Alternities

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  Headlights in the distance told him of a shuttle train approaching the Block station, a hundred yards farther along the median. He raced it there, reaching the platform just before the doors closed, and boarded without troubling to ask where it was headed. It would take him away.

  Whether to end of line in Wakefield or downtown did not matter. Just away, that’s all that mattered.

  Chronology: 1976

  * * *

  NOVEMBER

  1 Earthquake devastates Guatemala

  A powerful earthquake and several strong aftershocks centered in the province of Huehuetenango caused widespread damage in central Guatemala and Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula. The official death toll was more than 2,000, though some experts estimated the actual number of casualties to be twice that. More than two hundred buildings were destroyed in Guatemala City, and damage was reported as far away as Puebla, Mexico. A number of pre-Columbian Mayan temples were badly damaged by the quake, most notably at the Iximiche and Zaculeu archaeological sites. The strongest tremors peaked at 7.9 on the Richter Scale.

  3 Astronauts set endurance record

  UN Space Authority astronauts Robert Lovell (US), Erica Hamilton (UK), Viktor Syedykh (USSR) and Ernhard Schoene (GDR) set a new lunar endurance record, occupying their spartan Galileo Base quarters located on Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Security) for forty-six consecutive days. A fuel-tank leak in the Delaunay lunar shuttle had delayed the arrival of a relief crew, originally expected October 18.

  7 Brandenberg elected President, Republicans gain edge in both houses of Congress

  In the closest popular vote in American history. National party candidate Daniel Brandenburg narrowly defeated Republican incumbent Roland Maxwell to become the first member of the new party to achieve national office. Democrat Michael Mansfield finished a distant third in the polling, which appeared to mark the end of national effectiveness for the party of Jefferson and Roosevelt. The Republicans maintained control of the Senate, with 11 of 13 incumbents reelected to give the party 55 seats to the National party’s 16 and the Democrats’ 31. In the House, Republicans will occupy 200 seats, Nationalists 147, and Democrats 88. A majority of the successful Nationalist candidates were veterans of the Hill who changed allegiance in the wake of the party’s rift over U.S, participation in the proposed United Nations Confederation.

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  The Grave of Jacob Stalin

  Indianapolis, Alternity Blue

  The three other new field agents waiting with Wallace in a ground-floor room of the Scottish Rite Cathedral did not look as bored as they had a right to.

  Tucked away out of the way by the station staff, they were on hold with nothing to do, not even sightsee. The eight Tudor-arch windows spaced around the hexagonal chamber, the base of one of the cathedral’s four main turrets, were filled with a rippled glass which allowed no glimpse of the city outside.

  But instead of looking bored, they looked impatient, nervous, or eager—looks that all said “Let’s get on with it.” It was a sentiment with which Wallace could identify. He and his transit partner, Gary Fowler, had come through near the top of the move, and so had been waiting the better part of two hours.

  Fowler had been a stranger, an anonymous face in the new class, until that morning, when Wallace was assigned to bring him through to Blue. Since then, Wallace had collected a few biographical scraps. The son of a Nisei mother and an American father. Fowler had been 1A certified for the Hirakata gate in Green on the strength of his conversational fluency in Japanese. Fowler’s features were essentially Caucasian, but his short stature and slight build betrayed the mixed heritage.

  There were footsteps from beyond the open door, and all four looked up hopefully. “Bailey and Scowcroft?” asked the white-haired black man who appeared in the doorway.

  “Here,” said one of the two, scrambling to his feet.

  “Let’s be going.”

  Disappointed, Wallace and Fowler sank back into their chairs. “And then there were two,” Fowler said when the others were gone.

  “I’m getting used to it.”

  “You’d better, since we’re going to be bunking together. You play cards?”

  “Euchre?” Wallace said hopefully.

  “Is that a card game?”

  “It’s kind of like pinochle.”

  “Oh. No. I meant poker.”

  “Never really learned the rules. Mom didn’t approve. Hearts?”

  Fowler shook his head and grunted. “Probably no cards here anyway.”

  “I never saw any.”

  “How often have you been here?”

  “Thirty, forty times. Only ferry runs, though.”

  “That’s right. This is home for you.”

  “Sort of. I used to live about fifty miles east of here.”

  “How do you figure it? It’s like they’ve thrown away the rule book for this project. You never send moles or runners home.”

  “Or make singles moles,” Wallace said, thinking of the half-dozen or so unmarrieds among the new class.

  Jason wasn’t among them, and by the end of the fourteen-day accelerated training program it had been evident why. The class was not a particularly distinguished group: lAs and 2As, a dozen ferrymen, a number of analysts withdrawn from other stations, even a few desk-types from the Tower. Jason was too valuable as a runner, especially with the ranks of the runners thinned by the mass “promotion.”

  “And this business this morning,” Fowler went on. “Did you ever see gate control such a madhouse? What was that all about? There was no reason for running us through that way.”

  “I can’t figure it either,” Wallace said.

  There had been a definite air of controlled panic in the Tower that morning. The new class had been sent through the gate like an invading army, two agents at a time every four minutes, just about the minimum clearance required for the gate to reopen between transits. All other traffic had been suspended for the two and a half hours it had taken to get seventy-six agents across. No one Wallace talked to could remember a move on anything approaching that scale.

  But the efficiency of the move was deceptive. They had spent three hours being paired off, lined up, briefed and otherwise organized before the first agents started down the chute. Not until nearly the last minute were he and Fowler told who they were supposed to connect with on the other side.

  “It felt like some kind of rehearsal,” Wallace said. “Like high school graduation, with the people who know what they want done doing their best to keep it from the people who have to do it.”

  Fowler laughed and gestured at the windows. “You know, I’m taking it on faith that we actually are in Indianapolis.”

  “That much I can vouch for.”

  “What about this Donald Arens we’ve been assigned to? Do you know him?”

  “I’ve seen him once or twice, I think. Mole. I don’t really know anything else about him.”

  “Except that he’s not a punctual person.”

  “Punctuality is an overrated virtue,” said a new voice from the doorway. “You two ready to go?”

  They looked up to find a blond youth leaning against the door jamb, arms crossed over his chest, grinning while they gaped. The minimum age for the Guard was twenty, but Arens did not even look that old. And yet he was a veteran here, three years continuous duty.

  “Sure are,” Wallace said, standing. “I’m—”

  “Wallace. I know. They sent over photos for all of us nannies.”

  “Nannies?” Fowler asked. “Which makes us—”

  Arens’ smile had a gentle touch of superiority. “Come on, let’s get out of here. I haven’t seen my apartment for five days, and I’ve got a date with a cold beer on the balcony,” he said. “Besides, I can’t wait to see how we’re going to divide one bed three ways.”

  They went out the back way, passing under a tan canvas awning to a navy blue van waiting in the alley behind the cathedral. There was already a dri
ver behind the wheel, and the sliding side door was standing open for them.

  In the few seconds and half-dozen steps they were under the open sky. Fowler twisted around for a look at the building they had just left, while Wallace tested the view southward, toward the city center. Then they were inside the van, their vision blocked by metal and painted glass.

  “I never saw anything like that on a church before,” Fowler said as Arens threw the side door closed and the van lurched forward.

  “Like what?” Wallace asked.

  “On the awning. There was an emblem, a logo, with two eagles standing on a sword. Something in Latin underneath. Looked sort of Nazi-like.”

  “Spes mea in deo est,” Arens said. “ ‘My hope is in God.’ You still haven’t seen a church with anything like that. Because this isn’t a church. It’s a Masonic cathedral.”

  “I thought it was a church the first time I saw it,” Wallace said, coming to Fowler’s defense. “I was fourteen, maybe thirteen. Anyway, that cornerstone out front—what’s the inscription?”

  “ ‘For the glory of the Grand Architect of the Universe,’ ” Arens recited.

  “That’s it. Doesn’t that sound religious to you?”

  “I said it wasn’t a church. I didn’t say it wasn’t religious. Besides, who else but a Freemason would call God the Grand Architect?” Arens asked rhetorically. “My father belongs to a lodge in Richmond. Pretty silly stuff, if you ask me. Worse than the Elks. Mystic ties and lambskin aprons. Though it’s great cover for us here. All we had to do is take the Volume of Sacred Law off the altar and get ourselves kicked out of the state and national associations. We’re practically shunned. You couldn’t have handpicked a more secure gate house.”

  Fowler said, “We don’t have them in Sacramento, I guess. At least not my Sacramento.”

  “You probably do and just never noticed,” Wallace said. “They don’t advertise.”

  Smiling bemusedly, Arens glanced forward over the driver’s shoulder. “How about a little side trip to Pickett’s, cap’n? My refrigerator’s empty and I’m gonna have to feed the kids.”

  “Forget it,” the driver said. “I’ve been playing taxi for the new class all day. I’m not making any side trips I don’t have to.”

  “Prick,” Arens said, sitting back in his seat. “In that case, gentlemen, we’ll be home in about two minutes.”

  The fastest way to find furnished housing for seventy-six new agents had proved to be to drop them like uninvited guests on the doorsteps of the station staff and Indianapolis-based field agents. Many of those staffers, including Arens, lived in a twelve-story apartment house just north of where the gentle flowing Fall Creek passed under Meridian Street.

  Built in 1947, the structure was a quickie product of the postwar rush to house veterans and their families. But on the way up to Arens’ top-floor apartment, Wallace saw that the second-class construction had been given first-class maintenance. The lobby was spartan but clean, the elevator slow but quiet.

  The first glimpse inside the apartment reinforced the impression. The architect had not been generous with space, but there was more than enough for a perfectly satisfactory bachelor’s haven. Meridian Arms 12-E featured an L-shaped room of ambiguous purpose wrapped around a small kitchen, a bedroom just large enough for the queen-sized bed shoehorned into it, and a south-facing balcony roughly an armsbreath wide.

  The air inside was stuffy, with a faint hint of something spoiling. “I’ve been up in Chicago doing a job for the Guard,” Arens explained as he swept through the apartment, opening windows and inspecting end tables for liquifying food. “Either of you going on the road?”

  “I will be,” Wallace said. Fowler was silent; he had been assigned to the station as an analyst.

  “Anyway, it wasn’t something I could leave in the middle, which is why I didn’t hit the mark on meeting you two. In fact, I’m going to have to make another trip up there in a couple days as it is.”

  “You go to Chicago from here?” Fowler asked with surprise, joining the hunt for the offending putrefactant.

  “Indy is the base for operations as far east as Pittsburgh, as far west as St. Louis, north to Milwaukee, south to Nashville. You’re a half-day’s drive from about a dozen major cities,” Arens said, peeking in the cabinet under the kitchen sink. “Ecch, here’s the problem. Forgot to put the garbage out before I left. I’ve done that more than once.”

  “Drive?” Wallace asked, stepping back into the living room to let his host pass.

  Arens was carrying what looked like a square galvanized metal tub, extracted from beneath the sink. “Sure. No sense setting up substations all over creation when it’s so easy to zip around,” he said, heading for the hallway. “None of your 40-mile-per-hour interurban trains. The speed governors on most of the highways are set at 75. You drive?” he asked, pausing in the doorway.

  “Yes,” said Wallace.

  “No,” said Fowler at the same time.

  “You’re going to enjoy this alternity,” he said to Wallace. “Back in a minute.”

  Dinner was more like a lunch, improvised from the contents of Arens’ refrigerator and cupboards.

  “Did the stationmaster—what’s his name?” Fowler asked.

  “Kelly. Matt Kelly.”

  “Right. Did Kelly tell you nannies how long you’d be needed?”

  “A few weeks, at least. And Kelly promised us it wouldn’t be more than two months. I suppose you’re smart enough to figure that not everybody was excited about having company.”

  Fowler clearly hadn’t considered the possibility that they were not welcome. “It’s not like anyone has a permanent home here,” he said defensively.

  “Anyplace you live long enough to hang something of your own on the wall feels permanent,” Arens said.

  “So you don’t want us here.”

  “I’m not excited about it. But I’m not here all that much, either, so I’ll cope. And the subsidy bonus they’re giving us for our trouble is sweet enough that you two won’t be able to eat it all up,” Arens said, chewing. “Anyway, housing is tight, even if you’ve got deep pockets like the Guard does. The city’s been growing. It’ll take a while to line up enough of the right kind of space to break up all the triples.”

  “What’s the ‘right kind’?” Fowler wanted to know.

  Wallace answered for Arens. “I’d guess the stationmaster’s got to be careful not to step on toes by giving us better housing than the people who were already stationed here.”

  “On target,” Arens said, looking down the table toward the serving plate. “You catch on pretty quick for a runner. Now, if you value your life, pass that last bratwurst down to me, and don’t let me see you so much as sucking air over it.”

  London, The Home Alternity

  It seemed to Robert Taskins that David Somerset did not belong on 10 Downing Street. It was almost a physical thing—the clash between a tall broad-shouldered man and the modestly dimensioned, densely decorated rooms of the Prime Minister’s official residence.

  But there was a matter of style as well, discord between Somerset’s educated working-class sensibilities and Westminster’s expectations, a silent war between a man of Stepney and a house of Stuart. Somerset was not the kind of man who could be happy living in a museum, and Taskins entertained a doleful vision of the Prime Minister ordering the William and Mary restorations and Wedgewood china swept out in favor of plasticine couches and paper plates.

  Taskins had been brought in through the Old Treasury, ushered down the connecting corridor from the Cabinet offices located there, and shown into a small study where Somerset waited alone.

  “Good morning. Ambassador,” the Prime Minister said, raising his eyes from the papers on his lap. “Thank you for coming. This shouldn’t take long.”

  A winged settee was close at hand, and Taskins settled himself on its floral upholstery. “I’m happy to oblige. Though a bit more notice would be of value to me in the future, Mr
. Somerset,” Taskins said. “I was forced to cancel a staff meeting and a personal appointment to be here at this time.”

  “I apologize for any inconvenience,” Somerset said. “I’m afraid I’m inclined to trample convention when the matter seems important enough. You recall that I promised you that I would have more to say about an expansion of the Weasel rocket program?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ve been giving this business a great deal of thought,” Somerset said. “I believe I can offer you an accommodation which will allow you to more than double the number of weapons sited here while reducing the risk of exposure. After I’ve explained it to you, I want you to communicate it to President Robinson.”

  Taskins sat back in the settee, quietly bristling at the man’s arrogance. After you’ve explained it to me—do you see me as nothing more than a messenger, one of those pink-tailcoated fools wandered over from the Bank of England? Is it impossible to think that you might rather discuss it with me?

  But long years as a diplomat kept any trace of these thoughts from his voice and expression. “By all means,” he said. “Please tell me what you propose.”

  Somerset hauled himself up from his chair and spread a four-leaved map across the flat lid of a massive chest, hiding its splendid walnut marquetry. “BP—British Petroleum—has eleven inactive drilling platforms in the North Sea. Here, and here, and here—you see the marks.”

  “Inactive—what exactly does that mean in this context? Abandoned?”

  Somerset shook his head vigorously. “The platforms are unmanned and, I understand, stripped of much of their drilling gear, but quite sound. It’s uneconomic to be at full production just now, what with the export market being monopolized by Saudi oil, and these were the least productive of BP’s assets.”