I wasn't sure that I did but nodded. "So what?"
"Every one of those groups is within fifty miles of one of those beacons." Bradley said.
"That can't be chance." Mary added.
"This is a beacon 'ere." Marie pointed out. "There are three more in France."
"A beacon near Winchester and one up by Inverness. That's where the groups are." Mike informed me.
I regarded them sluggishly while my limited mental resources tried to see the reasoning behind this information. "So," I said slowly. "Every Earth survivor is near what to them is some kind of prehistoric pile of rubble. What the hell for?"
"It can only be to get these damned pills." Bradley said, swivelling himself round on the metal chair he was perched on. "It's getting clearer." He opined. Clearer? I felt the fog in my head getting thicker all the time. "Look," he opened his big hands and began to count his fingers. "Earth wide catastrophe, annihilation ten thousand years ago. One." He held up a finger. "Two. Small bands of survivors all gather round the beacons. Now, we don't know how long that took to arrange, could be a century or more, don't matter. Three, complex capsules all ready for them to take as soon as anyone wants them. Four, birth control as soon as they take the pills. Five, the people lose their free will."
Mary and Mike shifted and looked like arguing the point but I waved a hand at them. Bradley was getting interesting. "What about her?" I jerked a thumb at Melanee whose expression was strained as she tried hard to understand the esoteric argument.
"She's the exception that proves the rule, which brings me to the next point." Bradley was running out of fingers but I waited patiently. "Up near your beacon at Inverness we got a picture that needs some explaining." He turned back and tapped rapidly at the keyboard as we all crowded round. "See?" He said, and I did see. The beacon, it was a circular reinforced concrete construction originally with a rotating antenna on the roof was perched on the top of a respectable mountain some miles from where Inverness itself would have been if it was still there. The mountain had trees but they were stunted birch and pine, tailing off near the summit. Some local storm had torn off part of the roof revealing a shaft that obviously led down to something underneath but more intriguingly there was an unmistakable computer terminal with lights glowing on the keyboard.
"We told the ship to sharpen the definition when we found this." Mike breathed. "You see that square? I reckon it's a solar charger of some sort. Protected, you see the coating of crystal? Now look at the sides of the thing, the concrete sides where they meet the ground level."
Peering at the image, I saw what he meant. The hut, well it was a roundhouse really, was clean, no lichen, no fungus, no climbing growth. Mary put delicate fingers on my arm. "David, we think the whole construction was buried. It would make sense up there, you agree? But look at the stonework, it's so clean."
"Hydraulics." Mike said succinctly. "It got struck by lightning maybe or a special Scottish storm blew the important bits out to sea. It must have triggered the mechanism to bring the whole issue up and that allowed us to see what the hell is inside."
"A live terminal." I muttered.
"Don't you see? It's what's missing!" Marie was getting animated. "We thought that some kind of extra input was needed to make the capsules work. They must be connected to a planetary nexus."
"A planetary nexus?" I found myself stupidly repeating words.
"A worldwide network." Mike asserted. "David, whatever happened here was planned and provided for. These beacons were part of a well thought out behaviour pattern and no one invented that overnight."
"If we got there could we ask the bloody thing what went on?" I enquired, the formless plans that had been ghosting around in my head these last few days taking ominous shape.
That brought a small silence. "Well," Bradley sighed. "The damned computer here don't give us no answers but it's a hell of a long walk." He reached out and tapped fresh instructions on the board which displayed the Earth as a Mercator projection with a multitude of tiny red dots spread all over it. "This is where the other beacons are."
I stood up, massaging my back. "We know where they are to the nearest yard? Fine." They were all staring at me. "What about Montana?"
"Yeah." Bradley said gloomily. "Montana. We found their landing site."
"It's, well, I don't know." Mary was staring at the map. "Their lander is just sitting in a clearing. The state is very mountainous, yes? Well, they must have walked off and we can't find anything else."
"Hm." I grunted. "They knew where they were going and presumably they got there." I turned to Bradley. "You're American, didn't they show you what the hell was in there?"
Bradley smiled, his black face creasing into humorous wrinkles. "I ain't that sort of American, man." He glanced at Hilary sitting with no apparent interest in our talk. "And neither is she."
The oddity of it all descended on us once more as we stared at the familiar contours of the Earth's continents. A global extermination, followed by a detailed long-term plan to prevent any survivors from multiplying too quickly, if at all. What was the point? And what sort of twisted and deformed personality thought it all up? Personality? The thought hit the buffers. No one person cooked this up, it took a team, a big team, an international team and massive funding or at least the know how to use someone else's funds without them noticing.
"Billions dead in an afternoon." Mary said, shaking her head slowly. "And it happened while we were busy trying to find another planet to spread the empire of man." She laughed, an ugly sound.
Marie frowned at her. "Is there a connection? While we were away? Oui, but did they wait for us to go before they did it?"
I didn't know and it was getting to the point where I didn't care. We weren't going to find out standing around in this anachronistic left over from the age of science. Running my hands through my hair, I told them of my decision.
"I'm going to examine that beacon near Inverness." I said firmly, ignoring the startled looks I received. "Look." I held out a hand for the stack of paper Melanee was gripping. "This is the design specification of the aircars." I spread out the performance graphs to show them. "Still air range with full tanks and altitude at optimum fifty feet is six hundred and fifty miles." I looked up to see a circle of frowning faces, even Hilary gazing down with interested eyes. "From here to Inverness as the bullet goes is about a thousand miles."
Jules pursed his lips in disapproval. "But, mon ami, you will not be going like the bullet, eh?" He forgot his wariness of me in his study of my mad proposal.
"And," Marie added. "You will not be able to stay at fifteen metres, look at the ground in France and Scotland. You will 'ave to twist and turn to follow the low level." She glanced up with a cool expression. I don't think she would have been too upset if I disappeared altogether except that I was the one in our small company who knew how to survive in primitive conditions and she didn't.
"We'll make the computers work out a track." I announced.
"It's not just getting there." Mike cut in coldly. "What about getting back?"
"We take both cars." I explained. "With two passengers in the first car, we can take maybe two tons of fuel as cargo. Two more in the second car, but the second car doesn't go all the way." I leaned over to see the map. "Punch up the big scale France and UK. Right, the second car goes as far as Calais or Dover maybe, the computer will work it out."
"Gotcha." Mike said suddenly. "Clever clogs, David. They both land at Dover and the first refuels while the second sits there." He came to a sudden stop. "Wait a bit, but that means..."
"Yeah." Bradley put a heavy finger on the map. "We leave one aircar and come back with one, there ain't enough fuel to bring them both back."
"Is it worth it?" Mary gazed at my determined face. "Any engine fault and you don't come back."
Stretching and taking Melanee's hand preparatory to walking off to our sleeping quarters, I looked round at every face. "We sit here and we wait to die?" I asked. "Not me. Part
of me is dead already so it won't matter if the rest goes as well but I want to find the obscene mind behind this."
They didn't answer but Melanee did. "Daveed not dead. Daveed find how start again."
None of them said anything in response to this faintly Biblical prophesy so I led her away to our private corner. They hadn't heard the best bits of the plan yet. Someone was going to have to stay here and I knew who it was.
Chapter 15
NOVA SCOTIA
It was a madcap idea, I knew it. They all knew it. Scotland seemed as far off as the moon, nearly, across two dead countries with nothing but memories for company. Mike smoothed out his frown and gathered Mary, the super navigator, into a huddle to prove how moronic the scheme was but instead they came up with a bright amendment. We ferry fuel to and fro to the range limits, build up a dump. We had, amazingly, fuel bladders that were still in one piece and we leave them there while the intrepid explorers swan off. The beauty of the idea was in two parts. One, we had rescue if one aircar developed indigestion, two we could save both of them.
Scotland, as shown by the overhead scanners from the ship, had regrown the ancient Caledonian forest with no hungry mouths of deer or sheep to eat away the saplings. Mountain tops poked their way through the green carpet and traces of wild dogs were picked up as well as the ubiquitous cats. Mary's eyes widened at the thought of wolves, but I knew they wouldn't be interested in us, only the easy prey and Scotland must be full of those damned pigs. Nothing else seemed to have survived in such numbers.
The prospect of having Mike along was a relief, my physics being limited to ammunition behaviour and we were going to need an egghead. Mary was now Mike's second skin, she was never going to stay behind, not that I wanted her to. It was Marie that I talked to, with Jules rubbing his still sore jaw in the background, days before we started the thing rolling.
"You stay here, both of you." I told them, watching their faces. Puzzlement was mixed with apprehension, not quite what I expected. "You've got some research to do." I took Marie's arm, feeling her muscles stiffen at my touch. Steering her to the access terminal to the big brain downstairs, I plonked her down on the steel chair. "I want you two to find out two things."
They exchanged nervous glances before Jules coughed. " 'Ow to get into the restricted area." He said.
I had forgotten how sharp they were. "Got it in one. But the second thing is just as vital. You remember telling me this whole bloody set up was linked worldwide? Right, I want you to find out if it still is and if the brain down there can talk to the other one in Montana."
"The micro links are gone." Marie said, frowning at the screen. "Mmm." She started to scratch her chin.
"The satellites are still in orbit." Jules was frowning now. "You do not think to go to Montana? Eh?"
"It's a long swim, Jules and a long walk afterwards." I replied. "But I'd like to know if they think of coming here."
The idea struck them with instant immobility, the usual flourish of hands to illustrate the language disappeared as they grasped the potential. "It was 'uge." He said at last. "A city under there, I see part of the command centre once." He brooded, staring with sightless eyes at the flickering monitor. "You are not so stupid as I think." He added after deep cogitation.
The big, but BIG scheme they had told us about, required essential bits to be located in France and Russia. Russia we couldn't do anything about but here we were sitting on a large chunk of the jigsaw that I was becoming more and more convinced someone wanted to complete. I didn't know the picture and I didn't know if annihilation was part of it but there was something and Selena knew it. She was the king pin, Max was the hard man and fanatic, but he was no biologist and this was all about biology.
Mike knew how to fly an aircar, almost. His experience had been on the civil types, the ones used for seduction, with plushy interiors and cocktails bars. You flew the girl to a nice quiet spot and hey presto! As someone once said, 'talcum is welcum but likker is quicker'. It was a truism that the scientific community knew better than anyone else. He was unnerved by the power and nonplussed by the wings which gave odd flying characteristics. I hoped that the seemingly inexhaustible factory downstairs could keep producing hydrocarbon fuel because it took me days to teach him to fly the thing without colliding with the nearest tree.
Mary, pale but determined, flew off with him while Marie kept a drone high up. Melanee, fascinated by this technical activity, (she stuck by my elbow when I was telling Mike how to avoid sudden death) was going to come with me when I did the big jump. This decision she imparted to me in the dead of night, pressing her impressive bare breasts up against me as an additional incentive, her eyes wide and deep. Not wishing to be without such bribery every night I promised to let her come if she did all the cooking of whatever wild life we could catch. Not knowing anything about female emancipation and women's rights, she regarded this concession as a victory. Not until sometime afterwards did I discover that she had serious doubts about my ability to boil water let alone prepare food for human consumption.
Three trips Mike made, dumping fuel first near Bourges, then near Calais for our reserve. It was a fraught trip, they both said, flying feet above an empty land although such sentiments were anthropomorphic. It wasn't empty, it was full of life but not full of us. The Channel was the same but no ships, the harbour at Calais just discernible, the breakwaters still there or some of them. Marie, seated in front of the drone screens for hours, wiped her face and stared at me with what seemed to be her permanent frown when they came back the second time
"I am getting traces of radiation. The nuclear power stations along the coast, the container vessels are still intact." She informed us. "If they were not scrammed in time then the fuel rods, the complex will be very 'ot, even now."
"The China syndrome." Bradley supplied, grunting. He, too, had been watching the drone displays. "Up near the central mountains, there's radiation as well, not a lot. Nuclear weapons, I guess."
Interesting though this was, I wanted to get the show on the road but Marie, still frowning, grabbed my arm before I sloped off to see what Melanee was up to. "David, the drone."
"What about it?"
"We 'ave two thousand kilometre range with this model." She looked at me as if I should guess the rest of her sentence. Shaking her head irritably she pointed to scribbled figures on paper. "The Americans 'ad drones that could go round the world."
Creasing my own forehead, I stared at her. Naturally, the Americans had drones that were bigger, faster and better than anyone else. I was sure they ferried Neapolitan ice cream to all deserving American citizens by this high-tech method, it was in keeping with their character but so what? "I remember." I told her. "The Yanks always have to be top dog." I sighed because often they were, their inventiveness and go for it attitude producing remarkable results but there were no Americans now.
"Do you not think they saved some in Montana?" Marie was watching me carefully, her dark eyes alert. "If they use the ship for scanning and I cannot stop them, they see what we are doing."
"Yeah?" I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "What does it tell them? And even if they get a drone across the Atlantic, it won't tell them much more than the ship can."
She just stared at me without saying any more until I lost patience and trotted off, but I should have listened to her, she had instincts or perhaps something else. One of our aircars was being run over by Mike with the portable analyser, checking all systems, while Mary was storing it with goodies, not that we had many. Bradley with a compliant Hilary in tow had departed for the surface somewhere, gazing fondly at beetles, I supposed, but Melanee was collecting clothes, a useful activity because summer in Scotland was going to be a shock to our systems. Checking everything again obsessively, hours went by in this fashion.
"David!" The shriek was Marie's, closely followed by a shout that was almost a scream from Jules.
Haring back to them with Melanee, Mary and Mike breathing down my neck, I found Mar
ie standing with horror etched on her face, pointing at her monitor. Skidding to a halt, I stared at the thing, wondering what the hell all the panic was about.
The drone had radar, lots of it, side aperture, front scan, wide band all round and it showed high above, a dot that the optical lenses had focused on. It was a silver aircraft, leaving contrails, fingers of white condensation that this planet had not seen for ten thousand years. Jules grabbed my arm and pulled me to the next monitor. "Look!" He shouted. "They 'ave fired!"
The digital display showed incoming objects approaching at high speed. "Christ!" I yelled, snatching up the data box lying on the bench. "Bradley!" I bawled, hoping he had his set switched on. "Bradley!" I screamed. "Get out of there! Get underground!"
"The aircars!" Mike shouted. One of them was perched outside on the exit platform but we had no time, I could see that.
"Shut the hatch!" I shouted and ran for the heavy armoured hatch to the exit launch ramp. Melanee, who had not grasped the emergency, nevertheless ran with me, Jules and Mike arriving after seconds as we swung the damned thing shut with a clang. Scarcely had we done so when the ground under our feet vibrated and a heavy concussion with considerable overpressure slammed through the complex, a blast of air arriving from the upper levels.
"Two more!" Mary screamed, staring white faced at the monitor. The second blast hit as she spoke but it must have been further off because the thump was muted. The third was different. It must have landed right on top of the hollowed-out hill we were standing in. I thought I saw the flash but the roar from the stairwell was deafening, clouds of dust and debris billowing in. Cracks, alarmingly, snaked up the wall we were facing and rumbling noises from above us proclaimed serious rearrangement of the local area. We stood, frozen, staring at each other, Melanee clasping my upper arm as if it was a lifeline. Seconds passed, then minutes, the dust settling, noises fading to nothing. The lights continued to shed their white glare, the monitor screens still flickered with data, we were still here and still ticking.
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