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by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  “I’ll slow them down here.”

  Jess turned to Victoria’s assistant. “Bakana?”

  “I won’t tell anyone what I know, Defender. Solve the Mystery. Tell us everything.”

  “No more secrets,” Jess promised her. Her eyes met David’s.

  The tests, David thought suddenly. He still hadn’t told Jess what his nonhuman markers might mean for both of them. What if she’s marked for early death? He pushed down the disturbing possibility, seeking the comfort of logic as always. From the number of her older relatives just in the Shop, there could be variations that held hope for both of them.

  “No more secrets,” David lied.

  A half hour later, they reached the end of the inclined tunnel, only to encounter a crude airlock of sorts. A series of three doors, all metal, two painted battleship gray, long ago put in place to keep out radioactive dust after a nuclear holocaust. With David’s help, Jess took particular care to reseal each door properly with the handwheels like those on watertight doors onboard ships.

  Next to the first door she took the time to raid racks of emergency supplies and, more importantly, pouches of sterilized water. There she also found Australian army rations, complete with tubes of Vegemite.

  When they opened the third door, chilled desert air spilled over them. It was night, and above them stars dazzled, with the Milky Way a waterfall of light. When David told her he’d never seen a night sky like this one, she told him that she had, in the Barrens, though the northern sky held other stars and shimmering auroras.

  The cool night air was welcome on Jess’s legs as she tipped her head back, staring upward with him. Together they searched for and found the Southern Cross. The rest of the stars, most unique to the southern hemisphere, remained unknown to both of them. Even so, that didn’t make them unfamiliar.

  David gave voice to what she was thinking. “The same stars they saw.”

  Silently, she walked on with him, over a small rise, until they could see the transportation Niklas had promised. It was only a few hundred feet away in a small cleared section of ground that held a sun shelter with a corrugated metal roof. Beneath were a water tank, a chemical toilet, and two dust-covered Land Rovers, the same model as the one that had met them on arrival.

  David’s question was in his eyes. “Safety station,” Jess said, “for the guards patrolling the area. Your car breaks down out here in the summer, you can die.”

  They made quick trips to the no-frills facilities, then inspected the two vehicles. The keys were on the floor mats by the drivers’ seats.

  After making sure that one of the Land Rovers started and was fully fueled, Jess threw the other set of keys into the scrub. The brief respite from the memory—and the horror—of Victoria’s violent death was over. Niklas, Bakana, and Tomasso Moretti had freed them, but she and David were on their own now. There’d be no other Family help.

  Jess climbed into the driver’s seat unsure of the next step, and David took the navigator’s seat beside her. There was a GPS unit on the dash, and at her suggestion he powered that up.

  They were about two miles from the entrance to the Shop. There were no roads out here, but there was a trail of GPS waypoints marking the path back to Highway 87.

  “Where they’ll probably be waiting for us,” David pointed out.

  “Right. So . . . where do we go?” Jess held her breath, hoping David would somehow figure out what she could not. A way they could make good on her promise to Niklas and Bakana, and Moretti.

  “Antarctica.”

  “How? Even I can’t manage that on my own.”

  “So we’ll get help.”

  “From whom?”

  “Someone who wants to get there as much as we do.”

  PATAGONIA 7,794 YEARS B.C.E.

  The night was clear, but the wind was bitterly cold. Tel’Chon struggled to keep his furs pulled tight as he trudged through the snow to the common house.

  It was late, and he knew the ahkwila workers of Nikenk would be asleep, dreaming no doubt of another snowfall that would keep them indoors tomorrow. But khai shipwrights and tallymen would be working still, by the light of their whale oil lamps, tying knots in their colored threads to record the outpost’s production. Those who didn’t sleep could be dangerous because they reported directly back to the Fleet Masters in Carth. If they recognized his presence here, and knew the rumors of what he had done, what he carried, and of what he planned with his fellow scholars, it could be the end of everything.

  Solon opened the door when Tel’Chon knocked, hurried him in, then closed it again, unrolling insulating layers of fur over the door to seal it from the icy wind. The common room was warm, and Solon’s head was uncovered, revealing her shaved scalp, lustrously oiled.

  The others were waiting at the table by the fire. Six of them now, banded together in secrecy. Oil lamps cast flickering light upon their dark faces. The smoky aroma of the burning oil mixed with the rich cypress scent that rose from the rafters and walls and the table itself.

  Nikenk had been established to log the cypress forests of this land that one day would be called Patagonia, and the White Island was dependent on its output, first for the shipyards, and more and more with each passing year for fuel.

  “Do you have it?” Solon asked.

  Tel’Chon reached within his furs for the leather sack he carried. From it, he took his precious, deadly burden.

  It was wrapped in the purple cloth of a scholar, and he put it on the long wooden table for the others to open.

  “There,” he said. “Paid in blood.”

  He saw the expressions of his fellow conspirators then, as they realized the rumors were true.

  Holch pulled away the cloth, and for a moment everyone in the room stared in wonder at the golden book from the Hall of the Navigators. Such a thing had never been seen before outside the walls of Carth.

  Carefully, Holch turned the leaves of gold, reading the glyphs and calculations. “Does this prove it?” he asked.

  Tel’Chon stood close to the fire, banishing the cold. Through the stone flue, he could hear the wind howl outside. No one remembered a winter as bad as this one. “The numbers are recorded there. Scores of lifetimes’ worth. They’re as we suspected. And feared.”

  Azotekay left the table, to add more logs on the fire in blooms of crackling sparks. Like the others, Tel’Chon could see, she was troubled by the paradox before them.

  “If the numbers are recorded in the Navigators’ own hand, why won’t the scholars accept them? If a fact is known, why would anyone make an argument against it?”

  Tel’Chon lived in Carth, and knew that the influences that the scholars faced there had nothing to do with their studies. “The change we see,” he told the others, “is a known fact, but an expensive one.” It was vital they understand that if the scholars of Carth were to accept their proposal, then the people there would be disadvantaged. Shipments of fuel and building materials from Nikenk would be reduced, and the collapse might come sooner than predicted.

  Solon approached Tel’Chon as if seeking the fire’s warmth herself. She wore leather trousers and a shirt, and a brightly colored woven vest, the type made by the ahkwila here. It seemed odd to see her in clothes not meant for a true person.

  “Are you concerned that, if we go through with this, we might be responsible for causing the collapse of our own home?”

  “The collapse will happen anyway.” Tel’Chon pointed to the Navigators’ book. “The sea rises, the land changes. Not in the lifetime of one khai, but the Navigators saw it in their time, just as we see it now. If we take this action, then at least when the collapse comes, not everything will be lost. If we do nothing, then it will be the end of everything that we are, and everything that we might become.”

  Coscol, the eldest among them, rapped the table. It was time to decide. “The plan before us is simple. We’ll divert two shares of our logging operations to build additional bridge ships and use them to establish colon
ies away from the middle of the world. Change might come to one colony or another, but not to all.”

  Solon was unconvinced. “We can’t hide that much production from the shipwrights. They’ll demand to know where the extra ships have gone.”

  Tel’Chon had the answer. “I’ve just crossed the Storm Sea from Carth. Conditions are worse than I’ve ever seen. More ships lost in that passage than ever before. All we have to do is prepare manifests showing the ships have set out for home. Then, if they don’t make it . . .”

  “If they discover what we’re doing, they’ll kill us,” Solon said.

  Tel’Chon had already faced that possibility. “Our lives for our people? The equation seems balanced.”

  “What if it’s not enough?” Solon asked. “What if the change does affect the world, and the scholars continue to reduce the numbers of us allowed to enter the Hall of the Navigators?”

  To Tel’Chon, the answer was simple. “Then there’s no hope for anything, and it won’t matter.”

  “Hope is not a quantity that can be measured,” Solon said.

  In the end, they voted to undertake the plan and build the ships to spread themselves and their knowledge around the world. That journey and that mission was something the Navigators, for all their recorded wisdom, had never undertaken, and they had paid the price.

  For the seven who sat at the table in Nikenk, it was clear. What was the purpose of studying history, if not to learn from the mistakes of those who had gone before? And what was the purpose of history itself, if it was not remembered?

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “Knowing what we know about Ironwood,” Roz said, “we could have saved a whole lot of trouble by looking here first.”

  “Agent Marano,” Lyle told his partner, “I don’t need to hear that now. Or ever.”

  He and his task force were in the parking lot of a self-storage lot in Roswell, New Mexico. Less than a mile down the road was the Roswell Industrial Air Center, used by American Airlines, the New Mexico National Guard, and various aircraft maintenance companies. Once upon a time, as Roz had put it, it was the Roswell Army Airfield, site of the infamous Roswell crashed flying saucer story of 1947.

  “At least we know the guy has a sense of humor.”

  “Let’s hope it’s just that.” Lyle saw her questioning look but didn’t bother to explain.

  He, Roz, Captain Kingsburgh, two NRO technicians, and three other agents from AFOSI, together with Keisha Harrill, Ironwood’s lead programmer, had pulled up to the self-storage site in three unmarked white vans and a rented Chevy TrailBlazer. Harrill, who’d been arrested at Ironwood’s casino, wore an orange jumpsuit, white sneakers, and handcuffs. Roz said the ensemble was actually fashionable, perp orange being the new black-and-white stripe.

  One of the AFOSI agents fitted an ordinary plastic pail around the heavy padlock that sealed the rolling garage door of unit 27. A second agent, wearing thick, insulated gloves and a face shield, poured liquid nitrogen into the pail. Two minutes later, he removed the pail, and the first agent swung a sledgehammer at the frosted lock, shattering it like glass. Ironwood had warned them not to waste time trying to cut through the nanosteel alloy—it couldn’t be done.

  The third agent shoved the garage door open and went inside to turn on the overhead lights.

  “Thar she blows,” Roz said.

  On metal racks, spread more widely than they had been arranged in Ironwood’s casino, were half the 850 1.5 terabyte hot-swap drives that contained the SARGE database.

  Lyle entered the cool and harshly lit enclosure. Concrete-floored, it measured ten by thirty feet. As described, there was a hole cut conveniently through the drywall to unit 28. That was where the other half of the drives were kept, joined to the first half by a thick bundle of cables.

  A small beeping sound began, and Lyle looked over to a metal folding table with four computer screens and keyboards. A light on a stack of incomprehensible equipment was flashing in counterpoint to the beeping.

  “Tell me that’s not a bomb,” he said.

  Kingsburgh peered at the light. “Temperature alarm. We should close the door to keep the air-conditioning in.” He motioned to one of the NRO techs.

  The door came down. The beeping stopped. “Is this what you anticipated?” Lyle asked.

  Kingsburgh was already at one of the keyboards, scrolling through lines of text. “Seems so.”

  “Okay, then. I’m going to have to stand outside to make the call.”

  Kingsburgh held up his phone. “I’ll be on this. Send in your better half.”

  Lyle didn’t bother to ask who Kingsburgh meant by that. He tugged the garage door up, went back to the van he’d arrived in, and held out his hand. Roz gave him the satphone. He made the call.

  “That you, Agent Lyle?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  “You find it okay?”

  “Right where you said.”

  “Does Keisha say it’s all copacetic?”

  “I hope you don’t mind we’re having our own people check it out first.”

  “Just as long as you stick to the deal.”

  The deal, Lyle thought. He was still trying to comprehend the deal.

  Twenty-four hours ago, two hours before the Air Commandos reached Vanuatu, Ironwood had called the Air Force Office of Special Investigations headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia, and asked to speak with Lyle. He was using his satphone, and AFOSI patched him through to Lyle at home within a minute.

  Then Ironwood said he had another proposal to make, and Lyle said he was listening.

  “Clemency as before. Treasury protection as before. And no UFO evidence demands.”

  At the time, Lyle sincerely felt disappointment. He liked picturing Ironwood’s face as the Air Commandos burst into his home, bound, gagged, and cuffed him, and gave him a ride, military style, back to America. But the forces upstairs were willing to deal if it meant the billionaire revealed the location of the stolen database, so . . .

  “I can make that work,” Lyle said.

  “I haven’t finished, son. What I want is your guarantee, in writing, of the first two conditions, and one more.”

  “Go ahead.” Lyle felt no pressure. He checked his watch. The Air Commandos were almost at Ironwood’s front door.

  “I’ll tell you where I’m keeping SARGE, you take Keisha there, and you let her run one last search for me, just like that one in Cornwall. Shouldn’t take more than a day, then you send me the results and you can pack it all up and ship it to wherever you want. We’ll be done.”

  As Lyle considered that, General DiFranza’s voice joined their conversation, momentarily surprising him, until he realized that, of course, some, if not all, of the twenty or so personnel who had been in the Pentagon for his first call to Ironwood would have been rounded up to listen in on this one.

  “Mr. Ironwood, it’s General DiFranza. Don’t hang up.”

  “No such intention.”

  “If this search you’re requesting has anything to do with any sensitive location that could harm the United States or its allies—”

  “Put a sock in it, General. You think I’m an idiot? I hope you do end up thinking there’s something sensitive about what this search turns up, because then you’ll just be confirming what I’ve been saying all along. So either way I’m a happy man. Now is that a deal, or is that a deal?”

  “One search,” the general said.

  “Here’s my fax number. I want to see it all in writing.”

  By the time the Air Commandos were in position, the deal had been signed, and Ironwood had told them where to go.

  When Kingsburgh confirmed the entire database was online and operational, Ironwood read out a set of coordinates. General DiFranza, monitoring this unorthodox procedure from the NMCC, had the coordinates checked and, in under a minute, gave authorization for Lyle to pass the numbers to Captain Kingsburgh of U.S. Space Command, and on to Ironwood’s programmer in orange.

  The numb
ers didn’t appear to have any military significance. They designated a site on the Palmer Peninsula, Antarctica.

  Lyle had taken the coordinates in, personally. Roz had accompanied him without asking, and he’d allowed her to. It would have been cruel to cut her out of the end of the case that had consumed them both.

  Kingsburgh was under strict orders not to let Harrill have any direct access to the database, so Ironwood’s lead programmer sat back from the metal table on a cheap rolling office chair and told the air force captain how to proceed.

  First, he input the coordinates. Then, on the screen before him, an aerial photo appeared of . . . of white. That was all that Lyle could see. Next, Harrill told the captain to zoom in, and the white expanded to more white, and finally some random black shapes appeared. Black rocks partially covered by snow, Lyle decided.

  “Toggle the false-color control, bottom left,” Harrill said. Kingsburgh used the mouse, and the screen switched from white with black to white and a garish purple-blue. “Now switch to SARGE. Bottom right.”

  The white areas magically disappeared, replaced by a rainbow assortment of bright colors.

  “Whoa,” Roz said to Lyle. “What happened?”

  “I believe we’re looking through the snow to the actual terrain.”

  “Cool.”

  Then Harrill gave Kingsburgh a set of step-by-step instructions having to do with setting the initial depth and resolution of the slices they were going to examine.

  At this point, Lyle stopped paying attention. He had had a long talk with Roz about the exchange he had seen between DiFranza and the civilian who had been identified as a psychiatrist. Roz accepted that the general’s story might be true—that a criminal who asks for something impossible in a negotiation isn’t really interested in closing the deal. However, she also agreed with his argument to DiFranza, that to someone like Ironwood, asking for evidence of UFOs to be released wasn’t an impossible demand—not if he truly believed such evidence existed.

  Nor had she understood, as Lyle hadn’t, why the psychiatrist didn’t take that into account. “Unless,” she had added, “he wasn’t really a psychiatrist. Maybe he’s the guy with the key to the vault where they keep the alien babies.”