Solstice

by David Hewson

  Burnley shot her a caustic glance, and she strode up to Clarke. On his call they picked up the pace and put a little extra space between them and the followers.

  'Hell of a place for a private conversation,' the President said. 'Walking down the middle of the Strip at four in the afternoon.'

  'If you want this to be private, sir.'

  He groaned. 'Jesus. You people are so stiff it must make it hard getting up in the morning. So? What happened?'

  'She turned up the controls. Focused it all somehow. We wondered what we'd get if she managed to pull everything together. Now we have the answer.'

  'But what caused this?'

  'We're working on the fine detail, sir. Think of it as a combination of fire, a powerful burst of radiation, and some odd electromagnetic effects too. A cocktail, if you like.'

  'It looks like a bomb site, Helen.'

  'And it is, of a kind. Except that some of the injuries go beyond mere blast effects.'

  Clarke stared at her with that look she was coming to recognize, the one that said: Tell me now, because we don't let up until you come clean.

  'It looks like we have some form of spontaneous combustion, sir. Of people. I'd like to leave it at that. For now.'

  'Jesus…'

  'And while I'm dealing out the bad news, I should say that this is only a foretaste of what she'll have tomorrow. When we roll up to the zenith, the energy out there will be much greater than we have at the moment. This could be just a sideshow compared with what's to come. Today she burned a track a mile or so wide down the city. What she can throw at us when the cycle peaks will probably be four, five, even ten times that magnitude.'

  Treasure Island was coming up on the left. The two ships in the man-made lake outside were gutted, fire-eaten wrecks, half-sunk in the lagoon.

  'And this was meant to be an instrument of deterrence?' Clarke wondered.

  She shook her head. 'No one seriously suggested that, sir. Not when you go into the SDI papers in any detail. We knew what we were building all along.'

  He kicked a stray Coke can with some force. 'Bull. Some people knew. But you didn't. Your predecessor didn't.'

  'I guess not. I'm sorry, sir. If there's something you think I should be doing that I'm not…'

  'Forget it. I'm just a grouchy old bastard sometimes. You ask anyone who was in the Gulf with me. Amazed the papers didn't pick up on that one when I became running mate. Maybe that was one way being black helped. I mean, what else did they have to say?'

  'That's not fair. Or worthy of you. Sir.'

  'No,' he said, dark eyes shining right into her. 'And thank you for pointing that out.'

  'This meeting you've called…'

  'Yeah. Thirty minutes to go. I know.'

  'What's the purpose of it? We have as much work under way as we can and the lines of reporting are in place. Also I think we are starting to get somewhere. From what I hear, you have everybody in attendance. The chiefs of staff, us, the Bureau, these federal emergency people Levine keeps talking about. More people from Washington than I ever knew existed.'

  He was staring at the shell of the big Treasure Island casino. 'Did a fund-raiser there last year. Boy, was that fun. Those guys never expected to see me coming back as President. Or in circumstances like this.'

  'Sir. May I say something?'

  'You don't sound like the kind of person who's easy to stop.'

  'You have to lose the race issue. It could cloud your judgement.'

  'My judgement.'

  'Yes.'

  He nodded, and she felt a little foolish. What was going through Clarke's mind just then was nothing that simple or visible. 'Maybe you're right. And maybe not. Anyway, you asked a good question. Why are all these people coming here? You ever hear of the Cambridge Mandate?'

  'No.'

  'Don't feel ashamed. I hadn't either, and it is supposed to be a secret. But I've been doing a lot of reading recently. Mainly because I don't like being surrounded by people who know a whole lot more about what's going on than me. The Cambridge Mandate goes back to the Kennedy administration. Bay of Pigs. All that nice part of our history when a lot of people in Washington suddenly got real scared that nuclear war was around the corner. Kennedy was in Cambridge at the time, which is where it got its name. What it did was pull together all the civil defence plans that had been put in place over the years and put them into a rounded whole. A neat, tidy set of executive orders that you can employ when the occasion arises and throw as tight a grip around this country as you can get. Martial law by any other name. And mark the timing of this. The Cambridge Mandate was designed to be used before the bombs started to fall. They were all Boy Scouts back then: Be prepared.'

  'Is this still around?'

  'Oh yes. Updated and approved by every one of my predecessors, including Rollinson, not that I knew anything about it, of course. Bill always did think he was immortal.'

  She nodded. 'You have to have something like that. Even with the Cold War over. I didn't realize it was quite so tightly organized, but I rather expected something would be in place.'

  'Sure, and that's what these guys are bringing down for me to sign. They don't want to wait to see what happens with the Shuttle. Their advice is we should put up the barricades now, take out the current Federal Defense Act, and tie the nation up nice and tightly this very minute.'

  "This bothers you?'

  Clarke looked behind them, saw the distance they were keeping from the Secret Service people. It was a false security, he knew that. If they wanted, they could pick up the conversation anyway. 'Of course it bothers me. Once that goes into place, this country is to all intents and purposes under a form of martial law. We take control of the telecommunications networks, install mandatory censorship in the news media. All existing forms of government are suspended and we work on the framework of the civil emergency network, which, in case you didn't know, is ostensibly answerable to local county officials and, in the end, state governors. Hell, I even have to hand over a whole piece of my powers to some new federal emergency council on the grounds that there's no other way to counterbalance the loss of democratic control elsewhere. This is a big thing. Every last detail is there, right down to the disposal of human remains. And it's open-ended. Think about that.'

  She tried to imagine what this world would be like. What the alternative might be. 'In the short term, it might be a good thing. We don't need any distractions right now. We have to track those people down, not get pulled off-line by civil unrest issues.'

  'Yeah. I know. But what worries me is this: How often do you see people voluntarily handing power back these days? If the Children do get to cause us some damage, how long is it before we return to some kind of normalcy? And if they don't, what happens then? Do we all tear up the piece of paper and go back to what we were doing? As everyone keeps telling me, this Pascal woman is smart. Isn't it possible we're just playing into her hands? By treating this as the end of the world, maybe we prompt the sort of response she's trying to get.'

  'Sir, if you are going to impose some kind of order, you need to do it before the emergency if that's possible.'

  'Yeah. You're the millionth person to make that point to me today.'

  'It's a question of contingency, Mr President.'

  'Really? You're right, up to a point. But think about it. In 1961 you could walk state troopers down the street and tell people to stay indoors and believe every word Walter Cronkite said on the one TV channel that was still broadcasting. You think that's a possibility now? Or is some guy going to come at you with a gun and decide to take advantage of the situation and do what he wanted to do all along? Or post some crap on the Net that scares the living shit out of everyone — and there's no way we can close that thing down entirely, believe me, not short of cutting off the power supply to the entire nation. Think of some of the right-wing crazies out there. You can imagine what they'd be saying. We've got a nigger in the White House who's taken our birthright away. We'd have so-c
alled independent states springing up everywhere the moment they heard that Washington was taking over everything and running it through whoever we felt like. And like I keep asking, in a way, isn't that what these Gaia people want?'

  They were at a big empty crossroads. No people. No cars. Just barren roads running off into the flat desert nowhere, and the husks of burned-out, shattered buildings. She shivered, even in the intense heat. What Clarke was talking about gave her pause for thought. 'I don't know, sir. That's your call.'

  'Oh yeah, I'm aware of that. This is one big switch we're talking about throwing. So tell me. Is the Shuttle going to work? And if it doesn't, are we going to catch these people some other way?'

  She thought about Yasgur's Farm and the woman in Mallorca,

  Martin Chalk and fireballs raining from the sky. And, more than anything, about three astronauts edging their way toward Sundog in orbit above them.

  'You bet. The Shuttle can do it. If that fails for some reason, we'll get them ourselves. They're here. Everything points to that. This was as much a test site, for them as a warning for the rest of us. They're watching. And we will track them down. I can't guarantee you this will blow over without some damage. Lieberman thinks we would probably be in line for that even without the Children. But we will find them. We will put a lid on this thing.'

  And nearly added: Trust me.

  Clarke smiled at her and said, 'Well, in that case, I think you've made up my mind.'

  Twenty minutes later, Helen Wagner followed mutely behind Graeme Burnley as they entered the conference room at Nellis. Clarke walked in, looked at the assembly of suits and uniforms, looked at the pile of executive orders awaiting his signature, and said, 'Gentlemen, you can file these papers for another time. We're here to beat these people. Not give in to them.'

  He listened to the murmur run around the room, wondered who would be the first to object. Much to his surprise, it was Graeme Burnley, who laid his pen on his notepad and sighed, like a man at the end of his tether.

  'Mr President. This is your decision. You're the chief of the Armed Forces. What you decide, we will do. But I have to warn you — '

  'Warn me, Graeme?' Clarke replied, half-amazed. 'Is that what I'm paying you for?'

  'I'm paid to tell things how I see them. What you're suggesting, this wait-and-see idea, it runs counter to the advice of everyone. We have discussed this and there really is-'

  'Mr President,' Ben Levine interrupted, 'we're twelve hours away from what could be the worst global disaster imaginable. We need to act now. Not wait until the last minute.'

  Clarke watched the men in uniform nodding. 'Really, Mr Levine?'

  'Yes, sir. This is plain practical preparation. And we're all of one mind on this.'

  'No we're not,' Dan Fogerty interjected. 'None of you even asked my mind. You just took it for granted I'd go along.

  The President's right. This is premature. We're accepting defeat before we've even given the game a good run.'

  'Twelve hours, Dan,' Levine objected. 'After that we could lose everything we've got to get the message over. TV. The phone system. Everything. You want to try putting some order into this country after that?'

  Helen looked at Levine and knew, from the stony certainty on his face, that he wanted no interruptions.

  'No, sir.'

  Every face in the room looked at her. She didn't even try to read Levine's. Some bridges needed burning. 'That just isn't correct. Even if we don't manage to intervene before the zenith, we've still got some time. The best guess we have is that the zenith is close to midday UTC. That's six am in Washington. It's not going to get hot enough or high enough to give the Children the potential for major damage in the US until the sun's moved around a little, say four hours or so. We don't have to rush into anything right now.'

  'Thank you, Miss Wagner,' Clarke said. 'I hear what you all say and I agree. My decision is we wait, gentlemen. We wait and we work. Now, is somebody going to tell me how we find those people out there?'

  Dan Fogerty raised his eyebrows at Levine, who was going red across the table, then shuffled the report in front of him, stood up, and began to speak.

  DAY THREE

  June 21

  SOLSTICE

  CHAPTER 44

  Close Quarters

  Equatorial orbit, altitude 20315 kilometres above the Pacific, 0320 UTC

  'Nice view,' Bill Ruffin said. He and Mary Gallagher had just left the ship, attached to it by the long umbilical tethering line that snaked out in their wake. They had enough oxygen to last three hours, enough tools, as David Sampson had put it, to build a damn space station if they wanted. Sundog hung in front of them looking dead and still and gigantic. The earth sat below, radiant and blue. A few cloud systems drifted across the Pacific like stray feathers caught in a tantalizingly slow wind.

  Ruffin had been in space enough to have gained an intimate feel for his position in relation to the land below. You couldn't measure locations in conventional terms here, you had to depend on technicalities like inclination and azimuth to define where you were. They found Sundog locked into an equatorial orbit that was just unpredictable enough to avoid easy detection. But to Ruffin there was an easier way to think of this place, and the analogy always came to him, on every EVA. If he reached into an imaginary pocket on his space suit and dropped an imaginary nickel, an imaginary gravity, unaffected by the very real atmosphere beneath him, would take it down in a dead straight line to hit the face of the earth. In this case around two hundred miles west and a touch north of the Gilbert Islands. They had come across Sundog when the satellite was poised above the gigantic empty blue waters of the Pacific, and that was perfect. He didn't want Charley trying to mess with the thing while they got on with their work. That way the Children might spot some disruption in the power curve and start looking for a reason. This was the down time on the satellite's flight around the world. There was no one to burn for an hour or two, until Tokyo came up on the horizon. They had room to get this right.

  'Forget the view,' Schulz said in Ruffin's earpiece. 'We're getting real close to this thing now and I want you to make damn sure she doesn't hear us.'

  'No dissenting voices here,' Mary Gallagher said. She peered at Ruffin. In space, buried deep within their bulky suits, they looked like awkward intruders, creatures out of their element. That part always scared her a little. The Shuttle was like flying, a rush of adrenaline at takeoff and landing, and a lot of routine in between. EVA was always tension, from the moment you stepped outside the ship to the point you got back and breathed its dank, stale air again. There was so much to go wrong in this empty, bleak place, and from what she'd seen this was likely to be the longest space walk in the brief history of the science. It felt deeply odd to be doing this under the command of people she didn't even know. NASA control at Houston was now in the back seat. Once the satellite was in their sights, they passed the entire command process over to La Finca and left it to them to take the thing down.

  'You got this?' she said, and flicked the floatcam on. The three-foot-high round cylinder with the rotating lens moved gently in front of them.

  'Yeah,' Schulz replied.

  'Good,' Ruffin said, 'you have control of the thing. We got enough junk to contend with.'

  The engineers had done a fine job with Lieberman's blueprint for the shades. Packed into four compact tubes was a tightly rolled web of rigging with gas pump canisters sewn inside. Expanded, they could cover the solar panel wings of the satellite with room to spare. Compressed, they looked like a set of business equipment being hauled along for an exhibition. The canisters followed in his wake as Ruffin floated gently toward the satellite, propelled by nothing more than the momentum of his departure from the Shuttle hull. The ground crew had ruled out the use of any small impetus devices to let them navigate the gap between the ship and Sundog. Something like that could have triggered the defence mechanism. So instead he and Gallagher had just taken aim, pushed themselves gently off into s
pace, and waited as they floated the four hundred metres or so toward the big black sails. It was hit or miss, but there really was no choice. And it looked as if they were going to get it right the first time around, which was good news, even though everyone had factored in three attempts. Ruffin was glad they weren't going to have to reel themselves in along the line for a second go. He shared Mary Gallagher's enthusiasm for bringing the EVA to a rapid close.

  'Remind me about the superstructure of this thing,' he said. They were midway between the Shuttle and the satellite and, in his estimation, would probably be able to touch the thing in under two minutes. He thought he knew this by heart anyway, but some reassurance wouldn't go amiss. 'What can I touch? What can't I touch?'

  'Okay,' Schulz's voice said. 'There are no alarm systems on the exterior. We assumed that the only physical visitors we were likely to get were friendly ones. So, in theory, you can touch what you like.'

  'In theory,' Mary Gallagher echoed.

  'Precisely,' Schulz said. 'What will trigger a response is if you fire up anything with much of a power surge. The Shuttle's down to standby, right?'

  'Affirmative,' Sampson said at the helm of Arcadia.

  'We can confirm that too,' the NASA controller added.

  'Nice to know you're still there,' Ruffin said to the team back home. 'When do we go back onto your work schedule?'

  'When that thing's dead, Bill,' the familiar voice said. "Then we get you three out of there real quick and back home for a few beers.'

  'Done,' Ruffin said. 'So I can touch any part of this thing I want when we get close to it?'

  'Provided you stay away from the earth side,' Schulz confirmed.

  Ruffin peered at the approaching hunk of metal. Close up it looked positively threatening, a big black mass of aluminium and silicon. They were now aimed almost dead centre at its heart. If they continued on their present course, he ought to be able to reach out and grab one of the giant wings, steady himself and Gallagher too, get back in line with the satellite, and move on to their next task, assembling the shades.