Close Up the Sky

by James L. Ferrell

  Matt held up his hand and said, “Hold on a minute. I met Kasdan just after I arrived at Apache Point. In fact, he was in the meeting Dr. Durant held in his office where we discussed the murdered agents. He knew about that, but not about this operation?” he waved his arm around the room.

  “Oh he knew about it,” Dr. Durant answered, “only we didn’t know he knew.”

  “I suppose you’ve learned how he managed to find out?” Matt questioned.

  The room became quiet while Ritchie removed a manila folder from his briefcase. He flipped through a couple of papers, read for a few seconds, then looked at Matt. "Are you familiar with a woman named Gail Wilson?"

  Matt glanced at Taylor. She gave him a sideways look and arched her eyebrows.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say familiar, but I met her a couple of times,” he answered. “On one occasion I had the feeling she was trying to pump me for information."

  "I expect she was," Ritchie observed. "Her job at Apache Point was to monitor and check computer systems for accuracy. But she was more than just a technician, she was also a computer hacker. And a very good one, I might add. At some point she and Kasdan became lovers, and he managed to recruit her to work with him on breaking the computer access code on the Babylon Station project. Once that was accomplished, he was able to read reports coming back from the oil accumulation points in the Middle East as well as those from the receiving stations in America. It was from Colonel Pope’s restricted files that Miss Wilson managed to hack into, that he learned about Captain Williams’s assignment to proceed to Apache Pointe and train Lieutenant Leahy in desert survival. From that point on he set out to sabotage the project whatever the cost, including murder. But he made one mistake. When Miss Wilson learned that he was not simply reading forbidden files but was actively engaged in sabotaging the project, she threatened to expose him.

  "She already knew that Kasdan had poisoned Colonel Pope, and when she found out that you had been shot, she realized the extreme danger of her own position. It was probably at that point that she wrote a full confession concerning her involvement with Kasdan and concealed it behind a wall picture in her quarters. She intended to use it as a threat to ensure her safety, but it didn't work. Kasdan had already decided to kill her, and before she could tell him about the hidden confession he drowned her in the swimming pool. The confession was found while her quarters were being cleaned out. That all happened just a few days after your expedition departed for Egypt."

  Matt and Taylor exchanged glances. Both of them remembered the conversation they had had about keeping quiet until all the players were known.

  Ritchie went on. "When Kasdan was confronted with the document, he made a full confession. The only thing he didn't mention was Sureahl. Apparently he held some hope that Sureahl would still be able to destroy the stellarite and dispose of the four of you. If it hadn't been for Sergeant Pierce we might never have known about him. As soon as we found out, we immediately took steps to transport you back to Apache Point. We sent signals to your pagers a number of times, but without success. We finally gave up on that tactic and came here to start a search."

  Taylor swallowed and said, "It's a good thing Seaman Hull was posted on that hill or we would be dead now."

  "That was just a fortunate coincidence,” Ritchie said. He looked at Matt. “Your brother, in his delirious state, had already disabled Seaman Pendergast, the sailor who was on sentry duty on the hill. Seaman Hull just happened to be in the right place at the right time."

  Taylor shuddered. "Oh, my God."

  Matt shook his head and let out an audible breath. After a few seconds of silence he said, "Poor Gail. Kasdan must be insane. And to be honest with you, I had already come to the conclusion that the stellarite had not really been sabotaged. The facts just didn't support that conclusion. I guess I was mistaken." He looked a little downcast.

  “No, you were correct, Matt,” Durant said in a low voice. “That’s another thing I have to apologize for. There was never any sabotage. That was just a cover story. You see, we burned out the stellarite by using the Chronocom for so many years to transport large quantities of oil from here to America…… and other places."

  Matt was nonplussed and it showed on his face. "But you said you couldn't transport anything from one point to another."

  "I said it was too dangerous to transport people. We've always had the capability of moving objects across great distances."

  Matt shook his head and glared at him. "You used us as pawns hoping we would recover the stellarite so this project could be continued, didn't you?"

  "You were never a pawn, Matt, and neither was Taylor,” Durant pleaded. “Mike Summerhour knew all about the project and was instructed to take whatever measures were necessary to ensure your safety. We were completely in the dark about who murdered the first exploration team, and we also suspected that Edward might not surrender to anyone but you, if we could find him at all. That's why we needed you so badly. I told you that during our first meeting. I hope you can understand the magnitude of our position. If things hadn’t worked out as they have, the Fade Away Directive would have been automatically activated and thousands of lives would have been destroyed.”

  Matt glared at the old physicist for a long moment. He felt the urge to strike out, but something in Durant's eyes held him back. It was obvious that he had been under intense stress, and the sincerity of his words showed in his face. In the end, Matt's heart overcame his anger and he began to relent. "Williams, I mean Sureahl, told us about Fade Away, so I guess I can understand your position; especially since our allies would also be subject to the directive." He shook his head and asked, "Have you learned who killed the time agents and shot Edward?"

  “Kasdan,” Durant replied. “You see, he was part of all the meetings in which we discussed finding other sources of stellarite. He knew that we had located the only other known source in the Valley of the Kings during Ramses's time, and that we were sending a team to recover it. He also knew the exact time and date of the team's departure. He surmised that if he could destroy that supply of stellarite, Babylon Station would collapse and his native land's greatest resource would be protected. Since he had authority to organize expeditions at his own discretion, he simply went back ahead of the recovery team and was waiting for them when they arrived. He watched them excavate the site and then confronted them. He shot all of them without mercy, Matt. He also thought that he had killed Edward. He was lucky to have escaped while Kasdan was burying the others. But the thing he didn't count on was Ramses's soldiers getting there first and digging up the element. Since the stellarite was gone, he simply returned to our time and waited to see what our next move would be. He was at the meeting when Mike Summerhour returned with news of the murders. He also knew about our decision to send for you."

  "It’s still hard to believe that Edward managed to escape,” Matt said. “He didn’t have his gun or pager on him when we found him, so I suppose that when he couldn't return to his own time for help, his only chance was to make it to Thebes, find the stellarite, and try to reach this base. It was an incredible feat that he managed to cross the desert in his condition."

  "You're right," Durant said. "He probably lost his utility belt during his trek to Thebes, but it’s of no real consequence. We may never know what became of it, but we can delete the pager from the computer’s memory and take our chances that the gun will never be found. We'll get his complete report as soon as he's well enough to talk. We owe him much more that we can ever repay."

  "Where's Kasdan now?" Matt inquired, changing the subject.

  Durant looked at Ritchie, who was busy making notes.

  "I'm afraid he's dead," Durant said when Ritchie did not make any comment. "Suicide."

  Matt glanced at Ritchie. The NSA agent turned his attention from his notebook and looked at Matt with a blank expression.

  "You understand, Lieutenant," he said to Matt. It was not a question, but a statement made by one professio
nal law enforcement agent to another, intended to put closure to the matter without any further questions.

  "Yes." Matt replied. “But there’s one other thing. Babylon Station is a top-secret project, and so is Apache Point. If Kasdan and Sureahl knew what was going on, how many of their associates might also know? This could start a war, you know.”

  Ritchie nodded. “A good point, but we are confident that those loose strings have all been tied up. You must remember that even though he was capable of murder, Kasdan was a scientist, not an intelligence agent. It must have been for that reason that he didn’t inform anyone else about Babylon Station until the arrival of Sureahl. He admitted that much in his confession. Sureahl himself was in New York at the time as part of a U.N. delegation. Kasdan contacted someone he knew in the U.N. and requested what he called ‘special help,’ and Sureahl received the assignment. As far as Sureahl is concerned, we feel confident that he knew nothing about the project until his meeting with Kasdan. He only knew that his initial assignment was to intercept and kill the real Charles Williams and take his place. In the meantime, Kasdan obtained the name and telephone number of the gunman who tried to kill you in the desert. He probably got the information from the same source in the U.N. Most of the events that have occurred since then have been spontaneous and coincidental to whatever was taking place at the time. They were just playing it by ear, so to speak. And since all communications are restricted at Apache Point, they would have had no way of informing anyone else before their plot was exposed.”

  Matt shook his head and sighed. “I don’t suppose you know the identity of the U.N. contact.” He made it sound like a statement instead of a question.

  “No. I doubt we’ll ever know,” Ritchie responded.

  Durant was relieved that everything was finally out in the open. "Well," he said, "we want to know everything that's happened to you two since you left Apache Point."

  "Would you mind if we put it off until later?" Matt asked. "I need some air." He and Taylor both stood up. "Will you join us, sir?" He said to Durant.

  The old man nodded and got up.

  "Please excuse us, gentlemen," Matt said to the others. "I'm sure we still have some more talking to do."

  "Take your time, Lieutenant," Ritchie said. "We won't be leaving until late tomorrow.”

  The three of them walked out onto the deck and leaned against the rail. The sun was just above the western horizon. In two hours it would be night. Lloyd's Perch rose up in front of them like a huge inverted funnel. Durant lit his pipe and blew a cloud of smoke into the warm air.

  "Hope you two don't mind," he said, indicating the pipe. "I can't tell you how happy I am that you're safe."

  Taylor kissed him on the cheek. "You know you've got to get some rest," she said. "We don't want to lose you either."

  “May I ask you something?” Matt asked the old man.

  “Anything.”

  "How do you keep an operation of this magnitude secret, and how much oil have we removed from this region, and where are we putting it?"

  Durant gazed out over the azure water for a moment before he answered. "As far as secrecy is concerned, with the exception of a few navy officers and managers, none of the workers or sailors know where they are. The oil tanks themselves are not near the actual fields, so the oilmen don't see anything when the transports take place. I don't know the exact amount we've moved, but I'm sure the figure is in the billions of barrels. And where are we putting it? There are hundreds of miles of dry caverns all over America, and many more throughout the western world. Here, in this time period, we have an untold number of pumps working around the clock at stations located throughout the region. The local stations pump the oil out of the ground as fast as they can, and pipe it overland to large tanks. The tanks are equipped with direct-link Chronocom pagers, and as they are filled the oil is automatically sealed in magnetic envelopes and transported to receiving stations in prehistoric America. It’s then pumped into pressurized holding locations. It's been a nonstop operation."

  Matt waved his arm across the other ships. “What about these ships? Are they rotated in and out? How do you manage to conceal their disappearance from Russian tracking?”

  "They stay on station for a few months until their replacements arrive with additional supplies and equipment. The warships protect the field operations and keep the local population away. As to their disappearance, as you put it, we wait for a good storm to brew up in the Pacific. In the case of two ships at a time, if we know they’re being tracked the navy makes it look like they collide in the storm and sink just at the instant the Chronocom transports them. If only a single vessel is involved, she simply goes down in the storm. So far we’ve gotten away with it. But it’s not just an American operation. Stations just like this one are operated by our allies at other locations throughout the region. So you can see what we were facing when our present supply of stellarite began to burn out. As I said before, thousands of workers and military personnel would have been stranded here, not to mention the strategic implications. Babylon Station has been underway since a few years after the Iraq war, and we finally stressed it to the breaking point."

  "Since the Iraq war!" Matt sounded incredulous.

  "Yes. Babylon Station was conceived just after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. In a way, the invasion served as a long overdue wake-up call for America and her allies. It was the first time that we truly realized the consequences of allowing another country to control the oil we have become so dependent upon. That was the day the president decided that we would no longer permit OPEC to hold such power over us. Our young men and women will never again be required to die in order to ensure the free flow of oil."

  Matt shook his head. “You know that we haven’t built a new refinery in America in more years than I can remember. The few we have can’t possibly handle the demand without foreign assistance. Even if we started now, it would be years before the first one is completed.”

  “A good point,” Durant responded. “But plans for new refineries, pipelines, and storage facilities have already been drawn. Construction is simply waiting for us to finish with this operation. We also know that the oil won’t last forever even if we include our own extensive untapped supplies. But Babylon Station has given us the time we need to develop new energy sources and put oil behind us once and for all.”

  "Have you considered the moral implications of it? I mean, Sureahl and Kasdan did what they did to protect their country, yet we call them murderers. How much different are we from them?"

  Durant thought on that for a moment then said, "We all do what we think is right, Matt. But America and the rest of the western world don’t deal in terrorism and death. Of course we wage war, put criminals to death, and sometimes kill innocent people who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We're always sorry for that, and when it happens we punish ourselves much more than anyone else ever would. We put our dirty laundry in the window for everyone to see, and we make amends wherever possible. But we don't persecute our own people or those of other nations. The free world depends on America to lead in human rights issues, and we do a pretty good job of it. We don't always win, but we try. America is far from perfect, but it's still the most amazing country in the world. Nowhere on earth do people have the freedom that Americans enjoy. That's why so many of them around the world are waiting to become one of us. America may be composed of many nationalities, but we are one people. That’s where our ingenuity and our strength come from.”

  “You make it all sound so simple,” Taylor said. She reached out and took Matt’s hand.

  "I know what I’ve said sounds like a speech written for a politician,” Durant went on, “but it's true. To make sure we stay strong, we just can't continue to allow terrorist countries to control such a large part of the world's oil supply. Our economy is so delicately balanced and so dependent on oil that the slightest interruption affects the entire fabric of our country. There is no freedom without oil; no
guarantee that some dictator won't rise up and crush us if we don't have the means to prevent it. We've seen it many times throughout history: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Saddam Hussein. They’ll never stop coming, and we’ll never stop fighting them while we have the means to do it. Like it or not, oil is the blood of freedom. But it can also be a powerful weapon in the wrong hands. If some future dictator attempts to cut off our oil supply, or manipulates prices to the point to where it threatens to damage our economy, we'll be ready. We'll never again have to fear being held hostage at the whim of some third world tyrant. We're free. But now the project is coming to an end. It's time to close up the sky and go home."

  "I hope you're right," Matt said. “But I remember you saying that it’s impossible to change history.”

  “What makes you think it’s been changed? Babylon Station is part of history, or we couldn’t have made it work in the first place. The Middle East is still supplying oil to the rest of the world, and we’re still buying it. The only difference is that we don’t have to deal with them if we decide not to."

  Taylor looked at Matt and nodded. “Now I know what you meant back at Apache Point when you asked me if something from the past could change the future without any outward sign that anything had been changed.”

  They were silent for a while, just looking at the water and allowing the warm breeze to blow over them. Right or wrong, the western world had taken steps to free itself from potential economic disaster. Now, involvement in third world affairs would only be in issues of human rights. With a touch of humor Matt thought that time itself would judge whether they were right or wrong.

  Off in the distance a speaker on one of the other ships echoed across the water announcing crew mess in ten minutes.