by Scott Mackay
‘‘Not yet. But rest assured, Tim, I’ve advised him to launch against Alpha Vehicle. I understand that the Builders might be trying to communicate with us, and that we might even learn a lot from them, but what about Omega Sol? That’s what I’ve asked the president to base his decision on. He’s talking to Russia. And the PRNC.’’
‘‘The PRNC? Why does he want to talk to Po Pin-Yen? He’s a lying son of a bitch.’’
‘‘Tim, you have to moderate your views on the North Chinese. They’re a major power now. Which means nothing can be done about Alpha Vehicle unless we touch base with them first.’’
The president must have got the go-ahead from the PRNC and Russia quickly, because he decided to launch the next day.
Pittman felt the thrill of combat surge through his blood. He was approaching Crater Cavalet in Moonstone 5 with Merryman, Newlove, and Weisgarber. Having crawled out of their emplacement moments ago like a half-buried beetle, they rolled across the lunar plain, moving from their defensive position on the outside of the crater, to their offensive one on the inside. The scientists had gone back to Earth in one of his own Moonstone shuttles—NASA’s planned civilian rescue had now been canceled, as it wouldn’t be here soon enough to get the Stradivari and Princeton Team members out of harm’s way. He had taken the position of forward gunner, was up in the battle bubble, and had a full three-sixty view.
The other hard-vacuum vehicles made their own approaches toward the outside rim of Crater Cavalet. Their treads turned and turned, scarring the Moon’s gray-brown dust. Moonstone 5’s shock absorbers gave as the vehicle hit the first upward curve of the crater’s rim. The clarity of it all was like a moment with God—the sun shining with a diamond glare, the Moon lit up as if from within by neon gas, black sky that was as impenetrable as a swath of sable velvet, and Moonstones 4 and 6 to his left and right, their own shock absorbers shifting in the fluid pull of the Moon’s weak gravity.
As Moonstone 5 climbed Crater Cavalet’s rim, the treads dug deeper. Looking behind, Pittman saw huge clouds of dust—but not clouds like he made with his pickup on desert roads back home, because this dust settled quickly, didn’t have the resistance of air to stop its fall. It was like a shower of gray sequins in the sun, as heavy as lead, plummeting toward the dry surface.
At last Moonstone 5 reached the top of the crater. Its weight crumpled the rim, and as the vehicle lurched forward, Pittman bashed his face against the bubble’s pressure glass. He didn’t wince. He went into battle and afterward he had bruises, cuts, and scrapes he couldn’t account for, tattoos he was always proud of. They churned down the inside of the crater.
To actually go inside Crater Cavalet was to gain an appreciation of its true size—at least two kilometers across and one kilometer deep, with the eastern edge of the rim casting a deep round shadow. Through this shadow he saw Moonstones 7, 8, and 9. Cloaked in darkness, the hard-vac war vehicles revealed themselves only by their red running lights. Along the western rim he saw Moonstones 10, 11, and 12, fully lit by the sun, but still hard to see because of their gray, brown, and black camouflage. On the south side, discernible only by the dust they kicked up, were the remaining Moonstones.
In the middle of the crater sat the thing.
Why wasn’t it trying to protect itself? A perfect sphere, and more reflective than the most polished mirror, it reminded him of a Christmas ornament. Why would it just float there two meters off the ground and not do anything when it obviously knew they were approaching? Not for the first time did he feel the strangeness and unreachablility of the alien construct.
He contacted his units.
‘‘This is Moonstone Five. Repeat, this is Moonstone Five. Do you copy?’’
All the other Moonstones copied.
‘‘Commence emplacement and prepare to engage.’’
The shovels to his rear revved and Moonstone 5 dug its way backward into Crater Cavalet’s slope. The crater reminded Pittman of the Roman Colosseum. Alpha Vehicle stared at him—the thing was looking at him the way a human might at a bug under a magnifying glass.
On the arching interior of the crater’s rim he saw the other Moonstone hard-vac battle vehicles dig in. After five minutes, everybody was in place. His men ran system checks and reported in.
He then intoned the words that as far as he was concerned were the only words in the world that mattered: ‘‘Fire at will.’’
He had his hand on the joystick, and his thumb on the firing button. The button was hard red plastic, had a hairline crack on one side, and responded beautifully, with a hair-trigger quickness to the first slight pressure of his thumb. The Moonstone’s big guns mounted left and right spit their ordnance, and his first volley arced like two flying stars toward Alpha Vehicle.
Thirty-six other flying stars from the other Moonstones flew toward the sphere, and it was just too easy, didn’t make sense, was, at least for Alpha Vehicle, the battlefield equivalent of suicide. The thing had the viscosity of egg yolk, according to all reasonable testing, and was going to splatter like a balloon filled with strawberry jam.
As the flying stars got closer and closer, he saw their reflection in Alpha Vehicle’s convex surface, like sparklers in a fun-house mirror, the images foreshortened. And in those few instances before the ordnance hit, there seemed to come to the battlefield an atmosphere of bated breath, of seconds lasting an eternity.
But when the ordnance struck Alpha Vehicle and penetrated its shimmering membrane, it simply disappeared without so much as a ripple.
No explosions, detonations, or rending of that perfect sphere, no final shutting of that awful silver eye. Alpha Vehicle ignored Moonstone’s best conventional effort. Had they dropped stones into the deepest part of the ocean, the result would have been the same— obscure and momentary.
‘‘Fire again!’’ came his words, but this time they were uttered in the telltale emasculated tone of the defeated.
He thumbed the cracked red button, and more flying stars jumped from his twin guns.
Over the coming minutes, the Moonstones fired enough ordnance to level a major city, but Alpha Vehicle retained its placid perfection. Pittman remembered his son’s terrible temper in the days before he and Sheila had split up, and how Tom, not getting his way, would come at him, red-faced with fury; Tom would swing at him, and Pittman would simply put his hand on Tom’s forehead to keep him away. Alpha Vehicle was doing the same thing now: Cognizant of its far greater power, the thing chose to ignore, or at least tolerate, them. It galled Pittman. Rankled his military ego. For Alpha Vehicle, quite simply, was above engaging Moonstone.
‘‘Cease fire! Cease fire!’’
The firing stopped.
He stared at the thing. Perspiration etched its way over his temple under his helmet. He didn’t know what to do. He began to regret getting rid of all the scientists. He thought of Dr. Conrad. If anybody understood Alpha Vehicle, he did. He sensed his whole team waiting.
‘‘Men, I know you’ll be disappointed, but until we . . .’’
A Greenhow prompt came to his strategic screen. He opened the incoming prompt and saw the little red emergency horn in the corner flashing on and off.
Moments later he had a visual of Tower 47—for they had numbered the towers now. Tower 47 had launched another energy cell. Further little red horns appeared all in a row, each one rigged to a specific Moon tower. He pressed the ENTER key repeatedly, and got successive visuals of various Moon towers, and each one was launching its own energy cell. He feared the energy cells might converge on their position. But it soon became apparent the energy cells were leaving the Moon.
After a minute, he saw that they were in fact heading toward Earth.
A few hours later, Pittman and Haydn, up in Gettysburg Tower, watched the incoming reports. Ninety-two additional energy cells—and why ninety-two, why not a hundred? It didn’t make sense to Pittman, but little about the Builders did—had established orbit around Earth with the preexisting ninety-two, making a total
of one hundred and eighty-four, now equal to the number of towers.
A short while later, a delicate pinging came from the Greenhow prompt on the screen. Pittman got up and leaned over Newlove’s shoulder.
‘‘Report.’’
Newlove double-checked the incoming data. ‘‘The blue hawks are leaving the poultry yard.’’
Greenhow showed the energy cells breaking away from Earth orbit.
An hour later it was confirmed by Orbops that all one hundred and eighty-four cells were sinking sunward at a rate of ten million kilometers per hour.
Ten hours later, Moonstone got the news from Orbops that all had impacted into the sun’s surface. Why would the cells dive into the sun?
He knew the answer only all to well.
The following day, Orbops established that a hydrogen bleed had indeed begun in the sun.
Omega Sol had become a reality.
15
Lesha walked toward the Johns Hopkins Physiotherapy Department a few days after the energy cells had plummeted into the sun. A freshly pressed man’s business suit hung from her fingers. The president’s voice had sounded different in person. She felt suspended in a world that had become inordinately unreal to her. A week ago she had been on the Moon. Now she was taking a suit to Cam so he could meet with the president.
She rounded the corner to the Physiotherapy Department and saw Cam walking on a treadmill in running shoes that looked too big for his legs. Whatever the Builders had done to him was slowly letting go. He was coming round a bit more each day. His hip gave slightly each time he put his left foot down, as if he had a pain there. She paused in the doorway and watched him. His eyes were intent above the broad planes of his prominent cheeks, and his brow was like a rock. The outline of his strong chin was thrust forward. Despite his forty-five years, his body had a youthful trim.
He at last noticed her. His face lit up with a smile. He continued to walk because he had no choice—the treadmill was still on. He reached quickly—and a tad awkwardly—for the switch. And when he had turned the contraption off, he used the support bars to swing himself around.
As if propelled by a magnetic force, she hurried toward him. She let the new suit drop to the floor. She felt giddy. They embraced and, comically, he lost his balance, and she lost hers because she was still newly returned from the Moon and didn’t have her Earth legs back yet. They gripped each other so they wouldn’t fall, and kissed.
‘‘Are you ready for the president?’’ she said.
He nodded. ‘‘I’m just glad you’re coming with me. I’m so happy you’re back.’’
She motioned at the door. ‘‘A car’s waiting.’’
‘‘What did the president have to say this morning?’’
Her brow rose. ‘‘He wasn’t too happy about the whole thing, particularly because Po Pin-Yen has suggested Omega Sol is our fault. He’s just glad you’re sufficiently recovered to have a sit-down with him. And he understands that you want me there. In case your speech gets bad again. He wonders if Omega Sol is retaliation for Pittman’s attack against Alpha Vehicle.’’
He shook his head. ‘‘I think Omega Sol is incidental to Pittman’s attack. But there seems to be an ominous development with myself in regard to Pittman’s attack.’’
She looked at him with sudden concern. ‘‘What?’’
‘‘I can’t speak Greek anymore. Not that there’s a definitive link, but I can’t help thinking that it’s more than a coincidence I lost the ability to speak Greek just a few hours after Pittman launched against Alpha Vehicle. It could mean any number of things, but I fear it might mean they’ve given up on me because of the attack. In fact, I’m afraid they might have given up on all of us. We’ve failed whatever test they’ve set for us. It’s the first overt act of violence we’ve committed against Alpha Vehicle. Maybe they’ve learned all they need to know, and have now shut down any and all communications attempts with us. It’s too bad, because just before Pittman launched, I thought I seemed to be making a breakthrough with them.’’
She grew still, peered at him more closely. ‘‘You had another episode?’’
He nodded. ‘‘A few hours before Pittman’s strike. The symbols were on the wall this time. I was reading them. Remember how I was telling you there was an emotional component to them?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘I felt this odd kind of . . . of pity from them. It was as if they were trying to probe my intelligence, but when they saw that I couldn’t think in for what lack of a better phrase I’m calling hyperdimensional logic—or at least not think in it as fluently as they could—they more or less dismissed me. And that’s when I felt pity from them.’’
‘‘The failed test idea?’’
‘‘Maybe.’’
She helped him dress, as he still lacked some coordination. She held his pants and he slid his legs in. He couldn’t manage his tie, and she tracked down a staff physician to produce a sturdy Windsor for them.
The president’s chief of staff, John Gielgud, called her while she was helping Cam with his shoes. ‘‘The president’s waiting.’’
She hurried as best she could, but it was difficult because despite Cam’s great progress, he still wasn’t fully recovered; and though he insisted on walking to the elevator, she finally convinced him into a wheelchair and pushed him quickly down the corridor. They couldn’t keep the president waiting.
The elevator doors opened and she squeezed in next to a janitor who was taking a large gray cart full of bagged garbage to the receiving bay. The janitor, an older black man with a saggy face, kept glancing at Cam, as if he knew perfectly well who Cam was, the special inpatient up on 5-East who was all tied up with this Omega Sol thing that was going on in the sun—for the energy cell impact had been reported widely in various media.
It was the same on the ground floor as they passed the volunteers in the information kiosk, kindly old ladies from the purple-rinse set who gazed at Cam with the numbing blankness of individuals who feared they were doomed.
Lesha pushed him quickly out the front door. The chauffeur, seeing them from his parking spot at the end of the drive-through, pulled up to the front door and got out. He wore dark sunglasses, but took them off to get a better look at Cam, as if even this government employee had to take his own measure of Dr. Cameron Conrad, the only man who had talked to the Builders, and who might be able to talk to them again if the right hyperdimensional conditions were fostered, and tell them to stop playing dangerous games with the sun. The chauffeur’s plea was implicit in his narrowed eyes—maybe if you just talk to them, reason with them, tell them that we’re not so bad after all. The big man, who had a granite physique and a communications earpiece, opened the rear door. He tried to help Cam out of his wheelchair, but Cam grunted and got out of the chair himself. He pulled his Builder-compromised body into the back of the limousine. Lesha got in after him and the chauffeur shut the door.
Once they were moving, she said, ‘‘The president wants to hear your ideas.’’
‘‘They’re not my ideas. They’re the Builders’. And really, they’re not even the Builders’ ideas. They’re absolutes. Only absolutes from a different plane than the one we’re used to operating on.’’
‘‘Your speech is a little rough. I’m having a hard time understanding you.’’ She glanced out the tinted window as they drove along Jefferson.
‘‘I’ll just have to talk slower, then.’’
They came to Northern Parkway and turned west. They followed the highway in silence for a while. She glanced at Cam. He slouched on the supple leather upholstery, his hands folded over his cane, and stared straight ahead, deep in thought. She couldn’t help thinking he looked lonely. Or at least not so much lonely as alone.
She said, ‘‘If you can outline some of your preliminary ideas. About how we might fix all this. Or at least tell me what you think they’ve been saying to you, and how you’ve been interpreting it so we have a clearer idea of where we stand w
hen we’re in front of the president.’’
So that’s what he did.
Over the next twenty minutes, as they headed south on the Baltimore-Washington Expressway to the airport, Cam sketched in his rough notions about what and who the Builders were, what they were saying to him, how they regarded the human race, what they were up to, and what the president might possibly do about them. ‘‘They more or less revealed a lot of this to me in the few hours before Pittman’s strike.’’
‘‘And it’s a test after all?’’
‘‘In a manner of speaking, yes. But it’s more like they’re trying to determine where we fit into the overall hyperdimensional scheme of things. If we pass their criteria, they might let us live. If not, who knows?’’
While they walked from the limousine to the waiting military helicopter, she decided the air had become distinctly chilly. They said the sun was going to cool first before it heated up. She was sorely tempted to glance at the sun, risk the retina burn, see if it had changed, but she experienced a sudden irrational fear. The sun—her sun, the same old sun she had tanned under as a girl growing up in California—wasn’t the same anymore. The Builders had filled it with the stellar equivalent of amphetamines, and now it was going to rush through its life cycle like a Roman candle. She found she couldn’t bring herself to look at it at all.
‘‘Why do you think they’re doing it?’’
Cam’s eyes narrowed. ‘‘I wish I knew.’’
The helicopter was black, had a white roof, and its rotor turned slowly as the aircraft idled on the tarmac. A short run of boarding steps hung from its side, like a corrugated metal tongue. A young female intern in a snappy business suit clutching a folded waferscreen, and an older, more senior member of the Secret Service, waited for them. These two ushered Lesha and Cam aboard. The Secret Service man made a call and said, ‘‘Navasota is secure and on the way.’’ The intern gave them security passes; she was young, and reminded Lesha of a wedding planner trying to get everybody organized.