Solstice

by David Hewson

  'Well, that has made up my mind,' Clarke said. 'HRT it is. You put soldiers in the dark and pretty soon everybody starts winding up dead. That's what we teach them to do.'

  'Sir?'

  Helen Wagner, to Clarke's amazement, was actually tapping her watch. He couldn't help smiling. 'It's okay. This isn't TWA. They don't go without you, I promise.'

  'All the same…'

  'One more question, Helen. We're assuming we do find their base. How much confidence do you have in this imaging idea?'

  She took a deep breath and replied, 'I'm confident we can track down potential objects. And that, given time, we could track down the dome. It's all a question of time. We don't know how many ordinary, similar objects will show up. We have to eliminate them first. Larry Wolfit knows this field better than anyone. It's not our only avenue either. We have people on the ground too. That part of the world is big and empty but it's still hard to start a commune and build something like that without someone noticing.'

  'I hope you're right.'

  'I hope so too,' she said, thinking how Clarke had grown in stature over the last day and a half. She recalled the way Levine and Fogerty had talked when they left the White House at that first meeting. There were plenty of people who expected Clarke to fail, and they had underestimated this man, enormously. In a way, she guessed, he was doing a better job than Rollinson could. As a former military man, he knew when the bull was being ladled out, and when to cut to the quick. And though the strain was there, he rarely let it show.

  'You go catch that plane.'

  'Sir,' she said, and took the hint, reached over, switched off the phone. If you thought about things too hard, Belinda Churton sometimes said, you muddied the waters, made it all murkier than it really was. The thought that came into her head when she looked at Tim Clarke's tired, conscientious face was a grim one: I can't do this. I don't have the experience, the will, or the courage.

  And she knew what Belinda would have said right then too: If that was the case, honey, why the hell do you think I chose you?

  'Right,' she said, and picked up the bag, walked out into the hall, headed for the door. Martha was dusting some furniture. She stopped, smiled, and said, 'You going for long?'

  'I don't know. Business.'

  'Oh, wow, business, forget I ever asked, don't want those men in long black cars around my house, no, sir…'

  The words drifted out onto the dust in the living room, unanswered. In this soulless, antiseptic room, Helen felt too aware of her solitary existence. It seemed as if the only footprints on the pale, perfect carpet were her own and Martha's.

  'I'm sorry, honey. It's serious, isn't it?'

  'I have to go.'

  'This is about this sun thing, isn't it? Some situation. You know, if I hadn't been able to walk here and get back home in daylight I couldn't have come today. It scares me. Scares everyone, not that they'd let on. I got Frank sitting at home, putting up his feet, saying this is just some free vacation time, courtesy of the government. But it's not that now, is it? You know that. I know that. Even that dumb-ass knows that. People are frightened by all this. It's like the ground suddenly starts moving under your feet after all these years of staying solid. You go sort that nonsense out, huh?'

  'I'll do my best,' she said softly, walked over and kissed Martha on the cheek. 'Take care of the house while I'm gone. And Frederick too.'

  'Damn cat don't need taking care of. Thinks he owns most of Washington, that creature does.'

  'I'm going, Martha.'

  'Am I stopping you?'

  Helen Wagner opened the door. Immediately the phone started ringing in the hall. 'Damn.'

  'Hell. You answer that phone. I'll take that stuff of yours out to your car, wait there to see you off.'

  Helen handed the bag over, watched Martha walk purposefully out the door, then picked up the phone.

  'Wagner?' Levine sounded angry.

  'Sir, I'm sorry-'

  'You're sorry. We're supposed to be cleared out of here in three minutes' time.'

  Her mind wandered; she looked outside. Martha was walking down the path, carrying the small green bag, her lips pursed, whistling. The sound came faintly to Helen through a half-open window. The day shimmered in a miasma. So much heat, so much lassitude in the hot, meagre air. A battered Toyota pickup was parked next to her Ford. The Toyota looked out of place, as if it had just come off a farm truck somewhere.

  'I had a call from La Finca,' she said. 'Lieberman is still missing. We're going to have to re-create the solar activity projections without him and pray we don't need any modifications to the Shuttle gear.'

  Levine was mad. 'Fifty damn people dead there, and the President kicking my ass all over the Pentagon. Wonderful.'

  There was no one in the van. She looked at the nearby houses. No one mowing the lawns, tidying the flower beds. Something stirred in her memory.

  'Those imaging people got us anything to go on yet?' Levine bellowed. 'I mean, we should be having this conversation on the plane, but I got people to brief right now.'

  'Nothing so far, sir.'

  Martha came to a halt next to her Ford, looked at the sky, pulled a sour face.

  'Well, then, you get the hell down here now and let's get moving. We can talk some more in the air and…'

  There were sacks in the back of the pickup: sacks and sacks and sacks, all full and neatly tied at the neck.

  'Shit!' she yelled, dropping the phone, then ran for the door, stumbled over the coffee table, screaming, words that made no sense, just trying to get Martha's attention. It seemed to take an age to get outside. Her limbs were made of lead. The sun bore down on her like an invisible dead weight. Down the path, yard by yard, Martha with her hand on the door of the car.

  'Martha!'

  Not looking back at the house, the black woman pulled the door handle, opened the rear door, threw the bag in, turned, and smiled at her, puzzled.

  'Run,' Helen screamed. 'Run!'

  Footsteps, someone walking. She felt for her purse. There was a service pistol somewhere inside. She had no idea if she could remember how to use it.

  Martha walked up and said, 'What on earth is the matter with you?'

  And a man in denim overalls strode up to the back of the pickup, pulled at one of the sacks, heaved it off the vehicle, onto the ground, grunting. Something like sand spilled out of the mouth.

  'Who the hell is he?' she panted.

  Martha shrugged. 'Some guy doing some building work on the house next door. If you spent a little more time at home you'd get to notice things like that, young woman.'

  'Right.' And this picture in her head — of Belinda Churton, blown to pieces — just refused to go away.

  'Gimme the keys,' Martha said. 'One minute to lock up, make sure that cat of yours is happy, and I'll drive you over to the airport. You look like you could use some thinking time on the way.'

  'Thanks,' Helen said, climbing into the passenger seat. And prayed she could stop shaking by the time she reached the plane.

  CHAPTER 35

  Phaeton

  Pollensa, 1649 UTC

  In front of them a line of poplars stirred gently in the tenuous evening breeze, making a sound like distant running water. The day was dying slowly in a wash of ochre, and the small town seemed deserted. With Bob Davis leading the way, they walked over the tiny Roman bridge and sat down in the battered plastic chairs parked outside the bar.

  'Beer,' Lieberman said, pulling out the videophone, trying to clear his head. They'd walked for miles through heat that defied imagination, a fierce, burning wall of air that was too thin, too hot to breathe. He punched away at the plastic, missing the buttons he was aiming for, and announced, 'If this damn thing still doesn't work, I'm going to stamp on it here and now.'

  The bartender came out of the deserted, dark interior. Mo chattered Spanish at him. He looked miserable.

  'I hope your gadget works,' she said when he went back inside. 'He says the phone's down.'
/>
  'They heard the explosion?' the pilot asked.

  She wasn't looking at Davis when she spoke. 'They heard. He says people are scared, Michael. There's talk on the radio about some kind of international crisis, and he doesn't understand it.'

  'Join the club.' Lieberman's head hurt. He could feel the dried blood pulling at his scalp. 'Correction. I have had the last piece of scaredness scared right out of me. I am numb. And if that bartender knows his job, I'm about to get even number still.'

  Three San Miguels and a Coke arrived at the table. He looked at Annie. She seemed a million miles away. Exhausted, he guessed. It had been a long, slow climb down from the mountain, trying to catch the attention of the occasional passing helicopter, trying to make the videophone come to life. He downed the beer almost in one swallow, ordered another, then turned on the phone. 'Come on, Irwin. Just this once.'

  Grey static on the screen, audio scurf out of the speaker.

  'Come on…' The LCD found some colour, a picture came together out of dots. Schulz stared back at him from the screen, goggle-eyed.

  'Jesus Christ, Michael. We thought you were dead.'

  'Not quite. Four of us here: me, Mo, Annie, and Top Gun Mark Two. Please send someone to get us. In a nice, earthbound vehicle, nothing with rotor blades.'

  'Sure. Where are you? Things are happening. You okay?'

  He looked at Mo.

  'By the Roman bridge in town. Outside the bar,' she said.

  'You hear that?'

  'Yeah. That's a long walk from the mountain.'

  'You're telling me. And my head hurts. I guess you must have been too busy to look for us that hard.'

  Schulz seemed offended. 'Not so. We had guys out there. Charley let off one big bang. We're only just managing to assess what's left.'

  'And?'

  Schulz looked grim. 'Let's put it this way. I'm awfully glad NASA has run with that sunshade idea of yours. They're on countdown to launch right now. I'll run a link through to you. We're pretty much out of it as far as talking to Sundog's concerned. Whatever they had up there took out the command centre.'

  Lieberman sighed and tried to replay the picture in his mind: the tongue of flame leaping out from underneath the promontory, the long, low concrete building starting to lose its form. And people running everywhere.

  'Many hurt?'

  'Yeah.' Schulz nodded. 'But it could have been a lot worse. And you guys got away. You don't know how good that makes me feel. Personally and professionally. Those sunshades could save us, Michael. And they have other leads back home too. They think they may have an idea where Charley is running this little show from.'

  'Thank God for that. Deserves a drink or two.'

  'Don't even think of it. We've got work for you here. Arcadia's about to get on her way. I'll patch through the live feed. Helen will be delighted to hear you're going to be around to hold their hands. She's en route to Vegas right now.'

  Vegas? Lieberman couldn't work out why that made him feel uncomfortable. 'Okay. Just send us the limo.' He switched the phone off, wondered where the beer had gone, and looked around to order another.

  'Please don't,' Mo said, putting her hand over the glass. A nice little feminine gesture, he thought. One he'd seen more than once in this world. This was a long day, Lieberman thought. So much traffic through his brain.

  The pilot was swirling around the dregs in his glass. 'You think he could be right? If they get back that other dome, we could do something with it? Even if the Shuttle idea doesn't work?'

  'Maybe. If, if, if…' He looked at the videophone. The screen was blank. Schulz still hadn't switched through the live image from the Cape, and he'd no idea how long it was to the launch. Somehow he didn't want to know. That image from almost fifteen years ago still lived in his head: Challenger dying in a giant shower of flame. He stared back over the road, toward the valley that led to La Finca. It was a pretty spot, low orchards, a few smart villas that bespoke money. But on this side of the track it was all local: cheap tapas, terraced houses, old, beaten-up cars. There should have been kids playing soccer in the street. There should have been people.

  'What a mess we've made of this,' he said. Swifts darted overhead, their chattering coming back in soft echoes from the stone walls.

  'Is that of anything in particular?' the pilot asked.

  'Everything in particular.'

  Inside, in the dark interior, there was bottle upon bottle lined up against the bar. Brandy and vodka, gin and all manner of local stuff. A man could have a good time here, he thought. A man could bring the curtain down in style, talking to the sun god all the while.

  And in the end, he thought, there really was just the one thing to decide: which sun god you happened to be addressing, which one was looking down on you from the burning sky and wondering who put these bugs on the face of the earth.

  There were so many to fit the bill. Apollo and Hyperion, Helios and Ra, Mithras and Hiruko. Every race that ever lived seemed, at some stage of its mayfly existence, to have come up with its own particular solar deity. The sky must have been full of them, arguing over who got there first.

  And, Lieberman thought, his gut going cold because this stirred some long-dead memory he didn't want to face, on a mere mortal scale there was Phaeton too. He couldn't remember why it took so long for that corpse to rise up from the dry and dusty dregs of his memory. There had been a time (when Charley was bright and healthy and optimistic and the world seemed young) this name ran through his head almost every day.

  Poor, stupid, mortal Phaeton, son of Apollo and some passing nymph. Star-crossed Phaeton, who cornered his dumb, adoring dad and wheedled out a promise that, just this once, he could drive the chariot of the sun across the sky and keep the universe in balance. There was something so human in this nagging request. Hey, Dad, can I borrow the Jaguar? Aw, come on.

  And something human in Apollo too, in letting the kid go, even though he knew this was fated. The horses and his impetuosity would betray him, the course would be wrong, the earth would catch fire, and, with a thunderbolt from Jupiter, Phaeton would, to use Annie's apt expression, be toast. Phaeton, who was warned not to fly too high or too low, to steer the middle path, to do as he was told, to ignore the basic rule of being human: I screw up, therefore I am. Hey, we've got to make progress somehow.

  There were those who thought the myth stemmed from some real event, like a meteor, some cataclysm from the sky. The legend said that the Libyan desert was created when Phaeton crashed to earth, that the scorching heat of this encounter forced up the blood of the Ethiopians and made their skin pitch-black. The Euphrates and the Ganges boiled. The poles were on fire. It was only when the earth herself, Gaia, daughter of Chaos, a family Lieberman felt he was starting to know well, spoke to Jupiter and called in a few favours that someone sent out the celestial Uzi and delivered a touch of holy retribution.

  This was crazy. You didn't need to rationalize a line. Phaeton was all of us. This foolish, ambitious fragment of the universe — child of the sun, child of the earth — was each of us, the very essence of humanity, all the stupidity, all the vanity, and that bright, sparking thing called ambition, that curiosity, that urge for the truth.

  We were Phaeton all along, but the toys got bigger, and with them the stakes. Every culture had its sun god, and every one its cautionary tale too. Of the mortal who flew too close to the fire and paid with everything he had. And the funeral oratory that followed, the one that said: Dumb kid, hapless kid, stupid kid. But you got to hand it to him. The moron was a trier.

  It lived inside every one of us. It was what made Rocky keep getting in the ring, remake after remake. It was what made you think you could shoot some souped-up chunk of metal into space and steal a little piece of that holy flame, make it all your own.

  Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket.

  Oh yeah? Bigger toys, bigger stakes, with the same dumb mammal flailing through the ancient ceremony. This was being human, having some insidi
ous, endemic thing that lived inside your soul and never let you rest. The world was just some giant room filled with buttons marked 'Don't Press', all manner of hell and damnation sitting on the other side, and we couldn't even hear the dybbuks jabbering beyond the door. Bring on the celestial idiots. Send in the clowns. And leave the earth to clean up the mess.

  'What are you thinking?' Annie asked. He was so lost in this reverie, the question seemed to come out of the sky.

  'I was thinking of an old story I used to read when I was a kid. About this dumb little brat called Phaeton, who thought he was bigger and stronger than he really was. And found out the hard way what happens when you mess with things you don't understand.'

  Mo nodded at the ground. 'I remember that story.'

  'Shame a few more people didn't.'

  'You don't mean that, Michael.'

  'No?'

  'No. You're as much a part of this as any of them.'

  'Bullshit.' He hardly had enough energy to be angry. The sun seemed to have stolen it from his body during the long, exhausting day.

  She was adamant. 'You don't think we should just sit in dark corners, never finding out about the world. You're saying that what that myth means is that we're small, we're powerless, we're insignificant, and we should know our place in the order of things? I don't think so and you don't think so. That's what Charley thinks and she's wrong.'

  He was silent. She was right.

  'And one more thing. You forgot the real point of that story.'

  'Being?'

  'The love that Zeus felt for Phaeton all along, even when he went bad. A human love. One that surprised, maybe even alarmed him. To be weak and mortal and still believe…'

  'Well, that's gods for you. Stroke them with a little humanity and see where they wind up. Extinct.'

  She cast him a sour look, reached over, and stole the remains of his beer. 'You really do sound like those people sometimes. And that isn't you.'