Finally he heard her engine behind him and saw her coming. Instinctively he thought it was more Icemen, and this time he did try to hide, ducking behind a drift. Cal got to the top of the ridge above him and came to a halt, jumping out and yelling.
“Poll, Poll, it’s me Cal.”
Nute was fighting to exit the upended tractor. He had the door open and was hauling himself out, stamping on the face and shoulder of the driver. Poll heard the female voice and cautiously put his head up, and then stood bolt upright, rooted to the spot. Nute, balancing on the side of the cabin, saw his target and got off another impulsive shot, but the round went wild. It was enough, however, to galvanize Poll. He started floundering his way through the snow toward Cal. He sank two or three feet every step, which allowed Nute to get ready. Standing on the top corner of the tractor cabin he leveled both his hands for a steady aim. The bullet spurted up snow just shy of Poll but Nute himself wasn’t so lucky. The kick of the barrel upset his fragile balance and he teetered and pitched sideways into the ditch.
Cal came down the last twenty yards and grabbed Poll’s hand, dragging him the remaining steps. They hauled themselves up the ridge, onto the treads of the two-seater and into the cabin. Down in the valley two other Icemen were now standing on the side of their stranded tractor but not bothering to draw their weapons. They were probably out of range and anyway they were laughing too hard at Nute who could be heard cursing foully from the ditch. Cal put the tractor into gear and moved off quickly along the line of the ridge. According to the beacon, it was also the direction of the rocket.
***
Poll was slumped in his seat in a kind of daze. He felt perhaps he was still dreaming. One moment he was sitting out on the tundra playing out the end of the Homeland and the next he was safe inside a cabin with Cal.
Cal reached over and gripped his arm. “Poll, you can’t believe how glad I am to see you, but right now I need you to keep going. Are you able to drive this thing, I desperately need a rest?”
The tone of Cal’s voice and the touch on his arm helped to rouse him. He looked at her.
“Cal, it really, really is you. How in God’s name were you able to do this? How did you know to get out here?”
“Poll, I’ll tell you everything, but can you drive this tractor? I’m absolutely dead.”
“Sure, I can. Stop the tractor, I’ll drive. But where are we going?”
Cal had her hand on the door to get out and double round to the passenger side. She turned back in surprise. “Following the beacon, to the transport to the sunny world. Isn’t that where you’re going?”
Poll was dumbfounded once more. “You mean the rocket…?” But Cal was already heading out the door. Poll got out his side and stood there as she came round, the amazed look on his face continuing his question. She said to him, “If that’s what you call it, yes.”
In a single moment all the tension and frustration and fear released inside Poll. He felt it physically like the lifting of an illness, like a weight dropping from his shoulders. Cal had not only rescued him, she had found what he’d been looking for ever since he first began to think about anything. He stood in front of her and there in the bone-chilling cold with the cloud and wind blowing again over the ridge he gripped her by the shoulders.
“Cal you did it, you did it!”
Cal clasped on to his arms, almost to support herself, but at the same to return his awkward straight-armed embrace. “Yes, we did, Poll. We did!”
Then he could not help himself but he hugged her, almost putting his head on her shoulder, and amidst that blighted landscape a gargled noise rose up inside him, half a sob of pain, half a cry of triumph, a sound he’d never made before. At once he was terribly embarrassed. He pushed Cal away abruptly. When they got back inside the tractor and he shoved it in gear he muttered, “Sorry about that, I got kind of carried away.”
Cal murmured, “Oh, no, really, I feel exactly the same way. And I’ve cried like that too.” Then to cover his embarrassment, “But tell me, who were those guys, wanting to kill you so badly?”
Her voice was already trailing off and as Poll thought to explain about Nute he looked round and saw her eyes were closing, her head thrown back against the seat.
She slept for three hours, despite the wild lurching of the ice-tractor and the grinding every time the gears shifted. Poll quickly located the beacon and right there on the console it shouted confirmation there was a destination that had nothing to do with the Sectors. He would have basked in its glow of vindication but he had to concentrate on navigating the frozen terrain, taking care to cross the valleys at right angles and as quickly as he could. As he continued to drive, however, he got more used to it and his mind returned to Cal and what she had done. He thought he could probably guess some of her story. She had used just over eight hours of battery life which meant that very likely she had gotten the tractor sometime around midnight and traveled through the early hours. The tractor and its beacon clearly suggested a live link with the other world itself. But who was traveling from there to the Sector, and how had Cal known about them and their tractor?
Then another thought struck him forcibly. All he had ever wanted was evidence to prove there was somewhere else on earth apart from the Homeland, but Cal seemed to be a step ahead. As he followed the track of the beacon he understood that for her they were heading not just to the rocket port, but to the rocket itself and the other world to which it linked. It made him almost dizzy to think of this. From being just a need to expose a set of lies, the whole thing had morphed into a trip to the world of sun itself.
Up ahead the landscape was suddenly different. He glimpsed a flinty wasteland, its snow and ice broken by naked rocks and bands of dark moraine. Beyond stood a higher range of hills, almost black against the skyline. The beacon seemed to be pointing toward a small spur at the northern end. As the tractor mounted the crest of the final snow ridge before the flats it was shaken by a squall of wind even more powerful than usual. From then on it was buffeted continually by high-velocity gusts, like a ship sailing close to a hurricane. The storm world was announcing itself for real; they were entering its territory. The shaking woke Cal.
“Hey, what was that?”
“Looks like we’re losing the effects of the high pressure. This has to be the start of the storm zone.”
“Then the rocket’s got to be close.”
“I reckon so. But, Cal. I’ve got a question: are you planning a trip?”
“Of course I am. And you’re coming too. You started all this in the first place. And, you know, I was so worried about you, Poll, I’m not letting you out of my sight again!”
He grinned and shrugged. “Fact is, I don’t have any other place to go, and really I should stick with you for my own good. I’d totally run out of ideas there on the ice. But, wait, tell me, how did you figure all this out? How did you find the connection to the rocket?”
She told him the whole story, about the guy at the swimming pool talking to Danny the day of the competition and Danny’s disappearance, and the way Esh had described him convincing her he was from the sunny other world. About specializing in Transport and learning how to drive a tractor in order to rescue him from the camps. And then just a day ago she’d heard someone, with the same look as the first man, had come searching for her, so she had decided it was now or never, she had to make her move.
“So Danny and Liz were taken to the other world, and all that stuff about sports stars going to special colonies, that’s basically what it is, they go to the sunshine world?"
“Looks very much like it.”
“But then you thought they were coming for you too?”
“I don’t know, but I had a pretty strong feeling. Maybe Danny had something to do with it. Anyway now we’re both going. Won’t that be a surprise for them! But, Poll, who was that crazy man who wanted to kill you? They told me at the camp you shot someone. Is that true?”
Poll gave her the full saga, about the I
cemen and Guest, the tunnels and the desperate fight with Nute, and finally his own stealing of a tractor and his decision to go out with a bang there on the ice.
“So, it was a fluke I found you. I thought it was some kind of desperate signal you were sending me. But, of course, how could you know I was anywhere near?” She laughed as she added, “I suppose it’s all part of my obsessive belief in saving you!”
“Well, I'm glad you believed that. Otherwise I'd be dead on the tundra.”
"Seriously. Those guys were after your blood.” After a moment she added, “I really hope nobody carries guns in the sunny world.”
“Somehow I think they'll have them in that place too. But we have to get there first. Have you thought about how we’re going to fly the rocket? It’s got to be more complicated than driving an ice-tractor.”
“We got this far, didn’t we? If it comes to it we’ll just wait until the strangers make it back from the Sector. I’m sure they were going to take me anyway, so I’ll convince them to take you, too.”
The wind was keeping up its barrage, rocking the body of the tractor back and forth. They were now a good way across the plain and the barren range of hills was much closer. The tractor growled over rocky ground, threading between outcrops and patches of snow, steadily approaching the edge of the range. The beacon kept them to the north, skirting the ascent. Suddenly it began to diminish on the screen, then it disappeared altogether. Almost simultaneously they saw a tall mast secured with steel lines on a ridge in front of them, and directly behind a bulldozed track leading up to the left. It was plain this would take them the rest of the way: they turned onto the grade as the wind lashed fiercely at the side of the cabin, lifting it drunkenly on its suspension.
It grew steadily darker and they needed to switch on the headlamps. They were no longer talking, focusing instead on the narrow track bordered by a yawning precipice to the side, subdued by the ominous atmosphere of the hills. It was now very dark and after traveling like this for some time the road leveled out and the heights on either side rose dramatically, forming a deep ravine. The effect of the wind softened abruptly and everything became calmer as the walls of the chasm closed about them. Then, after following the narrow, oppressive channel there appeared abruptly, right ahead of them, a vast crater. The road turned at ninety degrees, descending rapidly, doubling down hairpin bends into a pit so huge that it could only have been made by a bomb. They struggled to keep their nerve as they negotiated the tortuous bends. It took them over an hour of concentrated driving to get to the bottom.
As they made their way down they were able to make out little by little an astonishing black shape, an enormous long cylinder rising steadily from the bottom of the crater, seeming to widen until its mouth was lost at the top of the hills on the western ridge. It looked like nothing they had ever seen. All they could imagine it to be was a colossal throat stretching upward to cast objects into the sky. They were both very tired but they were carried forward by the shattering discovery they were making. As they came nearer to the bottom they could see a cluster of lights and buildings surrounding the base of the cylinder which appeared as a great bulb-like dome or rotunda.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. This has to be a launch for the transport.”
“Can you believe it? Finally the lie to the Homeland. Look at it! It’s so perfectly designed, to shield a rocket flare. Proof positive of cynical planning!”
They rolled the tractor down among the service buildings and followed the road to the edge of the huge circular structure sitting at the bottom of the launch cylinder. It loomed above them, a great black mass of metal. They scouted its edge until they found an entrance. The door was very heavy with a single recessed handle. Cal pulled it down and they heard catches release. The door swung back on automatic power, to reveal a long semi-lit corridor made out of the same dull metal. The place had an indescribable chemical odor, bitterly pungent in the confined space. They both coughed and put their hands over their mouths as they went as quickly as they could to where the passage ended in a big sealed double door. There was no obvious entry switch but clearly-printed letters above the door read: danger. shuttle launch only. evacuate immediately if not boarding.
Between coughs Poll said, “Looks like this has only one purpose. We need to get out and find the control station. Maybe we could jumpstart the sequence.”
They hurried out and reversed the tractor around, back to the scatter of buildings they had passed on the track. The obvious candidate was one they’d noticed, with a branching array of antennae and dishes on the roof, and lights on inside.
Cal tried the door handle and it opened to the touch. Inside was a long table covered with computers and a jumble of radio equipment. They immediately began to try the computers, looking for an open screen or turning them on as they went. Poll hit a switch on a control next to a large monitor. A screen buzzed into view, showing multiple panels and tables with headings like fuel, cabin pressure, telemetry, navigation. Cal was looking at screens with data of flights past and called out, “Look at this: here’s Danny and Liz's flight record. They were accompanied by a couple of people called emissaries, ‘Dante’ and ‘Milton’.”
Poll was not answering. He had found a panel which read: initiate launch sequence and had already clicked on it. But directly he ran into a block. The screen read: enter command code.
“Uh oh! We need a code to start this thing.”
Cal came over. “What?”
“This looks like the launch program, but you need a pass code. I had the same thing back at the camp. But it didn’t take long to guess. I don’t think their codes are very complicated.”
“Where would you start? With words, numbers, or both?”
“The names of the guys, you know, like the ones you said were with Danny and Liz, that could be a place to start. They might like using their names.”
“There could be a vehicle log or something in the tractor, with this flight's names and details!”
They both headed back to the vehicle. Neither had bothered to search it before, now they quickly emptied the compartments under the dashboard and between the seats. Cal dug out something from a side pocket.
“Hey, this looks like a possibility, a schedule or notebook of some kind.”
She opened the small palm-sized book. It gave the name “Brutus” with the address “Colony of Sports Monitoring.” Inside were various other names, with asterisks and little notes scattered at random like “Rolls Royce Engine,” “Shuttle Maintenance,” “Mustang Sally!” There didn’t seem to be a clear calendar, only references to numbered days without any particular order.
“This is all weird. It doesn’t help us.”
“We could just begin with ‘Brutus’ and try a series of numbers, see where that gets us.”
“Wait!” Cal interrupted, “This could be it, right here.”
There was a note reading, “Northern Rendition, Day 8” and then a series of numbers.
“Don’t know what that word means—rendition—but it kind of sounds right.”
They returned to the hut and entered the numbers on the screen. It paused, then read code accepted.
“Simple as that!” cried Poll.
The screen brought up a check list with sector security approved, biometrics transmitted, return telemetry, engine systems ready and several others.
They went through and checked them all off directly. There was a low hum in the building and the screen showed: ignition sequence commenced: ten minutes to board.
“Let’s go!”
They raced from the hut, into the tractor and back down to the door of the launch building. The corridor was now brilliantly lit and the smell was gone: a powerful ventilation system was sucking fresh air into the building. They ran down the passage and the sound of their running feet rang against the surface matching the thumping of their hearts. At the end of the corridor the elevator door stood open with an amber light flashing on the wall inside. They crashed in and Poll
hit a red push button next to a sign, descend to cabin. The door rolled shut and the elevator moved into a swift descent, fast and deep enough to make their ears pop. It came to a knee-buckling stop and the door swung back, beckoning the young people to step out. Beyond lay a cantilevered bridge stretched over a blackened cavern. The other end abutted the shuttle, a sleek black bird with narrow swept-back wings poised on a slender undercarriage with semi-retracted wheels. It was about thirty yards across the bridge to the cabin door but it seemed like a thousand miles. “This is it,” breathed Cal and they made their way across, gripping the rails.
A hatch was open at the side of the rocket and inside was a compartment at the angle of the craft, so the four seats were slightly off the horizontal. They clambered inside, stooping over, and took the two front places. Before them was a pulsing display, with instruction, cabin door ready for seal. six minutes to initiate launch. Poll got up and fumbled with the door lever until it swung across and sank into position. They heard the bolts engage and the display turned to fasten seat harness. They fussed with the belts across their chests until they got them plugged in, and then the display changed to confirm for take off. They stared at the console wondering where to give the command until the word confirm flashing on the screen made them reach out to touch it. Then another message showed three minutes to launch. Through a port window they glimpsed the bridge retracting and a seal roll down in front of the elevator platform. About thirty seconds later there was a flash and a billowing plume of smoke as the firing sequence began.
The shuttle quivered and inched slowly forward. Before they knew it there was a second bigger flash and a brilliant sheet of fire and smoke exploded round them and the rocket leaped forward with terrifying force. The noise was indescribable and the walls of the tunnel at once became a blur. Everything around them, and inside them shook, and at the same time they felt an enormous, breath-squeezing pressure. They really had no idea of what they had done, whether all the flight systems were working, or even where they were going. They were carried forward by an irresistible flow of events and the strange sense that their path was assured, even destined. Whether this was the arrogance of youth or reflected a deep truth, the effect was the same. They were on their way out of the Homeland toward another world. All the same, when the rocket left the tunnel and almost immediately hit the level of the storms it did a sixty degree yaw and they both let out terrified screams and groans. They were plunging head-first into the intense chaos which lay between their own world and the next.
Pascale's Wager: Homelands of Heaven Page 18
