Solstice

by David Hewson

  'Annie?' Schulz said, puzzled. 'Where's Mo?'

  Lieberman pushed himself in front of the camera. 'We don't have time, Irwin. Mo's been shot. They're calling for the medics now.'

  Schulz looked as pale as a sheet of paper. 'Oh my God — '

  'Irwin,' Lieberman said, close to barking. 'We're here. This is your play now. You try and get in through the front door.'

  'Sure. I'm sorry. All I need is the IP address. Do you know what that is, Annie? How to get it?'

  'I think so,' she said quietly, moving at the keyboard, watching the screen.

  'What happened, Michael?' Helen's flickering image asked, the concern obvious on her face, even through this less than perfect picture.

  'Later. We're behind. Let's just work on this, okay?'

  'You look — '

  'Later!'

  She was silent.

  'Try it now,' Annie said.

  Schulz seemed preoccupied for a moment, then beamed back at them. 'I think you did it, Annie.' They could hear the sound of the keyboard clacking down the line. 'Right. We're there. Well done. In a moment, the network's ours.'

  Lieberman watched as the girl buried her face in her hands. Then the big monitor cleared, lines of geek commands scrolled up and down too quickly to read, and Schulz and Helen came up again, in separate windows, looking a little less flaky this time.

  'What next?' Lieberman asked.

  'The key,' Schulz said. 'She's put her own password on it, probably just an ordinary word, except it's encrypted so we can't read it directly from the system. Just give it to us, Charley. We can get it anyway. Save some time here.'

  She sat in the wheelchair, not worried about this, Lieberman

  thought, just waiting for the celestial dance to do its stuff.

  'Don't be ridiculous, Irwin,' Charley said. 'Why should I do that?'

  'Because we need it,' Lieberman said. 'Can't you separate what's going on inside your head from what's happening out here? This isn't some dream; these aren't shadows of your imagination. These are real people. This is a real world.'

  'I know that,' she said sourly. 'I worked that out a long time ago.'

  He shook his head. She looked a little scared, he thought. Maybe there was a chink of light somewhere inside still. 'No you didn't, Charley. You just saw what was happening inside yourself and thought this was some kind of mirror image of what the rest of us deserved. Well, you're wrong, and if you thought about it you'd know.'

  'Still letting them fool you, Michael. Such a waste.' 'This isn't Berkeley circa 1971, Charley,' he said. 'Quit dreaming.' 'Go to hell.'

  'I'm there already, I don't need directions. Also, I don't need you. Helen?'

  Her head nodded on the screen. 'He's right. This is a standard Unix-based password. With the technology we have in Langley, and you're hooked right through to that now, we can blast our way through every one of those in a little under forty-five minutes. So you see we will get it. You won't stop us.'

  'Go ahead,' Charley said.

  Lieberman looked at Helen on the screen and didn't say a word.

  'Why do you fight this, Michael?' Charley asked. 'If it wasn't us, it would have been someone else. This is Gaia working. It has to happen. We can't carry on like this.'

  He stopped staring at the computer and wondered if it was worth pleading with her. But there was craziness in her eyes, a dead, fanatic certainty. This illness, and whatever else it brought, put her beyond that kind of appeal.

  'Michael,' she said, 'this is crazy. You should be thinking about rebuilding this world after the storm blows over. You could lead them.'

  'Jesus,' he yelled. 'Where did you get this from? Peace and love and corpses? Are you really still stuck in that vision? What do you think comes after this? Eden?'

  'If that's what we want.'

  'Bullshit! Bob? Where the hell is that medical team?'

  Davis was going through the door already. 'I'll chase it.'

  Lieberman looked at Bevan. All Bevan's confidence had disappeared. He was shocked, and scared. 'You too, Ellis. See what you can do for Mo. I can handle this.'

  'Sure,' Bevan said lamely, and was gone.

  Lieberman shook his head. There were too many images there. Mo's agonized face. The world winding down, like numbers flicking through the code program on the screen, so quickly you couldn't even recognize them. As this celestial ballet began in the sky, he felt drained and dead.

  'We will get that code, Charley. But you could give it to us. You could do that for yourself, as much as anyone else in the world.'

  'Just wait…' she said (and closed her eyes, saw the planets wheeling in space, felt this force moving within her).

  'No. You're wrong. Sure, you can push those buttons, burn the earth badly right now. But what we all wake up to tomorrow isn't some new age of enlightenment. It's just human beings getting hurt, getting scared. You're worse than the people you hate, Charley. You're the dinosaur. Not us.'

  Helen was staring at him from the screen and he didn't need words to understand the message. The monitor wasn't sparking with hits the way it should. Something was wrong.

  'You can feel things, Charley. Things the rest of us can only guess at. Don't tell me you can't feel that too.' She wasn't listening, he guessed. She was holding tight on to the arms of her wheelchair, eyes closed, face taut with pain.

  'I need my medication. They're on the desk.'

  'Right.' He nodded. 'What kind of pills might they be?'

  She stared at him. 'You'll give it to me? Is that meant to be some kind of a deal?'

  He shrugged. 'No. You know me. I hate deals.' Then he walked over to the desk.

  'Michael?' Helen said, a taut note of concern in her voice.

  'You heard. She needs her pills.' He handed her the bottle without looking at it. She took it, opened the cap with shaking hands, poured several capsules into the palm of her hand.

  'Thanks. You always were a good guy, Michael. That's why people take advantage of you.' She looked at the pile of capsules, took a deep breath, put them in her mouth, then swallowed hard. He watched her struggling, took a bottle of mineral water from a desk nearby, gave it to her to drink.

  'Michael,' Helen said, voice rising from the monitor.

  'Thanks.' Charley was looking at him, her face full of pain, so much older than he remembered. 'You can't get it, you know.'

  'What's that?'

  'The password. I'm not so stupid that I'd leave it open to some dumb number-juggling app like that. You're wasting your time. That's why she's squawking at you. Don't you know that?'

  'Hey' — he shrugged — 1 kind of guessed. It was worth a try, though. We're desperate, Charley. What do you expect me to do?'

  'I told you. Think about what comes after.'

  'Sorry. That's the kind of crap that got us here in the first place. "Catch a falling star…"'

  ' "And put it in your pocket…"' Charley said, a lazy, drunken smile on her face.

  'Annie?' She looked at Lieberman with old, tired eyes.

  'You did well but I don't need you any more. Take Irwin off-line, will you?'

  'You mean,' she asked, puzzled, 'cut them off?'

  'Yeah. Just from the line to the satellite. I still want them to be able to talk to us.'

  'Okay,' Annie replied, and hit the keyboard.

  'Michael!' Helen's voice sounded shrill and piercing from the tinny speaker.

  'Don't fret,' he said, and sat down next to Annie at the adjoining PC.

  'What's going on?' Schulz asked nervously.

  Lieberman looked at their pale, exhausted faces. 'Are you having any luck?'

  'I don't think so,' Helen admitted.

  'I thought not. Annie?' She was calm, but he knew what she wanted.

  'Your mom will be proud of you. You go to her now.'

  It had been a long time since he'd punched these particular keys in anger. He kept getting things wrong. And it was years since he'd designed those big solar wings now hanging over the
world.

  'What are you doing?' Charley asked, her voice a blurred smear.

  'Remember. Lone Wolf around 1982. You were there. You recall that too?'

  'No,' she drawled, a line of taut anxiety behind the slurred voice.

  'But you do. And you know something? Maybe there is some kind of god around. Because yesterday, and I didn't even know it at the time, something came back from that time, and I didn't even know it until right now.'

  Sitting by the sea at Half Moon Bay, on a warm July afternoon, the two of them happy (this was when they were just friends, colleagues), full of the confidence and optimism of youth. Shading their eyes and looking up at the sun, thinking how they could help everyone by putting a piece of silicon and metal in the sky to leach a little of its power and make the world whole.

  'What do you recall of that time?' he asked absentmindedly, working at the keys.

  'Naivete. Dumbness,' she said.

  'Yeah,' he muttered. In his mind's eye he was back with their old selves then; he could see them, bright-eyed and full of enthusiasm, arguing about the right lock to put on the system, the mot juste that would keep it safe from prying eyes.

  He turned and looked at Charley. 'You remember.'

  'I don't know what you're talking about,' she answered, some dim form of fury behind the statement.

  He looked at the screen and it was like peering at a past picture from his life. All Schulz's stuff was state-of-the-art visuals, like a video game made for the military. But back in the eighties, when he and Charley had been putting the satellite together, the original one, it was just command-line material, string upon string of impenetrable, inconvenient codes that brought forth impenetrable, inconvenient responses. It amazed him the way they still lived inside his head.

  'What are you doing?' Charley said icily.

  'The right thing,' he said, and watched the screen clear, throw up one single question: password?

  It was a playful argument on the beach that day, one that amused them at the time, trying to find a lock for the bold, brash scheme that would give mankind a nice little push into space. And they both came up with the answer, kept it secret between the two of them, knowing that there was nothing more apposite under the circumstances.

  He typed in the word: phaeton. And closed his eyes.

  Dumb kid, hapless kid, stupid kid, he thought. But, hey. The moron was a trier.

  Charley had used something to lock this new system up, and even though the situation wasn't the same, was full of black poisonous toys they had never envisaged back then, it was still appropriate.

  'It heard you,' Schulz squeaked out of the monitor, sounding like a teenager. 'I saw the screen. Dammit, Michael. It heard you!'

  'Yeah,' he answered softly, and wondered why there was something like shame hanging around the back of his head just then. Some of the old Charley was still there, he guessed. It made her lock this new, bright, fiery Sundog with the same key they used on the old one, the good one, as if it were some kind of incantation, full of a deep, mysterious power.

  'I can take it from here,' Schulz said. 'Just plug me back in.'

  'I know that.' Lieberman wasn't looking at anything but the screen. 'But this is my baby, Irwin. Mine to play with.' He was typing furiously now, astonished by how much came back to him.

  'Michael,' Helen said very firmly, 'what are you doing?'

  'I remembered, yesterday. Out of nowhere. Or maybe out of somewhere. I wouldn't care to guess. What do you think, Charley?' He turned to look at her and it was like staring at someone on the point of death. Her face was grey and lifeless; her eyes had lost that bright Charley spark.

  'Don't, Michael'

  Lights started to move on the monitor. Familiar windows began to appear.

  'We can take it from here,' Schulz repeated.

  'I heard you the first time. Like I said: This is my baby. You just get that damn helicopter here.'

  He looked at Charley. Her head was in her hands. 'Correction. Our baby.'

  Schulz watched what was happening on the screen and said, 'Michael, no…'

  From somewhere, Helen was yelling, loud, angry, and more than a little scared.

  In under thirty seconds it was done. He watched the confirmation codes come through. Then he walked behind the desk, found the power cables, ripped them out of the wall, relished the dying hum of the hard drives spinning down into stillness, the silence that was descending on the room.

  'You didn't listen,' Charley said, her eyes almost closed now. 'The god's not out there. It's inside us. Inside everything. The earth most of all.'

  'Didn't I?'

  'No,' she said drowsily, eyes half-closed, some softness in her voice that reminded him of the old Charley. 'And no devils, Michael, you never did understand that. There are no devils. Only the ones we make ourselves. We make our own crosses. We hammer in the nails.'

  'Yeah,' he muttered, looking at the distant shape of Annie, who was now out in the yard with the pilot, both of them crouched over the still, small figure on the ground. 'I wouldn't argue with that.'

  'I don't want to see this,' Charley Pascal said. She grabbed the wheels of the chair, tried to push, and lacked the strength.

  'Where to?'

  'Over there. My bedroom.'

  He pushed her slowly toward the door, and recognized the white, plain room and the part it had played in the deadly little drama he'd watched in horror on the Web. She wheeled herself inside, turned round, and watched him reach for the door. Charley's face was bloodless. Her eyes were wet.

  'Don't hate me,' she said.

  Lieberman looked at her, then turned round without speaking.

  The monitor was dead and grey. The job was done. Somewhere high above them in space those giant wings were wheeling into a new position, opening their eyes to stare the sun straight in the eye without blinking. And whether it worked or not was really beyond him. This was the final act. Time and the storm growing in the sky had taken everything else away from them.

  He left Yasgur's Farm, strode out into the burning sun. The day was like a furnace, no wind, no oxygen in the air. You could be on another planet, he told himself. You could be in hell.

  He walked over to Mo Sinclair, a still form in the blazing heat, the red on her chest drying to a dust-caked ochre that moved almost imperceptibly with each faint breath.

  'We need the medics right now,' Davis said, and looked at the sky. It was the colour of gold and empty. Bevan was scanning the horizon desperately. 'We can't just wait out here like this. I think we ought to get her out of this heat.'

  Annie touched her mother's hand. It was dry and cold. Lieberman bent down, picked up Mo's body in his arms, lifted her off the ground, and began to walk, slowly, carefully across the dusty ground, letting the thoughts run out of his head like water overflowing from a pail. Davis and Bevan watched and stood beneath the sun, waiting for the sound of blades to cut through the day.

  In the darkness of the barn, the air hot and swimming with flies, he laid her on a bed of straw, not looking anywhere except her face (which is where the soul resides, a stubborn memory told him that; the rest of you, the blood, the physical mechanics of your body were all, somehow, irrelevant).

  They sat down next to her on the soft, brittle straw, watched the world outside through the stone doorway, a rectangle of burning light, getting brighter, more intense by the minute. Annie touched his hands, held both of them together, in a shape that was so close to prayer. The air grew thin; the buzzing of the insects gave it a febrile, relentless power.

  Zenith.

  An odd word, he thought. Like an incantation from some occult rite, or the secret name of God. Too small, too weak to describe this celestial alignment that stood above the head of the world, bore down on it with all the dead, heavy weight of the stars. There were no words for this, only the relentless, surging beat of the universe, pumping through your blood, hammering on the walls of your skull.

  In silence, clutching each other for comfo
rt, they watched the day turn to fire.

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  CHAPTER 58

  The City

  Lieberman remembered so clearly the last time he walked into the St Francis Hotel. It was for the small, uncomfortable reception after the wedding, with relatives and people from Lone Wolf standing around, sipping warm wine, looking at each other, and saying, without speaking, 'This won't last, this won't last.' And he had gazed at Sara, so happy, not letting this thought get anywhere near her head, knowing they were right.

  It sat on Union Square, like a beached ocean liner, the shoppers and the tourists mingling around outside, blocking the sidewalk, tripping over each other. Except that this time there weren't so many. He walked across the square unobstructed. The change in the economy that followed the storm had rolled through into everything. There weren't so many buskers, playing bad jazz and blues, waiting outside the Gold Coast Bar for the spare dollars of people wondering whether to brave the queue for Planet Hollywood.

  Recovering.

  That was the word of the moment. It popped into his head the first time he went to see Sara, still in bed at home, taking longer to mend than anyone had expected, looking as if her colour was returning, slowly. In a month or so, she'd be back at work, trying to put this strange event behind her, trying to forget the occasional pains, the memories (trapped inside a falling shell that looked like a giant insect's eye, and that bright searing light, gold and fire, that seemed to accompany everything to do with Sun dog).

  People are good at forgetting, he thought. They have to be. No one can walk through life feeling the scars of existence — of death and personal loss, the constant round of interior agony — every day. We all need somewhere to put this legacy of grief out of sight, not quite forgotten, just hidden, for the times when it's needed as a reminder of just how fragile this daydream really is.

  Recovery wasn't just an idea for Sara. The world was adjusting to the notion too. The solstice had scarred the earth and its people, not in the way Charley Pascal had hoped, but there was pain and there was injury all the same. The sky had ceased to be something anyone could trust. A fissure had opened beneath the solid rock of certainty that underpinned the human state.