Solstice

by David Hewson

  Eve. Just the thought of the name filled her with joy. This was a rebirth that didn't even need Adam. By the time of the zenith, Charley would be the only one left on the farm. The danger of the group remaining intact was too great to contemplate. There would be some kind of revenge, and it was inevitable that, at some stage, the authorities would find their lair. If that was soon, she would be occupying it alone, with her drugs and her needles, safe in the knowledge of what she had achieved. And the rest of them could, when the time came, spread the word, about Gaia, about the need to nurture the precious planet, preserve it for everything that lived, not just the human species. Not that the world needed it. Charley had faith in her god. What would pass, would pass.

  The team had departed according to the roster Katayama had drawn up. There were only eight of them left now, with four more climbing quietly into a car outside. This was a kind of death, she thought. Their absence stole some degree of life from her. Like a string vibrating in sympathy, her own private poison had risen on cue. She could no longer feel her lower limbs. Her hands shook from time to time, and there was a distinct neural tic down the left side of her face, like some tiny stroke.

  This was not the work of a god in the conventional, human sense. Not an entity as such at all. Yet Charley Pascal felt sure that her own journey into the long, dark, thoughtless sleep ahead would be timed to perfection. A few hours after the zenith, when it would finally be safe to allow the cycle of the satellite to carry on its work, she could close her eyes, listen to this system dying into nothingness around her, and then let perpetual night engulf her.

  Katayama asked, 'What happens if we lose the feed?'

  The flat, crass question made her jump, almost annoyed her. 'We won't lose the feed.'

  He stopped messing with his hands, placed them flat on the plain yellow pine of the desk. 'But what if? They got the Shuttle damn close to us. We were lucky to get away with that.'

  'Luck had nothing to do with it,' she said coldly. 'You still don't understand, do you?'

  'I understand you're pushing this right to the end, Charley. We could just program the thing now, destroy the uplink, and then have done with it. There'd be nothing they could do, even if they found us.'

  'They won't find us in time. How could they?'

  His eyes never really opened, she thought. There was something so masculine in this.

  'They're not smart enough, Joe.'

  'Maybe not,' he grunted. 'All the same, it's a question that's worth asking. Does the risk balance out the reward? Does what we get by waiting really make it worthwhile?'

  Charley Pascal sighed. It had been a long time since anyone had truly questioned her authority, and now that it had happened, she felt affronted. 'That's my call, Joe. You're important to us. What you've done, sorting out the equipment, sorting out our security, that's vital. But you're not an astronomer or a physicist. And I am. So believe me when I say we have to do it like this.'

  'Even with the risk they might get here first?'

  'Sundog isn't bulletproof,' she replied testily. 'We can wind it up just so much and after that it breaks. Sometime after the zenith, the amount of pure energy that we'll be pushing through that system defies analysis. Even I'd be hard-pressed to put a figure on that. We've got to use it wisely or the whole thing will blow. To do that I need the best, most recent guess we have on how the storm's changing after the zenith, when we can use it to most effect. And I need to see how it responds when we do open up the gates all the way. I've got to do it like that, Joe. Otherwise we could be sending fireballs into the middle of the Atlantic, or making people sweat in Boston when we might be razing Chicago to the ground.'

  'Yeah,' he said, shifting restlessly in his seat.

  She didn't want an argument just now. 'Look. We've got the best information on the trend of the cycle there is. No one could supply us anything more timely.'

  'I know.' A shadow of a smile. It was as close as Katayama could get, she thought, and realized, with a twinge of guilt, that she was glad this forced, close relationship now had so little time to run. 'I just get impatient.'

  'Men do. And besides, isn't there something else you're forgetting?'

  He stared at her with those heavy-lidded eyes, not understanding.

  'We're not alone in this, Joe. We are part of the engine. We are agents of something bigger. If we weren't here helping the cycle along, somebody would be in our place. We can't lose. It's unthinkable.'

  'Right.'

  Sometimes he could be so impenetrable, so difficult to read. 'I want to see the cycle report,' she said curtly.

  'Okay.' He got up, went behind the wheelchair, pushed her over to the terminal. Eve was sweating over the incoming data. She looked little more than eighteen: a thin, flat-chested kid with long dark hair that kept falling in front of her face as she typed. She wore an i love linux T-shirt and cut-off blue jeans. A scrolling window of text and graphics swam across the screen.

  'In a nutshell,' Charley said.

  'Big,' Eve replied in a flat English accent. 'There was a lull for a while a couple of hours ago, and then it started to build. You can look through the reports. Major seismic events in Asia. A lot of telecom links down too. Confined to the northern hemisphere. There's nothing that seems able to touch anyplace below the equator directly. They'll still get hit by after-effects, of course.'

  'How much of this is us?'

  Eve shook her head. 'Not a lot. I'm putting in some extra background feed, a big broad wash, nothing focused like we did in Vegas. Is that right?'

  Charley nodded. 'I don't want this pushed too hard until we have a real target. We could have done something with Tokyo, I guess, but that could have jeopardized what we have later.'

  Eve looked at her. This was not some game. She wanted to get this right. Everything else seemed unimportant. 'You think we could break Sundog, Charley?'

  'I know we could. The power in the storm is unimaginable. If we use it too quickly, or at the wrong time, it could blow everything. And if the cycle comes up really high, that may not be at the peak. We could be wasting what we have then. Why turn it on New York if there's enough heat there already?'

  Eve glanced down the corridor. 'You still want me to go last?' she said, no emotion in her voice. (Eve had no emotions, Charley thought; this life, for her, was just a passing stream of events.)

  'Joe's last. You go before him.'

  'That means I have to make my own way out there, alone,' Eve said, the long dark hair flicking in front of her eyes.

  'No. None of us is alone. You can't even think that.'

  'No.' Eve's face was blank. Charley watched her reactions and glanced at Katayama. There was no room for changes at this stage.

  'I don't know what I'll do,' Eve said.

  'You'll find out, Eve. Don't worry.'

  'I know..'

  'Eve,' Joe said, that same thin smile on his face, 'this is the only way.'

  'Think of what they would do if they found us here together,' Charley added.

  'And what they'd do to us,' Katayama said. 'In the end, we get to be heroes. In the beginning — '

  'They crucified Jesus,' Charley said, and immediately regretted the analogy. This was a superficial one. They deserved better than that and it seemed to scare the girl.

  'I guess we'd be in big trouble. But watching everybody go — it's as if the fewer of us there are here, the weaker the whole thing feels. I start to ask questions.'

  Charley touched her arm, felt the warm young skin. 'No. We're all one in this. You'll come to feel that, Eve.'

  'I guess so.' She looked so young. Pale complexion, tired eyes.

  'I'm taking a rest now,' Charley said, and signalled for Katayama to push the chair. 'You keep at it. You come and wake me if you need to talk.'

  'Sure.'

  Katayama pushed the wheelchair into the bedroom, lifted her body carefully out onto the bed. She winced, almost felt like screaming. The pain was beginning to work its way into new parts of h
er body, creeping slowly with each minute, running like a gentle, sluggish fire. She pointed out the needle and the morphine on the bedside cabinet and said, 'Watch her, Joe. We can't change things now.'

  'She's scared, Charley. She's just human.'

  'Exactly.' Her face was screwed up with the pain. Then she closed her eyes and tried to dream the sky into her head.

  CHAPTER 51

  Calculation

  La Finca, 0803 UTC

  After they finished talking to the people in Vegas, something went out of the atmosphere of the room. Bevan, much to Lieberman's surprise and near-admiration, had come over, looked Mo in the eye, and said, 'Hey. What's done is done. The big guy's right. Let's just focus on the job.'

  And then the rest of them left the room, leaving Lieberman and Mo to fill it with some vast, empty silence. She broke it. 'Michael..'

  'No,' he said, putting a finger to her lips. 'You don't need to say anything. Really.'

  'I do.' She was dog-tired but there was still some sense of serenity about her. Talking about her pained, fractured past had lanced some wound.

  'Maybe. But not now. We'll have plenty of time when this is over, Mo. If you like. And that's your choice.'

  She came close to him, kissed him gently on the cheek. Then Annie was through the door, watching them silently, not knowing what to make of this.

  'You look bright and sparky,' he said. 'Unlike the rest of us. You got some sleep?'

  'Yes. Mom?'

  Mo was over, stroking her hair. 'What's wrong, Annie?'

  The girl blinked, big wide eyes that said, Scared, scared, scared. Mo held her to her waist, eyes closed, face screwed up in agony again, and Lieberman thought: This is one pretty picture Charley has given the world.

  'Hey,' he said, striding over, some bustle in him he didn't even begin to recognize. 'Will you two snap out of this, please?'

  His arms were around both of them, feeling this warmth there, feeling the comfort of their physical presence. Annie stared up at him, wide-eyed, looking for something.

  He reached down, held her chin. 'This will be okay, kid. Trust me. We can see this through. All three of us.'

  'I heard Irwin talking.' Her voice was soft and damaged. 'They know.'

  Mo groaned.

  'Know what?' he asked. 'That you two got a bum deal from life? Met some weird people along the way? So what, Annie? You didn't do anything. You just found some odd company. Big deal. One day, you two can come to San Francisco with me. If you like. You want weird people? I can show you ones you wouldn't believe.'

  'Michael…' Mo said.

  'It's an invitation. That's all. Think about it at your leisure.'

  Annie stared at him. 'They won't take me away?'

  Lieberman bent down, gazed into her pale, serious face. 'No. Why? And anyway, they wouldn't dare. We'll see this through. The three of us. And when we get out on the other side, I don't know what happens. But it gets better. For all of us. That's a promise.'

  'A promise,' Mo repeated, her head buried deep in his shoulder, so deep he couldn't begin to see her face. Michael Lieberman closed his eyes and wondered at this moment, its intimate closeness, the power of emotion that lived like an electric charge between them. Family, he thought. This, he guessed, summed it up. Sharing the pain, the ecstasy together. He really didn't need to wonder why Mo took to the Children when the floor disappeared from underneath them. Open arms didn't demand questions.

  'So,' he said, breaking the hot, laboured silence. 'Do we get to go outside now? Take a breath of fresh air? There's drinks on the terrace, from the sound of it.'

  They unclasped themselves from each other and walked out into the scorching day. The rest were seated on the veranda, underneath the shade of a gigantic palm, jugs of fresh orange juice on the table. Annie ran ahead and sat on the edge of the pond, watching the golden shapes of the fish come up to the surface now and then, throwing pebbles into the grey-green viscous water, following the circles they made. He and Mo pulled up chairs and helped themselves to the drinks. He felt edgy. Everyone just wanted to do nothing but wait, he thought, and wouldn't Charley be so happy with that.

  'Tell me about this satellite again, Irwin,' he asked. 'What did you do to my original design? What did you add?'

  He watched the surface of the old stone fish pond, Annie perched on the edge. Feeling helpless. Feeling exhausted and grateful for the shade of the palm that cut the power out of the gleaming day.

  'I thought we'd been through this, Michael,' Schulz replied, a distinct, sharp note of annoyance in his voice. 'We're all a little tired here.'

  'Let's wait and see, you mean?'

  'Look, we've done what we can. When they get that system back on-line, we're all ready to go. Till then, let's just relax, huh? There's no point in running round and round in circles over nothing. We may need all the energy we've got later.'

  'Yeah. No point.'

  They didn't even think the cycle reports were that important any more. Everything had come to focus around this place outside Vegas, walking in there, guns blazing, stealing back what someone else had stolen from them.

  'We're tired,' Mo said.

  'Me too. But doesn't something bug you about all of this?'

  'Such as what?' Bennett asked.

  'How, ever since it started, we never really got around to doing any thinking for ourselves, because someone else was always feeding a chunk of information that shaped what we did anyway. Like this Vegas thing. Like taking out the domes. And there's a curious thing too.'

  'What?' Schulz asked.

  'How come everyone else in this loop — Spooksville in Langley, most every European capital we can think of, Tokyo, Vegas, San Francisco, they're all looking up at the sky and see all manner of crap coming down on them. And we just sit here watching most everything work? Do you ever think about that? Aside from the explosion of the dome, we haven't had a single serious outage. It's all happened elsewhere.'

  'No reason for it to happen here,' Schulz said. 'We're way away from any major financial centres. Why should she target us when she's blown up the dome anyway?'

  'Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought we were supposed to be in charge of the whole thing.'

  ' "Were",' Schulz said.

  'Point taken. Still…'

  'Still what, Michael?'

  He rolled the dregs of his orange juice around in the glass and watched Annie playing by the thick green water of the pond. She had a little paper yacht folded from a used sheet out of the laser printer. He could still see the text on it: numbers, formulas, graphs, all the mechanical things you used to describe what happened in this wonderful place called science. 'Still, I think we're being dumb, somehow.'

  Bennett, who looked dead to the world, said, very slowly, 'I don't think any of us would argue with that.'

  'No. So Sundog. Remind me, Irwin. You took my design and added all that ugly Star Wars stuff on the bottom.'

  Schulz sounded offended. 'Michael, how can you call it ugly? You only saw it on the damn model'

  'Okay, I know, I know. Ugly is as ugly does. And my name's Forrest — '

  'Michael!' It was Mo this time, and she looked close to annoyed.

  'Sorry. I babble creatively. Einstein did it too but no one snitched.' He watched Annie pushing the little boat across the pond. Sundog was something like this, only with the extra dimension of space added in. This was science too. Somewhere there was a bunch of numbers that could add up the satellite's present position. Somewhere a little line of buzzing electrons ran back from Sundog right to Charley, directly to her lair, talking in some two-way conversation only they understood. It irked him no end that a chunk of equipment he'd initially designed was being used in this way. And something else too.

  'You're wrong, Irwin,' he muttered.

  'About anything in particular?'

  'About all that ugly stuff you tacked onto the butt of my beautiful machine. I didn't just see it on the model.' The image was still there in his head and h
e knew why it had stayed hidden. There was just too much pain in those last moments of the Shuttle crew. He'd liked Bill Ruffin, felt touched by the dogged, dutiful enthusiasm of the crew.

  'Maybe you weren't watching, but after your nice machine killed those people, that floatcam of theirs got jerked around by something itself — I'd rather not guess at just what. It moved around from the dark side of Sundog out into the light. The business end, I guess you'd call it.'

  Schulz took a big gulp of his drink. 'I guess I wasn't looking right then.'

  'No. I don't blame you. But I don't think I was hallucinating. It made it there, for a few seconds anyway. And then the line went dead.'

  'The satellite would have fried the thing, Michael,' Schulz explained. 'That's what it's supposed to do.'

  'I guess so.' He did see it, he was sure of that. A bristling array of dishes, antennae, and assorted chunks of military metal. He was right. It was ugly. 'We still got that video on the system, Irwin?'

  'It's on the system.'

  'How do I find it?'

  'I can do that for you,' Mo said, looking interested. 'Any particular reason?'

  'No.' He wished he could think of one. 'I guess I'm just feeling restless.' He looked at his watch. It was nine-fifteen local. If Helen and her people got lucky in Nevada, the satellite might be back under their wing within two hours. That gave them a little under an hour before zenith to take the thing down.

  He got up, and Mo Sinclair followed him. They went back into the control room, and he didn't know why but there was some low buzz of interior excitement hanging around his head, like a cloud of flies. 'You find me that video, Mo. I got a call to make.'

  He watched her bring the PC alive and dialled Helen's number. 'I'm waiting,' he said to the screen on the desk. But there was nothing there except blackness.

  Then he turned back to the video. It was there, as he remembered it. The antenna on the satellite did move, like a dog cocking its ear to the call of its master, and he couldn't, for the life of him, work out why this bugged him.