by Greg Bear
"Of course." But she offered no suggestions.
"Hey, we have more pictures from the external cameras!" someone yelled. The wide-screen video was wheeled out and connected to the central cafeteria hookup.
Patricia did not look at the video screen. She had seen satellite and lunar telescope pictures of the conflagration in the Thistledown City library. Somewhere on Earth—in Washington or in Pasadena in Hoffman's office—copies of those pictures were being embraced by the destruction they depicted, an ouroboros of doom.
Carrolson watched, however, eyes narrowed, lips drawn back.
One by one, the cities blossomed. The atmosphere rippled over each explosion, as if a giant steel ball had been dropped in a pond.
Over the western limb, beyond the Atlantic, a brighter-than-dawn glow was creeping, now yellow, now purple, now green.
The whole world was being swept by a crown fire, with the flames leaping not from tree to tree, but from city to city, continent to continent.
People were no more substantial than pine needles.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gerhardt and Lanier stood near several squads of soldiers guarding the entrance to the zero elevator. Gerhardt held up the field glasses. "Little specks," he said. "Mosquitoes. Most of them are coming down in this chamber. But quite a few appear to be crossing over." He handed the glasses to Lanier.
"Into the second chamber." The cool wind sliding down from the cap played with Lanier's hair. Lanier kept track of two of the specks in the glasses, following their contrails along the axis. He lowered the glasses to inspect the defenses around the two science team compounds.
"Yeah. Expecting us to have a bigger force here, which we do."
He raised his glasses again and saw broader white dots at a much lower angle, near the southern cap. "Parachutes," Lanier said. "Some are in the atmosphere now."
"Jesus, what an effort," Gerhardt said in admiration. He picked up his radio. "Zero south tunnels, forces coming your way. Bore hole, keep your eyes open."
Lanier could not concentrate. He kept thinking of the diversion; had they set fire to the world just to gain an advantage here? Hoping they could control the results with negotiation, keeping the casualties close to those of the Little Death? He suddenly grew sick of all the thousands of artificial modes of behavior conjured up by representatives of government, by military men, by patriots and traitors and fighters and—
He wanted to crawl away and sleep.
He could not keep from seeing in his imagination an image of Hoffman, on the road to Vandenberg in her limousine, hoping to escape the madness, to leave the dying aircraft and bail out—to come here, where the madness had spread, and not making it anyway; facing the blasts over Vandenberg.
"Do they know?" he asked.
"Know what?" Gerhardt said.
"Do the Russians know the Death has come?"
Gerhardt, who had never been in the library and had had none of Lanier's forewarning, frowned at him. "What are you asking, Garry?"
Lanier pointed up. "They're about to engage us in battle, but do they know neither of us have supreme commanders anymore?"
"Some leadership will survive," Gerhardt said.
"Oliver, does it matter?"
"You're goddamn fucking right it matters!" Gerhardt screamed at him, spittle beading on his chin. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his overalls, shaking his head and turning away, face reddening. "Don't go under now, Garry. We need everybody we can get."
"I'm going to fight," Lanier said.
"It won't be the first time, will it?" Gerhardt asked, his voice strained and harsh.
"On the ground, yes." Modes of behavior. No rest, no end, even after doomsday. "Where's my weapon?"
They had made it through the second bore hole, despite sporadic fire from troops stationed there. More had died, but not many. . . .
Would he ever stop falling?
Mirsky spun in his path to survey the city—
He had never seen such a city!
—as his thrusters pushed him a hundred meters away from the bore hole, then two hundred, then three. He spotted the landmark he was after—the zero bridge spanning the chamber-circling river—and pushed himself away from the Potato's axis, toward the thin glow of the plasma tube.
Other soldiers had already fallen free through the atmosphere barrier and the plasma tube. Their informant had assured them passage was safe, as long as they did not linger—but Mirsky trusted only experience and survival. He could not see whether his comrades were alive or dead—when he saw them at all, they were too tiny to make out details. They were dwarfed—how could a few hundred soldiers command an object as big as a republic?
The perspective changed very slowly as he fell away from the axis.
He felt no wonder whatsoever at how selfish his emotions were now, and how much hate filled him. Mirsky had felt these emotions many times before, during training or the horrid endurance tests. These were the emotions of soldiers in battle, hard and bitter, touched with fear but mostly with overwhelming self-interest.
He could not have cared less about the state, the Motherland, the revolution. There was no shame in him.
Only falling. Spiraling outward as the great cylinder turned around him. He kept pace with the landmarks using his thrusters. Silence, not even the sound of wind yet. He prepared his air-sled, fanning out and locking its segments.
Then he noticed he was drifting some degrees away from the bridge. He corrected with another thruster burst. There was so little sensation he might go mad. . . and yet he had been falling for only a minute or so, very slowly. . . .
He felt—perhaps only in his mind—a tingle and knew he was passing through the plasma tube. Below that, but only by a few hundred meters, lay the upper limits of the atmosphere, beyond the restraining barrier. He braced himself behind the sled and strapped his arms and legs to the concave inner surface. Whatever angle he first brushed the atmosphere, the sled would flip him around to the shape of least resistance. He would plummet through the upper air until he could hear the whistle of its passage, then he would kick free of the sled and begin his fifteen- or sixteen-kilometer dive, releasing the chute only two or three kilometers from the floor of the chamber. He would be lighter, falling; the impact would not be very hard at all.
Another soldier came close enough to wave—one he didn't recognize, with the insignia of Sixth Battalion, from Rolls-Royce. Mirsky waved back and motioned for him to prepare his sled. The soldier held it up—folded, in tatters from a projectile impact—and shrugged, flipping it aside. They were to maintain radio silence, but the soldier used his rockets to approach close enough that they could read lips.
—Can I survive without?
—I don't know. Tuck up into a ball and present your back to the air. . . if you can.
That was difficult to convey with lip movements, so Mirsky mimed by folded himself up as best he could behind the shield, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms around him.
The soldier nodded and signaled okay with his thumb and index finger. They drifted apart—the soldier falling more slowly because of his thrust toward Mirsky. Mirsky watched the soldier thrust again to move away from the cap surface, toward which he was drifting, and then busied himself preparing for the entry.
He checked his position with relation to the bridge. One more adjustment with the thrusters. He could feel some pressure now against the sled. A vibration, weak nudges.
He made one more thrust and, then unfastened and discarded the rocket pack. Where it fell he did not care, so long as it didn't land on him.
For an instant, through the preparations and the near-fury of anticipation, he looked again at the city and wondered what the Potato's secret actually was. Why were they fighting for it? What could it bring them?
How would the West react, facing the theft of its greatest prize? Or the attempt (he had heard rumors) to take out its orbital platforms and spy satellites?
How would Russia react in the same circumstance
s?
He shuddered.
The sled jerked and whirled around. He blacked out for a moment, then came awake to a bone-crushing slam and a high-pitched, wavering scream.
Coming down.
The sled swung around again and bucked but was now committed to one orientation. He was pressed against its inner surface, padded elbows and knees braced, hoping he had broken no bones. It had been more violent than the falls from three meters in training. He tasted blood in his mouth. He had bitten almost through his inner cheek—he could flap the tissue with his tongue. He closed his eyes against the pain—
(And gathered up his chute in the golden grassy field, smiling at the burning sun, looking for his comrades, shielding his eyes to spot the distant speck of the transport plane—)
And fell. He hastily unbuckled from the sled. The air roared around him. Then he grasped the straps loosely in his hands. He flipped the sled over and it was torn from his fingers.
Made it!
From here on it was a simple freefall and parachute exercise. He tucked to roll, and spread his arms and legs to flatten out and stabilize. The bridge was still only a line of white over the blue-black river. Was it really the right bridge—really the zero bridge?
Yes—he could spot the tiny speck of a guard shack nearby and make out lines of defense and sandbag emplacements. And he couldn't have fallen so far wrong as to traverse a third of the chamber's arc. . . . He was right on, too close in fact—he would have to drift away some.
The wind hummed mildly past his helmet now. He checked his laser and Kalashnikov and made quick surveys of his equipment belt.
Chute release had to be gauged purely by eye. There was no sense counting from the axis, since everyone would fall at a different rate. He held out his thumb. It covered the length of the bridge.
He pulled the rip cord and the chute leaped away, billowed, collapsed and billowed again, spreading wide in the shape of a package of small sausages.
Mirsky jerked and dangled and gathered his guidelines in both hands, pulling one, then the other, spilling a little air from one side of the chute to move in one direction, then from the other side.
He saw with relief that he would land some five kilometers from the objective. Unless they had far more men than reported—and radar-aimed automatic guns within the chambers, which their informant had told them they did not—they would probably not bring him down.
He saw others coming down beside him and above him, only a few below. In all, hundreds of them.
Mirsky tried to hold back tears and could not.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
"Where's Patricia?" Carrolson looked around the mess.
"I don't know," Farley said. "She was here a few minutes ago."
"We should go find her."
"I'll go," Carrolson said. She had to get outside anyway; she wasn't sure she could stand the scene in the cafeteria any longer.
She stepped out under the tubelight and looked back and forth across the compound. Her eyes fixed on something astonishing. Against the dark gray southern cap, tiny points of white were falling like snow—dozens, then hundreds of them. A marine ran by carrying two Apples. "Look!" she cried, pointing and turning a half-circle. No one paid her any attention. The marine jumped onto the tailgate of one of the fully loaded troop trucks rumbling out of the compound.
Carrolson shook her head to clear it. She was drunk with grief and anger; any solid thought seemed to be vomited away by a nauseated mind. She couldn't afford such a handicap now. She had to think clearly and she had to find Vasquez.
On the opposite side of the compound, a train pulled away from the elevated station. She glanced at her watch; as scheduled, the fourth chamber stop, 1400 hours. The platform was empty; none of the trains were being used for troops, only trucks. The trains were doing their automatic best to keep everything normal.
"Jesus," she said, suddenly realizing. Vasquez had wanted to return to the library. Which one did she mean?
Farley ran up beside her. "We're being invaded," she said, astonished. "Paratroopers. Russian soldiers. Cosmonauts. Whatever they are, they've come down in the first and second chambers. They're coming down here, too."
"I've seen them," Carrolson said. "Patricia's gone to the library. We have to find her—"
"How? The train's gone. Not another for half an hour. We can't take a truck—they're all in use."
Carrolson had never felt so helpless and out of place. She stood with fists clenched, facing the southern cap. Most of the parachutes had descended below their line of sight.
Patricia stared at the seat ahead of her, biting her lower lip. Nobody was guarding the train; that was either an oversight, or providential.
She had been in a dream ever since leaving Earth. Was it possible to be trapped in a dream?
In a dream, you can do anything, if you learn how to control, to shape and command.
And the equations hit by the chalk. . .
If what she had seen in the equations was correct, then at this very moment, there was a place—a curve—where Father sat in his chair, reading Tiempos de Los Angeles, and the corridor would pass right near it. She only had to search for the right door, the right section of the corridor, and she could find Rita and Ramon, Paul and Julia.
She could hardly wait to tell Lanier. He would be pleased. Rimskaya would be proud he had recommended her. She had solved the secret of the corridor—the last pieces of the puzzle falling into place in a dream, no less.
She could take them all home again.
The train came to her stop and she exited, climbing the stair to the ground level.
"Miss Vasquez?"
Patricia turned to face a man she had never met before. He sat on the concrete edge of the underground entrance. His hair was black and short and he wore a close-fitting black suit.
"Excuse me," she said, her eyes not really focusing on him. She was in the grip of a powerful working state. "I don't know who you are. I can't stay."
"Nor can we. You must come with us."
A tall creature with a head almost as narrow as a board and jutting eyes rose from behind the ceiling. Its shoulders were wrapped in silvery fabric; otherwise it wore nothing. Its skin was smooth as fine leather and just as brown.
She stared, inner concentration evaporating.
"Things are in quite a riot here, aren't they?" the man said. Patricia realized that he had a nose but no nostrils. His eyes were pale blue, almost blank, and his ears were large and round.
"Excuse me," she said more softly. "I don't know who you are."
"My name is Olmy. My companion is a Frant; they don't have names. I hope you don't mind our intruding. We've been watching everybody very closely."
"Who are you?" Patricia asked.
"I lived here, centuries ago," Olmy said. "And my ancestors before me. For that matter, you could be one of my ancestors. Please. We don't have time to talk. We must leave."
"Where?"
"Down the corridor."
"Really?"
"That's where my home is. The Frant and his people come from elsewhere. They. . . well, working for us doesn't quite describe it."
The Frant shook its head solemnly. "Please don't be frightened," it said, its voice like a large bird's, low and warbling.
A breeze from the northern cap pushed through the outskirts of the third chamber city, rustling the nearby trees. Following the breeze came a slender craft about ten meters long, shaped like a cone flattened lengthwise, with the nose truncated. It drifted gracefully around a tower and landed on the point of a single central pylon.
"You're done some remarkable work," Olmy said. "There are people where I live who will be very interested."
"I'm trying to go home," Patricia said. She realized she sounded like a lost child speaking to a policeman. "Are you a policeman? Do you guard the cities?"
"Not always," Olmy answered.
"Please come with us," the Frant said, stepping forward on long and oddly bent legs.
"You'll kidnap me?"
Olmy held out his hand, whether supplicating or indicating the situation was not his to control, she could not say.
"If I don't go willingly, you'll make me?"
"Make you?" He seemed puzzled, then said, "You mean, force you?" Olmy and the Frant exchanged glances. "Yes," Olmy said.
"Then I had better go with you, hadn't I?" Her words seemed to be spoken by a distant and heretofore unknown Patricia, calm and better versed in the analysis of nightmare.
"Please," the Frant said. "Until things are better here."
"Things are never going to be better here," she said. Olmy took her hand with a courtly bow and led her to the open oval hatchway in the craft's flat nose.
The interior of the craft was confined, a T expanding at the rear, the walls like abstract billows of polished marble, all white curves. Olmy took hold of a soft bulkhead and stretched it out to form a couch. "Please lie here." She lay in the softness. The substance firmed up beneath her, molding to her body.
The narrow-headed, knock-kneed brown Frant climbed farther back through the whiteness and nestled into its own couch. Olmy pulled out a section across the aisle from Patricia and sat in it, again touching his torque.
He smoothed his hand over a bulge before him and the curved surface erupted into an intaglio of black lines and red circles. Beside her, the whiteness faded to an elongated transparency, forming a long elliptical window. The edges of the window remained milky, like frosted glass.
"We're going to leave now."
The third chamber city glided away beneath her. As the craft banked, the window filled with the austere grayness of the northern cap.
"I believe you'll truly enjoy where we're going," Olmy said. "I've grown to admire you. You have a remarkable mentality. The Hexamon will be impressed, too, I'm sure."
"Why don't you have a nose?" the distant Patricia asked.
Behind them, the Frant made a sound like an elephant grinding its teeth.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The Soviet troops assigned to the second chamber had come down on a two-hundred-meter-wide strip of parkland separating the river from the southern cap. The squads had regrouped at two points on opposite sides of the zero bridge, each about three kilometers from that objective. Communications with the squads on the opposite side of the bridge were good.