by Mike Ashley
Her eyes started to panic. "Oh, Scott ..." Not quite above a whisper, she said, "Oh, not now."
Why not now? Isn't that what God does? Lets you think you have a shot at happiness just before he pulls the rug out from under your feet? I bet that's a real knee-slapper up in heaven, the way we all go splat on our faces every time.
I stood, taking both her hands in mine, and pulled her to her feet. "No sense staying here."
Maryanne said, "Where can we go? Back to our room?"
The classic thing, in keeping with my character. Go to bed with the woman of my dreams, and wait 'til darkness falls, once and for all, now and forever. Die with my boots on, like a trooper. I said, "We need to go get our spacesuits, Maryanne. If we go outside, we can watch."
Watch. I saw her eyes light up, just for me.
We walked hand in hand then, up the aisle and out the door, almost running down the long corridor toward the elevators, headed for the industrial complex near the surface. Just before the elevator came, I heard Paulie's voice call out, "Wait! Wait for me!" He was alone, no Olga now when it mattered most, running towards us, hair and beard flapping.
Maryanne reached out and pressed the elevator's hold button, smiling. "It doesn't hurt to be nice. Not now."
We got to the big airlock and got in our suits with a few minutes to spare. There were a surprising number of people already there, more pouring in as we racked up. I thought about the ISS crew. Talk about a grandstand seat! They'll be the last ones to go. Jonas clapped me on the shoulder as Maryanne, Paulie and I climbed into his cart. "Where we headed?"
He said, "Awww, just out onto the shoulder of the mountain. Remember where we watched the launch?"
Somebody tripped the depress valves and the air started hissing away, tension forming on the door, our suits ballooning out slightly, then it was gone, the floor vibrating as the door rolled up.
"God!" That was from Jonas, not me.
I whispered, "Maryanne ... " She turned and looked at me, face bathed in silver light as the cart rolled forward, out under a brilliant noonday sun. The sky was black, the mountains lit up all around us. Up in the sky, where the sun should have been, was a huge silver ball, full of twinkling sparkles, tumbling glitter, bits and streaks of magical fire.
Maryanne said, "Oh! It's pretty, at least."
Paulie cried out, "Look! It's the Moon!"
Gibbous. Lit up silver like everything else.
The ball of silver fire was swelling fast, perspective making it look like some enormous steel sphere, falling on us out of the heavens. The Moon exploded, flying apart in a liquidy gout of magma fire, little black dots of solid material almost invisible in the spreading mass.
I wrapped my arms around Maryanne, holding her hard as I knew how, and before I could open my mouth to speak, we were snatched from the cart, falling into the sky as the world turned upside down.
Screaming. People screaming.
Falling with us.
Over her shoulder, I could see the mountains, the land, everything dropping away, a world made of brilliant liquid silver, melting as I watched.
I heard Paulie screaming somewhere: "Oh! Oh, God, Scott, I'm s-" My earphones filled up with a deafening fuzz of static, radio howls, terrible noises whose names I didn't know. Looking at me through her faceplate, I could see Maryanne's eyes, full of fear, full of ... me. Her lips were moving, mouthing the words we'd waited too long to say.
The world suddenly flooded bright orange-red, the landscape bursting apart, leaping into the sky after us. I thought I saw the metal and concrete structures of the Redoubt, rupturing as they lifted off, spilling an antlike mass of people, then they were gone, smothered in foaming lava.
Seeing the light reflected in my face, maybe even seeing the image of it in my eyes, Maryanne pressed her head fonvard in her helmet, closing her eyes, trying to push into my chest.
" There, there.
We're together now.
The rest doesn't matter.
But I could feel my heart pound.
Feel myself not want it to happen.
Not really.
Not now.
The fire was closing with us quickly, leaping smears of molten rock, like the fire fountains of Hawaii, solid bits tumbling dark within. Try not to flinch. Keep your eyes open. You don't want to miss a thing. Not when...
There was a hard impact, spinning us around. I could see Mary-anne's eyes were open again, blazing into mine. I could see her mouth open, screaming. Another impact. Something hit me in the helmet, then something else, a lot harder. The glass cracked, then blew out with a howling roar.
A fiery hand reached down my throat to grab me by the lungs.
There was just enough time for one long, ghastly burp.
Then no more time at all.
It began, as always, once upon a fucking time...
Oh, the old life sucked.
But it was what we had.
Until the Cone.
That Saturday morning had been brilliant and clear, not a cloud in the tawny sky. I got up before Connie, got dressed, drank my coffee, called Paul, waking him, and said if he wanted to hear what I'd found out, he could meet me at the south entrance to Umstead Park in half an hour.
"Can't it wait?" Another second and he'd be asleep, would stay asleep until the sun was high and the air turned to steam.
"Hey, it's the end of the world, Paulie-boy. You feel fine yet?"
I got in my car and drove away, not even tempted to go back upstairs and hump Connie awake, rolled down the windows and drove too fast, down the Freeway, on up I-40 past the airport to Umstead, getting there in seventeen minutes, maybe a little less, singing as I drove, the words to that dumb old skateboarder song, and was surprised to find Paul had beaten me there.
There was a cool wind blowing as Paul killed the antique heavy metal music blaring from his car, some Grand-Funky bullshit. "This better be fucking good," he said.
"Let's go hiking, ole buddy ole pal!"
When we got in under the trees, breathless from trying to keep up, he called out, "What the hell is this all about?"
I turned around, walking backwards, slipping once in the pine straw, letting him catch up. "It's the Cone of Annihilation, Paulie! The end of the world! And all in only eighteen years!"
"So this is your big joke, Scott?"
I stopped and waited until he was standing in front me. And told him what I'd found out, last night, with my little illegal server probe. Shovatsky's Cone, thin as a needle, swept back to no more than a few arc-seconds wide, reaching backwards into the sky, from Gliese 138 all the way to the end of creation, wiping out stars and galaxies as it came.
It was fun to watch the grin fade. Finally: "Scott. You're a mean bastard. This isn't funny."
I said, "There's a printout in my car, Paulie. I'll give it to you when we get done walking." I turned and headed down the trail.
"Wait." He said, "Scott, how the hell did you find this out?"
I told him...
Another doubtful look. "Will you let me have a copy of this ... program you wrote?"
I shook my head. "I'm using HDC's hardware and digital phone lines. You'd only get caught." I started walking down the long, steep hill toward Crabtree Creek. "Come on. Suppose it's true. Then what?"
"Well, shit, I don't know. Eighteen years? We'll be almost seventy. My Dad was only seventy-one when he ... died."
Right. "Why the hell would this fucking Cone be aimed at Earth? We collapsed its wave function with all our telescopes and shit?"
He said, "Finger of God."
Right. "Paulie, let's you and me pretend you're really the atheist you always claimed to be. Why?"
"How fast did you say this thing was moving toward us?"
"Just a cunthair under the speed of light."
He said, "Nice talk, Scott. So. The point of the Cone is moving toward us at close to the speed of light. And then, a Planck-length further away, there's a ring of cone moving toward us at the same
speed, but its 'light' is relativisti-cally lagged. Then the next ring, another Planck length..."
I tripped over a root and stumbled headlong, stopping myself against a sticky-sapped tree, pieces of scaly bark coming away on my hand. "So it's not a skinny cone, it's a fat cone?"
He nodded. "Or maybe a flat surface, warped away from us by..."
"What would make a flat wave-front, sweeping across the entire universe, putting out the stars?"
He snorted, stifling a giggle. "I dunno. A bad science fiction writer desperate for a plot?" There was a book we'd wanted to write, years and years ago, about a science fiction writer who got turned into God by mistake. Didn't get written because Paulie thought it was a stupid idea and wouldn't work on it with me. I said, "You know, if this thing has the slightest Riemannian curvature, it's wrapped around the sky, back behind the stars."
"That's stupid. Why would it have directionality then? Why do we see a Cone at all, in any particular part of the sky?"
"Heisenberg? Quantum oscillations?"
We walked on, silent for a while, then, as we were crossing the shaky green metal bridge of the creek, the one that was swept off its footings a while back, during hurricane Fran, he said, "So the point of the Cone gets here in eighteen years, and what? Suddenly a black dot appears in the sky, starts widening fast as the light-rings catch up to each other, stars start going out, and then the Sun-"
Funny to imagine that happening, storyworld become real at last, when I'm sixty-eight years old. If I live that long. "What the hell would happen if the Sun went out?"
"I'd have to think about it. I know Shovatsky was talking about infrared sources inside the Cone. Like the stars weren't going out, maybe being dimmed by some kind of electromagnetic damping."
"Brainwave'?" Like a story. A story full of stars and snow.
He said, "This has got to be some kind of elaborate joke. A game the scientists are playing with each other."
"And if it's not?"
He shrugged, "Eighteen years is a long time."
Time enough for us to die and miss the whole thing.
He bumped into my back when I stopped walking. "What?"
I said, "How far behind the oncoming wavefront of the light we're seeing now will the tip of the Cone lag?"
"What do you ... oh. Yeah. The Cone's going to run up behind its own light waves, moving at relativistic speed. It'll ...I don't ... um. It has to be a while. Otherwise it'd look like a point-source instead of a Cone. No, that's not right. There's no such thing as a point source of non-light. Hell. I'm surprised you didn't see something about that in the newsgroup. Shovatsky group must know."
I'd read fast, not really believing what I saw. "So, what? It'll be here next week? Next month? Next year?" Point source. Interesting. And if the Cone were moving at light-speed, it would've arrived without warning.
He scratched his chin, rooting among loose, wiry beard hair. "If we had some numbers, we could probably figure it out. If we're not too dumb." He stopped and looked away from me for a minute. "How the hell are we going to know if this is real or not?"
"Shovatsky was talking about calling some kind of press conference on Monday."
Next year? The world will end next year? The two of us were looking at each other, like a couple of goofy, lop-eared dogs.
Near as we could tell, sitting at a picnic table in the shady part of the park, using the calculator Paul had in his car, combing through both piles of printouts for clues, the tip of the Cone would run through the solar system in fourteen months.
Next August, Paulie. That's what I whispered.
And now? Now, what?
We're dead. Dead, Paulie! Do you hear me?
His face floated by, balloon-like, screaming. Turned suddenly and stopped, rotating towards me, balloon eyes staring. It's all your fault, he said.
God damn it ... Intensity of regret. Can you imagine it? The world gets destroyed, I get fucking killed, and here's fucking Paulie haunting my fucking ghost?
Maryanne?
Nothing.
What the hell did I expect? Maybe I'm waiting for the Maryanne balloon to come by. Maybe the Connie balloon. Lara? Who else?
Maddie, fucked at a party, on the floor, in front of laughing others, when we were both so drunk we almost puked? Katy? Katy-balloon?
Nothing. No one. Just Paulie the balloon-head, orbiting me like Dactyl round Ida. Slowly.
There was a prickle of apprehension on the back of my neck, like a cool, damp wind, breath of swampy corruption. Oh, yeah. This is bad news, ole buddy, ole pal.
The balloon head screamed, It's all yourfaultl You made me do it.
I think I smiled. Hard to tell. Am I a balloon head too?
Hey, Paulie. Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe this is just my death-dream. There's a lot of blood and oxygen in a head, you know. Hey, great! That explains the balloon-head symbolism! See, we're dying now but our brains are still intact and functional, producing a dream that lets us imagine we'll somehow escape.
The balloon head's lips twisted angrily, empty eyes accusing. So you're going to tell me this is just another example of excuse-seeking behavior?
I think I laughed.
Balloon head whispered, It's all your fault.
Hey, come on. Play along, Paulie. This'll be fun. We'll see the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel, it'll get closer and closer, we'll fall into the light, then the doctor will lift us by the heels, slap our little asses, and we'll be reborn. Get it? Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
Balloon: All I wanted to do was get along.
Something inside me went quiet with despair. I tried to make myself turn away. Turn my back on him. Come on balloon head. Get thee behind me. Paulie orbited away, mouth working angrily, eyes still accusing, and the emptiness around us flooded with fine white light after all.
Life goes on, whether you want it to or not. You can call it an adventure, if you want to, and we did, embezzling all that money from HDC, cheating on our taxes, building our shelter up in the mountains, the concrete redoubt in case the freezout was mild, the emergency capsule in case it wasn't, Paulie growing stranger and more secretive until that last day, when I fell asleep on the porch, waiting for the sun to come up black. A hand shook my shoulder and I awoke with a start. Paul was standing there, staring down at me, looking well rested, dressed better than usual, hair neatly brushed and tied back in a pony tail. Even his beard, grown back over the winter, had been combed. He said, "It's ten o'clock."
Ten a.m. Pale blue sky. Dark green woods. Birds chirping. Bees buzzing. The distant whir of cars on the road. Hot out, maybe eighty-five already. Christ. Look at the sunshine. I said, "So. What do we do now?"
He shrugged, not looking at me, looking sideways, out across the lawn toward where our cars were parked. I said, "What happened? Is the timing wrong or ... The government, Paul, they built all those shelters! What happened?"
He took a few steps, backing away from me, eyes shifty now, very nervous. And then he said, "You remember back at Christmastime?"
Christmas? All I remembered was Connie. "No. I, uh ... "
He said, "After what I found out, after what you said and did. The bit about the software..."
I whispered, "Paulie, you were taking risks ..."
"Asshole."
I sat fonvard in my chair, watching as he backed to the top of the stairs. "What did you do, Paulie? Tell me."
He said, "I bought a laptop computer and cellular modem. Kept it in my car. Only used it when you weren't around."
Some cold chill, like soft fingers down my back. "Paul..."
He said, "I made my own ferret, Scott, in imitation of yours, and I used it." He seemed to smile, maybe at my reaction, my obvious gape. "In February, Scott, I found out that the Cone, the asteroid strike, the missile scare, everything ... they're all cover stories!"
"For what?"
He started backing down the steps, feeling with his feet, careful not to stumble on his way to the sidewalk. "I found out from a
group up in Montana that's been doing some digging, Scott. A group that calls itself Novus Ordo Seclorum."
"'A new order for the ages?' Paulie, that's right off the back of a dollar bill."
He nodded, smiling as he reached the bottom of the stairs, standing flat-footed, right hand in the pocket of the fashionably loose slacks he was wearing. "Scott. Scottie ... " a soft snicker. "They are cover stories for the establishment of the New World Order. The governments of the technically advanced countries, us, Russia, Japan, France ... This is the moment of unification, an end to war, the beginning of... everything!"
I sat back, looking for the shine of madness in his eyes. But whose? His or mine? I whispered, "Why didn't you tell me, Paul?"
Anger glinting now, a show of teeth. "Because you never listen to me, Scottie. We always had to do things your way!"
"And then?"
Another smile. "In May, Scottie-poo, I went up to Washington, DC, for a reason. And when the IRS audit comes next week, I'll be on the other side. Scottie, they've agreed to let me ..."
He suddenly recoiled, taking another step back, jerking a revolver, some small .32 caliberish thing, from his pocket, pointing it at me. "Stay in your chair, Scott!" I stood up anyway, willing him to shoot, listening to the whine in my ears, feeling like I was ten feet tall. Hands and feet far away. Maybe I'm going to faint. There was a dull, hot flush, hotter than the summer morning air, forming all over my face, rippling down the middle of my back.
"Why'd you do this to me, Paul?"
He kept backing away as I walked forward, coming down the steps, following him towards the cars. He whispered, "Stay back, Scott. I'll kill you. I will."
"You already have, you malignant little prick."
He said, "You have to understand, Scott. I had to do it. Because of what you..."
I took another step forward, imagined myself rushing him, summer sunlight glassy and strange all around us. Maybe I'd get him first, maybe we'd grapple for the gun. Maybe one of us would die. Maybe both.
Paul looked away from me, a bizarre confused expression on his face, looking down on the ground at his feet, looking around at the shadows. Something about the shadows.
I looked beyond him, towards the horizon, towards the sky above the black ridge of trees. "Paulie." My voice sounded funny and far away. "Why is it so pink out here?"