“Ah. Here we are.” The door! He sidled through it awkwardly, afraid of snagging himself. Imagine being caught here, unable to move forward or back. He would have to use the geologist’s hammer to shatter his faceplate and end it quickly. Now he was through and the tunnel was clear. He quickened his pace.
“Thirty minutes. My God.” He was pushing it. Easy: remember it was only a mile back to the transition site, a twelve-block jaunt. No problem except getting bored waiting for the screen to come on.
Up the ladder. On the surface. He stood and caught his breath for a moment, then leaned down and pulled the manhole cover back into place. Reqmescat in pace. He remembered his stepfather’s funeral, the banal finality of dirt falling on the cheap coffin. At least his sky had been blue and rich with clouds.
Pierce looked up and grunted. The sky was a blaze of stars, more than he had ever seen on even the clearest nights in New Mexico or Idaho. The tank’s hoarfrost gleamed in starlight; the machine silently waited to take him back to safety and light and air.
“Twenty-six minutes and boarding for the return trip,” he said. Into the cabin, down into the seat, seal the canopy, something was wrong —
The instrument panel lights were out.
The tank was dead.
Pierce reset the circuit breakers. Nothing. Something had failed for good. Maybe he could find the cause in thirty-six minutes and maybe he could even fix it, but that would do him no good at all. For all he knew, the tank’s self-destruct was still in perfect running order; it was set to go off thirty minutes after the I-Screen came back on.
Grimly, he yanked the holotape and put it into a pouch at his waist. He unsealed the canopy once more, pulled himself out and jumped recklessly from the tank tread to the ground. Again a moment of disorientation: which way was south? He found it, then checked the suit compass for the first time on the trip. Its digital readout was three zeros, intermittently flashing random numbers. Not enough magnetic field on Ulro.
Pierce set out across the stony terrain. The tank had not left much of a track, but the lamps threw encouraging ellipses of light ahead of him and he could see a few landmarks. He passed the toy truck and was tempted to bring it with him. But this was no place for souvenirs; the toy would be radioactive.
“Nineteen minutes.” He seemed to be making good time. Maybe he’d walk right through without breaking stride. Wigner would be amazed at the material. It would give him unheard-of leverage, undreamed-of power. The bad guys were in trouble, all right.
“Twelve minutes.” He came to the futile scratches he’d put in the ground by the rocky outcrop. Less than four hours ago. It seemed like years. He could see faint tracks left by the tank, and he followed them up the slope of the hill to the crater in the side of the moraine. Eight minutes to spare.
Pierce stood and breathed deeply, shivering a little. His underwear was soaked, and his feet were getting cold. The tank had been designed to survive twenty-four hours, and it had failed in less than three. His suit would keep him alive only a couple of hours under these conditions, unless one of its systems also failed.
The thermometer registered minus 90 degrees. All the heat absorbed during the day was being rapidly lost.
Transition time came. The I-Screen did not open.
“Come on, come on,” Pierce said. He stamped his feet to try to warm them, and the bricks slid away. Staggering, he regained his balance. “Come on, come on!”
The moon, three-quarters full, rose over the moraine. Pierce saw his shadow extend across the rubble.
He was the only living thing on the planet, unless somewhere, in some pitch-black sealed cave, a few spores awaited resurrection. Above him was the sky, full of stars and a moon that looked exactly as it always had. Below was the dark land, dry and dead, silent forever. No, not forever. The volcanoes still shot their gases and stones into the emptiness, and eventually after millions of years this world would have an atmosphere again. Millions of years. This world would be born again, scarred and crippled, but he would not.
Something caught his eye. He looked up, trying to find it amid the stars. There it was, a bright spark, a little blue-white star that twinkled.
But the stars didn’t twinkle here, not in near-vacuum. And the stars didn’t move so quickly, nor from south to north.
A flash glinted in his helmet’s rear-view mirror, and Pierce spun awkwardly around to see the fading glow of the explosion that had destroyed the tank. A moment later he felt the thump under his feet.
Oh Christ it went off and they’re right overhead they must have seen it they’ll know I’m down here come on come on open it come on —
The I-Screen opened again four hours and thirty-two minutes after Pierce had first gone through. He lurched down the ramp of rocks and bricks toward the beckoning lights, through the screen. It must have winked out at once; he could hear the scream of air pumping back into the chamber, and then see the sudden high-pressure jets of water and detergent shoot at him from the ceiling and walls. The chamber disappeared in a frothing swirl of bubbles across his faceplate, and he could feel the jets drumming against his suit.
After a moment or two he decided he needed to sit down. He was shaking too hard to stand.
CHAPTER IX
“No, I do not consider the mission a failure,” Wigner said calmly.
Eight men and one woman looked at him from around the long table in the Research Services Division meeting room. Summer rain was falling silently from a yellow-black sky beyond the windows. Jonathan Clement, chairing the meeting, sat at the far end of the table; the others, all from Langley, were clustered near him. Each had a cup of coffee and a bulky agenda. Wigner sat alone, dressed in a sober blue suit with a maroon tie. He was item four on a fifteen-item agenda.
“I can understand your point of view, Eric,” said one of the Langley men. “After all, you did send your man through, and he got back alive with something.”
“He got back with a great deal, considering the condition of the repository. We’re working on the data now, and we think it’ll be extremely helpful.”
“I’m sure it will be,” said the woman, smiling. “But we’re not exactly getting advance warning of Pearl Harbour, from what I understand.”
“That remains to be seen, Muriel,” Wigner replied. “We’ve given the microfiches only a quick review so far. Deep analysis will tell us much more. I have no doubts about that.” He kept his tone aggressively confident, just the far side of defensive.
A tall, sallow man looked pained. “I hope you’re right, Eric, but frankly it just looks like in-house gossip. We didn’t have to travel to the twenty-third century to find out that Phil Warden sleeps around.”
The others burst into roars of laughter: a Langley in-group joke. Wigner smiled uncomfortably.
The woman spoke up again. “We think you showed a great deal of initiative and imagination in mounting this project. And luck as well. It could have been much worse, yes? Well, even so, we must consider the results. Something over twenty million dollars spent, almost half our divisional research budget, much of it on a piece of high-tech junk — excuse me, Eric, I have to say what I think — that failed miserably. A young agent who appears to be highly competent, very nearly killed. And he’s now undergoing rehab up in Wood-stock, I understand.”
“Yes.”
“Poor man. Let’s hope he recovers.”
“Dr. Franklin says the prognosis is excellent.”
The sallow man cleared his throat. “Eric, we’re not ganging up on you. You had a very good idea, and you pushed it through masterfully. Masterfully. I wish we had more young people like you. So, I recommended that your project go ahead, although I had my reservations, because we need to encourage ambitious, aggressive young guys. I know Jonathan feels the same way.”
Clement grinned and nodded.
“But we haven’t become the kind of organization we are by ignoring facts,” the sallow man went on, his voice lilting almost musically. “The facts are that m
ounting an expedition to Ulro is a damn dangerous business with not much return on the investment. We’re better off leaving it to the universities and the
military, and picking their brains afterward. The Administration is much more concerned about the downtime chronoplanes, and with good reason. We can do something there. On Ulro — ” He shrugged.
Wigner leaned back, elbows on the armrests of his chair, fingers steepled. He paused for a moment.
“I could argue, I suppose,” he said quietly. “I’m still convinced that Ulro is a critically important area, especially for us. But you’re right, Dr. Benson,” he said to the sallow man. “I hope I can face facts, too. For the time being, Ulro is low priority, and I accept that. At least we took a shot at it, and I thank you all for giving me that opportunity.”
The others shifted cheerfully in their places, smiling faintly at one another and at him. He smiled back, a little ruefully.
“Now the question is what to do with our Young Turk,” Clement said happily. “How long will the data analysis team need, Eric?”
“Probably not more than a couple of days.”
“No, I suppose not. Hard to spend more time than that over six microfiches, even if they are from the future.”
“Tomorrow’s Times would have been a lot more helpful,” said a fat man who had been silent so far, and everyone chuckled.
“For the lottery numbers or the horses?” Eric asked, smiling.
“Let’s not be distracted, please,” Clement said. “Any suggestions, Eric? Want to go back to straight political analysis? God knows you’re good at it.”
Wigner studied the table. One beat. Two beats. “Actually, Jonathan, I think I need a change. I’d like a couple of weeks’ vacation and then something new. How about something in economic analysis, maybe with Semiotronics?” That was the proprietary that had hired Pierce as a systems security man.
Clement’s dark eyebrows rose, as if an unexpected idea had been put to him. Wigner watched him struggle to keep from smirking.
“Well, I don’t know. We’d hate to lose you here, and I’m not sure you’d be entirely happy there. Lot of busy work, you know, lot of paperpushing.”
“Jonathan, I’m not the fire breather you think I am. You gave me a chance for a hell of an adventure, and I learned the hard way that I’m not really cut out for it. I think I need to sit somewhere quiet for a while, someplace where I won’t get into so much trouble.”
He stared at the table and allowed his lips to twitch just a little: the fair-haired boy confronting his own inadequacy.
They chuckled understanding^. Clement nodded slowly, looking reluctant.
“Well, let me think about it, Eric. Is there anything else you’d like to say? No? Anyone else? Then thank you, Eric. And thank you for your constructive and positive attitude. We all appreciate it.”
Wigner stood up, smiling, and excused himself. The people from Langley smiled and waved, then turned their attention to the next item on the agenda before he was out the door.
Please don’t throw me in that ole briar patch, Wigner thought.
Two days later, Wigner was back in the meeting room, in the same chair. At the table were the four other members of the data analysis team. Since all were Trainables, they had no need for bulky agendas; each had only a flickreader and a plug-in keyboard linked to the office’s central computer. Although they all worked on East 52nd, this was the first time they had met as a group. Rather than crowd into someone’s cubicle, it had been easier to communicate by LAN.
“I’ve got a draft,” Wigner told them, booting it up on the pop-up screens set into the table. “Take a look.”
They read silently at their varying rates, their faces impassive. For about half a minute, the only movements were fingers tapping silently on keyboards. Wigner monitored the revisions they were suggesting, accepting most of them.
Jaz Jones was finished first. She rubbed her eyes and shrugged sympathetically at Wigner. Seconds later the other three were done as well.
“Good enough,” said a plump young man in a loud sport shirt. “I added a couple of minor things, but you got the whole thing down right.”
“Yes,” said Jaz. “I just wish we’d had more material to work on.”
“Me, too,” said Wigner with a sour smile. “Hell, with no access to current personnel files, I already knew about three of the alcohol problems.”
“Nice to know we’re gonna run a successful operation in Lisbon in 2004,” the plump young man said.
“Except we won’t need to now,” Jaz replied. “God, how could they be so dumb?”
Everyone understood her to be referring to the senior staff whom Wigner had met two days before.
“Gotta be more there,” said a teenager with a curly black beard. “Odds on. Even with the repository trashed, he got this in a few minutes. Go back there for a day — wow.”
“Someday,” Wigner sighed. “Anyhow, thanks for your help.”
“Word is you’re getting a lateral arabesque,” said the teenager.
“A change is as good as a rest.”
“It’s not fair,” said Jaz quietly. He winked at her.
“Not just the six microfiches,” the teenager said. “What’s in’em.”
They all nodded and frowned. Wigner shrugged.
“The content wasn’t that much of a surprise either,” he said quietly. “We’ve been projecting the fall of the Emergency government for months. Admiral Bannister was the likeliest one on the Joint Chiefs to stage a coup, and he’s no friend of ours, so, of course, the Agency got shaken up.”
“Dismantled,” said the plump young man.
“At least he doesn’t seem to be thinking about a coup here on this chronoplane,” Wigner observed. “Be interesting to see how the I-Screen has influenced events.”
“Still,” said Jaz, “it wasn’t a picture the committee was happy to see.”
“Would you like to see a photograph of your own corpse?” Wigner asked.
“Yes,” she retorted instantly, “if it gave me a clue as to how I died. These guys just aren’t thinking it through.”
“Please, Jaz. You’ll provoke me into saying something I’ll regret later. Maybe, with a little time to think, they’ll have second thoughts about Ulro.”
The meeting broke up. The plump young man suggested dinner at Pietro’s, but Wigner declined. He had too much work to do.
The whole business was a dangerously near thing. The power failure delayed the reopening of I-Screen, and Wigner came as close to losing control as he ever had in his life. While the techs cursed and shouted, trying to get power to the transition chamber, Wigner paced outside it, glaring at its blank steel airlock door. He was already wearing a radiation suit, and he slapped his gloved hands against the crinkly metallic fabric. Perhaps he should have worn a Newtsuit instead; it simply hadn't occurred to him that a screw-up like this could have happened. If the screen opened and Pierce wasn’t there, or couldn’t come through, the whole point of the exercise was lost. Wigner wished again that they’d given him a backup. Stupid bastards. He’d had just the guy picked out, too, not as tough as Pierce but good enough for a quick rescue sortie.
Then the power came on. The video monitors showed the transition chamber lighted once more and the soap-bubble colours forming in the I-Screen. The screen was opened onto Ulro at night; a couple of bricks slid down into the chamber.
Then Pierce staggered into the chamber after them and lurched a few steps forward.
“Kill the screen!” Wigner shouted into his microphone. “Repressurize the chamber!” Two techs, also in radiation suits, moved forward. He waved them off.
“I’m going in alone. I’ll bring him out. As soon as pressure’s up, get the sprays going.”
He cycled himself into the airlock; its inner door had a window showing Pierce sagging awkwardly into a seated position. Frost sparkled in the rushing air, making delicate traceries on Pierce’s suit. When the green pressure lights went on, Wigner
plunged into the chamber. The cold hit through to his skin.
“Jerry! Are you hurt?”
Pierce’s voice was muffled inside his helmet. He looked disoriented and exhausted. Wigner squatted beside him, gripped his arms. Radiation meters were flashing digital readouts from four sites around the chamber: nothing too bad, but Pierce would need a good hosing down before he could be moved out of the chamber.
The detergent sprays gushed from the ceiling, Ailing the chamber with mist as well as liquid. Wigner reached into Pierce’s chest pack, felt the microfiches. With detergent pouring down over his faceplate, Wigner could made out little but colours: the buff of the daily briefings, the pale green of the personnel records. He unhooked the chest pack, let the sprays wash over it.
Pierce hardly seemed to notice. When the sprays Anally stopped and they could look at one another again, Pierce leaned forward until their faceplates were touching.
“They’re up there, Eric. The aliens are there.”
Wigner felt an odd tremor. “But not here, old son. Can you stand?”
“Yes.” But he made no move to. Wigner tried to help him to his feet, but he was too heavy and inert.
“I need help!” Wigner barked. In seconds, the two techs were with him, helping Pierce to his feet. They guided Pierce to the airlock while Wigner followed behind, moving close to a radiation meter. With the chest pack right in front of it, the meter registered only a fraction of a rad. Good.
The two techs and Pierce cycled through the airlock while Wigner waited. When it was his turn, he plunged his hand into the chest pack and pulled out the micro-Aches. A cabinet hung on the airlock wall; he opened it, stacking the micro-fiches neatly atop the First-aid equipment. Everything went into the cabinet except six personnel micro-fiches from 2002, which he returned to the chest pack. He hoped he wasn’t mentioned in them.
The techs had Pierce out of his suit by the time Wigner came out. Pierce was shivering violently.
One of the techs looked at Wigner. “We better get him to the infirmary upstairs.”
The Fall of the Republic (The Chronoplane Wars Book 2) Page 11