Solstice

by David Hewson

  She held out her arms. They came to her, touched her flesh, her clothes, covered her in kisses. When they were done, when they stood back to look at her, she was soaked in tears. Joe Katayama nodded across the room at Gunther.

  'Make the call,' he said.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Golden Dome

  Kyoto, 0447 UTC

  George Soames looked at the dome in the midday light and felt, as always, a sense of pride. Like the two other Sundog domes, this was a perfect geodesic, a 'Buckyball, named after Buckminster Fuller, who had conceived the idea of the perfect geometrical dome. It sat on the northeast edge of Kyoto, on a low hill of bamboo and scrub, ringed by a ten-foot-high security fence, accessible through a single narrow guarded road.

  As local director of Sundog, Soames had supervised its construction down to the last detail. The telecom equipment the project required was expensive and delicate, though not particularly rare — most parts could be bought 'academic retail' for those who had the money and the sources. And Buckminster Fuller's geodesic was ideal to contain the dishes safely and securely, out of sight from prying eyes. Thanks to the advanced lightweight material of the dome, it gave sufficient radiation cover to keep the prefecture happy when it came to safety regulations too.

  The unique structure seemed custom-made for the project. Nothing could match its strength and efficiency. The dome was cheaper to cool and heat than a conventional building. And the greatest part of all for Soames, who loved Kyoto dearly, regarded himself as half-Japanese after twenty years in the city, was the colour. The fabric had to be treated to contain the radiation created by the operating equipment inside. This wash of protection left it a mature burnished gold, not quite the same tone as the Golden Pavilion a few miles away, but close enough to let him rename his baby the Golden Dome.

  Soames admired the scene in the morning's radiant light. It was hard to remind himself that there was a job to be done here. With a sigh he flipped open the screen on the satellite videophone and looked at Irwin Schulz's tired face.

  'Hell, Irwin. There's nothing wrong here. We checked it a dozen times. I've had the embassy spooks go over it, every last inch. We've cut the Net connection, just like you asked. The dome works, and everything inside it.'

  'You got the hardware people in too? To check you really are logged off?'

  'Yes. How many times do I need to look at this plug to see whether it's wired or not?'

  'I'm not doing this for fun, George. How many people have you got there?'

  'Me and about ten from the embassy, the five permanent security staff, and a bunch of people from the local police station. And frankly this is starting to make me feel a little embarrassed. Can I go home now? I can see why we need all this activity but it makes me feel uneasy. You know as well as I do we're just a mirror. We don't have all that big stuff you guys have to deal with at La Finca and Lone Wolf.'

  Schulz's face disappeared, to be replaced by someone Soames only knew as 'the new guy'.

  'In case you forgot, Soames, these people just took out the Lone Wolf dome in a way that just shouldn't have been possible, damn lucky someone didn't get killed too,' Bevan spat down the line. 'You'd be doing us all a favour if you took this a little more seriously.'

  'Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on,' Soames answered. 'I'm taking this deadly seriously. It's just that there's nothing more we can do here. And that's not my opinion, it comes from your guys who've done the rounds.

  There are no devices here. No signs anything's been tampered with. And the perimeter's secure.'

  He watched the shirtsleeved security men walking the length of the wire, checking every inch again. 'What the hell else are we supposed to do? This is Kyoto, not California. We have a lower jerk count, in case you didn't know. And you just keep making this assumption that, because these crazies hit Lone Wolf, they're bound to hit us next.'

  Schulz's face reappeared. 'It's not an assumption, George. It's a precaution.'

  'You think these people are capable of taking out all three domes? One by one? What they got out there? An army or something?'

  It was Bevan again, and he looked mad. 'We don't know.'

  'Well, son, I don't think I'm going to be finding out any answers for you here. We got this baby wrapped up tight. No one comes in, no one goes out without one of your nice embassy people looks them up and down.'

  'George?'

  Soames couldn't help staring at the dome. It looked so beautiful in the bright sunlight. He was around the back of the thing, by the smaller, secondary door. 'I hear you, Irwin. Is that creep done with me now? Those people always give me the heebie-jeebies. Yeah, I know. They're a necessary evil.'

  'People are getting hurt,' Schulz said. 'Treat this seriously. Take care.'

  'Sure,' he said, his mind wandering. 'I keep telling you, Irwin, this is Japan. We never imported that stuff here.' He stared at the outer skin and frowned.

  'George?'

  'Wait a goddamn minute, Irwin. You guys getting air miles for these calls or something?'

  Damn contractors, George Soames swore to himself. Every week they were supposed to come and clean the dome. Top to bottom, make sure the exterior was spotless, make sure every last rip in the fabric got mended. And here he was, one day after the visit, looking at the biggest blemish he'd ever seen in the dome skin since it was completed.

  'I'll kill those guys,' Soames muttered, then walked the six feet that stood between him and the dome fabric and looked again.

  'Irwin?' Soames asked.

  'What is it?'

  'This fancy videophone of yours good enough to let you see a decent picture of something?'

  'What?'

  'If I knew that I wouldn't be asking the question. Something stuck to the fabric'

  'Jesus,' the voice from the videophone shrieked, 'get the hell out of there. Leave this to security. They get paid for it.'

  'Don't piss your pants. This thing's no bigger than a matchbox. Maybe it's just part of the gear from something inside that got tacked onto the fabric'

  'Call the goddamn security guys!'

  Soames looked around. 'Typical. Can't see a damn one of them right now. Tell you what. This thing's up at about six feet or so. Too high for me to try to take it off, but if I hold up your fancy phone here maybe you can get a good look at it.'

  Soames stretched his five-foot-three frame to the maximum and tried to point the lens of the phone at the object on the skin. Then, to make sure it didn't penetrate the skin in some way, he opened the small secondary door with his smart card, pushed it open, and walked inside the bright, gleaming interior of the dome, looked at the skin from there. It was unmarked. Soames was beginning to feel pretty mad. With a grunt, he walked back out into the sun, leaving the door open, and called Schulz.

  'You see it? As far as I can make out it just looks like a plastic box, it doesn't go through or anything. Something shiny on the side. Like I said. No bigger than a matchbox. Beats me. Where the hell are those security guys?'

  Back at La Finca, Ellis Bevan stared at the dark object on the screen and shook his head. 'Means nothing to me. Why doesn't that moron do what we keep telling him to and get someone to look at it?'

  'You don't know George,' Schulz muttered. 'He sort of loves that thing.'

  'Well?' Soames bellowed. 'I'm waiting.'

  'Hell, George, we don't know,' Schulz replied. 'Will you just walk around and find those guys, please? We could be wasting precious ti — ' The videophone went quiet.

  'Irwin?' George Soames beamed. 'I knew you'd come up with something. You're thinking. I can hear it from here.'

  'How well can you see the front?'

  Soames stretched on tiptoe. 'Pretty well.'

  'Looks to me like there's some kind of shiny plastic panel there? Just like the kind you get on the front of a TV remote?'

  Soames grinned. 'You got it. Someone stuck a TV remote on the side of my dome. I'll disembowel the bastard when I catch hold of him.'

  '
Let's think about this,' Schulz said slowly, feeling hot, trying to sort through the possibilities. 'Did you put any alarm systems in recently? Some surveillance points?'

  'What? We got permanent security supplied by the embassy. Cameras every fifteen feet or so along the perimeter wire. What the hell would we need a burglar alarm for?'

  Schulz closed his eyes, squeezed hard, then glared at Ellis Bevan. 'You have any clue what this is? Why anyone would use a simple infrared device on the exterior of a building?'

  Bevan shook his head. 'Not a one.'

  'George,' Schulz said slowly. 'Just walk away from that damn thing, find the security people, and leave it to them. Okay?'

  'Bull,' George Soames answered, and stuffed the videophone into the pocket of his neatly pressed blue shirt. 'No bastard goes around sticking bugs on my dome.'

  He jumped up once, then twice, and finally got his hands on the thing. The little black box came away easily from the skin of the dome and sat in his hand. He turned it over. There was a little clasp for a battery compartment, held fast with a single Phillips screw. He swore mildly, then walked back inside the dome and picked up a screwdriver from a bench just inside the door. He worked on the cover, flipped it, opened the back, and looked at two shiny new AAs sitting in a row.

  'Would you believe it?' he said into the big empty space, then took the videophone out of his pocket again. 'Hey, Irwin. Take a look at this thing. It is a goddamn TV remote. Now, who the hell has been messing with my dome? That's what I want to know.'

  Irwin Schulz stared at the picture on the screen, thought about the two batteries and the infrared eye on the front, then said, 'Okay. What you do is you take out the batteries. Then you pick that thing up and throw it as far as you can and start running in the other direction. You understand me, you get — '

  'What?' George Soames's face came back at them, wrinkled with a puzzled frown. 'You hear that noise outside? Sounded like a mosquito farting or something. Damn if that makes sense. No civilian traffic around here for miles.'

  He felt cold in the constant midday sun. The whine kept getting louder. He looked through the open doorway. It was coming from the sky. There was a tiny black dot there.

  'Where the hell did those security guys get to? Never there when you need 'em. When I get back to the emba — '

  'George?' Schulz's voice asked, a tinny sound coming from the phone.

  Soames didn't reply. He just stared up through the open door at the bright blue sky. Coming straight down at him was something that was moving so quickly it was hard to focus on the shape. 'Damn me if it isn't some toy plane,' he said to no one in particular, clutching the little plastic box all the more tightly in his hand.

  'Get out of there!' Schulz yelled.

  Then the picture made a lurch and all Schulz could see on the monitor was tumbling scenery: grass, the bright fabric of the dome, what looked like the red and white wings of a model aeroplane. There was the sound of something breaking, George yelling in pain, what might have been an explosion, then a hissing noise that went on and on.

  Schulz watched the monitor, his heart in his mouth, trying to stab at the keys on the workstation, calling for help. He'd just got through to Langley when George Soames's face rolled in front of the camera. It was distorted now, the skin a livid red, eyes bright, bloodshot, and terrified. His tongue protruded between his swelling lips like a fat red lump of tortured flesh. In one swift, convulsive movement, Soames vomited on the ground repeatedly. And then was still.

  CHAPTER 24

  Return Call

  La Finca, 0611 UTC

  Somewhere over the other side of the world, he guessed, an incoming message icon was flashing on a screen. This was a crazy way to communicate. He'd no idea where he was calling, what was at the other end. Then Helen Wagner answered. Michael Lieberman looked at her calm, tired face and felt some kind of decision being made for him.

  'Hey, I thought I might be waking you up. Returning the favour.'

  She smiled. 'Not exactly. I had half an hour on the sofa in the office. We have more than a hundred people working on this outside the door, and that's just S&T. How's Sara?' Lieberman blinked. 'She's fine. Resolute, you might say.' 'And the bad news. You heard about Kyoto?' 'Yeah, I got it from Irwin. He's really cut up, knew the guy there. So that's two down, one to go. What the hell happened?'

  She winced. The small movement made him realize how effortlessly attractive Helen Wagner was, and he couldn't help but wonder how this must have hindered her career in the Agency. 'They planted some kind of homing bug on the dome. We don't know how. Then they used a toy airplane loaded with VX nerve agent.'

  'That's the stuff Saddam was fond of, right?' Wagner gave him a look that was only a touch short of condescension. 'We all have VX, Michael. It's not rocket science. They wanted to penetrate the dome and make it unusable so they had some minor explosive charge in the plane. As it turned out they didn't need it. The local director had the door open anyway and the damn thing went straight inside. He took a direct hit, which has to be one of the worst ways to die. They knew what they were doing. This is a persistent, highly localized nerve agent. It's going to take up to sixteen weeks to clear away the residue from the vicinity, and we won't be able to work efficiently in the dome for a good four to five days.'

  'What about breathing apparatus?'

  Wagner did give him a condescending look then. 'You think we could run this operation wearing space suits? Do you want to try that right now in your control room?'

  'Sorry. I'm dumb in these matters.'

  Wagner favoured him with half a smile. 'Think yourself lucky. It's the best way to be.'

  'Hell of a weapon for a bunch of ecoterrorists to use.'

  'Perhaps…' The thought had occurred to her. 'I don't know. Maybe they were trying to make a point. The cult that attacked the Tokyo subway had much the same view, you may recall. Except they used Sarin, which is around one-twentieth the strength of VX and nowhere near as persistent. They were trying to get their hands on anthrax and the Ebola virus too.'

  Lieberman shook his head. 'This is one scary world you inhabit.'

  'Same world as yours.'

  'Really. If you don't mind my saying, you people didn't do much of a job protecting Kyoto. Are you going to do any better here?'

  She looked nervous. 'We're still trying to get our heads around this one. The President said something that really struck me. This is all outside the loop, outside anything we've prepared for. As much outside as having aliens land, except we have at least some contingency plans for that.'

  'Really?' he asked, half-agog.

  'Of course. It would be irresponsible not to. But the President's point was that these people are as foreign, as incomprehensible to us as aliens. And they're of our own race, of our own making. You want to know the really scary thing? I know how they feel. In some ways I sympathize. We are making a mess of the planet. We are out of control. And…' She went silent.

  'And what?' he asked.

  'We're all distanced from one another. It doesn't matter to them that they can cause real harm, real hurt. Somehow it's all just a game. No, not a game, they're deadly serious. It's all apart. We've replaced real communities with virtual ones, and some piece of humanity disappeared in the process. I'm thirty-five and single and you know what I do when I happen to have some chunk of free time you might call leisure? Read a Web page about mountain climbing. Instead of damn well going out there and doing it.'

  'So this is the insight part of the conversation, huh?'

  She laughed. 'Oh dear. Did that sound deliberate? It wasn't. Really.'

  She found herself enjoying this conversation, tired as she felt. There was something insidiously likeable about this man.

  'Okay,' he continued. 'So let's think about Charley. You know who these people are?'

  She shook her head. 'I wish.'

  'Let me tell you. Just ordinary people. People like us. They're bright. They're educated. They probably come from nice middle
-class parents who gave them everything they ever wanted. A good education, a nice car, the works. They've got no real gripes with society. No one took over their country. No one oppressed them. They have no political philosophy they think can change the world for the better. So why do they do it?'

  Helen Wagner closed her eyes and knew exactly what he was going to say.

  'Because they have no lives, none to speak of,' he continued. 'And we've all been like that, from the sixties on, searching for something we thought had been promised us. Then usually getting older, getting responsibilities thrown at us so often we forget we ever dreamed things could be different. Except these kids had this new world, of PCs, of the Internet, come up and open its arms, welcome them in, and say: Hey, this can be home. This can provide anything you want. People who agree with you. People who hate you. People who say they love you. Even virtual sex — whatever that might be — if you want it. And suddenly they were a part of this unreal thing. Learning Linux when they should have been sitting watching a baseball game. Hacking Web sites instead of dating. Thinking theirs was the reality and ours was the illusion. And it's such a waste. Because they're wrong. No clever stuff here. They just took a blind turning and it's eating up their lives.'

  She watched him fall into silence on the screen and wondered, "Was that Charley?'

  'Oh yeah. And more. You want the gory details?' 'Only if you think they're relevant. And then only if you want to.'

  He watched the light growing outside the window. One more day to the zenith. And somewhere, maybe inside him, was some key they could use to reach Charley.

  'When the scales fell off my eyes over that damn satellite I went a little crazy,' he said, not looking at the screen. 'Charley and I were just colleagues until then. Really. Then that big bombshell struck and I just felt stupid and used and mad. I wanted out. She wanted in. And the crazy thing was that when we both fought like that, we wound up, one way or another, having an affair too. Professionally we went in two different directions. I chased anything that was the opposite of solar satellite design I could find. She picked up her security badge and went in to finish off the job. The new job. This lasted six months.'