Solstice

by David Hewson

  'So,' Phyllis asked, 'how is the world going to end? I've always been a little curious about that one.'

  'Fire,' the man said plaintively. 'Don't you know anything?'

  Carney wished for one brief, sweet moment he'd lived in the days when you got to kick people from time to time. 'Okay. You're out of here — now.'

  'No!' He was almost in tears again. 'You got to believe me!'

  'Why?' the cop yelled. 'Why the fuck do I have to believe you any more than I have to believe all the other loons who wander in here because they've got nothing better to do?'

  'Because it's true.'

  'Hey,' Phyllis interrupted. 'Look at it from our point of view. You come in here. You won't give us your name. You won't do anything except sit there telling us the world's going to end. And you won't go. We can get you some help. We can call someone if you like.'

  . 'Help?' He shook his head. 'You can help me? If you knew how dumb that idea was…'

  Carney rapped softly on the table with his knuckles. 'Time's up, pal. We got better ways of occupying ourselves.'

  'What's left of it.'

  'Yeah. Anyway, the short of it is you're out of here. Now, do you want to walk? Or do you want to be carried? Your choice.'

  'All I want is for you to listen.'

  'Sorry,' Phyllis Simpson said, and touched his arm. He really was going to burst into tears, she thought. It might be best to get in the Samaritans.

  'You go tell your people I know about Sundog,' the man said, head bowed. 'You tell them that and see if they want to speak to me.'

  Phyllis took her hand off the man's arm and looked at Carney. Then she pushed over the closed folder in front of her and watched as he opened it and read the single sheet of paper there, with the Bureau seal on the top.

  'This been in the papers? On the Net?' he asked her.

  'No, sir.'

  'Right.' He bent down, tried to get into the guy's line of vision, which seemed to be pitched directly at the tabletop. 'Hey. Cheer up. You just won something. You got my attention.'

  'I have? You do surprise me. Tick-tock.'

  'What?'

  'Time just ticking away.'

  'Right. So this Sundog thing. What do you mean by that?'

  'Ask your bosses. They know.'

  'It's a start, I guess,' Carney said, then pushed the piece of paper over the table. 'You can read that if you want. It's an alert from the FBI. Asks us to pick up people going around making unusual predictions of the end of the world — great request to us, I'm sure. We'd fill every cell we've got. And it gives us some clues as to what turns just your average Joe crazy into someone they'd like to speak with. That word 'Sundog' is one of them. Congratulations. You won. We got local Bureau guys here. I'll call, but if you want my opinion, they'll bring people in for this. It seems pretty important to them. So you probably just got yourself a couple of days in custody.'

  The man stared at the piece of paper, blinking, and said, 'You got another cigarette?'

  'No. Or rather, yes. But you're not having it. No point now, is there?'

  'As a favour?'

  Carney looked at the man. The room stank from his sweat. 'Jesus, I don't believe this,' he said, and threw another Marlboro over the desk, then watched the man's hands while he lit it. 'Make that call, Sergeant.'

  He was almost choking on the cigarette. 'Why are you doing that?' Carney wanted to know. 'Hell, I don't think you even smoke.'

  'Lot of things to fit in.'

  'This being the end of the world and all that?'

  'Sort of.'

  'Sir,' Phyllis asked, 'who exactly do you want me to speak to?'

  'Never mind. I'll do it. I need a break from this.'

  'So,' the man said, half-choking on the cigarette, then stubbing it unfinished into a grubby tin ashtray, 'you really are going to call the FBI?'

  'You heard, chum,' Carney replied.

  'Good. Then that's me done. Some go early, she said. The best are always the first to go.'

  Tears started to roll down his cheeks. Underneath the table, out of view, his hand was shaking as it came out of his jeans with a ball of silver foil.

  'Who said that?' Phyllis asked.

  'Nemesis,' he mumbled. 'Look it up in a book. She's the one who gets you for hubris, but I guess you dumb people think that's something you pick up in a Greek deli.'

  Carney looked at Phyllis Simpson and shrugged his shoulders. 'I'm forgetting you said that, friend, I'm just saying to myself: This guy knew the magic word.'

  The man put his hand back on the table, unrolled the silver foil, took a handful of pills out of it, popped them into his mouth, closed his eyes, and started to chew and swallow, chew and swallow. All so quickly that there was nothing they could do to stop him.

  Phyllis Simpson watched him and started to curse herself. 'What's that?'

  'Digoxin,' the man mumbled, his mouth full of white, mangled pills. 'You believe those Heaven's Gate guys used barbiturates? Now, they really were crazy.'

  She darted a worried glance at Carney.

  'Shit,' the cop said, got up, walked around the table, took the man by the neck, and yelled, 'Cough those fucking things up now.'

  He started choking. Carney shoved his fingers down his gaping throat, waited to hear him gag, then screamed, pulled his hand out. 'Fucking bit me! Simpson. Get the paramedics in here. What did he call that stuff?'

  'Digoxin,' she said, reaching for the phone.

  He swung the guy around in the swivel chair, stared him in the eye, and said, 'Listen. Either you cough those things up now or I hold you upside down until you spit them out. Now, what's it going to be?'

  The man wasn't crying any more. 'Fucking cops,' he said, his face going red, voice slurred, breathing laboured. 'Can't you even let a man die with dignity?'

  'No,' Carney yelled, then picked him up under the arms, let him stand for a moment, and punched him hard in the stomach. The man creased over onto the table, gasping, coughing, retching. 'Spit those fuckers up. Where the hell are those paramedics, Simpson? They on coffee break or something?'

  'Don't try to make him throw up. It's not the right thing to do. I did poisons in training. Digoxin is digitalis. We can't deal with this, Mike. He needs medical help.'

  The man slumped back onto the table, groaning. Phyllis Simpson walked over, felt his forehead, looked into his eyes. 'Can you see okay?'

  The man shook his head. A thin dribble of opaque yellow vomit trickled out of the corner of his mouth. He yelped, then farted. The room filled with an obnoxious smell.

  'How much did you take? Come on, now. It's not too late.' Simpson tried to ignore the stink. He was shaking, and Phyllis had an idea it was halfway between an involuntary spasm and laughter.

  'Enough,' the man said, then rolled out of the chair onto the floor, mouth open, starting to choke on the stream of puke that kept coming out from inside him. His eyes were popping out of his head. His body was going into convulsions.

  'What they tell you about this?' Carney asked. 'In training?'

  The man puked a real bellyful onto the floor. Shit stains ran down the seat of his pale chinos.

  'You can pick these things up anywhere. They use them to strengthen the contractions of the heart. Too much and the system just goes haywire.' The convulsions were getting worse, she thought. She let go and he twitched a whole revolution across the floor, spraying bile everywhere.

  'Is it bad?'

  She looked at him. 'What do you think? From what I recall, they said that anyone who survived the first twenty-four hours would probably pull through.'

  A noise was coming out of his mouth, not quite human. It sounded like an old door with rusty hinges, a low, slow exhalation of sound, dying away into nothing. Then he twitched, a sudden spasm that went the length of the body, pulled his hands up into a rigid, rabbit like pose underneath his chin, opened his mouth wide, face white and waxy, eyes popping, and went still.

  Phyllis Simpson turned away and stared at the wall.
/>
  'Well,' said Carney's voice behind her, 'I think he just missed that one by — oh — twenty-three hours and fifty-eight minutes.'

  The door opened with a bang and two paramedics walked in, beaming. 'Phyllis!' the first one said. 'And my favourite lieutenant. Now, you people been beating up on the good people of Vegas again or wha-'

  They stared at the body on the floor and fell silent.

  CHAPTER 27

  Tactics

  La Finca, 0829 UTC

  Michael Lieberman sat on the steps at the front of the mansion, watching a handful of soldiers mill around the helipad. From this distance, it was hard to see what kind of troops these were — American or Spanish. When you put people inside khaki and gave them a gun, they all looked much the same. On the flat parched grass of the clifftop two helicopters sat side by side, the rotors on the nearest turning slowly in a leisurely windup sequence. He winced. Aeroplanes he could handle. Helicopters, with their noise and constant vibration, always seemed somehow unnatural. These were his least favourite form of transportation.

  Ellis Bevan came and stood by him. He was wearing a grey shirt and slacks of an identical colour. The best uniform he could muster, Lieberman thought. 'Where are they going?'

  'The mountain,' Bevan said, his flat, expressionless face already soaked in sweat. The day had developed with some fierce, burning vengeance in its belly. This was the hottest yet. It was impossible to escape the ferocity of the sun anywhere, even in the close, damp, humid dark of the mansion. 'If anywhere is going to come under attack, it's there.'

  He looked Bevan in the eye. 'You're sure?'

  'Oh yes. That's where the dome is. And close by we have another control centre too. It duplicates what we have here to some extent, and handles all the telecom traffic with the satellite. They could reduce this place to rubble and we'd still be operational. If they are going to hit somewhere, it's on the peak.'

  'Hope you're right this time.'

  Bevan tut-tutted quietly to himself. It was a small, infuriating gesture and succeeded in making Lieberman feel immature. 'You're still mad at the way we lured you here?'

  'I don't like being lied to.'

  'If we'd told you the truth, would you have come?'

  'No.'

  'So you get my point? Also…' Bevan fell into silence, watched one of the helicopters manoeuvring into the sky.

  'Also what?'

  'You knew this woman. Maybe you had some involvement too. We couldn't rule that out.'

  'Jesus,' he grunted. 'It's nice to have your trust, Ellis.'

  'You're bad at seeing other people's points of view, Lieberman. It makes it hard for you to work alongside others.'

  'Thanks for the analysis. I wish it was original. So, speaking of teamwork. These guys with the guns, they're answerable to you now? My, your empire grows and grows.'

  'It's a security issue. Do you think I should leave this to Schulz?'

  Lieberman laughed. It was a good answer. 'No, of course not. But this is a waste of time. Charley's too smart to start lobbing missiles or something at us.'

  'You're probably right,' Bevan said, watching the helicopter disappear along the coastline, out over the iridescent blue sea. 'That doesn't mean we just sit here doing nothing. Speaking of which…'

  'Yeah, yeah… I know. I was just taking a break from looking at those damn screens. When I designed that thing we used models and paper and stuff. Not so much in the way of computers. It all looks so different from what I remember.'

  Bevan eyed him and nodded. It might even have been a gesture of sympathy. 'This idea of crippling Sundog through the Shuttle isn't going to happen, is it?'

  He didn't like the note of pessimism in the man's voice. 'I'm working on it. You people have asked me to disarm some little scorpion you've invented, one that can bite me the moment it knows I'm there, and, guess what, I don't even get allowed to touch it. If it was easy, I wouldn't be here, now, would I?'

  Bevan let his dead blue eyes wander over the desiccated corn fields. 'I wouldn't argue with that. We need all the hands we can get right now. And if it means anything, I'm glad you're one of them.'

  'Thanks,' he said, and meant it.

  'And one more thing. If people liked me here, I probably wouldn't be doing my job. Bear that in mind. You think we should get back to work now?'

  Lieberman shrugged, got up, and followed Bevan into the big barn. The control room was only half-manned. Maybe the rest were up on the mountain. To his astonishment Annie Sinclair was seated at a terminal next to Irwin Schulz, who was almost beaming at her through his thick glasses.

  'Annie?' Lieberman asked. 'Are they running the new Barbie CD-ROM on these things now or something?'

  Her eyes flashed at him, wide open, astonished. Offended. 'I hate Barbie. How can you even say that?'

  He threw up his hands. 'I believe you, I believe you. But what is this? Where's your mom? And why are you making out like a geek? Do you want to turn into Irwin or something?'

  'Annie's no slouch at Unix,' Schulz said, his eyes not leaving the screen. 'Don't knock it. You never know when it might come in useful. More than a Barbie CD-ROM anyway.'

  'So,' the girl asked, 'if I want to make it to super-user I need to have another password, one way or another?'

  'Yeah. But that's enough for now.'

  'Okay.' In a flash of keystrokes, she logged off the system, turned to them, and said very seriously, 'Mom's in the briefing room, Michael, waiting for you. I'm going to have some breakfast now, if you don't mind.'

  He watched the little figure go out the door into the sunlight and shook his head. 'So what's wrong with the Barbie CD-ROM? Will someone tell me?'

  'Context,' Schulz muttered. 'That's all. Annie has picked up a lot. She knows enough to log on, find files, even get onto the network. And you want her to talk Barbie?'

  'Great, another geek in the making.'

  'Bull. It's not that hard. Most kids can use a PC these days. What's the big deal?'

  'I don't know. All I know is there is one.'

  'Luddite,' Schulz said, half-laughing. Lieberman followed him into the briefing room, noting the presence of Bennett, Mo, and a couple of silent-looking types he guessed were pals of Bevan's.

  'Michael,' Bennett said, smiling, 'we're so glad you changed your mind.'

  'Yeah.'

  Mo just looked at him. He didn't like the expression on her face. She seemed scared. He sat down and watched Bevan go to the whiteboard and scrawl the single word Security on it.

  'We all know what's happened in Lone Wolf and Kyoto over the last twelve hours,' Bevan said. 'And you don't need a crystal ball to guess that the dome here is next on the list for these people. I want you to know that we will stop them. And I want you to understand what these security measures mean for you and the people on your teams. The Sundog people know each other. You haven't met Captain Suarez, who is our liaison officer from the Spanish military…'

  One of the seated soldiers nodded at them. He was young, about thirty, Lieberman guessed, thin, with a slender dark moustache on a nice-looking tanned face.

  'And John Capstick here is US military liaison for the duration.'

  The other one smiled. Blond crewcut, bright sparkling eyes, a physique out of a football team. 'Lady,' Capstick said, smiling at Mo, 'gentlemen.'

  'Between them,' Bevan continued, 'our two friends have upward of sixty armed men, mainly on the peak, which is where we perceive the principal threat to be. We have emergency orders which will allow all officers to arrest anyone they find in the restricted area, and shoot if they don't cooperate. And we have an air exclusion zone covering the entire western mountain line of the island. These crazies will not get through.'

  'You bet,' Capstick said, grinning.

  Lieberman felt faint at the man's optimism: He really did think this was one cushy number. 'So now we know how Charley won't try to wipe us out. Is someone going to tell me a few ways she will?'

  'Michael,' Schulz said softly, 'we hav
e to take these precautions. I know it's unlikely, but you have to see why we can't ignore them.'

  'Sure. But you know she won't come at us like this. Why the hell would she need to when she's got your neat little magnifying glass in her hand?'

  'True,' Bennett said. 'But we're taking precautions against that too.'

  'She didn't use Sundog to take out Kyoto,' Bevan said. 'There's a lesson for us there.'

  'Yeah. The lesson being that was then and this is now. Maybe she thought there wasn't enough solar activity to let her damage Kyoto when she wanted to hit it. But take a look at the latest projections. Pretty soon everyone will understand this is a global event. There's a whacking great beauty spot about to appear on the face of the sun. When she has that in her grasp, who knows what she can do?'

  'Whatever it is,' Bennett said, 'it's predictable. We may not know what the precise mix of radiation will be, but we can protect against it. When this meeting is over we'll start to put a lead covering over the roof of the control block. That should make it safe for us.'

  'Should?'

  'Michael,' Schulz said, 'we don't say this is perfect, we're saying it's as good as we're going to get.'

  'Right. So all we need is for me to figure some way to disarm Sundog, without even touching the damn thing. Or get the system back on-line and keep our computers running through this storm that Charley's helping along the way. That's all. These soldiers here — you're just putting those guys out there to fry.'

  'We know the risks,' Capstick said.

  'You do? Wow, well, that's more than I do. And what about you, Bennett? You're just about the world authority on this stuff. Do you know what these poor suckers are risking by standing out there under the sun like that? A lot more than some missile up the ass is my guess.'

  'Michael…' It was Mo this time.

  'Hear me out. I don't know if I can work some magic with the Shuttle. I do know we have to cover the basics. Mo, a systems analyst of all people should know what we need to do in this situation. We need to secure what we have. We need to know that something that gets knocked out can be replaced or revived one minute later. How the hell do you communicate with the control centre up there and the dome anyway?'