Second Horseman Out of Eden

by George C. Chesbro

  “Come here, Mongo—if I may call you Mongo,” Jack Holloway called over his shoulder. “I have something to show you.”

  “You can call me anything you want, Captain,” I said, rising and walking to the front of the cockpit, where I squeezed the shoulders of Holloway and Nigel Fickley. “Damn, you guys are good. Thank you both.”

  Holloway made a self-deprecating gesture with his right hand, then indicated a small scope that the copilot and navigator was hunched over. “Show them, Nigel.”

  “That’s a satellite tracking beacon,” the lanky copilot said, placing his finger on the green, flickering screen directly over a thin pencil line of light that was just barely discernible among a cluster of specks and lines of light. “It’s possible that we’re wrong, but the captain and I think that’s a reference beam from the biosphere to the satellite. There are a number of military installations in this general area, but their reference beams have a particular ‘signature’ that isn’t evident here.”

  “You get all that from that screen you’re looking at?” I asked the navigator, making no effort to mask the awe—and a touch of disbelief—I felt.

  “That, and certain other instrumentation. Anyway, the signal is emanating from a site a few miles outside of Boise. We’ve checked, and there are no broadcast stations, military installations, or commercial ventures that might use satellite facilities. That, and the fact that the satellite the beam is locked onto belongs to a private company, lead us to believe that the signal may be coming from the biosphere you say is down there.”

  “Who owns the satellite?” I asked tightly.

  “Blaisdel Industries,” Garth said quietly from behind me. “We checked it out with the F.C.C.”

  “Jesus Christ. That’s the one.”

  “Let us hope so,” Jack Holloway said dryly, “because that’s the signal we’re homing in on, and we’re almost out of fuel. We’re way below safety regulations, really.”

  “When are we going down?”

  “Now,” Holloway said, and banked to the left as he eased up on the throttle. The horizon line on the screen directly in front of him began to rise slightly. “You have a decision to make. With that signal to home in on, we can virtually land on top of the facility. But we need considerable runway space—”

  “Are you going to be able to bring this down in the desert?”

  “You’re assuming that’s desert down there, and that there are no trees or rock outcroppings to run into. That’s impossible to tell at this point. In any case, we’ll just have to do our best. But you must tell us how close you want to be taxied in. I understood from the conversation Garth had with your friends in Washington that there’s concern over our presence being noted.”

  “How much noise does this plane make when it’s taxiing, Captain?”

  “There’ll be a high-pitched whine, but there are steps we can take to minimize it. Depending on the terrain, we may be able to coast a quarter mile or so with the power off; it will require timing, and good visibility on the ground.”

  I felt a large, familiar hand on my shoulder, and then Garth leaned over me to speak to Holloway. “I realize it’s dangerous, Captain, but I think it would be best to try to land some distance away, then slowly taxi in as close as you can without any lights. Mongo and I just don’t have the time or energy to jog too far on the ground.”

  “You’ve got it,” Holloway replied evenly as he banked the plane even more and began a steeper descent. “Buckle up, then lean forward as far as you can and brace yourselves.”

  “How long, Captain?” Garth asked.

  “About a minute—and I have no idea how rough it’s going to be.”

  As Garth and I sat down and buckled our seat belts, I glanced out the windows and saw nothing but darkness. “Where the hell is it? They must have lights in the place.”

  “There’s still a thin layer of cloud cover below us,” Nigel Fickley replied over his shoulder. “When we pass through the clouds, it will be about a hundred miles to the west—your right.”

  “We’ll go subsonic in a few moments so as not to warn them with a sonic boom,” Jack Holloway said. “About … now.”

  There was no indication inside the cockpit that we had slowed below the speed of sound, but a few seconds later we emerged from the clouds and, far in the distance, I could see a cluster of lights that I assumed was Boise. Slightly closer, appearing just off the plane’s wingtip, a faint, greenish-yellow blob stood out from the blackness of the desert. The blob vanished beneath the body of the plane as Holloway banked and made another sharp turn, then came back once again. Now the blob was clearly visible—much larger—through the front windshield. I was astonished at how far we had traveled in only seconds, and how close we were to the ground; even from where I was sitting, I could see that the guidelines on the horizon indicator were only a fraction of an inch apart.

  “Brace!” Holloway barked.

  The landing gear touched ground; we bounced slightly, landed again, and the plane began to vibrate. Just before Holloway cut off the power and the lights I could see apparently open desert, its seeming flatness belied by the clatter of the Concorde as we rolled over it. The greenish-yellow light kept coming closer, and gradually became a mammoth dome that reminded me of nothing so much as a huge fluorescent light bulb. Finally the plane shuddered, and came to a stop. As far as I was concerned, Jack Holloway and Nigel Fickley were magicians; I estimated that we were no more than three or four hundred yards from the sickly green plastic hemisphere that was Eden.

  “Christ,” Fickley murmured, wiping sweat from his forehead with his forearm, “I wouldn’t have thought it possible to do that; we take off in a blizzard, than land virtually blind on an unknown surface. I can’t believe we’re not dead.”

  Jack Holloway slowly unclenched his fingers from the controls, sucked in a deep breath as he leaned back in his seat, slowly exhaled. “Well, I think this is as close as I can get you,” he announced in his clipped accent. “Sorry I couldn’t get you to the door.”

  “This is as good as the door,” Garth said as we both took out the guns Frank Palorino had given us, checked the magazines and chambers. I noted that he had found the time to tape his sprained left wrist, and it didn’t seem to be bothering him.

  “I’m going with you,” Holloway said, and started to get out of his seat.

  “No,” Garth said softly but firmly as he laid a hand on the pilot’s shoulder. “There’s nothing either you or Nigel can do that Mongo and I can’t handle. It will take both of you to get this thing off the ground if the bombs do start falling. Also, we need you here to establish communications with those fighter-bombers if and when they have to come in.”

  “Frederickson, I can’t let the two of you go in there by yourselves. It just isn’t done!”

  “The captain’s correct,” Nigel Fickley said, and started to unbuckle his seat belt. “We’re both—”

  Something in Garth’s face—or perhaps the memory of how Garth had arranged for Malachy McCloskey to miss the trip—caused the slender copilot abruptly to stop speaking and slowly sink back into his seat.

  “The fewer of us there are in there,” Garth said in the same firm voice, “the fewer people there are for those lunatics to spot. The two of you stay here, get back up in the air if we’re not back by, say, five minutes to midnight. Make it ten; leave at ten minutes to the hour, and provide a tracking beacon for the bombers. Mongo and I have done this kind of thing before, and you’d only be in the way. Captain, can you find us a crowbar, or something else that we can cut or smash with?”

  “Just a minute,” Fickley said as he rose from his seat and hurried out of the cabin. He was back in a few moments with a small but heavy fire extinguisher. “Will this do for smashing?”

  “It will have to,” Garth said, taking the fire extinguisher. “Jack, let us out of here.”

  The captain flicked two switches on the console to his left. I heard a door open behind me, and then a whomp as an emerge
ncy escape chute was deployed and inflated. I glanced at Garth’s watch as we hurried back to the exit: it was 11:03. As I jumped onto the air bag and slid to the ground behind my brother, I found that my head and vision were clear; the cold night air in my face was invigorating. I no longer felt feverish, and now, at least for the time being, my legs felt strong.

  Perhaps, I thought as I hit the ground and, with Garth beside me, came up running toward the massive, glowing structure, my heightened sense of concentration and newfound energy might somehow be connected to the fact that Garth and I could have less than an hour left in our lives.

  The assault on Eden had begun. Santa Claus and helper were coming to town.

  16.

  In moments we had reached the base of Eden, which was a wall of concrete five feet high. We crouched in the darkness, just below the eerie green, chemically or solar-cell produced light that seeped out of the translucent plastic dome that covered the vast expanse of the biosphere.

  “How are you holding up?” Garth asked.

  “Okay. You?”

  “Okay. Decision time.”

  “I know. If this thing was built to the same scale and design as the model I saw, we should be just outside the desert region. The living quarters will be in the first arm, which is a good way up. Where do we go in?”

  “What do you say, Mongo?”

  I thought about it, said: “It’s too risky to try to break right into the living quarters. Hell, we could end up falling in through Tanker Thompson’s window and into his lap, which is grief we don’t need. Besides, I doubt that the transmitter is anywhere in the living quarters section, or Thompson would have known where it was. If the transmitter is someplace else, then it doesn’t make any difference where we break in and start looking, because one place is as good as another. I say we go in here, and check out the terrain as we make our way toward the living quarters.”

  “Agreed,” Garth said, and swung the fire extinguisher full force at the plastic material that rose from the concrete wall.

  The steel cylinder struck the plastic and rebounded like a tumbler on a trampoline, almost pulling Garth off his feet.

  “Shit,” I said. “That’s reinforced Plexiglas. It’s going to be a bitch to break.”

  Garth took a deep breath, gripped the handle of the fire extinguisher with both hands, and swung again—with the same results. I grabbed his wrist, looked at his watch: it was 11:11.

  “Come on,” I said, tugging at my brother’s sleeve. “We don’t have time for this. We’re going to have to look for the front door.”

  “No,” Garth replied curtly as he took McCloskey’s automatic out of his pocket and slipped off the safety catch. “We could waste time looking, make just as much noise going in there as here, and possibly warn them. Let me see if I can’t weaken the shield with a bullet or two.”

  Garth fired two bullets, spaced closely together, into the Plexiglas. I knew that the thickness of the shield would undoubtedly muffle the sound, but I still winced each time the gun went off. Again he smashed the steel cylinder into the plastic, just below the two holes; and again. A slight crack had appeared, but the material still held firm.

  His watch read 11:13.

  Garth raised his gun again, but I grabbed his arm and shoved Frank Palorino’s revolver at him. “Here, use two from mine. We don’t have any spare ammunition, and neither one of us can afford to have an empty gun.”

  Garth nodded, pocketed his automatic, and used the revolver to fire two more shots into the Plexiglas, just below the first two. Then he banged the end of the fire extinguisher into the center of the rectangle formed by the four holes. The material cracked further—and parted. Three more whacks, and there was a hole big enough for a man to crawl through.

  “Up, up, and away,” Garth said, crouching slightly and cupping his hands together at the level of his knees.

  I tucked the revolver, which Garth had given back to me, in the waistband of my jeans, took two steps backward, then ran forward, jumped, and planted my right foot in Garth’s cupped hands. He gave me a moderate heave, and I sailed head first through the opening in the Plexiglas, prepared for the shock of landing on what I assumed would be hard-packed sand.

  Wrong.

  So much for relying on scale models, I thought as I landed in foul-smelling muck that almost immediately closed over my head as it began sucking me down. I fought against the slime, struggling to right myself, and finally felt my feet touch bottom. I stood up, found myself in blackish-brown mire that came up to my shoulders, gagged when I sucked in a breath. It seemed I had landed in the swamp—which was virtually a cesspool.

  Something was definitely rotten in Eden; or it was Eden itself that was rotting. Blaisdel, Peter Patton and Company had missed an equation somewhere.

  I checked my waistband to make certain the revolver was still there. It was—not that it was going to be much use, except maybe as a club; the firing mechanism would be hopelessly fouled with the lumpy slime.

  “Watch out!” I called through cupped hands, shuddering as I felt—or imagined I felt—something large, cold, and slimy slither across my back. “Forget the floor plan! It’s a fucking swamp!”

  Garth’s head and shoulders appeared above me in the opening. He looked down at me, frowned. “You all right?”

  “I’m all right, but my gun has to be fouled. Watch out for yours.”

  Garth nodded, then raised the automatic over his head and jumped into the mire beside me. Taller, and with more leverage, Garth was able to wade more easily through the muck, and I didn’t object when he grabbed my arm and dragged me after him across the surface toward higher ground seventy-five yards or so away.

  Blaisdel and his people had dreamed of building themselves the ultimate greenhouse, I thought as I gazed into the distance, and my first impression was that they’d wound up with the ultimate shithouse. I wondered how the people living there could stand it. The fetid air hanging over the swamp could not be that much better anywhere else in the biosphere; it was humid and cloying, and felt like wet wool in the lungs. The “sky” above Eden—the same sickly, dim green glow we had seen outside—was, I presumed, supposed to give some psychological satisfaction so that Eden’s inhabitants would not be depressed by utter darkness in the absence of the sun, moon, and stars; I would have preferred darkness. It was hot—too hot—and I suspected that the inevitable greenhouse effect induced by the coated Plexiglas was considerably greater than the designers had anticipated, and would eventually become unbearable. Eden was no place to hang out during any Tribulation; Eden itself was a tribulation.

  Perhaps a half mile away, the “sky” seemed to lighten and ripple slightly, and I suspected this might be a reflection from Eden’s “ocean.” Unless the whole biosphere had been redesigned, the living quarters would be in a separate arm or wing constructed on higher ground near the shore of the ocean.

  Further in the distance, barely visible, there was what appeared to be a heavy mist hanging like a diaphanous curtain from the ceiling to the ground. That would be the rain forest.

  Somewhere in this vast, artificial, rotting world a machine was ticking away, preparing to send a signal that would trigger explosions that would kill tens of millions of people. Eden, indeed. Leaders like Blaisdel, William Kenecky, and Peter Patton, abetted by followers like Tanker Thompson, the Small brothers, Hector Velazian, Billy Dale Rokan, and Craig Valley, had always suffered their patently insane obsessions and superstitions, along with a desperate need to inflict their obsessions and superstitions on everyone else. I had always believed that at the bottom of every political and religious zealot’s heart was a death wish. They were, in every sense of the word, enemies of humanity, creators of hell on earth, infecting generation after generation down through the centuries, their lineage of paranoia, hatred, and terrorism going all the way back to the dawn of humankind’s tenure on earth. Henry Blaisdel and William Kenecky had presumed to go to the head of the class, and Garth and I had only minutes left to s
top them.

  We reached the edge of the swamp, scrambled up a bank of mushy ground that rose at a sharp angle, squatted down on the crest of a hill, and looked around us. The transmitter was obviously not in the swamp area we had just come through, and the light was too dim for us to see anything but large, general features on the ground. There was no time to search randomly through the biosphere, which meant that we were going to need help—and we needed it right away. Covered with slime, we began to jog at a fairly good clip in the direction of the living quarters. There were a number of filthy streams draining into the swamp; most we could jump over, but one we had to ford. Garth took care to hold his automatic high over his head, keeping it dry.

  As we ran, we constantly scanned our surroundings; there was no sign of anything that resembled a transmitter.

  The ground gradually rose and became firmer as we approached the area where the light above us was paler and shimmering. And then we reached the shore of the “ocean”—a sizable expanse of water that was perhaps a half to three-quarters of a mile wide, and about as long. Here the air was even heavier, and sweat ran in thick rivulets down our bodies as we gasped for breath. We took only moments to try to catch our breath, then headed along a narrow pathway by the retaining wall, toward a soaring archway that—we hoped—would be the entrance to the arm containing the group’s living quarters.

  At the edge of the arch we stopped, bent over double, and struggled to suck air into our lungs.

  “What time is it?” I gasped.

  “What difference does it make?” my brother replied, shaking his head. “Let’s go.”

  We stepped around the edge of the archway and, keeping low, sprinted twenty yards to the edge of an orchard of sere, withering trees with remnants of fruit on them that was, like everything else in Eden, rotting; here, too, the air was tainted, sickly sweet. We hurried through the orchard, stopped when we came to the edge of a wide dirt road that ran the length of the area. Across the road were a number of cottages, all a uniform color that might once have been white, but was now gray.