Constantine had been sure to tell the bald American who had recruited him that radiation might kill certainly, but it also did so slowly, leaving more than enough time to settle any scores or betrayals. The American had merely nodded, and something in his eyes had told Constantine he understood very clearly.
Now, standing here, looking down at the strange, hard container that seemed to be pushing everything away like a petulant infant, he wasn’t quite so sure.
He would get himself checked, just in case, the moment he got back to Moscow. And if he had been lied to, then God help the bald American bastard and his Dr. Walter Montgomery.
For now, he would see the container placed exactly, perfectly within the open circle at the center of the dome, directly beneath the device suspended high up at the bulging roof, and oriented correctly.
Then he would gather the rest of the crew, thank them for their efforts, and execute them, leaving only the security staff within a hundred kilometers of this place.
And once that was done, he would call Dr. Montgomery and inform him that everything was at last in readiness and he could, at any time he wished, give the order to begin cycling up the power station.
As the two technicians carefully lifted the container from the nylon bag and gingerly extracted it from the surrounding mesh, he nodded toward the open spot at the center of the dome. In a few moments they were all moving in that direction.
The thickness of the dome, the soggy camouflage that coated it and the low, steady sound of the inflation pumps masked the distant sound of the rocket-propelled grenade being launched.
The long, sizzling hiss of its primitive engine was too low to even register. But the blast, when the shaped charge of the grenade warhead struck the rear of the retreating vehicle, and the almost instantaneous detonation of the plastique explosives lining the walls of the machine, sent a booming crack through the air that penetrated to where Constantine was following the carefully treading technicians in a kind of solemn procession.
Constantine had to smile. He so disliked Americans.
14
Prelude
John jolted awake suddenly as the gun slipped from his lap and clattered to the floor of the car with a dull thud.
He jerked up quickly, leaning to look out of the windshield, casting a quick glance at his watch. A bolt of ice shot through him. Half an hour. And White wasn’t here.
He felt the eruption of tingling panic boiling up from his gut and snapped his head around, scanning the darkened street.
Shit, he thought. I just closed my eyes for a second. I wasn’t that tired, was I?
A moment later the garage door of the small white house began to rise, spilling light out into the evening. The long, black car slid slowly down the drive.
It was him, John thought, his mind screaming. The guy. And he’s leaving.
The car reached the cul de sac, turned and began to roll forward toward where John sat.
Quickly he dropped over, flat onto the front seat, craning up to track the headlights as they flashed by, moving off down the street.
John straightened, whipped around to claw at the door handle and managed to pop it open, then just as he pushed himself from the seat, remembered the gun and turned to scoop it off the floor of the car. His eyes caught sight of the blocky little radio on the seat and he snatched that as well.
He shoved the door closed and began to move, quickly, toward the now open and abandoned garage.
He jogged up to it and instantly saw that the inner door also stood ajar. He paused, then gritted his teeth, stuck the gun out in front of himself and tiptoed toward it, pausing to scan the room within before creeping forward.
The house seemed deserted. The room on the other side of the garage door looked like some kind of den at the rear of the building. He saw the hallway leading toward the front of the house and leaned to look down it.
The door at the opposite end was wide open, a single light flooding the room. He crept down the hallway, the gun extended as far in front of him as he could manage, and finally reached the door.
He jerked to a halt. He didn’t have to go any further. He didn’t want to.
There was something on the bed to the left of the door. He saw a bare leg, a rope around the ankle, and the thick smear of blood that even now was dripping lazily onto the floor.
His whole mind seemed to seize up and go blank. Whatever that was, whoever it was, it was dead.
He turned, clenching his stomach muscles against the bubbling heat in his gut, and moved back down the hallway. That was when he noticed the small hole in the large back window, surrounded by its spiderweb of cracks.
He moved to the glass door that led to the side of the structure and pushed it open, almost mechanically. He stepped down and moved, in spite of himself, to the rear of the building.
White lay, crumpled on the dark grass, his arms and legs jutting at strange angles.
John felt the urge to run, to get the Hell out of there. To flee, screaming.
But before his instinct could fully grip him, he stiffened, balling his hand into a fist.
No, he snapped at himself, don’t do this. No time for this. Just think. What can you do? How can you help? How can you be useful?
It came to him easily, dragging a kind of calm resolution with it to wrap around him.
He shot a glance at his watch.
Four minutes since he’d awakened. He had time.
He couldn’t save the gray haired man, he’d slept too long for that, but he could –
He turned, reentering the den and stepping down into the garage. He moved quickly to the rear corner, placed his back against a tall, rough tool cabinet, and jumped.
The garage door was closed and the light was off.
Through the opposite wall he could barely hear the faint edge of a tortured female scream, muffled by something.
Quickly he stepped to the passenger’s side of the car and quietly opened the door.
He clicked open the glove compartment and pressed the small button within.
The trunk gave a dull pop and raised an inch before catching.
John closed the glove compartment and the door, then felt his way along the side of the car to the back and raised the trunk lid.
A small light came on within, casting a thin spray of illumination on a wide tool shelf at the rear of the garage.
John scanned the inside of the trunk, then twisted to closely examine the trunk latch.
He needed something to push the flange aside, he thought.
Turning to the tool bench, he quickly scanned it and saw a screwdriver, which he swept up and tested on the lock. It pushed the flange easily.
Okay, he thought, this is it.
Without stopping to consider whether or not he was doing the right thing, he stepped up into the trunk, maneuvered himself around, reached up for the trunk lid and pulled it down, hearing it lock.
He fumbled around in the pitch blackness until he had the radio raised in front of him. He felt around and managed to switch it on. Wish I had the damned earpiece, he thought, then pressed the talk button.
“Hello,” he whispered harshly. “Anybody there? Anybody listening?”
“We read you,” a flat, tinny voice said from the small speaker.
“We got a big problem,” John hissed back. “White’s dead and I’m in the suspect’s car, in the trunk.”
The voice hesitated before responding.
“Copy,” it said. “Provide location, if possible.”
“Never mind,” John hissed back. “He’s about to leave. I can’t follow him so I’m hitching a ride. I’ll come back when we’re on the road. I got a shitload of questions to ask you guys.”
“Copy,” the voice responded. “Standing by.”
John quickly fumbled for the power switch and flicked it off, lowering the radio to the carpeted surface on which he was lying and maneuvering the gun until he had it gripped tightly, his finger curled around the trigger, the barre
l pointed vaguely at the trunk lid.
Please, he thought to himself, don’t let this guy pack anything.
A minute later he heard the door to the garage open. A few seconds after that he heard the dull thunk of the car door opening and closing. Then the engine roared to life around him.
Well, John thought, like it or not, here we go.
The car started to roll. In a few minutes John was quietly back on the radio, trying to find out what in Hell he was supposed to do.
Dr. Henry sat, sipping the cold cup of coffee he’d managed to fumble out of the dispensing machine, and glancing around the stark, sterile medical center cafeteria. He still couldn’t process everything he’d witnessed in the last few days, or the collected reams of data gathered over the day of testing.
Granted, his tests on Roger had proven utterly useless, and the results obtained from John seemed to indicate he was a perfectly healthy, average human male. And that was all. Despite having seen with his own eyes perhaps history’s first demonstration of time travel, it seemed to produce absolutely no data whatsoever. He just willed it, it happened and that was all.
It was breathtaking. It was amazing. It was infinitely frustrating.
As a physicist, he knew that there was so much about the functioning of the universe that human beings hadn’t even started to realize enough to formulate the questions, let alone go looking for the answers. But it all seemed to be hidden in the nooks and crannies of creation. Now he’d had two dropped squarely into his lap, and he was feeling very much like a monkey being handed a Rubik’s cube. His only response might just turn out to be stupidly jamming it into his mouth and sucking on it. Because like an ape, he couldn’t even begin to understand the concepts.
He noticed Dr. Patel standing with a tray of some bland substitute for real food they tended to serve in such places, notice Marvin and begin moving toward him across the almost deserted space.
He trudged over, slid the tray onto the gleaming table top and sank into the cheap plastic chair.
“Hello again, Dr. Henry,” he said. He sounded worn out, and Marvin couldn’t blame him.
“Dr. Patel,” Marvin responded, taking another sip of the grayish, bitter liquid from the rapidly softening paper cup.
“So,” Patel said, raising a plastic forkful of some beige mash from the plate, “What are your impressions?”
Marvin grinned tiredly.
“I do a mean Werner Heisenberg,” he responded.
Patel froze a moment, pondering this, then seemed to dismiss it. Marvin couldn’t blame him. The joke was as worn out as he felt himself.
“Seriously,” he continued, “I don’t know what to think. I’ve seen it, I’ve touched it. I’ve poked it with a sharp stick, but as to what it is or how it works, I haven’t got a single clue.”
Patel chewed absently, speaking between bites.
“What about your theory? The nuclear forces?”
Marvin managed a shrug.
“I’m just guessing. Without any workable data I might as well say they came out of a cereal box.”
“But you believe you’re right,” Patel challenged.
Marvin sighed, considered and gave a faint nod.
“So what are you going to do now?” Patel asked.
Marvin considered this a moment.
“Back to the hotel, catch some sleep, get a flight out in the morning.”
“Back to the real world?” Patel asked, grinning slightly.
Marvin pondered this as well. Was that the real world? Spending the majority of his time in a darkened room watching monitors tracking the meaningless bits and pieces of cosmic stuff that wheeled and circled out beyond the sky, watching for one of them to misbehave? Or standing in a half-empty lecture hall attempting to cram the rudimentary basics of how the galaxy ties its shoes and combs its hair, and performs a thousand other mundane chores with matter and energy, into the heads of kids who were only looking for a science credit on their transcripts? Was that the real world?
“Back to work, anyway,” he finally responded.
They sat silently for a while before Marvin fixed on the other man.
“Let me ask you, Doctor,” he said, “What do you think about this? About what you’ve seen. What are your impressions?”
Patel chewed, his eyes fixed somewhere in the distance, then lowered the fork and turned his attention on Marvin.
“I think it gives me hope,” he said quietly.
“Hope?” Marvin replied, a bit startled.
“Yes,” Patel responded. “Hope. For what we are. For what we might become.”
He sighed deeply.
“Life is such a mystery,” he said. “It puzzles us so. What does it mean? How did it happen? You and I, we are each trying to find an answer to that, in our own ways. And that is good. That will lead us onward. To what, I don’t know, but something.”
He leaned back in the chair, casting his eyes around the large, sterile room.
“Every day I come here. I see people when they are sick. I try to help. Sometimes I have to watch them die. There is so much we don’t understand. Diseases that anger us and make us feel helpless. Injuries we simply cannot fix. So much is still so far beyond us. And maybe it always will be. Maybe that is what is meant to be. I don’t know.
“But I see those two men, and my rational mind tells me there is a system behind it. It was caused somehow. And if I am diligent, and work hard, I will know what that is.”
He turned to fix on Marvin.
“But the rest of me, the human being looks at such things and doesn’t care why they are as they are. What matters to that human creature is simply that they are. That they are incredible. Miraculous. And for that part, just knowing they exist is enough.”
“For what?” Marvin asked.
Patel smiled.
“For me to hope there really is something more. Something greater.”
Marvin stared at him a moment before giving a small shrug.
“The most incredible phenomenon in all of human history,” Marvin responded. “The thing that could win you a Nobel Prize. That could change the direction humanity goes from here on out. And you wouldn’t kill to know how it works?”
Patel smiled.
“Not if it makes me feel hopeless,” he replied quietly. “Everything I learn about people and this world, how it all functions, is so cold and mechanical. It’s just some huge mechanism that goes rolling along with no meaning that can be found. Everything new I learn just seems to strip a little more wonder from life, and makes it a meaningless organic machine with no real purpose.”
He leaned forward suddenly.
“But these two men, what they can do, not knowing how or why, gives me hope that there is meaning behind it. And perhaps I really don’t want to know what that meaning is. I don’t want it to turn out to be another mindless clockwork thing that accidentally happened. I would much prefer to simply believe in that meaning, whatever it is, and wonder at it.”
Marvin smiled quietly.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
They savored the silence briefly before Marvin’s gaze fixed back on the Doctor.
“We can’t tell anyone,” he said. “It would change the world forever, and we can’t tell anyone.”
Patel nodded thoughtfully.
“Yes. A pity. But there is a bright side.”
“What’s that?”
Patel grinned mischievously.
“We know someone who can loosen those stubborn, tight bottle caps.”
Marvin chuckled, beginning to feel relaxed after the long, frustrating day.
Dan raised the beer to his lips, angling his head so he didn’t have to take his elbow off the bar. Beside him, Jim took another sip of his shotglass.
“It sure makes you think,” Dan said slowly, after swallowing the bitter liquid.
“About what?” Jim responded.
“About all of it,” Dan replied. “About the universe, life, all of it.”
“We are out there every day,” Dan said, “Working the streets, putting it on the line, and maybe we make a tiny little dent in it. Maybe we stop something bad from happening once in a while. But those guys. What they can do.”
“I’m not drunk enough to believe it yet,” Jim interrupted. “I’m still in the ‘shock and awe’ part of it.”
Dan turned to regard him.
“Would you want to be able to do that? What they can do?”
Jim’s expression turned thoughtful.
“I donno,” he mused. “Which one?”
“Roger,” Dan answered. “Infinitely strong, invulnerable to injury.”
Jim pondered this a moment.
“I donno,” he said at last. “Can I control it?”
Dan smiled.
“No.”
Jim seemed to consider this a while, then his expression grew puzzled. At last he fixed his eyes on where Dan sat, staring back.
“Really? He can’t control it?” Jim said.
Dan shook his head.
“Wow,” Jim said slowly. “That sucks.”
Dan nodded.
“Tell me about it.”
Jim considered the uncomfortable thought, then seemed to shake it off with a slight shrug.
“In that case, I’ll take the other guy. The time-jumping guy.”
“John,” Dan interjected, turning back to the bar.
“I know his name,” Jim complained. “I mean, I’m just thinking about them as… guys who can do that stuff, you know? Not Rog and John. Just these special guys. But could be anybody.”
“I know what you mean,” Dan said. “I mean, I talk to them, hang around with them, but when I think about them, they’re not guys I know. They’re… something else.”
“Exactly,” Jim concluded. “So I’ll take the time thing. That’s kind of cool.”
“It makes him sick as a dog,” Dan said.
Jim pulled a sour face.
“Right, I forgot that. In that case, to Hell with it. I wouldn’t take either one of them.”
Class Fives: Origins Page 33
