by Greg Bear
"Believe me, nobody enters the libraries on whim. You're uniquely qualified. You've been working in an area with no practical value—until now."
"I'm going to stop asking questions," Patricia said, sighing. "I don't even know the right questions to ask."
Electronic sensors had been placed around the building. Chain link fences topped by wicked-looking razor-wire curls enforced the gentle suggestions of sensors and cameras. Four guards stood before the entrance, carrying Apples—anti-personnel lasers—and looking very serious. As Lanier and Vasquez approached, an amplified voice boomed out, "Mr. Lanier. Stop and allow scan. Who's that with you?"
"Patricia Vasquez," he said. "Index under science team, reference memo from General Gerhardt."
"Yessir. Advance and present ID."
They left the truck and walked to the gate. "We brought the razor wire and sensors up from Earth two years ago," Lanier told her. "When we began to realize what we had, in there."
They presented their IDs and laid their hands on a plate carried by a woman in black and gray. After being cleared, they entered the enclosure.
The ground-floor windows had been broken here, as well. No signs or maps were evident within, but it had the definite feel of a library—though once again, it seemed artificially quaint. The interior was dark and deserted.
"The outside guards can't enter the library, only special security—black-and-gray uniforms. There's one person on duty inside at all times, with a video monitor—the voice we heard."
"Very fancy," Patricia said.
"Necessary."
A strip of fluorescent lighting hanging from the ceiling on a bolted track flashed on. More strips glowed in sequence, making a path of light across the ground floor and up a flight of steps near the center of the building.
"We have portable generators at four locations in Alexandria," Lanier said as they walked down the path. The floor was bare and dusty, with a few well-cleared tracks in the dust. "Most of the city's power nets aren't functioning. We haven't tracked down the power supplies yet, but they're probably not discrete plants. The Stone itself seems to carry a reserve of power, with concentrations in supercooled batteries."
Patricia's brow wrinkled. "Batteries?"
"Like the hundred-meter cells in Arizona and the Greater African Conservatory."
"Oh." She wasn't much on practical physics, but she didn't want Lanier to know that.
"The electrical system is pretty conventional, otherwise. Control and information channels are optical, more so than back on Earth. The buildings are dark because most of the circuit breakers—or whatever served that function—have been tripped, and nobody's going to reset them until we know more about fire hazards."
"Why are the windows broken?" Patricia asked as they continued climbing.
"Glass gets brittle with age, slumps. Pressure surges in the atmosphere crack the windows."
"Weather?"
"Of a sort. There are high- and low-pressure systems in the chambers, updrafts and coriolis, downdrafts near the caps. Even storms. Snow in some of the chambers, infrequently. Most of it seems controlled, but we don't know whether the controls are built-in, static, or whether machines are still hard at work someplace."
In the shadowy halls beyond the light strips on the second floor, she saw man-sized metallic cylinders arranged in rows, marching off into obscurity.
"We've been pulling data out of these storage banks for a year," Lanier said. "The programming languages weren't familiar to us, so we've only had success producing readable copy and useful images for about six months. As it turns out, the library in the next chamber is even larger, so we're concentrating on it, now. But. . . I still prefer this. There's an extensive hard-copy center on the fourth floor. That's where I did my early research, and where you'll be doing some of yours."
"I feel like I'm on the Mary Celeste."
"The comparison's been made," Lanier said. "At any rate, here or anywhere else, the rule is, Don't disturb anything you can't put back exactly the way it was. The archaeologists are just finishing their gross surveys and they're still touchy. We have to break the rule now and then—repairing necessary equipment, tinkering with the computers—but no excess meddling is allowed. If the Stone is a Mary Celeste, we can't afford not to know why."
On the fourth floor, they entered a large room filled with reading cubicles, each with a viewer and a flat gray panel mounted in a small desk. One of the desks had been equipped with a recently imported Tensor lamp connected to the new power supply. Lanier pulled out a chair for her. She sat.
"I'll be back in a moment," he said. He walked to the opposite side of the room, passed through a door and left her alone. She fingered the viewer on the desk—was it for video, microfilm? She couldn't tell. The screen was flat and black as ebony, no more than a quarter of an inch thick.
There was something unusual about the chair. A small cylinder was mounted horizontally in the middle of the seat, fitting with some discomfort between her buttocks. There might have been cushions at one time, covering the cylinder—or perhaps the chair created its own cushion when powered up.
Patricia glanced nervously at the rows of empty cubicles, trying to imagine those who had last used them. When Lanier returned, she was very glad to see him. Her hands were trembling.
"Spooky," she said, smiling weakly.
He held out a small book bound in milky plastic. She thumbed through the pages. The paper was thin and tough. The language was English, though the typeface was unusual—too many serifs. She opened to the title page.
"Tom Sawyer," she read, "by Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Mark Twain." The publication date was 2110. She closed the book and put it down, swallowing hard.
"Well?" Lanier asked softly.
She looked up at him, frowning. Then a kind of understanding passed between them. She opened her mouth to speak and shut it again.
"You've wondered why I'm so tired looking," Lanier said.
"Yes."
"Do you understand, now?"
"Because of this. . . library."
"Partly," he said.
"It's from the future. The Stone is from our future.
"We're not certain of that," he said.
"But that's why I'm here. . . to help you figure out how."
"There are other puzzles, equally mystifying, and perhaps they all tie together."
She opened the book again. "Published by Greater Georgia General, in cooperation with Harpers of the Pacific."
He reached down and took the book from her hands. "That's enough for now. We'll go outside. You can rest for a bit, or we can spend a couple of hours at the security base."
"No," she said. "I want to go on." She closed her eyes for a few seconds. He left to reshelve the book, then returned and walked ahead of her to the ground floor.
"The subway entrance is two blocks from here," he said. "We can walk it. Exercise clears the head."
She followed him across one corner of the park, looking at without really seeing the buildings and their signs in the various languages of Earth, knowing she was past the point of assimilation.
They passed beneath a half-moon arch and walked down a double-back incline into the subway station.
"You said the Stone wasn't from the future," Patricia commented.
"From our future," Lanier corrected. "It may not be from our universe."
Her skin felt warm. She blinked rapidly, not sure whether she was going to cry or laugh. "Damn."
"My sentiments exactly."
They stood on a broad platform, near a wall ornamented with large, flat, rose-colored crystals arranged in irregular tesselations. Direction signs hung from the ceiling, letters scabbed and peeling: "Nexus Central, Line 5" "This side for Alexandria" "San Juan Ortega, Line 6, 20 minutes." More of the ebony-black flat display screens hung near the signs, all blank.
Patricia felt a small tremor of dizziness. Was she really where she was, or suffering through a work-induced dream?
"You're getting Stoned
," Lanier said. "Watch yourself."
"I am. Yeah. Watching myself getting Stoned."
"Depression is usually the next step. Disorientation, fantasies, depression. That's what I went through."
"Oh?" She looked down at the white tiles beneath her feet.
"Should be a train coming in the next five, ten minutes," Lanier said. He put his hands in his pockets and joined her in regarding the floor.
"I'm doing fine," Patricia said. She didn't believe herself, but on the other hand, she had felt worse before exams than she did now. She'd hold up. She had to. "I'm just wondering if there are better ways to indoctrinate newcomers. This seems pretty haphazard."
"We tried other ways."
"Didn't work?"
"No better, some worse."
A puff of air advanced out of the train tunnel. Patricia thought to peer over the edge of the platform to see what kind of mechanism the subway cars rode on. The floor of the channel was featureless, no rails or guides of any sort.
Out of the tunnel hissed a giant aluminum millipede, its nose windowless and crossed by a radiance of green lines. It stopped with neck-jarring suddenness and hummed softly as its doors slid open. A marine guard stood in the lead car, holstered pistol and laser rifle prominent.
"Mr. Lanier," he greeted, saluting smartly.
"Charlie, this is Patricia Vasquez. Another green badge. Patricia, this is Corporal Charles Wurtz. You'll probably be seeing a lot of each other. Charlie is our main man on the zero train line."
"Keep all the boojums from bumming a lift," Charlie said, grinning and shaking Patricia's hand.
Lanier beckoned for her to enter first. The interior, examined for basics, was like any reasonably new rapid transit system vehicle. The plastic seats and metal fixtures were in good repair. The cars had obviously not been designed for crowding—no handstraps or rails for standing passengers—and the arrangements were spacious, with lots of leg room. And no advertising. Indeed, within the car there were no signs at all.
"Like an old BART in San Francisco," Patricia said. She hadn't ridden on the BART or the LA Metro in years.
They settled back in their seats. There was no sensation of motion until she looked out the large round windows spaced at irregular intervals along the sides of the car. The station was a passing blur. Then there was only darkness relieved by flashing white vertical bars.
"It just doesn't look that much like the future," she said. "It's recognizable. I always thought the future would be so different, it wouldn't be recognizable. Particularly a thousand years in the future. But there are buildings, subways—I mean, why not matter transmitters?"
"Alexandria and this rail system are a lot older than other parts of the Stone. When you get around and see things in more detail, you'll notice big differences between our technology and this. Beside. . .” He paused. "There's history to consider. Delays. Handicaps. And holdovers."
"Which I'll know about soon enough."
"Right," Lanier said. "Did you feel any motion just now? Acceleration?"
She frowned. "No. But maybe we started out slowly—"
"The trains accelerate at four g's."
"Wait." She turned to a window and looked at the passing bars of white, then frowned. "Alexandria. . . I mean, it wasn't designed right."
Lanier regarded her patiently. She was supposed to be brilliant, but in many ways she was so young. Struggling to maintain her decorum as if she were a schoolgirl.
"The Stone has to accelerate and decelerate, right? Just like this train. But I don't feel any motion now, and. . . the chambers should have angled floors, to compensate for the thrust, for the wash of water in the lakes and ponds—higher walls on one side. Acceleration slosh. Angled walkways to compensate."
"There aren't any provisions for acceleration in the chambers," Lanier said.
"So they accelerated slowly?"
He shook his head.
"They had some way to compensate?"
"The sixth chamber," Lanier said. "But that's part of the big picture, too."
"You're making me sort everything out for myself."
"Whenever possible."
"As a test."
"No," Lanier said emphatically. "The Advisor said you can help us. I don't doubt that. But if this were a test, you'd be doing just fine." Though he had reservations.
The tunnel walls passed behind them and the train rushed into light. They passed over water, doing at least two or three hundred kilometers an hour. "In the elevated stretches, there are three rails under the cars, magnetic induction," Lanier said.
"Oh." She turned her attention to the sea, a uniform expanse of rippling blue-gray, stretching north to a bank of fog against the cap. Above the gray expanse she could see the chamber's arch, and to the northwest and northeast the distant edges of the fog bank, and a shoreline at three o'clock high.
About seven kilometers from the train, its lower extremity hidden in white mist, was the hexagonal top of an upright tower, perhaps fifty meters tall and half as broad. Another tower appeared only a kilometer or so distant, fully visible and mounted on a slender round pylon.
The fog rushed up to meet them, and suddenly, they were over land. Rich pine forest blurred beneath, appearing healthy—if slightly blue—in the tubelight.
"Fourth chamber was a recreation center, as near as we can tell," Lanier said. "And of course, a reservoir and air-purification system. There are four distinct islands here, each with a different habitat. There were underwater habitats, too—coral gardens, freshwater ponds and river systems. Resort, wildlife preserve, fish farm—it's all returned to an untended state, a bit wild but prospering."
The train slowed and slid with a faint humming noise over an elevated platform. Two men in black jumpsuits ran next to the cars as they came to a stop. Lanier stood and she followed him to the door. It opened as silently as before.
Forest, water, dirt—all in one glorious sniff.
"Later, Charlie," Lanier said. Charlie saluted smartly and took a stance in the doorway behind them.
A platform guard stepped up to examine Patricia's badge. "Welcome to summer camp, Miss Vasquez," he said. She looked down from the platform railing. They were six meters above the ground. The platform was surrounded by a compound much like the one in the first chamber, with fiberboard buildings and earthen ramparts, but a much larger greenhouse-agriculture laboratory.
Everyone in the compound wore black, in combinations of black and khaki, black and green, and one black and gray. "Security forces?" she asked. Lanier nodded as they descended the platform stairs.
"We keep a small science group here, and we let people take their vacations or liberty here, when there's time for such things, which isn't often. This chamber is strategic. It divides the relatively livable parts of the Stone from the business end."
"The propulsion system?"
"That, and the seventh chamber. Anyway, you'll have a chance to stretch your legs, assimilate what you've seen so far."
"I doubt it," Patricia said.
Lanier guided her to the compound cafeteria.
In most respects, the cafeteria was little different from the one in the first chamber. They sat at a table with British and West German soldiers. Lanier introduced her to the German commanding officer, Colonel Heinrich Berenson. "He'll assume command of the seventh chamber security forces a week from now. You'll be working together quite a bit."
Berenson was a colonel in the West German Space Force, sandy-haired and freckle-faced, as tall as Lanier but more obviously muscular. He appeared more Irish than German; with his non-German name and sophisticated manner, he seemed truly international to Patricia. His manner was friendly but slightly distant.
She ordered a salad—fresh greens from the agrilab—and looked at the faces of the men and women around her. Not all of them had green badges.
"How does the badge system work?" she asked Lanier. Berenson smiled and shook his head, as if this was a sore point.
"Red badges are
confined to the bore hole in the first chamber," Lanier said. "Mostly engineering support. Blue can go anywhere in the Stone except the sixth and seventh chambers, but in all chambers but the first, must be escorted and must be performing specific duties. Green badges can go to any of the chambers but are always subject to security checks."
"I am here more than three years," Berenson said, "and I only get a green three months ago." He glanced down at her badge and nodded meaningfully. "Fortunately, I found a loophole. I can be considered to have escorted myself."
Lanier grinned. "Let's just be thankful things are going as smoothly as they have been."
"Amen," Berenson said. "I would hate to see true confusion."
"For green badges, there are three levels of clearance. Level one is lowest—no access to designated secret areas. Level two is limited access for duty purposes—the special security guards have level two green badges. Level three is the clearance we share."
"I will be level two," Berenson said.
As they returned to the train, Patricia asked, "Being level two means he won't know exactly what the Stone is?"
"When you get to the seventh chamber, you have to know a lot."
"But not about what's in the libraries."
"No," Lanier said.
That sobered her. Berenson was morose, and he didn't even know about the libraries.
The four spacesuited soldiers ran in long, graceful leaps across the lunar surface with only the stars and a quarter-Earth to light their way. Mirsky watched them from the top of a boulder, only his white helmet showing. In his right hand, he held an electric torch, pointed back toward his team comrades waiting in a gully carved by a rolling rock millions of years before. When the four were in the proper position, he flashed the light on and off three times.
The objective—a mock-up of a lunar settlement bunker—lay a hundred meters beyond the boulder. The four defenders were now by the airlock. Mirsky raised his AKV-297—automatic vacuum-adapted Kalashnikov projectile rifle—and pointed it at the airlock hatch.
The hatch opened and Mirsky raised the rifle slightly, centering it on a cross-barred target near the hatchway signal lights. With one gloved finger, he depressed the side-mounted trigger and felt the rifle kick three times. A thin line of burning gunpowder discharge from the barrel glowed briefly in the darkness. The target blew out in tatters of plastic as the door opened.