Black Barney stood tall in the boat rushing to Buck.
"Welcome aboard!" the admiral shouted.
Buck's feet barely touched salt water, and that was all as eager hands grasped his body and guided him into the launch, Barney hugged him fiercely.
"You're just in time for lunch," he boomed.
Chapter 17
Captain Ardala Valmar came through the lo sick bay with concern creasing the hnes of her face. Considered by her crew to be implacable, pragmatic, and given to cold, analj^tical observation of her crew and their performance no matter how demanding the moment, they could hardly conceal their surprise as they saw her grateful greeting to the two pilots who had flown a near miracle in support of the great submarine.
The captain slipped a small flask beneath the covers of Buck's hospital bed. She leaned forward, her face close to his ear. "According to the dark one," she said, referring without name to Black Barney, "you are quite fond of this potion. When this is gone, just hand it to Nurse Beth, and it will be replaced with a full container."
"Thanks," Buck said to her. "I don't know whether to call you ma'am or sir."
"Ardala is fine. And you are Buck rather than Colonel Rogers." She smiled, a radiant sight. "We'll save the diplomatic and military formalities for when it is necessary for the crew to hear. Otherwise, after what you and Wilma have done—and I admit to being overwhelmed by her performance—that—"
Buck's face went serious. "Ardala, listen to me. I don't want to leave this unspoken or to pass it off lightly. Without Wilma, we
A Life in the Future
would never have destroyed that Mongol bomber."
"Can you see her across the corridor? In her room?"
"Yes. Isn't that Markham with her?"
"It is. He has been debriefing her. Every detail of your mission is being data-compressed and sent off to Niagara. She has been raving about your performance. You were really quite remarkable up there today, Buck."
He shook his head. Immediately he brought his hands up to each side of his face. The room whirled about him. Ardala placed her hands over his. "Gently, gently, my friend. Those gyrations have left your inner ear less than happy. That, and the dosage of gamma radiation you received. It was more than any of us expected. It will affect your balance for several more days."
He glanced down at the intravenous needles protruding from his arm. "Is that why you people have been using me as a human pincushion?"
'You and Wilma." Ardala glanced at the blonde woman talking with animation to Markham, relating again and again the details of their wild flight and combat. Everything was being recorded; the mission profile on all the radar scopes and scanners was being integrated and fed to Niagara.
"Have you met Li Yandai?" Ardala asked.
Buck glanced up. "That sounds like something from a Chinese menu. Who is he?"
"Don't be misled by his Chinese name—or his face when you meet him. Li is American-born, but was raised as a young priest in a Chinese enclave in the Dakota Badlands. He is utterly faithful to Amerigo and is married to the former Carlotta Domingo. Mixed Spanish and Italian, I believe. Li is a poet, a scientist, a strategist of pure brilliance, and he is also the chief of whatever air forces and planes we have left. He watched your encounter with that Hoffman fellow from the Half-Breeds. They have since joined with us and have brought at least another dozen of the wild ones with them."
"Does he fly?" Buck asked.
"Like an angel. He lacks your particular skills and he prefers flying, whenever possible, in a glider. I think that's what it is called . It has no power, and its wings are extremely long and thin, like—"
"It's a sailplane."
Buck Rogers
"That's it. Thank you. Li will remain aloft for days in that birdlike contraption of his. He even sleeps when he is aloft. He is masterfully self-trained so that, if necessary, any upset of his bird—as he is fond of calling his sailplane—brings him instantly awake. He has not yet met you directly, but he hopes to do so when this mission is completed. In the meantime, he is gathering all the records of your contest with the Mongol machine, as well as everything from Wilma, and then he is going to the Mongol Enclave, where he'll meet with Soo Kassar, ruler of the American Mongol forces residing in our country."
"He's going to sit down and break bread with a Mongol ruler in Amerigo?"
Ardala nodded. "The two of them are old friends. Each remains faithful to his own people, but they are sensible enough to realize that open warfare is insanity. The world has too long been on the edge of poisoning itself So he will meet with Kassar and give him all the records of your battle with the bomber. You see, the Mongols have boasted that not even ten of our fighters like the Skua could destroy a single machine, as you did today. Li believes this will reduce the number of flights over our parts of Amerigo. It's just one more step in breaking down the barriers."
"Where is this Soo Kassar?"
"In what was once Chicago. He lives every day with underlings doing their best to capture, unseat, or kill him. There is no peace within those people. They feel they are regarded as outcasts by the Celestial Mongols in China and Tibet and are looked down upon almost as subhuman."
Buck shook his head and laughed. "What goes around comes around, Ardala. Everything you just said could be taken right from the words and actions of my world in my time. You have lots of super gadgets and gimmicks, and many of your people are great, but you're still burdened with the same problems and prejudices that burdened us."
Ardala held her silence for a few moments. "You understand that Li Yandai would rather die than knowingly betray Amerigo?"
"If you say so. But how can he trust this Soo Kassar?"
Ardala laughed. "I turn to history, to your own time, for that answer. Shall I say he knows on which side his bread is buttered?"
A Life in the Future
"So we keep him in power."
"He is a known factor. He is honest and faithful with the Mongol government. But he is not stupid or burdened with their native hostilities, and he feels that one day we will either join together or we will fight furiously to the finish."
Buck studied her face. "Ardala, I wouldn't count on wrapping this up with a tea party. One day you'll either reclaim all of our country, without the Mongols maintaining an armed camp here, or there will be full-scale war. Let me give you another bit of history. Those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes."
"I will remember that. And now do you feel up to some serious conversation?"
"I could do with a thick steak first."
"Done. Nurse Beth will signal me when you are ready. You will be moved, along with Wilma, to the observation dome. Our conversation will continue there."
Whoever was chief of the mess knew how to do things right. Buck was never that certain what was in his thick porterhouse; he knew that most of the "meat" served aboard lo was first run through food converters as a soupy mess from the sea, to which nutrients and vitamins were added, and then into the "steak factory," where it was processed to look and taste exactly like steak, right down to the bone on which he chewed afterward. Kitchen-fried potatoes and several mugs of steaming coffee left him sprawled back in his bed.
Black Barney was his next visitor. He closed the door and increased the air-conditioning flow through the room. Buck watched him in silence until Barney pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and, still in silence, handed him a long, thin cigar. Finally he spoke. "Enjoy, son. Just take a sharp breath. That thing is self-lighting."
Buck sucked in air. Immediately the end of the cigar glowed and sent up thin curls of smoke. "Amazing. I guess this must be made from seaweed, too, but it sure tastes like Jamaican tobacco."
"It is Jamaican." Barney smiled. "We trade in many things, but they have the world market cornered in great tobacco."
Buck took two long drags, letting the smoke drift gently from his nostrils. "Okay, Barney, all this kid-glove treatment makes
&
nbsp; Buck Rogers
me feel like a new man." He grinned. "Now that you've fattened the goose for the kill, what do you have up your sleeve?"
White teeth flashed in the dark face. "We'll go into it in detail when we get you and Wilma up forward. Did Ardala talk to you about the gamma radiation effects?"
"Sure did. Said I'd have some woozies but only for a few days. My guess is it messed up the inner ear a bit and—"
"More the medication than the gamma, but she's right. Three days from now you'll be as good as new."
"Barney, damn it, you're bursting at the seams! Whatever it is, spit it out!"
Barney chuckled. "You know we're going around the Cape and up to the main Chilean base on the west coast of South America."
"Yeah. To pay a call on our Atlantean visitors from way out yonder—the Pleiades, or whatever they call home."
"It doesn't matter. Fifty thousand years or more from a destroyed solar system is a long way off. The big question is whether they're really here."
"Got some news?"
"In a way. You've met Ricardo Sanchez and Ricki Chavez?"
Buck frowned, trying to remember, then nodded. "Sure have. The Bobbsey Twins, right? Twin brothers, but they use different names. Slicker than owl snot on a brass doorknob, from what I hear."
"What else do you remember besides their slick ways. Buck?"
"They're the meat-and-potato combo of South America; they've got smarts, contacts, money, power; they speak a bunch of languages; and they deal in drugs, slaves, and other nasties from their home base somewhere up in the Venezuelan Andes. They do odd jobs for Amerigo, and in my book, they're the worst kind of slimeballs, who ought to be ground under our boots."
"Neatly spoken, and I agree." Barney added, "I'd be glad to do it myself except for the fact that they're more important to us alive than dead."
Buck shrugged. "It's not for me to decide. But if you hang around in a pigsty long enough, it's tough to get rid of the stink."
"I take it that's a criticism."
"Barney, we once promised not to snow one another. Of course it's a criticism! They're roaches!"
A Life in the Future
"Useful roaches, however," Barney reminded him again. "They have a number of high mucky-muck Chileans who depend upon them for their supply of the finest grades of coke and heroin."
"Somewhere in all this there must be a point."
"You're an impatient man, Buck."
Buck laughed. "I've been looking for answers for nearly five hundred years. Cut to the quick, okay?"
"Their cocaine and heroin buyers, very high up, as I say, can be maneuvered to say anything when you string them out. Hold back on their supply and they're ready to eat their children to get the stuff This time, at our request, Sanchez and Chavez—"
"The Blues Brothers of the underworld."
"Explain that to me some other time. My point is they left a few of their highest buyers way out on a limb. They were screaming for the stuff The brothers, as you say, dropped the hammer on them. Either they came up with some good answers about the Chileans £ind Atlantis, or they could die from the screaming meemies."
Buck bolted upright in his bed. "And?"
"I told you. In a little while, in the forward observation lounge."
"Then get me out of here! Now!"
"I thought you'd never ask. I'll send for your clothes."
* * * * *
They gathered in the forward observation lounge and waited for latecomers. Finally Ardala Valmar called and said she and several others would be delayed for some time from the highly secret meeting. The crew didn't ask questions. Their captain had placed the forward lounge area completely off limits, with guards and heavy blast doors sealing them off from the rest of the submarine.
Buck, Wilma, and Barney had some time to once again be mesmerized by the rapid movement of/o. Sonar and maser probes painted a startling holographic display of the ocean bottom well ahead of the submarine. It gave them an even more amazing sense of unreality when a tiny submarine floated in hydrospace on the holoprojection. It was like watching themselves, as though they were witnesses from high above.
With the furious engagement with the Chilean submarines
Buck Rogers
and the Mongol bomber far behind them, the passage around the bottom of South America went without interference, /o's sensors kept up constant probing of the depths, and Valmar kept three UAVs on constant patrol.
The small unmanned aerial reconnaissance robochoppers were powered by overlapping twin rotors—no tail boom, no aft controlling rotor. They burned little fuel and kept constant contact with combat teams in lo, sending back a flow of video and other visual observations. The most activity they encountered was a huge pod of whales moving in stately procession to their feeding grounds off Antarctica.
lo had other eyes as well. Two-man-crew negative buoyancy submarines ran thirty and seventy miles ahead and flanked the course of the submarine.
Now that they were starting to enter the waters of the Pacific, the ocean floor presented a startling view of what might be found on some distant, alien planet far from Earth's solar system. "It looks like some of the roughest mountain terrain I've ever seen from the air," Buck noted to Wilma. "It's hard to believe that most of what we're seeing was once above mean sea level, that the ocean surface was below these ranges." He swept his hand in a wide gesture to take in the sea bottom, "This is the result of continents shifting, crustal plates bouncing off one another. . . ." He shook his head. "It's astonishing and incredibly beautiful." Buck was deep into the wonders of the sea that had fascinated him as a youngster, much as he had been mesmerized by the promise of flight.
"You did some deep-ocean exploration, didn't you?" Wilma asked. "I overheard Admiral Barney talking about a deep valley or trench of some kind."
"The Marianas Trench in the far Pacific. At the bottom is the Challenger Deep. We sent down some research vessels. They touched bottom at nearly thirty-six thousand feet. But don't give me credit for that, Wilma. I was just in the research group that supported the deep dives."
"You have a rueful look on your face."
Buck laughed. "I never said I didn't want to go down there. But you know what? Those same people who did the deep dives would give their eyeteeth for a trip like we're taking right now. We're in a submarine as large, as heavy, and as strong as a
A Life in the Future
battleship, and we can view everything in incredible comfort. In my day, Wilma, what we're doing right now was strictly a distant dream."
"Consider it a dream come true," she said warmly. Off to her right, in stygian darkness, flickering lights caught her attention. She grasped his arm. "Buck . . . look over there." She pointed. "We're so far down there's no natural light from above, but that looks like signals of some sort."
"They are," he replied. "It's from an octopus, and how big they get is anybody's guess. But they're highly intelligent, and they have bioluminescent capability. Along their arms they grow what we'd call lights. They flash them on and off in different colors. We finally determined the sequences were signals."
"Intelligence?"
"Advanced. It's sort of a visual Morse code, but infinitely more detailed. They're 'talking' to one another, and the more we study them, the more we learn about both their intelligence and their ability to communicate. When we descended, at a thousand feet we reached the point where we left sunlight behind. It's utterly black down here, as far as light from above is concerned, anyway. But another five hundred feet down, especially if the observer stays down long enough, he encounters a world he never even suspected was there. Turn out the lights, Barney. Can we have the neg boats kill their lights also—just for a short while? They've got sweep sonar and other stuff to navigate with."
"Can do," the admiral replied. He passed on the request to the bridge and Captain Valmar agreed. The observation deck went utterly black. They waited quietly for their eyes to adjust to the slightest light beyon
d the submarine.
Then it began. They passed a large area of octopus flashes of color, then complete darkness again. Suddenly Wilma cried out in astonishment. Ahead, there were explosive bursts of light in the distance, as bright as skyrockets, dazzling in white and yellow.
"What. . . what was that?" she asked, awed.
From the darkness to her right, she heard Barney's voice. "I wish we knew, Major. Ninety percent of what goes on down here is a mystery to us. We've only been exploring the sea for about ten thousand years, but we're still groping."
"Would you believe," Buck added, "that at least half of all life-forms down here have bioluminescent ability? There, off to our
Buck Rogers
left. It looks like fog, sort of filmy, like pale milk."
"I see it," Wilma said.
"Keep your eyes on it. It's a giant squid, and they're amazing."
"How deep are we?"
"Three thousand feet. Look!"
A cloud of burning particles spread out like a starburst, twinkling and sparkling, red and yellow and orange intermixed with rays of dazzling white.
"What—what is that?"
"It's the squid, trying to fend off an attacker. It's probably deepwater sharks, or a sperm whale on the hunt for its favorite lunch. They'll fight like two giants battling. Sure enough—see?"
Against the background of scattering light, the silhouette of a huge sperm whale came into view, its jaw agape, ripping at the squid. The froth was visible from the luminescence of the struggle. Other animals had gathered to watch the battle and to feed at the scraps that would be left over, a dinnertime call announced with flares and spotlights.
Directly before lo's deck, riding the pressure wave of water flowing back as if it were breaking surf, swam a procession of hundreds of strange fish. They remained invisible in the darkness, except that along each body was a line of bright dots, like the portholes of miniature submarines.
"Those are the favorite food for big barracuda down here," Barney explained. "The lights keep them all in touch with one another, but it's also a great danger because it attracts killers. That's why they're hanging on to us as long as they can. To the predators down here, we're the biggest fish in the sea, and little fellows like these are too small for us to bother gobbling up. . . ."
Buck Rogers- A Life in the Future Page 21