Jack let it hang there, allowing his words to achieve their full emotional impact.

  “Don’t get me wrong. You’re the finest group of young people I’ve ever known. What Janet and I don’t trust is the agenda of the starship that altered you.”

  “Wait just a second!” Jen burst out. “The Rho Ship’s the bad one.”

  “Damn right,” Mark agreed. “And it’s not like the starship chose us. It was just pure dumb luck that we stumbled onto it and tried on the headsets.”

  “Was it?” Janet asked. “You know the odds that the wind catches your model plane and drops it down that canyon, right into the starship cavern?”

  “Two chances in 3,423,851.” The words tumbled from Heather’s lips before she caught herself.

  A smile lit Janet’s beautiful face. “Pretty slim odds.”

  Mark shrugged. “Shit happens.”

  “True,” said Jack. “But this might not be one of those times. Remember when I told you not to trust anyone completely, not even each other? Think about the agendas in play here. You’ve seen what your starship wanted to show you about its enemies. That doesn’t mean your Bandolier Ship has Earth’s best interests at heart. We think it’s trying to stop whatever the creators of the Rho Ship had in mind, but we don’t really know the Bandolier Ship’s original mission.”

  Janet shifted to face Mark across the table. “And we don’t know why you were each drawn to a particular headset. Although all of you have been enhanced across the board, you each have special skills that are significantly different. Does that mean the headsets have certain crew positions to fill on the ship? Heather’s ability to calculate probable outcomes and evaluate strategies implies a command function. Mark, your physical and language enhancements would seem to fill a security officer role, while Jen’s computer expertise and ability to influence the thoughts of others could fill a communications and science officer function. We also know that once a headset attunes with someone, nobody else can use it while the original user still lives.”

  Heather shook her head. “I’ve considered all that. Too many holes in the logic. What about the fourth headset? As far as we know, only two people have attuned with it, the Rag Man and El Chupacabra. Hardly starship crew candidates.”

  “But with similar natures,” said Jack.

  Jennifer shook her head “Ridiculous. A homicidal maniac crew position?”

  Janet reached out, letting her fingers brush Robby’s curly brown hair as he rocked slowly back and forth. “It’s more common than you imagine. In the Soviet Union, it was standard procedure to place a political officer with every unit to ensure loyalty to the motherland. The Nazis used the Gestapo in a similar role. In Saudi Arabia, a volunteer clerical police force called the mutawa’ah enforce sharia law. Throughout the Middle East, religious police perform similar functions throughout society.”

  “But not in Western governments,” Mark said.

  “Don’t kid yourself. Even the US has its enforcers of politically correct thought. Whether they are internal security, internal affairs, internal revenue, or even some of the media, their mission is to make people toe the line. They wield special powers that inspire fear.”

  “It doesn’t make them the Rag Man,” Heather interjected.

  “No. But they’ll do whatever it takes to force people to conform. That kind of power attracts zealots and fanatics.”

  “So you think we’re under some sort of alien influence?” Heather asked.

  Jack shook his head. “If I thought that, I wouldn’t be training you. But we need to know everything we can about the intentions of both ships’ creators. We also need to learn everything we can about their technology. You’ve already done amazing work in this area, but we need to delve deeper. How do their weapons work? Not just the starship weapons, but personal weapons as well. What other technologies are hidden away? In the case of your Bandolier Ship, we have an in, the headsets. But that means you’re going to have to breach the ship’s internal security mechanisms and get access to the restricted parts of its computing systems.”

  “You think I haven’t tried?” Jen asked. “Those systems are interwoven with complex fractal patterns that I haven’t even come close to cracking.”

  “You’ll need to work together. While you have the headsets on you’re all linked to the ship and to each other. You share imagery, even thoughts. By focusing your combined talents on cracking one barrier at a time, you’ll have a chance.”

  Heather exchanged fleeting glances with Mark and Jennifer before responding. “The ship isn’t stupid. Its computing systems function as a fully integrated expert system, possibly even an AI. It’s bound to have defenses against what we’ll be trying. Some of those might not be as passive as firewalls and encryption. It may lock us out completely, or
worse.”

  Jack nodded. “There is that risk. It’s why Janet and I have had you exploring the other systems through your headsets these last few weeks, letting you enhance your familiarity with the ship’s artificial intelligence in a nonaggressive manner. It’s why you’ll need to proceed with extreme caution, Jennifer’s skill guided by your mind and by Mark’s link to the security systems. I’m counting on you to find a path through those defenses.”

  Mark inhaled deeply, cracking his knuckles as he breathed out. “Sounds interesting. I’m game.”

  “Me too,” added Jennifer.

  Feeling all eyes on her, Heather centered, thrusting aside a series of disconcerting visions that sought to pull her into the deep.

  “Let’s do it.”

  After dinner, Heather took her turn cleaning dishes before walking through the open alcove onto the veranda. It was a beautiful fall evening, temperature hovering in the high seventies, with just enough breeze to make the humidity comfortable.

  Although Sunday was usually the day set aside for their headset exploration of the Bandolier starship, Jack had decided it was time to change up the routine. Even though the headsets worked through a subspace link that was undetectable by earthly technology and Dr. Stephenson was rotting in an American prison cell, predictable patterns of behavior violated Jack’s sense of security. But Heather detected something else in Jack’s demeanor, an eagerness she had never before observed.