Eon (Eon, 2)

by Greg Bear

  "What the hell do you want?" he said in a harsh undertone, stepping closer to her, shoulders hunched forward and chin drawn back almost into his neck, an incredibly tense and uncomfortable posture, Patricia thought. She was startled by the sudden breakthrough.

  "I want somebody else to tell me what to feel," she said.

  "Well, I can't do that." Lanier's shoulders corrected themselves and he extended his jaw. "If we start thinking about anything—"

  "But the work, the work," Patricia completed, on the edge of mockery. "Jesus, I'm doing the work, Garry. I'm working all the time." There were tears in her eyes, and to her further shock, she saw tears in his. Lanier's hand moved to his face but he held them back and one tear fell to his cheek, then down the furrow at the side of his mouth.

  "Okay," he said. He wanted to leave but he couldn't. "So we're both human. Is that what you wanted to know?"

  "I'm working," Patricia said, "but inside I'm just bloody. Maybe that's it."

  Quickly, he wiped his eyes. "I'm not a snowball," he said defensively. "And it isn't fair to expect anything more from me, right now, than what I'm giving. Do you see that?"

  "This is really peculiar," Patricia said, lifting her hands to her face, as if to mimic him. Her fingers went no higher than her cheeks, which were hot. "I'm sorry. But you followed me."

  "I followed you. Shall we leave it at this?"

  Patricia nodded, ashamed. "I never thought you were cold."

  "Fine," Lanier said. He turned and walked quickly toward the cafeteria.

  In her room, she pressed her fists into her eyes, now dry, and tried to mouth the words to a song she had dearly loved as a child. She couldn't quite remember them—or wasn't certain she remembered them correctly. But wherever you go, she ventured to accompany the tune, whatever you do, I'll be watching you. . . .

  Chapter Nineteen

  Patricia sat in a director's chair on the roof of the women's barracks. She glanced at the date on her watch as those attending the dance gathered in the science team compound. The war was scheduled to begin in seven days.

  Everything was coming down on her too quickly. She could render opinions but she could not convince herself of their accuracy. She could, for example, tell Lanier that the Stone could not have been shunted very far from its original continuum. Stone history and their current reality would not differ substantially. Perhaps not enough to prevent war.

  Perhaps the Soviet knowledge that a war was imminent would turn them around, make them back off, prevent the war. . . .

  Perhaps the presence of the Stone, and the clear technological advantage that it gave to the Western bloc countries, would push the Soviets over the edge anyway. . . .

  Perhaps the Stone simply made an effect and canceled that effect, and would leave hardly a ripple on the immediate future of the Earth. . . .

  Carrolson and Lanier entered the compound. Patricia could see them greeting team members as they arrived from the other chambers.

  The ragged, bloody feeling inside had passed. She didn't feel angry or sad. She didn't really even feel alive. The only thing that gave her any joy now was sinking into the state, continuing her work, bathing in the brilliance and majesty of the corridor.

  She would have to make an appearance, however. She expected it of herself. Patricia had always resisted playing the reclusive genius and avoiding contact with others. Resisting was not the same as denial of the urge's existence; she did want to stay away, to go to her quarters and work. The thought of dancing under the eternal tubelight (the dance was being held in the open) and making small talk—essentially, of going on the social roster, if only for a few hours—frightened her. She wasn't sure she could maintain her temper, the balance that kept her from dissolving into tears of rage and frustration.

  She descended the stairs and left the barracks, hands in pockets, forcing her chin higher as she approached the milling crowd.

  Two soldiers, two biologists and two engineers had built their own synthesizer and electric guitars out of discarded electronics. The story had been circulating for some weeks that the band was tolerable—perhaps even good. This was their first time in front of an audience, and they seemed coolly professional as they tuned and adjusted the amplifiers.

  Loudspeakers of a peculiar design had been cadged by archaeologists working in Alexandria and offered up for the dance as a kind of goodwill sacrifice, an atonement for their fussy protectiveness. The speakers had been set up at corners of the rectangular dance area, an unused acre reserved for future buildings. No wires went to the speakers; the music was broadcast to them on a special frequency through a low-power transmitter. The sound coming out of them was somewhat metallic, but they were serviceable. Heineman inspected one casually and said, "I'm not sure what this is. It isn't a loudspeaker."

  "It's working, isn't it?" Carrolson said, sticking close to her intended dance partner.

  Heineman agreed that it was producing sound from the beamed signal, but went no further than that. The question was never satisfactorily settled.

  Beneath the steady tubelight, security team members took turns dancing with the scientists and technicians. The Soviet group stood together to one side, playing wallflowers. Hua Ling, Wu, Chang and Farley joined in energetically, though they had already been informed of the shutdown.

  The band switched to older acid rock for a few selections, but that didn't suit the mood and they reluctantly returned to more modern music.

  Patricia danced once with Lanier, one of the Japanese waltzes that had become popular in the last few years. At the conclusion, as they held hands at arm's length and bobbed around one another, Lanier nodded mysteriously and smiled at Patricia. She felt a flush work up her neck to her face. At the dance's conclusion, he held her close and said, "Not your fault, Patricia. You've done great. A real team member."

  They separated and Patricia retreated to the sidelines, confused, her sensation of nullity broken. Had she really expected or wanted approval from Lanier? Apparently; his words pleased her.

  Wu asked her to dance and proved to be a capable partner. She then sat out the rest of the festivities. Lanier rejoined her during a break; he had been dancing rather feverishly with a number of partners, Farley and Chang among them.

  "Enjoying yourself?" he asked.

  She nodded. Then she said, "No, not really."

  "Neither am I, if the truth be known."

  "You're a good dancer, though," Patricia said.

  Lanier shrugged. "Have to stop thinking sometime, right?"

  She couldn't agree with that. There was so little time. "I have to talk to you," she said.

  "On recreation time?"

  "Is here okay?" she asked, simultaneously. The noise was loud enough that they could hardly be overheard.

  "As good a place as any, I suppose," Lanier said. He looked around for Takahashi; he was on the opposite side of the dance quad, nowhere near the Russians.

  She nodded and again her eyes filled with tears. Because he had said something nice to her, now she would open up and express her worst fears, her darkest opinions. "I've tried to calculate how big a snap the corridor's creation would have given the Stone."

  "How big?" Lanier asked, keeping an eye on people passing close enough to hear.

  "Not very big," she said. "It's a complicated question. But not big at all."

  "We're on, then?"

  Her throat tightened. "It's possible. Is that why you really wanted me on the Stone? Just to say that?"

  He shook his head. "Hoffman wanted you here. She told me I was responsible for you. I just put you to work." He reached into his pocket and brought out an envelope, opening it and withdrawing two letters. "I haven't been able to give you these before. No, amend that. It slipped my mind until now. I brought them back with me on the shuttle."

  She took the letters from his hand and looked at them. One was from her parents, the other from Paul. "May I write back?" she asked.

  "Say anything you like," he said. "With
in reason."

  The postmarks were a week old.

  A week passed. The day scheduled for Armageddon passed.

  Patricia stayed in her quarters, working harder than ever with the resources left to her.

  She could not change her initial opinion.

  Each day, then, was a victory, with reality showing her how wrong she could be.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lanier exited the elevator and took hold of the cable, maneuvering into the cart. The slightly built driver—a woman in air force blue coveralls—moved the cart off its normal route and followed a track into Kirchner's staging and practice area. Lanier had been there only twice before, each time to meet with the admiral. He clung to the cart handgrips and tried to prepare an answer for the questions he knew would be asked.

  Hoffman had hinted in her last communication that the information she had given him had finally reached the Joint Chiefs. That meant Kirchner and Gerhardt had it now.

  Gerhardt's aide met him in the short tunnel before the converted cargo storage area where Kirchner's bore-hole team practiced. He led Lanier into a bare-rock cubicle lined with makeshift file cabinets. One wide vein of nickel-iron had been polished and wire-brushed to serve as a projection screen. Kirchner floated into a harness, viewing readouts on a slate, as Lanier was escorted in and announced. Gerhardt pushed himself along the hall and entered after him.

  Kirchner nodded at them both. The admiral did not appear comfortable.

  "Mr. Lanier—used to be lieutenant commander, did it not?" Gerhardt asked brusquely. He was a squat, trim man with wiry black hair and a broad squashed nose. His dress differed little from that of his internal defense marines: green uniform, black boots with soft rubber soles for traction.

  "Yes, sir." Lanier waited out the pause.

  "You did not inform us that Takahashi is a Soviet operative, Mr. Lanier," Kirchner said.

  "No, I did not."

  "You learned of this almost two weeks ago and did not inform your security team leaders of the breach?"

  Lanier said nothing.

  "You had your reasons," Kirchner offered.

  "Yes."

  "May we be informed?" Gerhardt asked, his tenor voice tightening slightly.

  "It was our intention to give the Russians a little breathing space, to let them see we were backing off. We could not do that if Takahashi was locked up."

  "Which I would have done," Gerhardt said.

  Lanier nodded.

  "You're right. I would have. Do you realize this could put our whole operation in jeopardy? Takahashi could have witnessed our maneuvers here, our preparations for the assault—"

  "No, sir. He's kept to the compound except to send messages." Kirchner, his usual taciturn self, was letting Gerhardt administer the dressing-down.

  "And he's been sending those messages right over our heads, right along with our alignment beams for OTV docking. Wonderful. I am arranging for his arrest now. I want him shipped back to Earth immediately and I want him tried for treason. Christ, Garry." Gerhardt shook his head vigorously, as if to frighten away insects. "Hoffman wanted this?"

  "She implied it."

  "She gave you the name. Any results? I mean, have the Russians decided to negotiate yet?"

  "No, not that I've heard."

  "You're damned right they haven't. They know what we're holding here. You expected them to believe we would just pull back and share it all with them?"

  "I thought we needed a breather. Chance to reassess."

  "Did Hoffman know what information Takahashi was passing along?" Kirchner asked.

  "Yes. Material about the libraries."

  "Jesus, Garry, the clown had access to places Kirchner and I can't go. If you ask me, you've screwed this operation up royally. Is there anything I should know that he knows? Or that your sweet little female student has learned?"

  "Yes, undoubtedly," Lanier said, keeping calm, letting the general blow off steam. "And you know I won't tell you. You'll have to ask your superiors."

  Gerhardt smiled. "Yes. A President—off the record, Garry?—a President who's living in some antebellum dream of democracy, can't even talk about space much less think about it; a Senate composed of his stooges and ass-backwards Republicans grinding out bills on southern reapportionment. . .” He glanced at Kirchner, who shook his head, smiling slightly and looked off at the asteroid rock wall. "Nobody's giving half the attention to the Stone they should—or am I wrong?"

  "You're right and wrong. At this moment, I don't think there's any more important topic to the governments of the world than the Stone. Everybody's speculating. The Russians are scared shitless we'll have a technological drop on them. We already do, but the Stone cinches it, doesn't it?"

  "What are Kirchner and I doing up here, Garry? Why aren't we kept informed, like you? The Stone's security relies on the Captain and me, but those bastards have pulled curtains around us. We can't get into the libraries, can't see documents. . . . I don't understand. . . some of the weirdest things I've been hearing. It's going to drive me nuts. Isn't it time we cooperate with each other?"

  "They have their reasons," Lanier said.

  "I've watched you, Garry. You've gone downhill the past year. I don't want to know your secrets for my health's sake. What in hell have we got here?"

  Lanier pulled himself into a second harness and gripped the straps. "What are your orders from Earth, Oliver?"

  "I am to prepare for imminent assault on the Stone and for the possibility of nuclear confrontation on Earth."

  "Can the Russians take the Stone?"

  "If they put everything they have in space against us, yes," Kirchner said.

  "Do you think they will?"

  "Yes," Kirchner said. "How, I don't know. But we're thinking day and night trying to second-guess. On our next close approach, they'll use little skirmishes on Earth—at sea and in Europe—to distract attention from the Stone. They'll come at us and try to take it from us. Or they'll try the Stone first. I don't know."

  "Can they succeed?"

  Gerhardt raised his hand to interrupt. "Will you level with me on what we're facing, Garry? And let me lock the bastard away?"

  Takahashi had probably served his usefulness.

  "Yes," Lanier said. "Get him off the Stone as soon as you can. Let the State Department take care of him once he reaches Florida."

  "You'll let us into the libraries?" Gerhardt asked.

  "No. They're closed. I'll tell you what you need to know."

  "Then I'll answer your question," Kirchner said. "The Russians can succeed. They can take us over. If they put everything they have into it, we can't really stop them short of sealing off the bore hole, and we can't do that without sealing ourselves in. We've been ordered not to do that."

  "Of course," Lanier said. That would have ended all doubts for the Russians.

  "Good talking with you, Garry," Gerhardt said sharply. "Now, let's get busy and move those sons of bitches off the Stone."

  "Only Takahashi. Don't touch the Russian team."

  "God, no," Gerhardt said. "We won't do that until it's too damned late for anyone to be sensitive."

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Within the belly of the ocean-launched heavy-lift cargo vehicle, battalion commander Colonel Pavel Mirsky listened to the technicians of Orbital Sentry Platform Three refueling the tanks surrounding and below the cramped aft compartment, preparing them for the next step of the journey.

  Mirsky had learned to enjoy weightlessness; it reminded him of skydiving. He had spent so much time falling from airplanes (and floating in the bellies of falling airplanes) in Mongolia and near Tyuratam—and experiencing the real thing during his training in orbit—that weightlessness seemed only natural.

  The same could not be said for many of his men. Fully a third were in the throes of desperate space sickness. The three tight, stuffy compartments, stacked atop one another along the heavy-lifter's centerline, had not been designed for comfort. The orange bulkheads
and dark green quilted pads snapped over most surfaces did little to make anyone feel secure.

  The troops had already spent twenty hours in confinement. In that time they had been subjected to the stress of lift-off and now weightlessness. The motion sickness medicines had turned out to be long past their shelf life, pharmaceutical antiques in plastic bottles.

  Mirsky took such things in stride and offered what support to his men that he could.

  "What do you think of history now, eh, Viktor?" he asked his deputy commander, Major Viktor Garabedian.

  "Fuck history," Garabedian said, waving his hand listlessly. "Shoot me now and get it over with."

  "You'll be fine."

  "Fuck health."

  "Drink some water. Yes, and fuck it, too, if you wish." They hung in their slings in the forward compartment, surrounded by the smells of sickness and tension and the sounds of men trying to be quiet, lying in their slings, some eating out of ration pouches and tubes, most not.

  When they had launched out of the Indian Ocean, just over the southern extremity of the Carpenter Ridge, they had used a slot scheduled for resupply of a near-earth Sentry platform. They were the fourth of seven heavy-lifters, one launched from the Moon. The seven bore the code names Zil, Chaika, Zhiguli, Volga, Rolls-Royce, Chevy and Cadillac. Three of the heavy-lifters, including Volga, their own, carried generals—code-named Zev, Lev, and Nev, after a popular comedy dance troupe. Six of the ships carried two hundred men and the small arms and contingency supplies they would need if they succeeded in the first part of their mission. The seventh—Zhiguli—carried heavy artillery, extra supplies and fifty technicians.

  If they did not succeed, there would be no need for more supplies. If they did, they would be able to live for years without support from Earth or Moon. So the tacticians had claimed, based on their intelligence.

  Mirsky wondered about details that had not been included in his briefings. The method of entry seemed logical enough; there was only one way in, and one way out, both the same. The heavy-lifters were masked, supposedly difficult to detect—great dark bloated cones topped by three blisters containing the cockpit and weapons. Leading surfaces of the vehicles were armored beneath their disposable heat-diffusing panels. The armor had been covered with reflective anti-laser shields. How much that would help them as they entered the very throat of the beast—best not to think about that.