by David Hewson
'Michael,' she yelled. 'You knew this was going to happen.'
'I did?'
'Don't fuck me around!'
He looked lost, desolate. 'I'm sorry, I just told you what I knew — she's smart, smarter than us, in all probability.' Then he went quiet, let her get her head back. When he judged she was ready, he continued. 'I got around to some calculations on the receptor dish, based on the video we got from the satellite. I tried to figure out some position for the ground station from the way the dish was moving, where it was pointing. These are really rough, bear that in mind. But she can't be in Nevada. It has to be east of there. Way east, from what I could calculate of the angle of the dish.'
'Damn. You didn't tell us?'
He looked miserable, ashamed. 'I tried. But then I decided there's precious little point in standing in front of a charging elephant yelling at it to stop. Do you think it would have worked?'
She didn't speak.
'And,' he added, 'I could have been wrong. I was praying I was wrong, if you want to know.'
Finally, she said, 'Where is she? Where's Charley?'
'I don't know, Helen,' he said slowly. 'Really, I just don't know, and I can't calculate that with any degree of accuracy from the data we have. All I know is that it is a long way east of you, and probably somewhat north too. Maybe this side of the Atlantic even.'
'Then I guess she just won,' she sighed. 'We're an hour away from this thing going critical. I guess I just call the President now and tell him we're done here.'
'If you feel that's the right thing to do.'
'Give me an alternative.'
He was struggling with himself, she could see that. 'Yeah. I've been pushing an alternative at you all along. Why don't we stop looking where she tells us? And start thinking for ourselves?'
'Fine,' she said, and, for the first time, there was some sourness, some defeat in her voice. 'I'll tell that to the President.'
'Don't bother,' Lieberman said. 'I'll tell him myself, if you like.'
CHAPTER 56
Choices
A three-way conversation, 1113 UTC
Which he did. They set up a video conference on the system: Clarke at Nellis, Helen in pain on the ground at Cabin Springs, and Lieberman, Schulz, and Bennett, with Bevan watching over their shoulders and Mo Sinclair working the computer, at La Finca.
'Thanks, but I got people breathing down my neck trying to get me to sign executive orders on this one,' Clarke said grimly. 'If we really have no hope of stopping these people, I don't have much choice. From what I've seen of the damage before this thing peaks, maybe I ought to be doing that anyway, whether or not you people do have any luck.'
'We're missing something here, sir,' Lieberman said quietly. 'If we can just see it, I think we can get back in the game.'
Helen kept her peace.
'I'm not hearing the famed science people from the CIA,' the President grumbled. 'You care to enlighten me on your position right now, Miss Wagner?'
She tried to think straight through the pain in her arm. It wasn't broken, as Barnside had feared, but it damn well hurt. 'We have less than an hour before the cycle starts, sir. We also have clear evidence that our operation was compromised. They're worried, for sure. I guess that's why Wolfit attacked me. But I can't offer any hope that we can get back in the game.'
Jim Sellers was punching furiously away at a portable terminal a few yards away.
'We're running the scanning checks as thoroughly as we can,' she continued. 'But now we're told it could be a long way east of here. I can't get anything out of that. It's too big. We already know there's precious little chance of finding it through digital tracking alone. I can't — '
'Jesus,' Lieberman found himself yelling, 'do we all just give in that easily?'
'No,' Clarke replied. 'We've worked damn hard on this one, Mr Lieberman. People have got hurt. People have got killed, for chrissake. We don't give in at all. But sometimes we just have to cut our losses. If we really have no option except to wait and see what they can throw at us, then I ought to be signing these papers now. God knows, there's parts of the US that could use martial law at this very moment.'
'So what's new?'
'I don't have time for the smart-ass remarks, Lieberman.'
'I wasn't aware I made one. Sir.'
'Hell, get off the line, will you?' Clarke bellowed. 'We need people here solving problems, not making them.'
'No. You can hear me out. We've all fouled up on this one, me included. And you know why that was? We just didn't think. We treated these people like they were some crazy cult, not equals.'
Helen closed her eyes and listened, trying to still the pain in her head. 'I don't see where that gets us, Michael.'
'It gets us back to where we should have been all along. They've been putting up targets, we've been popping at them. Instead of asking questions, trying to think straight. I mean, what is the proposition Charley's put before us now?'
No one spoke.
'Okay, let me bury myself a little deeper,' he continued. 'First we tracked these people from San Francisco to San Diego. Then, after a lot of work, we tracked them through Vegas to this place we thought was Yasgur's Farm. Except we got it wrong. This whole thing was just a put-up job to lead us off the track if, by some chance, we got smart enough to detect a track in the first place. It looks like they were doing some Gaia work there, maybe erecting the Web site or something. But the real people, Charley in particular, they were elsewhere, just running some nice little virtual conspiracy across the Net.'
'You're not taking us anywhere,' Clarke said.
'No? So I ask again: What is the proposition we're being asked to believe now? What is it that Charley hopes we're thinking?'
Helen hugged her bad arm and tried to jog her brain into action. 'That somewhere else they have an identical set-up to this one, except that it has a working dome. And if we could find that, we'd be back on track.'
'Right. And the big question has to be: Is that true? Can that be true? Is it really possible?'
Clarke watched them, waiting for someone to break the silence. 'Well?'
'It's a hell of a job,' Schulz admitted. 'I mean, to be honest, putting together one control room and a single dome, even one with nothing inside it, that must have been tough in the time they had. Putting two together… it's possible, of course. But it wouldn't be easy.'
'Right,' Lieberman continued. 'So let's ask some practical questions. Did she buy enough material to build two domes?'
Helen shook her head. 'Not that we know of. The company we traced had just the one order. No other company dealing in dome material had anything that could count as a second one.'
Lieberman almost smiled. She could see something there. He detected a spark. 'Fine. So did she have the equipment to put inside it?'
Schulz made a pained face. 'We went through that one before, Michael. This is fairly standard telecommunications, satellite broadcasting kit. If you had the money and the know-how, you could put it together without having to breach any government guidelines or anything.'
'Yeah, I know. But this isn't stuff you buy off the shelf of Radio Shack. It's big and expensive. Someone must have kept a record somewhere. So. Did they?'
Helen shook her head. 'We have no trace of any equipment purchases in the US or Europe which could match that order. That doesn't mean she didn't get it somewhere else, maybe piecemeal to deceive us-'
'No,' he interrupted. 'But it does mean she probably never bothered.'
'Michael,' Schulz said, his voice rising to a whine, 'she had to buy it. What alternative is there?'
'You're looking at it the way she wants you to. "What's the alternative?" That's where she kills us. We know the alternative; we're just not considering it. She doesn't need a second dome. She doesn't need the equipment.'
'Not possible,' Schulz said flatly.
'It has to be. I don't know how. But that's what we have to figure out.'
'If I follow you,'
Clarke said, a flicker of curiosity in his face, 'what you're proposing is that she has some way of tapping into an existing system and running Sundog through that?'
'Yeah. I guess that is what I'm saying.'
'Well, can someone tell me how?'
'Not possible,' Schulz said emphatically. 'No one can talk to Sundog except through the networks we created. Charley could copy that herself; she couldn't just impose it on someone else, not without them knowing, not without us knowing either. It's just not possible.'
Lieberman didn't let go. 'So, what is the answer?'
'Michael,' Schulz said, close to screaming, 'there isn't one. There were, as far as we know, only three domes in the world capable of controlling Sundog. No one else has that complete mix of technology, not even Charley herself, if we follow you. And those three domes are down. She did it herself. They're useless. End of conversation. End of story. Roll on the apocalypse, because I'm damned if I know how we can stop it.'
Clarke watched the two teams on the monitor. He knew despair when he saw it. They really had run out of options, out of ideas. 'I think you made my mind up, folks. You've tried your damnedest but I can't let this go on any longer.'
'They're wrong. You're all wrong.' Mo Sinclair blushed when she spoke, as if this weren't her place.
'Excuse me?' Clarke asked impatiently.
'She didn't take out all three domes,' Mo said. 'She took out the one in Kyoto and the one in California. But what she blew up here was the control centre, and that's a long way from the dome itself. We were there, Michael. Don't you remember? I don't recall seeing any explosions at the dome at all.'
Flames and noise, the helicopter bucking beneath them. He did remember. There was one image that stood out in his memory: the low, flat concrete control centre disintegrating in front of his eyes, and a sea of smoke and dust rising up toward the summit of Puig Roig. And somewhere inside that shroud, still golden, still intact, the dome, a good five hundred feet above the destruction.
'Shit,' Schulz said, eyes wide open. 'We assumed that bringing down the command centre took out the dome too. And it does for us. But if she could get a line in there… Are you sure?'
Lieberman wanted to hug her. 'Yeah. We're sure. We were there.'
The President glowered at them all. 'Someone want to tell me what that means?'
Schulz said quickly, 'If the dome here is still in one piece, all she needs is a microwave run up the ridge and they're in business. She's got the software. She's got the know-how. You don't need to build a damn thing else.’
Lieberman closed his eyes and thought of all the activity of the previous day, and the way the soldiers had been stood down, sent home with a shrug of the shoulders as if to say: Game over, go back to base, practise the crowd control. 'She's here,' he said. 'She's been here all along. And we just sent our men away, trailing their guns behind them.'
'You're guessing,' Bevan said defensively. 'This whole thing is just a wild guess.'
'Maybe,' Clarke said. 'But you got less than sixty minutes to find out, one way or another. After that I sign those papers. And God help us all.'
CHAPTER 57
Zenith
La Finca, 1134 UTC
'I'll go,' Schulz said.
'You can't do that,' Helen said down the line. 'We have to have someone at La Finca who knows this thing inside out, Irwin. We can't spare you.'
Mo listened to the conversation and shrugged. 'You just need the network brought back on-line, Irwin. I can do it.'
'No, absolutely not.'
'Irwin,' she insisted, 'I want to go.'
'Mo,' Lieberman said, and he knew this battle was lost from the beginning. 'You have nothing to prove. Nothing to feel guilty about.'
'That's easily said.' She picked up a copy of the Unix handbook from the desk drawer, packed a pen down the spiral spine. 'I want Annie with me. They know her. She can't stay here on her own, and she may be able to help too.'
'These people — if they are there, and that I doubt — could be dangerous,' Bevan said. 'I don't want a kid around. We're cutting this fine as it is.'
'We go together or I don't go at all. They won't harm us. They're not like that.'
'But — ' Lieberman said, pleading.
'No.' Annie walked over, sat on her mother's lap, stared mutely at them all.
Bob Davis, the wiry helicopter pilot, came into the room, glanced at Lieberman, and said, 'I've looked and I've looked and this is all we have. One machine pistol. One nice and ladylike little Beretta. You' — he held one of the weapons out to Bevan — 'can take the machine pistol, I'll stick with the kid's stuff. I make this decision on the grounds that you are a better shot than me. I hope I'm not wrong.'
Annie stared at the gun, eyes wide.
'We won't need that crap,' Lieberman said.
'Really,' Bevan answered. 'I'm trying to regroup some forces from Palma but it's going to take an hour or so. If we do find something, we relay the position and wait for them.'
'We can't wait, Bevan. You know that.'
Davis looked at them. 'The girl's coming? You're kidding me.'
'Yes,' Mo said. 'Anyone else here speak Unix?'
'Oh wonderful,' Davis groaned.
He took a set of keys out of his pocket. 'Let's talk on the way. This is one old helicopter we're using here and I want it warming up a good two minutes before we attempt to levitate. Ready?'
Lieberman picked up the videophone, got ready to fold out the screen. Helen's face stared back at him. She looked hurt. It was hard to imagine her in pain, in darkness in the Nevada desert.
'Good luck, Michael,' she said, halfway across the world. 'It's my turn to say that now.'
'Yeah,' Schulz agreed, toying with the keyboard. 'You stay in touch. The moment you get an IP address, you let me in there. We can do this, I believe that.'
'I know.' He wished he could get rid of the image of Charley's face, wished he didn't feel such foreboding about just the chance of meeting her again. They went out to the dry flat ground of the helipad, climbed inside the purple-covered Squirrel that sat there, alone now.
'Three in the back, one in the front. And you' — the pilot pointed at Lieberman — 'are the front man. I need you to be my eyes. It's hard trying to fly this thing and scour the ground at the same time.'
Lieberman climbed into the left-hand seat feeling his guts start to churn already, thinking, all the time, how much he hated these things. Davis played with the controls, the engine whined, and slowly the rotors started to turn. Davis motioned for him to pick up the headset and put it on.
'Only two sets of cans in here, I'm afraid. So the people in the back will just have to lose their hearing for a little while.' The machine began to lift beneath them, rise and steady in the hot, unstable air.
Lieberman hit the talk button. 'Irwin? You hearing me?'
'Yeah,' said a distant tinny voice.
'And Helen?'
'Yes.' It sounded as if they were the same distance away, both trapped in some remote digital universe. 'So what am I looking for? Dishes?'
'Absolutely,' Schulz said. 'Maybe just one. Maybe several. It depends where they're based and what the terrain is like between them and the dome. This is line-of-sight. And they don't need to be big either.'
'Right.'
Helicopters and computers. These were, he was fast beginning to realize, his two least favourite things in the world. 'Irwin? You think they've been piggybacking off our network for some time?'
'Makes sense, if they tapped into the link. Even when we had control, we only used the network when we needed it. They could have used dead time, then locked us out when they decided to take control. Could have been messing with it for weeks.'
Lieberman shook his head. 'I still can't believe you wouldn't notice someone building an alternative microwave link up to your dome.'
Schulz sounded touchy. 'Really. Well think of it this way: If they have the protocols, and Charley seems to have taken them with her, all they need to
get through is a dish the size of a satellite TV antenna. You tell me how easy that is to spot up there. And you're looking for it. Which we never were.'
'Point taken.' Lieberman watched the big mountain rise up in front of them. The dome was hidden from this angle. On the seaward side of the range, pine forest ran green and uninterrupted all the way to the water's edge, not a building, not even a track in sight. Davis passed him a large-scale map of the island. 'You work it out,' he said. 'Where are these people supposed to be based? In a building? In a cave? Or what?'
Lieberman pressed the transmit button. 'Irwin, what do they need to run a control centre like this? Power, obviously, but lots of space too?'
'Just what you saw here at La Finca. What they had in that place in Nevada too. We built that big command centre on the mountain underneath the dome because that was handling traffic from Kyoto and Lone Wolf on top of everything local and we did some R&D there too. That was like the server for the whole system. But if they're just dialling in, all they need is room for ten or so workstations and a line-of-sight microwave set-up.'
He still couldn't picture it. 'I'm trying to think of the kind of place we're looking for.'
'Michael, you're looking for Yasgur's Farm, surely. Only the real one this time.'
And then it came to him. He could almost see it. Schulz was right. Creating this simulacrum in the desert of their real home was just the sort of joke Charley would like.
'Fly to the top of the peak,' Lieberman said, letting go of the talk button. 'Let's check our base assumption first.'
The machine rose sluggishly in the hot, thin air. The day was bright and cloudless, the sun relentless. No interference. No shocks. More proof, if you needed it, Lieberman thought. Charley kept the island clear of attacks for practical reasons.