by Greg Cox
CAUTION! ATOMIC POWER STATION
NO UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL PERMITTED!
The warnings were printed in English, Hindi, Punjabi, and Chinese, and accompanied by a bright yellow rendering of the universal sign for nuclear radiation. Even more daunting were the two armed guards flanking what appeared to be the only entrance to the power station.
“Halt!” one of the guards commanded Seven, raising his rifle as he stepped between Seven and a lowered steel door. “Identify yourself!”
Seven knew he couldn’t outdraw both armed guards with his servo—his reflexes weren’t that fast—so he clicked the transport function of the servo instead, summoning a cloud of roiling, luminous plasma that appeared from nowhere between Seven and the guards, [219] shielding him from their view. Alarmed by the shimmering smoke screen, both guards fired randomly into the fog, not realizing that their bullets dematerialized the moment they entered the plasma, instantly converted into pure energy. Both guards discharged a full clip of ammo in a vain attempt to shoot the intruder on the other side of the glowing cloud; Seven used the sound of their weapons to target first one guard, then the other, with the servo he quickly drew from his pocket. The tranquilizer beam, not being composed of matter, passed through the plasma unobstructed, silencing both gunmen within seconds.
Seven canceled the transporter command, banishing the unnatural mist back to subspace, then hurried forward through the last blue wisps to the sealed entrance to the reactor. The subdued guards were slumped on both sides of the lowered steel door, dozing contentedly. Seven methodically searched the pockets of the nearest guard, quickly turning up an electronic passkey, which he inserted into a slot next to the door. “Open sesame,” he muttered, reflecting a thorough grounding in Terran folklore and literature.
Hidden motors thrummed as the door began to slide upward, receding into a slot in the ceiling. Seven did not wait for the barrier to disappear entirely, ducking beneath the door the minute there was enough room to squeeze under. “No one move!” he ordered, announcing his arrival to the startled technicians in the control room. He held the servo in an overtly threatening manner. “As recent announcements confirm, I am indeed armed and dangerous.”
The half-dozen technicians present backed away from the entrance nervously, most of them abandoning their posts at the control. A single techie, however, risked Seven’s wrath by slapping his palm down on a large red button, triggering an immediate alarm. Seven swiftly turned the servo’s beam on the security-conscious offender, causing that individual to droop in his seat, but the damage had already been done. Sirens blared overhead, no doubt alerting all of Chrysalis of his incursion into the reactor’s control room.
Seven sighed, but shrugged his shoulders. No matter, he thought. Kaur and her security forces were bound to guess my intentions eventually, [220] especially after seeing me slide down that cable to this level. He gestured with his servo, forcing the remainder of the technicians to line up against the back of the room, in front of the startlingly old-fashioned computers with their refrigerator-sized housings and large, rotating spindles. “All right,” he instructed the cowed techies. “I want you all to leave here as quickly as possible, taking that gentleman with you,” he added, nodding at the tranquilized whistleblower, now slumped over his control panel. Seven’s gaze zeroed in on one particular technician, who struck him as older and most likely to be in charge. “Except you,” he specified, singling out his chosen candidate: a lanky European, whose security badge identified him as Ryan Johnson, Chief Engineer. “I need to talk to you.”
The other technicians needed no further encouragement to make themselves scarce, abandoning the control room in record time. Seven waited for the last two engineers to depart, carrying their droopy colleague between them, then used his stolen passkey to bring the metal door crashing back down. The control panel next to the door was rudimentary in design, at least to Seven’s standards, so it took him only a moment to reprogram the locking mechanism, effectively sealing the control room off from the security teams that were probably arriving on the scene at this very minute. They’ll need an acetylene torch to get through this door, he thought approvingly. That should give me all the time I need.
“Sorry about the delay,” he said to his sole remaining hostage. “Thank you for waiting.” He walked between the rows of consoles, quickly familiarizing himself with the layout. The fundamentally crude and antiquated nature of the controls made his current task easier, but appalled him nonetheless. He glanced out the wide Plexiglas window at the huge concrete silo housing the reaction chamber itself and shuddered accordingly. I can’t believe that the people of this era think they can play with nuclear fission so haphazardly. At the rate mankind’s building these slipshod power generators, they’re sure to stumble into a serious meltdown or two within a decade. “How do I initiate the self-destruct procedure?” he asked Johnson.
“What?” The man’s weathered face went pale. “You can’t be serious!”
[221] “I’ve seldom been more serious,” Seven assured him. “If you don’t assist me, I will have to attempt to initiate an explosive chain reaction on my own, with possibly less control over the timing of the resulting conflagration than I might have otherwise. It’s up to you, Mr. Johnson. Do you want to give Chrysalis’s entire population a chance to evacuate, or shall I just start fooling around with the controls?” He strolled toward the nearest console, laying a hand upon a complicated array of switches, gauges, and knobs. “I’m guessing these regulate high-pressure coolant infusion. Shall we see if I’ve figured them out correctly?”
Johnson’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a vacuum buoy in a cosmic storm. “But it’s impossible,” he gulped. Terrified eyes tracked the progress of Seven’s fingers as they roamed over the control panel. “I couldn’t help you even if I wanted to. Only the director can order the detonation sequence.”
Naturally, Seven thought. Not that Sarina Kaur really worried too much about the accidental release of one of her handcrafted bacteria; this entire self-destruct option was no doubt a concession to the safety concerns of project engineers who were unaware of Kaur’s genocidal ambitions.
His eyes narrowed. “Show me,” he insisted.
A hissing sound, coming from overhead, interrupted his interrogation of the chief engineer. Johnson peered upward, with a look of definite relief upon his face.. Recalling Roberta’s account of her own capture, Seven was not surprised to see thick white fumes entering the control room via the ceiling. Apparently the Developmental Deviations Unit is not the only section of Chrysalis so equipped, he concluded.
Placing his hand over his mouth and nostrils, he aimed his servo at the corners of the Plexiglas window occupying most of the southern wall of the chamber. He set the beam on Disintegrate, then proceeded to dissolve the molecular bonds holding the massive sheet of transparent plastic in its frame, so that a single shove sent it falling onto the concrete pavement one level below the control room.
Seven heard it clatter when it hit the cement floor. Fresh air rapidly entered the once-sealed chamber, even as the knockout gas dissipated [222] into the vast open space surrounding the reactor silo. The roar of the turbines penetrated the formerly soundproofed control room, adding to the humming and clicking supplied by the computers and other apparatus.
Seven coughed to clear the last of the invasive fumes from his lungs. “Now then, Mr. Johnson,” he reminded the chief engineer, “I believe you were about to show me how to destroy Chrysalis.”
Wide eyes staring where the unbreakable window used to be, Johnson nodded weakly, and led Seven to a console located directly in front of the now-empty windowframe. He sat down in front of a microphone and switched the mike on. “Activate Emergency Self-Destruct Sequence,” he said, swallowing hard.
Voice-activated controls in 1974? Seven was impressed; Kaur had clearly harnessed the best efforts of some of the planet’s top minds in the fulfillment of her ambitious design. What a shame, he thought, that so much geni
us and creativity was spent on such a dangerous endeavor.
A fresh onslaught of bullets suddenly zipped past Seven’s head to slam into the ceiling behind him. Obviously, the guards on the level below were taking advantage of the Plexiglas window’s disappearance. The barrage of gunfire, angling upward from the floor some fifty feet below, forced Seven to crouch down behind a sheltering console. “Are they out of their minds?” a distraught Johnson asked frantically. “What if they hit something important, costing us our control over the reactor?”
“Please remain calm, Mr. Johnson,” Seven urged him, keeping the business end of his servo aimed at the back of the man’s neck. Despite the coolness of the air-conditioning, sweat soaked the engineer’s collar. He started to hyperventilate. Seven hoped that Johnson’s middle-aged heart was up to the strain of trying to trigger a nuclear explosion while under fire. “Continue the procedure.”
As quickly as it had began, the scorching eruption of bullets trailed off, as cooler minds presumably recognized the considerable hazards of shooting up the reactor’s control room. Johnson’s breathing calmed a bit once the gunfire quieted, but his hands still trembled as he gripped the coiled throat of the microphone. “Repeat: Activate [223] Emergency Self-Destruct Sequence. Control Room Authority: Johnson-slash-zeta.”
Computers whirred and tractor-fed printers clacked away as the automated controls processed Johnson’s request. “Control Room Authority accepted,” a faceless voice intoned from a built-in loudspeaker. The computerized response lacked any trace of personality, quite unlike the acerbic tone Seven expected from his own Beta 5 computer. “Executive Authorization Required.”
Johnson brought his mouth away from the microphone and whispered to Seven, who crouched beside him. “This is the part I told you about. Only the director can give the final command; the computer’s programmed to respond to her voice alone.”
“That won’t be a problem,” Seven whispered back, gesturing for Johnson to step aside. Seven sat down before the mike and massaged his throat, recalling the unique inflections and cadences of Sarina Kaur’s speech. If nothing else, he reflected with a trace of bitterness, I had opportunity enough to listen to her.
Prompted by Seven, Johnson scribbled down the required command on the back of a green-and-white computer printout. Seven nodded and read the message out loud—in flawless mimicry of Kaur’s own voice. “Executive Authorization granted: Kaur-slash-zeta-zeta.”
“Emergency Self-Destruct Sequence confirmed,” the mechanical voice acknowledged soullessly. “Please input timing sequence.”
Next to the microphone was a digital display panel controlled by a ten-digit numerical keyboard. Flashing red numerals, currently set at 00:00:00, presumedly counted off the seconds and minutes and hours before the self-destruct sequence was completed. “Quickly,” Seven demanded of Johnson, “how much time do you need to evacuate the entire Chrysalis installation?” He subjected the rattled engineer to a probing stare that tolerated neither evasion or deceit. “You must have had drills. Tell me the truth. How much time?”
“Twenty minutes,” Johnson stammered. “Maybe thirty without any warning.” He looked longingly at the sealed door to the control room, perhaps wondering how or if he would be able to evacuate the doomed underground complex. “There are emergency, high-capacity elevators [224] to the surface, and fully fueled desert transports hidden in the old fort.”
“An admirable degree of preparation,” Seven commented, genuinely thankful for Kaur’s foresight; knowing that the misguided, but not necessarily evil, scientists and staff of Chrysalis had a viable escape plan eased his conscience concerning the atomic conflagration ahead. Too bad the secret of the flesh-eating bacteria is likely to escape as well, he thought, but there’s nothing that can be done about that now; that particular genie was already effectively out of the bottle. Playing it safe, Seven keyed a thirty-minute countdown into the control panel, then had Johnson show him how to access the public-address system.
“Your attention please,” he announced to all of Chrysalis. On the digital display panel, the countdown proceeded, a second at a time. It now read 00:29:16. “This is the intruder your leaders warned you of. I have taken control of the nuclear reactor station and initiated the emergency self-destruct sequence. You have thirty minutes to evacuate Chrysalis before this entire installation is destroyed. This is not a drill. This is not a hoax. You have thirty minutes to flee, starting now.”
Fortunately, he considered, all the previous disturbances created by Roberta, Isis, and myself will have already put the entire population on alert, which should help speed the evacuation. He looked at the glowing red numerals on the annunciator panel. 00:28:45.
Rising quickly from his seat at the console, Seven crossed the control room to a fire-safety station near the entrance. He smashed a sheet of protective glass with his elbow, then pulled out a length of coiled fire hose. He tossed the nozzle of the hose through the gap where the picture window had been. The nozzle plummeted from sight, dragging several yards of hose behind it. Confused shouts rose from the floor of the turbine room as the metal tip of the hose hit the cement pavement.
“You can go now, Mr. Johnson,” Seven said, gesturing toward the gray hose snaking across the floor. It wasn’t the most graceful way for the former hostage to exit the control room, but it would suffice. Seven, on the other hand, knew he had to stay until the very last [225] moment, to insure that no one—specifically Sarina Kaur—could override or cancel the self-destruct procedure.
“Don’t shoot! It’s me! Don’t shoot!” Johnson yelled to the guards below, as he scurried over the edge of the open window. With as much speed as his middle-aged frame could muster, he awkwardly grabbed on to the unspooled hose, tugged on it briefly to reassure himself that it would support his weight, then dropped over the ledge. “Don’t shoot!”
Seven had the control room to himself now. He looked at the illuminated red display 00:27:16.
Twenty-seven minutes to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY
811 EAST 68TH STREET, APT. 12-B
NEW YORK CITY
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
MAY 18, 1974
ALTHOUGH DINNERTIME IN INDIA, it was seven-thirty in the morning in New York. Roberta knew that the transporter lag would catch up with her eventually, but right now she was too busy to even try to reset her circadian rhythms. Depositing Isis onto Gary Seven’s desk, she quickly paged the Beta 5 computer. “Computer on!”
Like the revolving secret door in an old haunted-house movie, shelves of mostly decorative books automatically rotated into the wall, replaced by the wall-sized computer interface. A circular monitor, about two feet in diameter, telescoped out from the reflective black panel centered in the matte-gray casing of the Beta 5, just above the protruding control panel. Prismatic waves of color cycled across the cosmic radiation gauge above the round viewscreen, while, to the immediate left of the monitor, flashing, multicolored strips of light appeared and disappeared at right angles to each other, charting the mental activity of the Beta 5’s artificial intelligence. “Computer on,” the supercomputer responded. With every syllable, the blinking lights reconfigured themselves.
“Process incoming data,” Roberta addressed the machine hastily. She aimed the twin antennae of her servo at the receptor site on the [227] control panel and clicked the Transmit function; in theory, this should have transferred Chrysalis’s exact geographical coordinates directly into the computer’s memory, although Roberta always found the whole process somewhat magical. “I need you to scan that location right away!”
“Authorization required to conduct scan.” The computer’s feminine, electronic-sounding voice held a distinctly snippy tone that Roberta knew only too well. “Please identify yourself.”
“You know who I am!” she blurted, seething with impatience. No matter what it was asked, the Beta 5 always made it sound as if Roberta was interrupting something far more important than, say, the fate of the planet. “We don
’t have time for this,” she protested. She glanced at her wrist, then recalled that her watch had been confiscated by the guards at Chrysalis. Watch or no watch, though, she could feel vital seconds ticking away. “Just do what I told you!”
“Please identify yourself,” the Beta 5 insisted, the embodiment of cybernetic stubbornness.
Roberta clenched her fists at her sides, nearly snapping her servo in two. “Roberta Lincoln. Agent 368.” Her foot tapped irritably upon the orange shag carpet. “Satisfied?”
“Beginning scan,” the computer allowed smugly. A color image appeared on the viewer, depicting the lonely Rajput fortress at sunset. Violet shadows crept down the pitted sandstone walls of the fortress.
That’s better, Roberta thought. Now we’re getting somewhere. She hoped that some remnant of the gorgeous ruins would survive the underground explosion. “Deeper,” she instructed the Beta 5. “Beneath the surface.”
“Affirmative. Exceiver circuits tapping into existing surveillance system.” Multiple views of Chrysalis’s interior flashed upon the viewer, one after another, providing Roberta with glimpses of the complex’s many labs and corridors. “Please narrow parameters.”
Roberta nodded thoughtfully. First the kids, she remembered. Then the animals. “Prepare for remote transportation. Lock on to all humanoid life-forms ... oh, one hundred pounds or less.” That should cover every toddler, she thought confidently. I sure didn’t see any freakishly [228] huge children in the DDU, and that’s gotta be where any amazing colossal kids would’ve ended up.
“Scanning,” the Beta 5 reported. A moment later, a series of images flashed upon the monitor, one after another, presenting views of several different assortments of small children. Nearly all of the kids were sitting up in bed, looking alarmed and/or half-awake as they looked about in confusion. Rows of bunkbeds hinted at some sort of dormitory arrangements. Roberta didn’t need to hear the warning sirens to know that Seven had thrown all of Chrysalis into chaos, right on schedule. “Transporter matrix locked on two hundred sixty-four life-forms.”