Mary had returned to the nullspace to be with the girls and was lying on the carpet in the common room, petting the cat the girls had named Mihos. Ness sat on a sofa. Grace and Emily sat in the two armchairs. They were all eating snacks that Isaac had brought them, crackers and cheese and squares of dark chocolate. Where he'd obtained chocolate none of them could guess. They were just glad that he had. Isaac made a half-smile in response to their inquiries, but said nothing.
"So Stan confirms what Alice told you," said Mary to the girls. "Your dad and Linda are safe and sound and at their destination. Apparently he found somebody he could trust in the military. Somebody who can track their iDent chips via satellite."
"I knew them dang things would have a good side," said Ness. She took another piece of the cheese, a homemade cheddar she found delicious.
"Are they coming back soon?" asked Grace.
"I don't know, hon," said Mary. "Stan hasn't spoken with your mother since just before they drove into Chernobyl. Apparently there's no working cell system inside the Exclusion Zone."
Ness shook her head. "All these high-tech alien gizmos around here and the U.S. government is stuck with bad cell phone service."
"So they made it to the place where all the bad guys live, but the bad guys are all gone," said Emily with a frown. "So why don't they just come home?"
Mary pushed up into a sitting position. "I think your folks just want to look around the place first," she said gently. "I don't think they'll be long."
"Any news about Iain?" asked Ness.
Mary flinched, wishing she'd discussed this with Ness privately. She shook her head. "Nothing yet," she said. She glanced toward the door to Iain's bedroom. They all knew that his body lay right there, in his bed, hooked to monitors and catheters and watched over by a hybrid nurse who visited regularly. Mary looked at the girls. "The Middle Children have done a rough scan in jumptime and found nothing. Now they've begun a much more finely tuned scan." She glanced at Ness for support. "He might very well be out there, lost, trying to find his way back, just like you all were when you were inside the Murk. If Alice is right, and he's lost in time, well, that's a much bigger haystack to search through."
"And Mihos is looking for him as well," added Emily, reminding them of their cat's double life.
Grace sighed heavily.
Mary looked at the younger girl. "What's up, Grace?" she said. Grace’s field had darkened considerably.
Grace shook her head from side to side. "He's not lost," she muttered.
"He's not lost?" asked Ness.
"No," said Grace, angrily, as if she might use rage to hold back her tears. "He's gone."
19.9
It took them a few minutes to catch up. Gabrielle told them what she knew so far, and of her suspicion that Zacharael had been involved in her rescue. Linda and Cole told of their adventures since Gabrielle's abduction: the new plane, the drive into Chernobyl, the vast light show as The Families' huge woks had taken off, the rain of bodies. Gabrielle knew little more than they did about what it all meant. She did confirm Linda's assumption that the colony woks were meant to transport tens of thousands of passengers. The number who had fallen back to Earth must have represented a tiny portion of the whole.
Gabrielle had already opened the unlocked door on the little gray building and had scoped out what was inside. There was a wide, stone stairway that seemed to go down into the very bowels of the Earth. And there was a working elevator. But she'd been too scared to go very far inside, and then Linda and her group had arrived to save her from making that choice on her own.
They started toward the building. The island itself was long and narrow, maybe a mile in length and a couple of hundred feet across. It was dotted with trees, and the remains of the old gravel path were still clearly visible, running down to the southern end where the causeway continued on, heading further out into the reservoir. About two-thirds of the way down the island sat the small gray structure. It was built from concrete block, with a gray metal roof and a single, gray, metal door facing to the southwest. To the right of the door was a red emergency light. Inside the light was a tiny reflector that rotated once per second, resulting in the flashing effect.
Cole stepped to the door and pulled it open. Inside and to the left was an office chair and a desk with a computer on it. Apparently they had kept a guard stationed here. To the right was the stairwell. In the center was the elevator door. Cole and Linda stepped to the top of the stairwell and leaned over the edge. They counted at least twenty floors before they could no longer be sure. It was all still well lit. Gabrielle stepped up to the elevator and pushed the call button, as she had before they arrived. The door opened instantly. The elevator compartment was clean and well lit, and it looked like it would hold them all.
Linda turned to her companions. "Anybody wanna sit this one out you're free to do so," she said with a smile. She stepped onto the elevator and stood by the back wall. The rest of them followed.
19.10
Danny and Gina stayed put in their little two-bunk cell and listened to the announcements and waited. Every now and then one of them would stick their head out into the hallway, or make their way to the lounge or dining areas, and listen to the scuttlebutt, and maybe ask a question or two. From what they could make out, the colony woks had all made it to Enceladus and were now hovering over the Herschel Colony, circling the wagons while they figured out their next steps. The man whose wife they'd seen crying had turned out to be one of The Families' major contributors for the Scalar Cannon project. And he wasn't the only one to have been swept out of the woks as they passed through the Grid. Some said that there were hundreds now missing. Others said the total was more likely in the thousands. And all of the missing, as far as anyone could tell so far, were either Family members or higher-ups somewhere in their associate organizations. The missing included most of the Directorate, and the Master himself. They were the rich and powerful. They'd been picked up and tossed from the colony woks by an unseen hand. Where they'd been taken was anybody's guess.
But the hand was no longer unseen, was it? As soon as they'd stopped at Enceladus, small, ghostly figures had appeared in dozens of places in every wok in the fleet. They looked like holographic projections, though where they were coming from nobody could tell. It was one of the Grays, the Life. A little old guy in a long, flowing red robe. He appeared out of nowhere and began to speak.
"Greetings, spacemen," said the little alien, "and bon voyage." He had what appeared to be a slight smirk on his face. "I hope you folks know what a favor we've done you, ridding your ships of rats before you head out across the great seas of space." The little alien's eyes wrinkled as though he were grinning. "Look at me," he said, "Mr. Metaphor." He cleared his throat. "So, anyways," he continued. "We the Living Beings, on behalf of the local group of the vast Cogency, just wanted to wish you well on your new adventure. Those of you who have been selected for will soon realize that you still have everyone and everything you need to make your new colonies a success, once you get past the loss of most of your leadership, and reorganize yourselves. You will now be left alone for a period of time, during which you can establish your species in the physical realm, and establish for yourselves exactly what sort of people you wish to be from here on out. Further contact with the Cogency, including the possibility of gaining provisional membership status, will depend on the choices you make in the coming years. You will not see us, but we will be watching, as we always have. We understand the exigencies that have compelled you to leave your home planet. Please understand that your decision is irrevocable, and that you will not be allowed or welcomed back. We trust that this aligns with your intent." The little man looked back and forth as though he were gazing out over his audience. Then he bowed a slight bow and smirked again. "For now, may you leave with our thanks and blessings, and may you further life and consciousness wherever you go." With that he was gone.
Neither Danny nor Gina saw the original apparitions. But the little alien'
s short speech had been captured on video and was now being shown repeatedly on the viewscreens. "Do you suppose Director Sinclair was one of those rats?" asked Gina after they'd watched the video.
Danny shrugged. "Maybe," he said, "But I'm not sure it matters now. The whole project is topsy-turvy. People are in an uproar. Nobody's going to question us at this point. And they're going to be looking for smart, competent people." He reached out and pulled her to him and held her close. "All we have to do is show up and do our best. We'll fit right in in no time."
"We'd better," said Gina, quietly. "Cuz we can't go back."
19.11
There were thirty-three floors in the underground city of Urbem Orsus, if the buttons in the elevator were an accurate representation of the whole of the place. Given that the city had to hold tens of thousands of people, the systems to keep them alive and fed, the equipment they'd be taking along with them, the weapons they'd needed to punch through the Grid, and the fleet of colony woks itself, they knew that the underground structure had to be far larger than they could ever fully explore themselves. They had no real idea what they were looking for, nor how they might find it. And they didn't know, for sure, that they were actually alone here. So how should they proceed?
"Signs and portents," said Linda, as she pushed the number two on the elevator panel. "We'll go by gut feelings and intuition and signs and portents. So tune in, y’all, and speak up if you have a feeling or an idea." She looked around at her traveling companions. "The Fellowship of the Vial," Cole had jokingly called them. But it fit, in a weird way. The events of their journey had brought them together as fellows. And that vial still remained the central question on Linda's mind. Cole. Annabelle. Doobie and Marionette. Gabrielle. Brenda. They shared the journey now. None of them had opted out. For some reason the universe had seen fit to throw this particular group of people together, to explore the vast city of Urbem Orsus, which The Families had recently forsaken. A city that may yet hold a surprise, a grand gesture, and maybe even an answer.
The door opened to level two. They stepped out into a wide corridor that extended in both directions, with double doors at each end, and more passageways beyond the doors. Everything was well lit. The air was fresh and cool and comfortable. The corridor was smooth, like polished stone, and painted a pastel green, rounded at the top corners but with sharp right angles between the floor and walls. The floor was covered in standard institutional carpeting, though a deep burgundy rather than gray. The light came from a continuous strip that glowed soft and warm overhead. It reminded Linda of the human side of the vast human-alien lodge she'd been in under Washington D.C. It was founded on alien technology, but adapted to human sensibilities.
Committed to following her nose, but still open to input and intuition from any of them, Linda turned to the left, leading them down the corridor and through the double doors. A little further along the next corridor they came to a T-intersection. On the wall before them, mounted behind Lucite, was a diagram of what appeared to be the entire floor, and underneath that, a side-view cutaway showing the thirty-three floors stacked like pancakes. Everything was clearly labeled in English.
"That was lucky," said Cole.
"There are probably maps like this all over the place, at key points," said Linda. "But yeah..."
"Looks like the elevator we took down from the little island runs through the southern end of the city," said Cole, pointing at the map. "That would put most of the city itself directly under the nuclear power plant, and maybe under Pripyat as well."
"And it looks like if we walked to the other end of the city on this level, we'd run into their wok hangars," said Marionette, also pointing.
"I wonder how far down the top level is from the surface," said Brenda.
Gabrielle stepped forward to examine the cutaway. She followed the floors with her fingers until she found the one she'd been looking for. "The members of the Directorate would have been housed here," she said, pointing to a large section of level four. "Right under the hangars." She turned to Linda. "That's where my folks would be," she said. "Or had been." Her face was pinched into a frown but Linda thought she heard a note of hopefulness in the girl's voice. They had not yet told her about her father, thinking that that could wait until they were away from here. Maybe that was a mistake.
Linda nodded. "We need to learn if there's anyone here at all," she said. She studied the map. "Does anybody see where we might find a security or police office?" There had to be something for a city this size, especially one trying to hide from the entire world.
"Here," offered Doobie, pointing. "There's a small space labeled 'Sec' on every level. Looks like maybe most of the levels share a basic floor plan. The main security office is probably on the level labeled "Security and Operations.'" He pointed at the level on the cutaway. It was fairly centrally located, right under a large, open space that seemed to extend across four different levels.
"So I say we go check out security on this level first," said Linda. She looked around at her crew. "Does it make sense that we all stay together?" Everybody nodded. Nobody wanted to split up.
Linda started back down the hall and toward the elevator down which they had ridden. They passed the elevator and continued down another corridor, this one filled with doors on either side that opened up to two-bunk housing units. Working from memory of the map, they took a corridor to the right and then another to the left. They saw nobody at all along the way. And when they came to the security office on the right, it was empty as well. Lights were on. Computers were still on. There were papers strewn about on the desk. It looked as though whoever had been there had just stepped out for a trip to the bathroom. Apparently those who had left the planet did not care what they left behind.
They continued on with no particular destination in mind. The map had shown elevators all over the place. And they'd passed another map on their way to the security office. There seemed little danger of getting lost. And, so far, no danger of running into anybody who didn't want them there. Linda relaxed a bit and kept on.
The next map showed that they were nearing a cafeteria, of which there were apparently six on each level. At the possibility of finding something to drink, Linda began to feel her thirst. "I could use a cold one," muttered Doobie. The others agreed that some food and drink might be just the ticket in this strange ghost town. They headed that way.
Linda stood staring at the map for a while before following them. There was something familiar about the shape of this city. The levels were not all the same size. The top ones were smaller. Gradually they got longer and wider, but then they reduced in size again as they neared the bottom. If one pulled the city of Urbem Orsus up out of the ground and looked at it, it might seem to be roughly shaped like a potato, with a definite, conical bulge at the bottom. She might have expected a cylinder or a cube. But a potato? She had not expected that.
Ah well. There was water nearby, hopefully. Maybe even a snack. Linda hurried to catch up with the others.
19.12
Cole pondered their situation as they stood in the huge, stainless steel, restaurant-style kitchen, eating leftovers from the refrigerator and drinking bottled water and good beer and expensive wine. He glanced at the Lucite-framed map of Urbem Orsus on the wall by the door. It was all about choices now, and he was not certain that he understood how things should go from here on out. It was clear to him that Linda had dragged them all to Urbem Orsus for reasons of which she was not fully aware. There had never been any hope of stopping The Families from leaving the planet, as far as Cole could see. She was here in search of the Fisherman. Because whether she wanted to admit it or not, she had held out some hope that he could, and would, help her choose, despite his insistence that the fate of humanity was on her shoulders alone.
Cole understood Linda's need. How somebody could choose to allow the deliberate reduction of the human population he could not fathom. And yet, given these times, and given what was possible, perhaps even certain, if
such a reduction was not made, he understood that the choice was not an easy one. And to have it forced on you, as Linda had. It would change her forever, whatever choice she made. Haunt her. Maybe even destroy her. Cole regarded his wife from across the chef's prep table. Linda could not escape her burden. That secret hope had been dashed. The Fisherman had gone, avoiding the encumbrance Linda had wished to put back on him. So why were they still here?
The pantry and huge walk-in refrigerator were well stocked with quality foods, like the larder of an expensive organic restaurant. Everything was of the highest quality. There was nothing here off the GroCo truck. Cole had pulled out an almost full pan of some chicken dish, crusty baked breasts rolled with cheese and greens and nuts. He hadn't seen food this good in a long time. The chicken was wonderful cold and Cole took two pieces. Linda had a piece of the chicken and had discovered some salad to go with it. The others found things to add to their meal. Doobie and Marionette had laid out a wide choice of beverages, then grabbed some beers and ducked around the corner for a few moments alone. Annabelle had set plates and cutlery on the counter. It all felt spooky and surreal to Cole. Like they were characters in some disaster film, the last people on Earth. Was it only a matter of time before the zombies arrived?
Cole certainly felt like a movie character. This whole thing about the Wayfaring Stranger and the Church and how he was supposed to stop Linda from destroying the human race: none of that felt like the real world. Once again, life had grabbed him by the collar and dragged him along so forcefully that it was all he could do to stay on his feet.
Cole watched Linda, who stood across the table from him, stabbing at a salad and asking Brenda questions about her job and her connection to Mr. Bluebird. He loved his wife. He did not doubt that. But he was not sure who she was anymore. Something had changed her during her confinement on Mars. There was a hardness to her that was new. A coldness, perhaps. A stern determination that had kept her moving since they'd found each other on Squirrel Island. Circumstances alone could certainly explain that. The urgencies of dealing with The Families, and the disposition of that vial of serum, could not be denied. But it was more than that. It felt, to Cole, like Linda was running. He did not know whether she was running away from something, or towards it. It might have been both.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 72
