Aftermath a-1

by Charles Sheffield

  “That’s what I thought. Too neat.”

  “What do you mean?” Dana asked. “Isn’t this just what we want?”

  “It is. And it ties everything up.” Art handed the sheets back to Dana. “Guest is officially dead, so the government doesn’t hunt for him. We have the telomod test kits, and we know how to use them, so we don’t have to look for him. Everybody lives happily ever after.”

  “Including old Ollie,” Seth added. “Tell you what, tomorrow morning we go over to your house. No good doin’ it now, everything’s too hot to touch. But I’ll make a bet with you. We won’t find a body in the bedroom. We won’t see a sign of one, there or anywhere else.”

  By morning the rain had eased to a thin drizzle. Before breakfast, Art, Seth, and Dana were heading over to the cabin. They had slept in Joe’s house, which had more space. It also had more dogs. Dana had been wakened by three of them soon after dawn, as they wandered in to scratch and sniff at the interesting new female scent. She had thrown them out of the bedroom, but remained up. Art soon joined her. He couldn’t sleep. Seth was up already. For all Art knew, he had been awake all night.

  The burnt-out house had been reduced to a chaos of wet ash with an intact chimney protruding at one end. Everything was red-hot beneath the sodden upper layer of gray.

  It was easy enough to find the bed. The iron headboard and footboard were intact and upright, sticking up from a cluster of fallen roof slates.

  “See,” Seth said. “Nothin’.”

  He had a straight sapling that he had cut on the way over. Now he reached in from outside and raked the long stick across the mess next to the headboard.

  “Nothin’,” he repeated. “Hey, wait a minute.”

  The sapling had run across an uneven hump. He moved it a couple of feet, and poked again.

  “Son of a bitch. What’s that?”

  Something irregular in shape lay between headboard and footboard. It was impossible to tell what it was without direct examination. The three walked gingerly forward, hearing the sizzle as their shoes went through the crust of ash to the still-smoldering layers beneath.

  “My feet are starting to burn,” Dana said. “Can we pull the whole thing out? Unless it’s too hot to hold.”

  Working together, they dragged the remains of the bed onto bare ground. The iron end parts fell away as they went, creating showers of black ash and hot sparks. Slate fragments and patches of ash dropped off the object that lay on the bed. Once they were clear of the ruins of the house, Seth and Art carefully removed the rest of the debris.

  What came into sight was unmistakable. A human body lay faceup on the charred bed, most of its flesh burned away to reveal blackened bones.

  “Well, how about that,” Seth said softly. He stood looking down at the skeleton. “I said I’d take bets, an’ I was wrong. Dr. G., I guess I owe you an apology.”

  “Or maybe you don’t. Oliver Guest was a genius, but even a genius can’t think of everything.” Art squatted onto his haunches, staring at the scorched head with its naked cranium and empty eye sockets. He reached down and carefully removed something from the corpse’s grinning mouth. “When Guest was sentenced to judicial sleep, he was stored away naked. We know, because we found him that way.”

  He held up what he had taken out of the mouth, showing Dana and Seth a partially melted object made of plastic and metal. “They put him into judicial sleep for six centuries. What do you think the chances are that they’d have stuck him into the syncope facility wearing dentures?”

  They stared at what Art was holding, then at the burned body. Finally Dana said, “Who?”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know.” Art tossed the melted dental bridge back into the ashes. “I’d like to believe that Guest found a corpse somewhere. There are plenty around, we saw signs all the way here.”

  “Or maybe he dug one up,” Seth said cheerfully. “But knowin’ old Ollie, it’s more likely that’s number nineteen on his little list. Look on the bright side, though — it could easily have been one of us.”

  Each of them straightened, turned, and scanned the trees and bushes.

  “Come on.” Art took Dana’s hand. “Let’s get back to Ed and Joe. For once in my life I’ll feel safer with a few more guns around.”

  46

  As the full moon slid behind clouds and darkness became absolute, Celine gave it one last try.

  “I know the layout of the corridors and the feel of the place. You don’t. It could make all the difference.”

  “I realize that, ma’am.” The captain, no more than five years younger than Celine, treated her with the deference appropriate to some great and venerable head of state. “Your help in bringing us here and your description of what we are likely to find underground were really important. But you don’t know how to use any of this.”

  He gestured around them. He, Celine, and nine black-clad strike team members were sitting in a vehicle that from the outside might be taken as a standard and old-fashioned electric van. Inside, gas masks, gas bombs, rifle mortars, and suits of body armor lined the walls. Four small screens showed black-and-white images. Two displayed the terrain using thermal infrared and active microwave sensors. The third observed in visible wavelengths, and was at the moment dark. The fourth was a general purpose television. Once it would have picked up any of ten thousand channels. Now there was one channel only, and that was dedicated to official government broadcasts and announcements.

  “I wouldn’t have to know how to use everything,” Celine said. “You would do all that. I would just help you to find your way in the underground tunnels.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I know you are keen to help. But let me ask you this. You trained for many years before you went to Mars. What would you have said if, the day you left, someone without any training came along and told you they wanted to go along, too? My team has worked together for six years in this type of exercise. We know each other, we trust each other.”

  When Celine said nothing, he went on, “And there’s one other reason, ma’am, why we don’t want you along. This one sounds selfish, and maybe it is. But it’s true. You went to Mars and you made it back. You’re a legend. How do you think we’d feel, all of us, if you went along and somehow we got you killed? We’d never get over that.”

  Celine admitted defeat. This was supposed to be a neat surgical operation, fast in and fast out, with minimum violence and no casualties. But the Mars expedition had provided the ultimate proof that, plan as you liked, things went wrong.

  “Will you do me one favor?” she asked. “I’d like to know what’s going on. Can you show me the controls for the display units?”

  “Glad to do that, ma’am.” The captain nodded to one of his companions. The woman came forward and showed how each sensor could be controlled in look direction, focus, magnification, contrast, saturation level, and sensitivity. It was crude, it was cumbersome, and it had to be done manually. With the failure of the chips, none of the old taken-for-granted automatic features worked.

  Celine made a practice run. Under her control, the visible wavelength display at maximum sensitivity showed a faint gray ghost of a scene. Outside, dawn was approaching.

  Zero hour.

  The strike team adjusted their equipment, picked up gas cylinders and projectors, and prepared to leave.

  With their black body armor, goggles, helmet communication antennae, and long-muzzled gas masks, they were like strange mutant insects. The captain had a final word with the driver. “Two hours. If we’re not back, or you don’t have radio contact at that time, you’re on your own. Use your best judgment.”

  “Yes, sir.” The driver checked his headset.

  “Good luck,” Celine added.

  “Thank you, ma’am.” The captain fixed his mask in position and slipped quietly out of the open rear of the vehicle.

  Celine turned to the display controls. The microwave and thermal infrared channels showed the group snaking their way downhill toward the little schoolr
oom. As usual, her mind threw off half a dozen questions. What would the strike team do if the elevators were no longer in service? Would Pearl Lazenby, worried about Celine and Wilmer’s escape, have moved her headquarters? What were the chances of an ambush, somewhere belowground? Were Jenny and Reza safe, or had they been sacrificed to atone for their help in the escape? Had they been tortured, to tell whatever they might know? The rules of civilized behavior did not apply to the Legion of Argos. The strike team did not care about Reza and Jenny, their whole focus was on the rapid capture of Pearl Lazenby.

  The group reached the school. Celine watched them vanish inside. After that came the frustration of a view with nothing to offer but the gradual brightening of dawn outside the van.

  She turned to the driver. “Are they all right?”

  He gave the shrug of a man who had been through this sort of thing many times. “So far, so good. They’ve reached the elevators. We may lose radio contact once they go deep underground. Unfortunately, that’s when it gets interesting.”

  He was deliberately casual, but Celine noticed that he did not take his eyes off his own monitor. It showed the same scene as hers. But suppose that the Legion of Argos came from some other direction?

  She went to the open rear of the van, stepped outside, and looked around. All she saw was a peaceful morning of late spring. She returned to her seat and turned on the television that picked up general broadcasts. Apparently it was too early in the day. The little screen showed nothing but a test pattern.

  “A few more minutes.” The driver had observed her actions. “Then we’ll get the channel news.”

  Presumably, that would come on the hour. But by then, the strike team would be well on the way to success or failure.

  Celine tried to estimate times. Say, five or six minutes to descend. Another five to advance, cautiously, and determine the situation. The neural gas was supposed to make a person unconscious in seconds, quickly enough that there would be no time to use a gun. Then, say, five more minutes to take bearings and hurry along to Pearl Lazenby’s private quarters. Would she be asleep, or awake — or there at all? In any case there would be more gas, followed with luck by a quick retreat carrying her body. Then into the elevator, and back to the surface.

  Clean, tidy, efficient. Every task looked like that — until you came to carry it out. Then you discovered dirt, mess, and muddle.

  She turned to the driver. “Any word?”

  “They’ve left Grossman at the top with a radio. The rest are in the elevator. Don’t worry, he’ll report as soon as there’s anything worth saying — unless he loses contact when they get down there and approach Lazenby’s quarters.”

  Which would be the most crucial time. Naturally.

  On the television set in front of Celine, the test pattern vanished and was replaced by the Great Seal of the United States. A disembodied voice bade her good morning and informed her that this was America.

  But then, of more interest: “. . . the major speech made yesterday evening by the President.”

  Celine and the strike force had been on the way here and otherwise engaged. She had asked Wilmer to attend and note what was said, but she didn’t have much hope. Wilmer heard what he wanted to hear. Anyway, he and Dr. Vronsky, along with a dozen other scientists, were too busy playing with semirigid body dynamics and space construction methods to notice much of anything. Celine kept one eye on the external scene monitors and turned most of her attention to the television.

  President Saul Steinmetz was standing at a lectern. On the black-and-white image his face was pale and his eyes sat deep in their sockets. Somehow he seemed to have grown taller since her meeting with him, and the familiar voice was firm and commanding.

  “This nation and the world have over the past two months been through very difficult times. Supernova Alpha caused tragedy on the largest scale, for which no nation was prepared and from which no nation emerged unscathed. Now everyone, here and through the whole world, faces the enormous problem of rebuilding. I feel sure that it will come as a surprise to most of my fellow citizens, as it did to me, to learn that this country was one of the luckiest ones in terms of the supernova’s effects. But that is true. Our friends abroad were far less fortunate.”

  The camera scanned the crowded hall to show the audience of Senators and House members, then returned to the people standing directly behind the President. Celine recognized the new Vice President, Brewster Callaghan. Next to him on his left was the House Minority Leader, Sarah Mander, and on the right the Senate Majority Leader, Nick Lopez. Next to Lopez was the young male aide that Celine had met when she visited the White House. In front of Lopez stood the strikingly beautiful young woman who had accompanied Celine and Wilmer from the State Department to the White House. Yasmin Silvers presented her profile, because her eyes remained fixed on the President.

  “A unique tragedy,” Saul Steinmetz was continuing, “which we will certainly never forget. However, tragedy is not our business. Our business is the future. And now it is my duty to deliver a warning to us all. In the future — all our futures — half a century away, lies an event which without action on our part will kill every member of the human race. If humanity is to survive, we must undertake an enterprise of unprecedented size, difficulty, and duration. This Grand Design must be the construction of a vast shield, out in space, which can divert deadly follow-on radiation from Supernova Alpha. In order to build such a shield, the combined resources of the whole globe—”

  “Getting a message,” the driver interrupted. “Our man at the top thinks we got problems down below. Signal interrupted. He’s trying to make contact again.”

  “They failed?”

  “Don’t know that, but apparently it’s not going clean. Keep quiet a minute, let me listen.”

  Celine stared at the displays. They showed the same morning scene, with the schoolhouse sitting peaceful at the bottom of a gentle incline. The van was suddenly uncannily quiet, except for Saul Steinmetz’s voice continuing from the television.

  “ — at once, and with not a day to lose. Therefore, I am arranging an immediate series of meetings with the heads of governments all around the world. In those meetings, I propose that this country pledge its manpower and materials to the rebuilding of the infrastructure and industry of other less fortunate nations. Let me remind you that such an act is not without precedent. Eighty years ago, in one of this nation’s finest hours, we rebuilt the economies of those who had recently been our adversaries in the most bitter war in human history. Surely we will do no less now, for our friends. And, in return, we will ask their total commitment to a project which will save the world. Before seeking the support of other nations, however, all of us here must first be convinced that this action is necessary and indeed inevitable. To that end, I have arranged for a series of briefings, to begin tomorrow morning. The first ones will demonstrate both the danger and the need for action. Then the scale of the operation will be outlined—”

  “Shit.” The driver dragged off his headset and hurried to the rear of the van, for a direct view of the schoolhouse. “It’s looking bad. We have casualties. They’re on the way back up, but they didn’t have time to disable the other elevators. I’m going to join Grossman and give them fire cover. You stay here and get in the driver’s seat. If you see anything coming out and it’s not our own people, don’t wait and don’t watch. Take off in the van and don’t stop ’til you reach Washington.”

  He was already in full body armor. Without waiting to hear Celine’s response he dropped his helmet into position and jumped off the open rear of the van.

  She took one step toward the empty driver’s seat, and paused. If the long years of the Mars expedition had taught her one thing above all others, it was that you did not abandon a teammate in trouble. Not ever, not for any reason. At the moment she was a part of the Pearl Lazenby capture team — she was even responsible for its existence. There was just one important difference: the others had to obey the comm
ands of their team leader; she did not.

  She went to the side wall of the van, inspected the body armor suits, and took down the one that seemed closest to her size. It took a minute to climb into it, but her experience with spacesuits helped a lot.

  The choice of weapons was more difficult. She hated the idea of killing anyone, but gas bombs might be useless if the Legion of Argos followers had their own gas masks.

  Finally she hooked three gas grenades to her belt and picked up an automatic rifle. The gun’s advanced capabilities had been dumbed down a lot by the gamma pulse, but that suited her just fine. It was now a simple single-shot point-and-shoot projectile weapon, with a hundred-round ammo cartridge.

  Celine carefully climbed from the open rear of the van and walked down the hill. The schoolhouse at the bottom seemed astonishingly normal and neat. It was hard to imagine violence taking place in or underneath it.

  She recalled Eli’s cold, unblinking face and the belts of live ammunition around his chest. She began to walk faster. Soon she was at the door of the schoolroom, and still no sound came from within.

  She looked inside, past the broken glass window. The driver and the radioman Grossman stood side by side, guns raised. They were covering two of the three elevators.

  The driver had seen her arrive, and he gestured angrily at her to leave. She ignored him. An elevator was on its way up — no, two were rising in the shafts, she could hear the creak of their cables.

  The big question: Who was inside them?

  Apparently her companions had no more idea than she did. The third elevator sat silent, but their guns veered between the other two.

  She heard a final rattle of cables. The door of one elevator slid open. She held her rifle at the ready. Two people in body armor staggered forward. They were carrying a long object swaddled in light-colored material.

  “Take this and get out of here.” She recognized the captain’s voice, hoarse and strained. “Grossman, you and I cover.”

  The driver grabbed the end of the burden thrust at him by the captain and started with the other man up the hill. Celine, ready to turn with them, saw from the corner of her eye that the door of the second elevator was sliding open. Grossman and the captain stood right in front of it. They began to shoot, but gray-clad soldiers at the back of the elevator were shielded by those in front. Celine saw a black oval fly through the air to explode right at Grossman’s neck. His head vanished. Celine felt a hail of shrapnel on her armor and saw the captain blown backward — injured, dead, or stunned, she could not tell.