by Allen Steele
Macy was beginning to wonder which was worse: having a killer searching for her, or remaining in this toilet for one more minute. Somehow she’d managed, she thought wryly, to end up in what was probably Clarke County’s only slum.
The distant thunder, or whatever the noise had been, seemed to have aroused her ill-tempered neighbor. As she lay against the window, she could dimly hear him screaming through the walls.… “Goddamn space colony!” Crash! “Goddamn fucking tourists!” Whamm!
Something snapped inside of her. She leaped off the floor—ignoring the pain shooting through her ankle—and pounded with both fists against the wall. “Goddamn space colony yourself!” she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Remarkably, the maniac in the next apartment shut up after that. Macy’s tantrum had at least done that, but it also uncorked some pent-up emotions. She fell back onto the couch, curled up into a ball, and began to cry.
After a few minutes she wiped the last of the tears from her eyes, got up—more carefully this time, favoring her sprained ankle—walked to the door and unlatched it. She didn’t care if the hit man was standing right outside; she had to get some fresh air.
The night was warm and wet. It was delightfully weird to be in a rainstorm in space; the drizzle helped soothe her nerves. Macy walked out into the courtyard and gazed up at the immense bowl of Clarke County’s sky. Through a fleeting break in the thin, dark cloud layer, she could see the distant, bright grid-work of Big Sky’s town center. There was something that seemed to be glowing brightly up there, flickering as if it were burning … then it was gone, lost in the rain shower. She could hear the river gurgling nearby, but little else. In the early hours of Monday morning, nearly everyone in the colony was asleep.
It was a deceptive peace. Macy knew that she was still on the run. Someone had followed her to Clarke County; she wasn’t safe until she got off the colony, or found somewhere else to hide. She was hungry; even though she had thousands of dollars in cash, she could not easily visit a restaurant. She didn’t even dare go to a drugstore to buy a painkiller and a bandage for her ankle.
You’ve got to come up with something, Macy thought, slowly limping through the wet courtyard. There’s got to be a way out of this mess. You’ve got enough dough on you to practically buy a shuttle. Girl, you ought to be smart enough to figure a way …
“Hello?” A woman’s voice, behind her, spoke timidly. “Excuse me?”
Macy was startled, but didn’t show it as she turned around. A young woman, about her own age, was walking towards her. “Excuse me?” Macy replied.
The woman walked closer, stepping into the light, and Macy saw that underneath a hooded nylon jacket she was wearing a white T-shirt with “Elvis Lives!” silk-screened on the front. She was carrying a moist stack of brochures under her arm. “Are you lost?” she said, smiling.
“No,” Macy replied.
The smile remained plastered on the woman’s face like a mask. “Many are lost and don’t even know it,” she said airily. “Sometimes people wake up in the middle of the night, you know, in their own homes, in the comfort of their own beds, and they suddenly come to the realization that, even there, they’re lost. I think you may be lost. You’re looking for a direction, aren’t you?”
A loon, Macy thought. I wonder what’s she’s selling? It didn’t matter. It was the first friendly voice she had heard in several days. Out of curiosity, she decided to play along.
“Maybe,” Macy cautiously answered. “What kind of direction are you offering?”
There was an unhealthy light in the woman’s eyes as she spoke. “The company of brothers and sisters who have found the way. A fellowship who has recognized a divine presence among us. The return of a holy prophet. A twentieth-century saint reincarnated in the twenty-first century.…”
She reached into the stack of brochures, pulled one out and handed it to Macy. “He wants you to join us.… What is your name, if I may ask?”
“Mary,” Macy automatically replied, taking the brochure. On the cover was a hologram of Elvis Parker, resplendent in a white suit, surrounded by a halo of light which shifted prettily as she moved the picture. “The King Has Returned!” shouted red letters below the hologram.
“I’m Donna,” the woman said solemnly. “Mary, Elvis has a plan for your life. He has come here, to Clarke County, to spread his mission. In his previous incarnation, in the last century, he was able to heal with the touch of his hands, to move clouds by willpower alone, to bestow wealth and power upon his followers. He has returned in this time, reincarnated in the flesh of another, to collect new disciples.…”
“Is he here?” Macy asked, pointing at the hologram. “Here, in the colony?”
“Yes!” Donna responded ecstatically. “Elvis is here! He wants you to come see him when he makes his appearance Monday night at the stadium.” She paused, then reluctantly added, as if embarrassed to be mentioning such secular trivialities, “It’s free of charge, of course.”
“Yes, of course,” Macy murmured. Something was beginning to occur to her. “Are there … uh, other disciples here? Are there many other followers with, um, Elvis?”
“Why, of course!” Donna gushed. She seemed thrilled that someone was taking her seriously. Macy idly wondered how many times tonight this true devotee of Elvis had been told to fuck off. “He always travels with his friends. His reincarnation is a balance between his Dark and Good selves, and he needs us—all of us—to win his constant inner battle against temptation, for when he wins, we all win against the forces of Evil.…”
Unnoticed, the rain stopped. Donna blathered on for a few minutes, espousing a bizarre dogma which sought to bridge rock history and Biblical prophecy. Although Macy kept her eyes on her and nodded her head when it seemed appropriate, she barely listened. It was a twisted idea, but perhaps if she could hide within the ranks of these fanatics …
“I … believe what you’re saying, Donna,” Macy said, interrupting her screed. She hoped she put enough sincerity in her voice to carry the act. Instantly, Donna’s mouth opened wide and she stared earnestly at Macy. “In fact,” she continued, “I don’t want to wait till Monday.”
“Really?” Donna gasped.
“Truly,” Macy said. She shook her head like a sinner in a confessional. “I’ve been lost, so lost … but I think I’ve seen the light. Oh, Donna, Donna … you must help me.”
“Anything, Mary! Anything at all!”
“I … I don’t want to wait!” Macy grabbed Donna’s hands and fell to her knees. “Please! Take me to Elvis! I need to meet him, to join the path of the righteous!”
“Absolutely!” Donna cried. Macy was relieved. She was afraid she had been laying it on too thick. Apparently, though, this cult placed a high premium on discovering new converts. “We’ll go now!”
Macy stood up. “Let me go back to my apartment and … oh, gather just a few things. You can take me to him tonight, can’t you?”
“Of course I can, Mary. If he can’t see you tonight, you can stay in our company, among the faithful. Oh, Mary!”
Macy turned and started leading Donna the Dingbat toward the housing unit. Donna insisted on holding her hand. “You’ll not be sorry for this, Mary,” she said as they walked through the courtyard.
Hell, I hope not, Macy replied silently.
By mid-afternoon the sun was gone from the deck and our legs were getting cramped from sitting so long. We decided to carry our conversation down to the beach. Simon McCoy paid the bar tab and we left the restaurant to walk along the pier to the stairs leading to the beach. The tide was beginning to come back in while we strolled next to the waterline. On impulse, I took off my canvas loafers and rolled up my trouser cuffs and walked in the surf, savoring the cold Atlantic water washing around my ankles.
McCoy kept his shoes on and walked beside me on the beach, stepping around the waves as they slid up the sand. He had said little since we had left the bar, and I was beginning to wonder whether he had finished hi
s narrative, when he finally spoke up.
“Has it occurred to you,” he asked abruptly, “that what happened could not have been timed better?”
I thought about it and shook my head. “Not really. ‘Timing’ implies that it was preordained. From what I know and from what you’ve told me so far, things occurred because of coincidences. Nothing was ‘timed.’”
McCoy nodded and was quiet for another moment. “That’s the way it seems,” he concurred. “Still, I wonder … were there other forces at work?”
“I’ve never been much of a conspiracy buff,” I replied, shaking my head. “I don’t believe in illuminati-like manipulators or vast government plots, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“No, no, not like that,” he said. “It’s only that …”
He paused, stopping and looking beyond me toward the distant launch pads, tucking his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Never mind,” he said. He absently inscribed a circle in the wet sand with the toe of his shoe. “I’m only getting ahead of myself.”
I stopped walking. “Why quit? It was beginning to get interesting.”
McCoy smiled and shook his head. “Later, maybe. We should review history a little first. Tell me, from what you know as an investigator … how did Gustav Schmidt acquire the control codes for Icarus Five?”
“He hacked his way into NASA’s computers,” I answered.
McCoy shook his head. “No.”
“Yes, that’s what happened,” I persisted. “He had managed to penetrate the security systems some time before the Church came to Clarke County. The codes were in his possession, in fact, when he convinced Parker to do the revival as a live broadcast from the colony. That was the whole reason for …”
“No,” he repeated.
“That’s what we know,” I said.
“That’s what you’ve assumed,” McCoy replied. “Schmidt has never told anyone that was what he did. Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that considering the size of his ego, he would have told someone, if only to claim credit? Maniacs of that magnitude always leave a calling card to make sure the world stands in awe of their genius.…”
“All right, it was an assumption,” I said quickly. “The evidence has been overwhelming, though. There was a smoking gun and his hand was wrapped around it.”
“There was a smoking gun and his hand was wrapped around it, but it wasn’t his gun.”
McCoy took off his hat and sat down on the beach, motioning for me to join him. I kneeled beside him, feeling my knees crack with the effort. McCoy gazed out over the ocean. “Let’s review recent history,” he said. “The Icarus program …”
I could not help but smile. “You said that you were out of the country at the time.”
He ignored me. “The Icarus program was initiated in 2046 when space scientists in the U.S., the Soviet Union, and Japan ascertained that the Apollo asteroid Icarus, which once every nineteen years of its orbital period had made a close fly-by of Earth, was on a trajectory which would bring it in direct collision with Earth the following year. The possibility of a collision with Icarus had been the stuff of science-fiction melodramas since the middle of the twentieth century, but now it was certain that an encounter would occur in 2047. The difference was that by 2046 space technology was advanced to the point that such a disaster was easily avoidable.”
McCoy absently began to scoop together a little sand castle as he spoke. “All NASA had to do was to dust off and update a plan, Project Icarus, which MIT students in 1967 had devised as an academic exercise,” he continued. “Five thermonuclear devices, each with a yield of one hundred megatons, were lofted into high orbits aboard HLVs. The major difference in the revised plan, of course, was that NASA no longer had to rely on cumbersome old Saturn Vs to do the job.…”
“Are you trying to tell me something new,” I interrupted, “or do you only assume that I’m senile?”
McCoy was briefly embarrassed. “I’m sorry. No, not at all. I’m only trying to put matters in perspective. That means recapping history a little.”
Perhaps. But he also sounded as if he was enjoying himself, lecturing the expert. I stared off at the Oceanus salt-water reclamation plant, bobbing on the offshore horizon like an immense Portuguese man-of-war, and told myself to be patient.
“Six Icarus interceptors were built for the mission,” he went on. “Five were launched, while Icarus Six remained on the launch pad as a standby. As it turned out, only the first four interceptors were needed. One by one, they detonated between twenty million and seven million miles from Earth, gradually deflecting the asteroid’s course until it was certain to miss us. Icarus Five, positioned in a parking orbit above Earth, was never sent on.…”
“Which, of course, was where the problem lay,” I said impatiently.
Although Icarus Five’s detonator safe-arm system had been locked down during its stay in LEO, NASA did not want to risk a recapture mission. Putting a nuke into orbit was one thing; only special permission from the United Nations Security Council had allowed the agency to launch the nukes in the first place.
Bringing a nuke back from space in the cargo bay of a shuttle was an extremely dangerous proposal. If it had been detonated in orbit, the EMP pulse would have knocked out radio communications across the hemisphere. Also, space scientists argued against firing the nuke into the sun, since it was remotely conceivable that it could touch off a solar storm on the corona. Icarus Five thus remained in orbit, until someone could figure out a completely safe means of disposal. “I know the rest,” I prodded. “C’mon, hurry it up.”
McCoy wagged his finger at me. “But you don’t know the rest. What we heard was only the cover story.”
I frowned at him. “Schmidt hacked his way into …”
“No,” he said, “Schmidt didn’t do it. An Egyptian college student did.”
“What?”
McCoy nodded, smiling ingenuously. “The command and control codes were acquired by an arms merchant named Habib from a student hacker at the University of Cairo, who later turned up floating in the Nile. Habib was working under contract to the Salvatore family, and he in turn sold the diskette containing the codes to Tony Salvatore. Salvatore had been involved in the international black-market arms trade, selling guns and bio-warfare items to various Asian and African insurrectionist groups. He bought the Icarus Five C&C codes purely as a speculative investment. No telling what he planned to do with an orbital nuke, if anything. Perhaps he was planning to broker the codes himself to a non-nuclear country.”
He shrugged, running his forefinger around his little sand castle to build a moat. “Who knows? Nonetheless, it was in his wall safe.”
Then the obvious occurred to me. “And since the C&C diskette was in Salvatore’s safe …”
“That’s right,” McCoy agreed. “When Macy Westmoreland pilfered his safe before her escape from his compound …”
“She grabbed that disk,” I finished. “She must not have known what was there. She thought it was just another disk in Salvatore’s financial books.” I shook my head. “So that’s how Schmidt acquired the diskette. I’ll be damned.”
McCoy shrugged. “You’re getting a little ahead of me now.” He took a deep breath, relishing the salt breeze. “This is making me hungry. How about an early dinner? I’ve got a taste for shellfish tonight.”
Without waiting for my reply, he stood up, brushed wet sand off his trousers, and helped me stand up. “Of course,” he continued, “there were various complicating factors.…”
14
The Golem Dream
(Sunday: 7:42 A.M.)
Out of fire and silence, emerging from a netherworld of darkness and pain …
He found himself on the Strip again, just as he had been several hours (hours? or days? he could not recall) before. He had a vague perception of himself as a corporeal form, but just the same he did not feel as if he had a body.
Even as that paradoxical sensation occurred he felt himself appear
, as if he were materializing from the very atoms of the air. He was nude. At first he was vaguely embarrassed—I better get some clothes on before someone sees me—but the sensation was brief and passed quickly. When he looked down at himself, he was wearing his uniform. A neat trick, he thought, amused in a fleeting, abstract way.
The torus was completely vacant. There was no one on the wide concourse, but the Strip was open for business as usual. Lights gleamed through the windows of the bars and shops and restaurants, the neon and holographic signs were alive and glittering and moving, and the doors were all open. Nearby, from the Heartbreak Hotel discotheque, the antique Wurlitzer jukebox hammered out the dense, electric beat of an old Norman Greenbaum smoker:
“When I die and I lay me to rest,
Going up to the place that’s the best.
When I lay me down to die,
Going up to the Spirit in the Sky …”
Without any sensation of having moved, he was suddenly inside the bar. The mirrored ball suspended from the ceiling above the dance floor slowly turned, sending shards of light strobing around the empty room. Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Springsteen and the real dead Elvis smiled at him from alcoves in the dark walls, holographic specters from rock ’n’ roll heaven. Although he could hear glasses and bottles clinking and the background talk of a crowd having a good time, the bar remained deserted. The room was cold. Chuck Berry, half-bent over his guitar, peered owlishly as if he was enjoying a private little joke.…
“Going up to the Spirit in the Sky,
That’s where I’m gonna go when I die,