A guard brought her out to the visiting area, where inmates could sit opposite a visitor with a glass partition between them, and talk to them via a personal intercom unit. She didn’t recognize Tip Gerniss. He had a chubby face with narrow eyes and lips that looked pursed when they probably weren’t, all under a shaggy mat of dark hair. Her heart, unbidden, had a surge of hope—she had been terrified the visitor was bringing bad news about Grant. But surely Skylar Reece or Hunter Valence or somebody she knew would have come to deliver that awful news.
“You do not know me,” the man said.
“No...” Conn said.
“Conn, you are so much brighter than this. Tip Gerniss. It’s an anagram for—”
“Persisting!” she whispered. She was inexplicably flooded with relief.
“I thought about calling myself Buzz Aldrin, but I worried that someone here might know who that was.”
“Fifty-fifty. Why are you here? You’ve seen the feeds, about the Saturn mission?”
“We have,” Persisting said. “Your astronaut said, ‘Brownsville, is this one of your...’ What would have been the next word do you think?”
“I have no idea.”
“Let me suggest aliens. Or Pelorians.” Persisting said. “I fear we must proceed as though the worst has happened.”
“Of course the worst has happened. Those astronauts, out there—”
“Were likely killed by the Aphelials,” Persisting said. At her look of confusion, he added, “There is no direct translation in English. Now, we must remove you from this place. The survival of humankind may depend on it.”
“They won’t let me leave.”
“Can we ask somebody?”
“Can we ask—” Conn said sarcastically, but Persisting talked over her.
“The warden,” he said, “seems reasonable. Perhaps you should ask her.”
Conn was confused, but if Persisting could somehow get her out of this place, maybe she could help Grant somehow.
Two and a half hours later, Conn was in Warden Kohler’s office. Asking. Conn acted like she knew exactly what the threat from the Aphelials was, and there was no time to waste explaining.
“I’ve got two dozen inmates like you,” Kohler said, “here for supposed treason for being pro-Pelorian. Not one has been charged, not one is likely to see the light of day anytime soon. This isn’t the country I was raised in. No, wait—yes, it is. It’s not the country my grandmother was raised in. The country it’s supposed to be.” The warden rose and plucked a set of “court clothes” off the hook of the back of her office door—business attire for testifying in court or a similar official errand. She handed them to Conn.
“If you need to go save the world, go with my good wishes. You’ll be identified as escaped within the next couple hours or less, so if you have some kind of zoomy-zoom spaceship or something, now would be a good time to use it.” The warden checked the visitor log. “Your lawyer is here. Visiting someone else, but she’s here. She’ll do,” she said.
She escorted Conn out to the visitor’s area. Conn, as instructed, signed out as Hannah Ryan. The guard that buzzed them out was paying more attention to the warden glowering at him than he was to “Hannah Ryan.” The warden looked on sadly as the door closed behind them.
“You made it out,” Persisting said.
“I asked. Did you do something to her?”
“What do you mean?”
“To the warden. Did you, I don’t know, do some kind of mind trick—”
Persisting’s avatar chuckled. “I should be flattered by how powerful you always seem to think my mind is.”
“That’s not an answer. Never mind. Can we save Grant?”
“I don’t think we should spend energy trying to—”
“We’re going to Tethys and we’re getting him. Don’t you want a first-person account of what happened? Our fifth-dimensional spacecraft isn’t ready yet, but you have God only knows how many. Have them all calculate a fifth-dimensional course for Tethys. We’ll take the one that comes up under three—no, two days.”
“It’s statistically unlikely—”
“Yes, saving Grant is statistically unlikely. Just do it, Persisting. Please.”
The avatar drove them north and west toward San Francisco Bay. As it did so, Persisting was contacting Wrangel Island and the fortress on the moon with what looked like the Pelorian equivalent of Wear. Conn opened her window and stuck her face out far enough to feel the wind as it went by.
After at least twenty minutes, the avatar said, “OK. We have at least a hundred spacecraft calculating a course to Tethys. I had to do some persuading—evidently, there are those among my people that don’t like having war declared against them.” The avatar glanced sidelong at Conn.
“This is perfect PR,” Conn said, eyes shut against the breeze. “This will prove you have a benevolent intent.” She straightened and looked at the avatar. “You have a benevolent intent, don’t you?”
“We have never had anything but. I am concerned that this attempt to save your astronaut will distract you from the far more important issue: the Aphelials may be here, in your solar system already.”
“Tell me about them.”
“They seek out spacefaring races and eradicate them.”
“Eradicate?”
“Arrange matters, by force, so that they are no longer spacefaring.”
“I’d hardly call us spacefaring.”
“You’re close enough.”
“Why?” Conn asked. “Why do they want to get rid of other spacefaring races?”
“For the same reason King Herod slaughtered the innocents. You can see, can’t you? No species will challenge the Aphelials for supremacy if none of them can so much as get off their own planet.”
“You think the Aphelials are already here...based on what? What happened to the Saturn crew?”
“The Aphelials have a technology that you might characterize as a ‘gravity burst.’ They have developed a low-power, portable way to manipulate fifth dimensional tensors, effectively tricking third dimensional space into acting like there is a massive object nearby. It weaponizes the force of gravity. From your feeds, I suspect your Saturn crew encountered this.”
“You don’t need a massive object to have gravity?”
“You do,” Persisting said. “They don’t anymore.”
“We could find out for sure if we could get to Brownsville. Or, wait. Our headquarters here! Brownsville would be able to show us Al and Callie’s helmet cams there.”
“Even the parts they didn’t release to the public?”
“They’ll show me what I tell them to show me.”
“You speak of it as though you still own the company, Conn. My information is otherwise.”
“It doesn’t matter. If we can help Grant, it won’t matter,” Conn said, as much to herself as to Persisting.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Aphelials
April 18, 2036
As they approached the entrance to Dyna-Tech headquarters, Conn asked, “Will your ID work to swipe us through?”
“It may.”
Conn was impressed. “How do you forge this stuff so completely?”
“I didn’t forge it,” Persisting said, his avatar brandishing the Dyna-Tech ID badge. “I stole it. When I came here looking for a way to get to see you.”
“Well then it might not work!” Conn said. “If it was reported stolen—”
“Then you must sign in and call somebody to escort you upstairs. Surely there are dozens of people who know you here.”
“What about you?”
“If I cannot sign in, I will wait. You will return and tell me what the vids show, and I will tell you if the crew was attacked by Aphelials.”
Yongpo was delighted to come down and escort Conn upstairs. She signed in as Hannah Ryan, using Ryan’s driver’s license that had been “returned” to her when she left the prison. She had made no effort to disguise herself, but she looked sickly pale
and had probably lost ten pounds. She hoped that was enough to prevent anyone from recognizing her.
As Yongpo approached, Conn gave him a surreptitious shush gesture—it wouldn’t do to have him shout her name and ask her how she got out of jail. In the elevator, she caught him up.
“I’ve got to see Al’s and Callie’s helmet cam feeds,” she told him. “I’m going to get Grant one way or the other, but Persisting wants to know if these Aphelials attacked them.”
“And if they did?” They emerged onto the eighteenth floor.
Conn’s voice rose: “I don’t know. Then we’re all in deep shit!” She looked around; several faces were looking at them from their cubicles. “Sorry,” she stage-whispered.
They arrived at Yongpo’s cube. Conn cued his desk fone. “Operations Center, Brownsville,” she said.
Sandy Kearns appeared on the screen. “Conn? Is that you?”
“Sandy,” Conn said, “I want to see what Al’s and Callie’s helmet cams recorded right before they died.”
“Oh my God,” Kearns said. “It’s awful.”
“Show me,” Conn said.
Sandy looked conflicted. Conn couldn’t tell whether she was hesitating to show what Al and Callie saw because it was so terrible, or whether she was working out how to deal with Conn—who, after all, wasn’t the owner of the company anymore. Sandy frowned and typed away at something. Conn hoped she wasn’t asking someone else what she should do. There wasn’t time.
A helmet-cam feed blinked onto Yongpo’s display, and Conn breathed a sigh of relief. Almost immediately, Conn saw what looked like a Pelorian hover-sled, only bigger, more elaborate. The...thing riding it was gray-green, humanoid, but bubbling—rippling, Conn couldn’t decide the best word. She heard, “Brownsville, is this one of your—” and she stabbed the button to stop the feed. She couldn’t watch what came next.
Conn, Conn heard in her head. She instinctively looked around for Persisting’s avatar. I believe I am directly below you. If you can hear me, please say so.
Gray-green, on a big hover-sled, bubbling or rippling, humanoid, Conn thought to him.
You are describing an Aphelial. Conn, the front desk has been notified to watch for you, and me. Descriptions of us both were given. It may not be safe to retrieve Hannah Ryan’s identification.
“Yongpo,” she said, in a low voice, “can you get me out of here without passing the front desk?”
“Are you in trouble?”
“I’m afraid I am. You might also get in trouble if you help me.”
Yongpo rose to his full height. “I will help you,” he said gravely. Conn smiled.
Conn, they are reading the names of everyone who is signed in. If they know Hannah Ryan’s ID was taken...
“We have to go now. And”—she kissed him on the cheek—“thank you.”
They took the stairs eighteen flights down. As they walked, Conn directed Persisting to meet them. Yongpo was clearly excited about some progress he’d made with the fifth-dimensional problem, progress enough that he was leaving for Gasoline Alley the next morning. But Conn didn’t have time for that at present.
At the bottom of the stairs, Yongpo led her down a long, narrow hall to an exit door. “Smokers go out here,” Yongpo said. “They’re the only ones who use it.” Yongpo shoved the door, which opened too easily. He stumbled, and the wallet that had been holding the door open fell at his feet. The lone “smoker” outside was Persisting’s avatar. It was his wallet.
They were wary of returning to the car, so after fifteen minutes on foot, Conn and Persisting were several properties west of Dyna-Tech headquarters, sitting outside in another building’s smoking area. Persisting asked one of the smokers if he could bum a smoke. Conn sank into a wooden folding chair. She was tired, but infused with adrenaline. It gave her a headache.
“There is only about a one-in-four chance that one hundred computers calculating fifth-dimensional routes with an upper limit of seven hundred fifty days will discover a route that takes two days or less,” Persisting said.
One hundred spacecraft making the course computation was far more than Conn could have reasonably asked for. “When will the computations be ready?”
“For so short a distance, hours only. They will be complete at different times, but the quickest? Five and a half hours.”
“Then it makes sense to try again if we don’t get a one- or two-day route the first time, doesn’t it?”
Persisting admitted that it did. “However, I can’t guarantee we will be able to tie all spacecraft up for another six hours—”
“We’ll deal with it,” Conn said. “I really appreciate your help. Will whatever spacecraft we take have medical facilities, or is that just a shot in the dark?”
“You will be able to treat injuries on any of them, but the extent to which you can, as you’ve guessed, is a shot in the dark.”
“Why am I saying we and you’re saying you?”
“If you insist on taking a spacecraft out to Tethys, where Aphelials have already destroyed two crew members and quite likely left the last one alive only to lure rescue craft to the scene—I’m afraid I can’t go with you.”
“Could you even control your avatar from that far away?”
“No.”
“So in addition to it being foolish, there’s that, too.”
“Yes.”
They sat in silence for a time.
“I do wish I could talk you out of going,” Persisting said.
“Why?”
“You have proven an expert at getting the word out, as you say. You manage feed content well. Someone will need to convince Earth that the Aphelials are a threat. It would be terrific if you could also convince them that we’re not, but one thing at a time.”
“Persisting, I’ve escaped from jail. I can’t go on Hayley Brigham and talk about the looming Aphelial invasion. I’ll be arrested.”
Persisting seemed to think about this. His avatar looked troubled. “Well, you have a better chance of being able to help out here than in jail, wouldn’t you say?”
Conn smiled. “I would.”
They sat for a while, wary of attracting attention with any furtive movement. Then they called a car service to take them to Half Moon Bay at Persisting’s direction, paying cash. Stowed at the beach, out of the way, with a mini “cloaking” device hiding them, were two sets of pressure field collars and air tanks.
As they wriggled into the backpack apparatus for the tanks, then put on and powered up the collars, Conn said, “I don’t swim very well.”
“I’ll hold your hand,” Persisting said, and he did: they walked, then paddled their way out to where the water got deeper, Conn sticking close. Then, they went underwater, hand in hand, Persisting more or less dragging Conn behind him, kicking with a lot of inefficient, wasted motion, to a bullet-shaped vehicle that rested on the ocean floor.
They were off to Wrangel Island.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Outpost
April 18-19, 2036
Grant was still alive. Conn was able to tap in to a feed while en route under water—the tech that allowed her to do that was a mystery to her—which shared a Dyna-Tech press release that said that Grant was hydrating and resting. Dyna-Tech was no longer putting out any video showing him suffering. Conn approved.
It wasn’t lost on Conn that even if one of the hundred Pelorian spacecraft came up with a day-long route to Saturn, and even if they could get to that spacecraft in hours in order to launch, and even if she could precisely find Grant on Tethys (She hoped Dyna-Tech could help with that), and even if she could stabilize Grant and make him well enough for a journey home, they would then have to rely on the course-computer on the spacecraft for a return route.
All would be for nothing if lightning didn’t strike and give them a very short return trip. A route that took a year and a half, or even months or weeks, wouldn’t do them any good, considering Grant’s injuries. Persisting had said there was a one-in-four chance tha
t one hundred course computers would come up with a one- or two-day course among them. Therefore, there was a 75-percent chance that one computer would fail to calculate that short a course in its first one hundred tries.
Routes to Saturn started to come in. They were a year long, several weeks long, two years long, five months long. Persisting cautioned Conn against despair, but it was difficult to avoid as ten, twenty, thirty spacecraft failed to deliver a route that would save Grant’s life.
They arrived at Wrangel Island. Conn shuddered to think how fast they must have gone to arrive in so few hours. The tiny harbor they surfaced in was kept free of ice, but floes bobbed and jostled with one another just beyond. Ashore, what Conn saw startled her: at the foot of gently rolling hills dappled with snow, a field with what looked like empty oil barrels strewn across the bare, dead land. “We found it this way,” Persisting said, reassuring her. “The former Soviet Union had a military presence here fifty years ago. We leave it this way around our harbor because the polar bears avoid it.”
At his saying “our harbor,” Conn noticed for the first time at least two dozen other bullet-shaped sub-marine craft bobbing in two rows to their left. There was room for many more. Conn wondered how many were on the ocean floor off Half Moon Bay, or elsewhere off the west coast of America.
Conn left her pressure field on against the cold, and they mounted a hover-sled similar to those the Pelorians used on the moon. They wound their way along the coast, and it wasn’t long before she spotted some polar bears. Inland, on the other side of the hills, Conn could just see the tops of some artificial structures. There seemed to be one or two sled-paths diverging from the coastline toward them, but Persisting stuck to the coast.
Before long, Conn could see a number of “rocketships” standing nose up along the shoreline up ahead. As they approached, a spacecraft dropped out of the sky, firing jets intermittently to retard its acceleration, until it touched down vertically among the others. She saw repairs or maintenance being done on two of the spacecraft. No longer using Gasoline Alley, the aliens had obviously thrown together Earth’s first spaceport.
Girl on the Moon Page 28
