by Neal Asher
"You hear anything, Norman?" Sergeant Jack Teague asked his colleague.
"No."
"Puff of wind or something? I could have sworn I heard these papers moving."
"Just another boojum, Jack."
Teague approached the box and looked down at the papers. "Jesus," he murmured. "Wonder what this stuff is." He bent and ran his fingers just above the line of symbols. There were cursive letters mixed with bold black lowercase letters; double upright bars reminiscent of the matrix symbols he had studied in flight school, integral signs, exponents containing German gothic letters and Greek letters, squiggles and triangles and lopsided circles with double dots in the middle, letters with single and double dots like umlauts over them...
"What a mess," Sergeant Teagne said, rising again. His neck hair bristled and he sniffed the air, twisting suddenly.
Of course, nothing was there. What did he expect?
*12*
Lanier had slept through most of the two-day OTV ride, head full of weightless dreams indiscriminately mixing the Stone and Earth, past and future.
He looked at his watch and then at the face of the secret service agent sitting beside him in the limousine. There was an eighteen-hour lag between the time he had landed at Vandenberg and the time he would report to Hoffman's office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Outside the smoke-colored car window, desert flashed by. The air pressure was high and the gravitation oppressive. Even through the dark windows, the sun was hot and yellow.
He missed the Stone.
"I have some spare time," he said.
"Yessir." The agent looked straight ahead, face pleasantly bland.
"You fellows are discreet."
"Oh, yessir. We are that," the driver said. The agent seated beside the driver glanced back at Lanier.
"Ms. Hoffman says we're at your disposal, but we're to have you in Pasadena, alive and sober, by eight o'clock tomorrow morning."
Lanier wondered how Hoffman would react to being called "Ms." "Gentlemen," he said. "I've been celibate for more months than I care to count. Rank hath its responsibilities. Is there a safe place in Los Angeles where one can get..." He searched for a phrase as antique as "Ms." "...one's ashes hauled? Discreetly, charmingly, cleanly."
"Yessir," said the driver.
He was allowed two drinks in a fancy but ancient hangout known as the Polo Lounge, surrounded by aged relics of the bad old days of network television. By three o'clock in the afternoon, two suites in the Beverly Hills Hotel—directly opposite one another—were checked out. The agents efficiently inspected the suite where he would stay and pronounced the rooms safe with a nod to each other.
He finally had some illusion of privacy. He took a shower, lay on the bed, almost drifted off. How long would it take for him to get used to the extra weight? How would it affect his performance?
The woman who arrived at five was stunningly beautiful, very friendly, and ultimately—through no fault of her own—unsatisfying. He judged his performance as adequate, but the act brought little joy. She left at ten.
Lanier had never resorted to a prostitute before. His physical passions, with a few notable exceptions, had never been as persistent as those of other men.
At ten-fifteen, there was a light knock on his door. He opened it, and the agent who had driven the limousine from the desert landing site passed him information on two memory blocks. "Ms. Hoffman sends these to you with her compliments,'' he said. "We'll be just across the hall, if you need anything."
The memory blocks he had brought with him from the Stone—more precious than Lanier himself—had been transferred to separate, more secure vehicles and driven carefully into Pasadena that day. No doubt, the Advisor would be going over the blocks even now.
He shut out all the lights and lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering how many of the aged executives in the Polo Lounge the call girl had serviced in her young life.
He had never been comfortable with desire. This time, he had not felt desire as much as obligation to the flesh. After so many months of deprivation—more like a year, actually—it seemed likely the body had requirements it was no longer communicating to him.
That at least would have hinted at normality. He had always felt vaguely guilty at his coolness—if that was the right word. Guilty and grateful. It gave him much more time to think, without constant distraction or diversion of purpose.
The coolness had also kept him a bachelor. He had had his share of lovers, but work and accomplishment had always won out. Lovers had become friends more often than not—and had married other friends.
A very civilized situation.
Sleep. Gravid dreams, heavy and dark. He was captain of a huge luxury liner on a black ocean, and each time he peered over the side to check the water level, the ship dropped a meter or two. By the end of the dream he was in a panic. The Earth's gravity was dragging the ship beneath the sea, and he was the captain, and the ship was the most
beautiful he had ever commanded. He was losing it, and he simply could not abandon it by waking up...
At eight o'clock the next morning, Lanier walked across the concrete quadrangle of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, brief case in hand, accompanied by two new agents. He enjoyed the bright sun and the increased weight more now and almost regretted the thought of spending the day in air-conditioned offices. The first of two, perhaps three scheduled sessions would take place in the V.I.P conference room.
He popped a pill to knock down a runny nose, drank from a bronze fountain in a newly planted park, and slowed to a saunter past the broad black-background panel displaying JPL projects. Mars development activity schedules vied with Solar Sail reports and a hologram of the proposed Proxima Centauri probe.
There was no mention of the second ABE—asteroid belt explorer—launched two years ago.
Lanier and his gray-suited shadows climbed the steps slowly, allowing for his gravity fatigue, and passed through heavy-glass security doors. He presented his card to a monitor, and the steel gate swung wide with a pleasant hum. The agents did not enter with him. Beyond was a hallway lined by display cases. Intricate small-scale replicas of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's past triumph glittered in their plastic boxes: Voyager, Galileo, the Drake and the Solar Sail.
There were also OTV models and diagrams explaining the Star Probe concept.
He took an aging elevator to the sixth floor, staring up at the glowing blue numbers.
Another secret service agent awaited him and asked for his ID again as the elevator door opened. Lanier took the card from his pocket and lined it up beside his badge. The agent thanked him and smiled as he walked on, unaccompanied, to the conference room.
Hoffman sat at the end of a long black table. Piles of paper, two slates and a clutter of memory blocks were arranged before her. To her left sat Peter Hague, the President's representative to ISCCOM, and on the other side, Alice Cronberry, advisor on aerospace security and project manager of the second ABE. Lanier walked around the table and shook hands, Hoffman's first—warmly cupping her hand in both of his—then Cronberry's and Hague's.
"I see Joint Space Command and the Joint Chiefs have no representatives here," he said, sitting at the opposite end of the table.
"We'll get to that in a moment," Hoffman said. She had aged since he last saw her; her hair was grayer, she looked more matronly and her wrinkles had transformed from smile to frown. "You're looking fit, Garry." She was being polite.
"Feeling less fit."
"How is Patricia Vasquez doing?"
"As well as can be expected. I was called away before I had much chance to see her at work, or before she came up with any results."
"I take it," Hoffman said, "that means you're uncertain about her."
"I am," Lanier said. "Not because I don't think she's capable, or the best in her field—whatever that may be—but because she's young. The library was quite a shock to her."
Cronberry put her right hand flat on the table, leaning away f
rom him slightly. "It was a shock to all of us," she said.
Hoffman passed a sheet of paper down to him. "We've studied the material you brought with you. We've already made our final report to the President."
"Before Vasquez tells us anything?"
"I doubt she'll tell us what we'd like to hear. Call it instinct, but I think we're in deep trouble." Hoffman's eyes focused on an empty space over Lanier's shoulder. "We've verified some of the information from the library."
Lanier inspected their faces intently. They were all unhappy; even trying to hide their emotions, they revealed that much. "And?"
"There are divergencies."
"Thank God," he said. Hoffman raised a hand.
"Not broad divergencies. The consensus here is, given the information from the library and what we've discovered since—from the second ABE and elsewhere—war is a definite possibility. We've verified the historical references to Party Secretary Vasiliev. He has restructured the Defense Council just as the library said he would. The Russians are deploying SS45's on their Kiev-class carriers and Kirov-class guided missile cruisers, and of course the Typhoon and Delta IV supersubs, to match our Sea Dragon program. They do indeed know how to foil our multi-spectra laser communication systems, which puts them in violation of the 1996 Arms Elimination Accords ... not that that is in itself important, since no arms were ever eliminated."
Lanier nodded.
"We had to get tough to pry the information about the multi-spectra systems out of the Joint Space Force," Cronberry said. "That's one reason why the DOD and Joint Chiefs have no rep here."
"That's not the worst," Hoffman continued. "Congress is beginning inquiries on our budget. We've been well within appropriations, so that doesn't make sense, unless we take into account a push to discredit the library, the Stone, all of us. The President is convinced—been convinced by several members of his cabinet—that the Stone is either fraudulent or irrelevant."
Lanier's clenched his jaw tightly, making his cheeks ache. "Why?"
"I suspect the President is incapable of understanding what you've found on the Stone. He's a solid midwestern liberal, very weak on science and technology. An administrator, no imagination. He's never been comfortable with space matters, and this is simply beyond him."
Cronberry pulled a copy of a letter on White House stationery out of her briefcase and handed it to Lanier. It said, in effect, that the President was considering launching an investigation into the way research was being conducted on the Stone. "That was written after we began passing reports to the White House from the Second ABE imaging team, and after confirmation of the library evidence."
"We wanted to get the Vice-President up to the Stone by week's end, but he's declined the invitation," Hoffman said.
"What's the Russian position on the Stone?" Lanier asked.
"They secretly launched their own asteroid belt probe two years ago. That probe returned confirmation to them before or about the same time as ABE. They know that there is indeed a very large asteroid which precisely matches the Stone."
"Juno?"
"Yes. The imaging match is perfect, allowing for the excavations."
Lanier hadn't heard about the confirmation from the second ABE until now. "So Juno and the Stone really are the same."
Hoffman passed down a file of ABE and near-Earth surveillance photos. One ABE picture showed Juno, a sweet-potato-shaped chunk of primordial planetary material covered with craters and rills. The Stone was identical, but lined with excavations and dimpled with the bore-hole depressions. "God," Lanier said.
"I don't think He's the one to blame," Hoffman said. "Perhaps your Konrad Korzenowski is."
"At any rate," Hague said, "the Russians are going to pull their team out within three weeks, perhaps sooner. They're upset because we deny them complete access, when we allow the Chinese as far as the seventh chamber. That's their excuse, and frankly, it's a good one. I'd be pissed, too. But it doesn't explain everything."
"They agreed to those divisions a year ago, when we set up team responsibilities," Lanier said, frowning.
"Yes, but apparently there have been more leaks," Hague said.
"Oh, Christ." Who?
"And," Hague continued, "they are now claiming that we misled them as to the contents of the libraries."
"Which we did," Hoffman said, smiling faintly.
"Can the science team get along without the Russians?" Cronberry asked.
"Yes. They're mostly working on inner-chamber plasma tube power-supply theory. We can get along without them, but a lot of important research will slow way down, perhaps come to a stop. What about Beijing?"
Cronberry leafed through a folder of personnel papers. Hague reached across and drew one out. "Karen Farley is a Chinese citizen, and she's working for you on theoretical physics, correct?"
"Yes. She's made herself useful in all sorts of areas." Oh, please, not Farley—not Wu and Chang—
"She and her colleagues are to be withdrawn if the Russians leave."
"Why the coordination?" Lanier asked.
"The Chinese smell a rat," Hoffman said. "Or a rout. If the Russians feel they are being misled and kept out of important decisions, the Chinese have similar grounds for complaint. Their own presence might be more advantageous to us than to them."
"I can't believe either group would give up a place on the Stone. I wouldn't."
"They won't," Hoffman said. "We have evidence that both the Russians and the Chinese have clandestine operatives in the security team, perhaps men in the science team. And there have been interesting activities in Russian orbital space and on the Moon. Not to mention heightened activity at Tyuratam and the Indian Ocean launch site."
"Invasion from Earth and Moon?"
Hoffman shook her head. "Look, this is all chickenshit compared to the big question. Has Vasquez come up with anything? What does she have to say about parallel worlds, alternate histories?"
"She hasn't had time to say much of anything," Lanier said quietly. "In a few weeks, we might know."
"I understand the President's point of view. I find this very hard to believe," Cronberry said. "Is it your opinion that the Stone comes from our future?"
"No," Lanier said. "The Stone comes from another universe, not precisely our own. That much is certain. There's one obvious difference."
"No Stone in the Stone's past," Hague said.
"Exactly."
"And we have no way of knowing how much the Stone is affecting the course of our history."
"It's changing things a lot, I'd say," Hoffman remarked. "If anything, the Stone has made things worse." She held up a memory block marked "Plant Physiology Changes under Plasma Tube Conditions." "You made this copy yourself?" She passed it to Cronberry, then to Hague.
Lanier nodded. "It's in S-code," he said. "It's a summary from the best sources, mostly from the third chamber library.
Vasquez should be going into the third chamber in a few days."
"What does it summarize?" Hague asked, hefting it.
"The first two weeks of the war."
Cronberry flinched.
Hoffman took a slate, programmed it for reading S-code, plugged in the block and skimmed over the material. Her face went ashen. "I haven't looked at this before," she said.
"It's mostly historical photographic records made by the armed forces on both sides. Some of the stuff toward the end chronicles the Long Winter."
"So that's not just theory anymore," Hague said.
Lanier shook his head.
"How long was ... will ... the winter be?" Cronberry asked, reluctantly accepting the slate from Hoffman.
"One or two years in its major effects."
Hague took the slate from Cronberry. "You guarantee this material is from the third chamber library?"
Lanier swallowed before answering, irritated. "I could hardly have conjured it out of thin air."
"Of course not," Hoffman said. "if the libraries are correct—if our universes coin
cide in this one way—then we have about sixteen days?"
"One way or another, we'll know by then," Lanier said. "Although the knowledge of the events will almost certainly shape the results. If. If they happen at all."
"We're scheduling a meeting with the Russians tomorrow at noon," Hoffman said. "Strictly informal. They've asked that you be there. Mr. Hague's department has pushed very hard for State Department and DOD approval of the meeting. If those talks succeed, there will be other meetings below the cabinet level. And if we can convince the President before next week, perhaps a summit will be arranged." She blinked slowly in his direction, still focusing somewhere over his shoulder—not quite the thousand-yard stare of a battle-weary veteran, but very nearly.