by Scott Mackay
At the counter, Vivian ladled soup into a bowl. Pittman felt suddenly hungry, the overpowering need for food asserting itself for the first time since Iowa.
‘‘And what have you heard? Anything more about the Guarneri mission?’’ Because that was everybody’s obsession these days, the last great hope, a flotilla of flimsy spacecraft out by Venus trying to save the world at the last minute.
Joe peered at his wife. ‘‘Viv, what were they saying about that the other night?’’
Vivian fiddled with crackers. ‘‘It’s all in place and ready to go.’’
‘‘And then that other thing . . . what was that other thing they were talking about?’’
‘‘I don’t know, Joe. I don’t know what you mean.’’
A trace of irritation appeared on Joe’s face. ‘‘You know . . . that thing they were talking about.’’
Vivian let her hands drop to the counter in sudden frustration, her eyes closing briefly as if at the pinch of a migraine, accidentally knocking a cracker to the floor. ‘‘Joe, they were talking about many things. I don’t know what particular thing you mean.’’
Butch walked over and ate the cracker off the floor.
‘‘That thing about the atmosphere.’’
‘‘The cold trap?’’
‘‘Yes, the cold trap.’’ Then, with some sullenness, he asked, ‘‘Was that so hard to remember?’’
‘‘What’s the cold trap?’’ asked Pittman.
Joe leaned forward. ‘‘Part of the atmosphere.’’ He pointed to the ceiling. ‘‘Way up there. Any water vapor trying to escape the atmosphere turns to ice and drifts back down to Earth once it hits the cold trap. They say we need that cold trap. Without that cold trap, all our water will evaporate and drift off into space.’’ He leaned back in his chair and put his hands flat on the table, looking as if he were the sole possessor of a mystical knowledge. ‘‘But now it’s gotten so hot, it’s not a cold trap anymore. It’s not a trap at all. It’s not stopping our water from drifting off. They say millions of gallons are being burnt off every day. It’s the first step in the boiling of the oceans.’’ He pointed to the ceiling again. ‘‘This Guarneri thing they have floating out by Venus . . . I don’t know what good it is.’’ His brow settled cantankerously. ‘‘And the last thing we should have done was gotten the Chinese involved.’’
Vivian put his soup in front of him. ‘‘Joe, let’s not talk politics. I have every confidence President Langdon is going to fix the problem.’’
Joe’s face creased with mounting irritation. ‘‘Langdon’s nothing but a big-money patsy.’’
After this cynical pronouncement, the kitchen fell silent. Vivian joined them. Pittman ate.
He listened to the rain outside. A big crash came from the backyard, and all three looked up. They then went back to eating soup. Butch settled on the carpet by the mudroom.
Pittman couldn’t help thinking this had once been a big boisterous family home—just like his own place in Philadelphia—and now it was all gone. Here was Vivian, overweight and halfway through middle age; and Joe, a fussy old tyrant who was plagued by his own forgetfulness. And now the two of them had nothing left to believe in. He decided it was time to give the Haydns something to believe in again.
He started without preamble, his voice soft but firm.
‘‘We’d just reached our objective.’’ He gave them a brief description of the scene, the way the tower leaned like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. ‘‘Not right. Unnatural. With no regard for gravity. These aliens, they’re stranger than anything you can imagine.’’ He described for them the rise in temperature inside Moonstone 32, and how distress calls came in from the other operational units, and how they had been forced to bail. He sketched in for them Moonstone 32’s astonishing end. ‘‘Just melted, then froze up, like someone stepping on a bug, then letting it dry in the sun.’’ All that time he heard the low thrum in his ears; the same low thrum Haydn always heard. Going completely off topic, he asked, ‘‘Gunther ever complain of any ear problems?’’
Joe and Vivian looked at each other.
‘‘He had the tinnitus something awful,’’ said Vivian. ‘‘We took him to doctors but they never figured it out, not even the ones in Philadelphia.’’
Pittman considered the thrumming again. Was it guilt whispering in his ear? Or were the Builders trying to talk to him again?
He dismissed the phantom physical ailment and continued his story. ‘‘We were running away from the tower because we were afraid it might launch further attacks against us. Newlove didn’t make it out fast enough. He burst into flames. Your son and I headed for this small crater, seeking cover. I made it there first. I was trying to figure out what we were going to do. I realized immediately that we had an air problem. We had to walk back to Gettysburg because our Moonstone was gone. I’d left some Moonstones at Gettysburg for rescue response, but I couldn’t get in touch with Gettysburg because radiation from the Bleed was hampering our signal. As it turned out, all the Moonstones there had been destroyed anyway, so we were on our own. I decided that somebody had to get back to Gettysburg so we could launch our nuclear assault at Alpha Vehicle. It was the only chance we had.’’
He began to feel the insufferable heat and humidity again. Also extremely uncomfortable about the lie he was about to tell. He addressed Joe directly.
‘‘And that was when your son volunteered to give me his air, sir. I said I didn’t want it, that I couldn’t take it, even though I realized that the only way we could realistically continue the mission was to have the commanding officer get back to Gettysburg. But before I could argue further with him, he used his med-pak and injected a lethal dose of morphine into his body. I stayed with him right to the end. He wanted me to give you the message that he loved you. He was a soldier’s soldier. He knew and understood the importance of our mission. I disconnected his oxygen only when he stopped breathing. You have to understand that there was nothing I could have done to save him. The last thing I wanted was his death. He was a fine young man. And he died in the most honorable way any man can die, serving his country. I’ll always remember him. And we should all honor him.’’
Both parents, having stopped eating several moments ago, now grew still. Vivian spoke first. ‘‘So . . . you took his air?’’
Vivian’s eyes had widened a fraction. Joe’s jaw was moving ever so slightly from side to side. Candlelight brightened their faces from below.
‘‘By the time I did, he was already dead. I wouldn’t have taken it otherwise.’’
Both parents remained still for several more seconds, staring at him. And it dawned on him that they knew Gunther far better than he did, understood what he would do in a situation like that, and what he wouldn’t do. The look in their eyes told him that something wasn’t jibing for either of them. They knew he wasn’t telling the truth. Truth. Deception. And the notion that maybe he had done some bad things in his life after all.
Vivian finally spoke again. ‘‘And did he suffer?’’
He now felt relieved. At least he could offer a few comforting medical facts. ‘‘Opiate overdose is one of the most comfortable ways to go. The central nervous system shuts down quietly, and as you can imagine, there’s absolutely no pain. Once his biomonitors told me he had gone into respiratory arrest, I disconnected his oxygen. The United States Marine Corps offers its sincere condolences. I made a monument for him. The thing about a monument on the Moon, it’s going to last forever. There’s no weather up there, so nothing’s going to wear it down. I know we can’t bring him back, and I’m deeply sorry for his death, but please understand, your son made a brave decision. The Corps will be contacting you about the various medals and citations he will receive.’’
Vivian shook her head. ‘‘It doesn’t sound like Gun. He’s not the kind to give up without a fight.’’
When he was back in his truck heading toward Philadelphia, he felt the burden of his guilt greatly. It was true. He was a destroyer. It w
as as if the Builders had held up a mirror, and were now asking him for atonement.
28
Dr. Ochoa held a large syringelike instrument close to Mark’s head, one of the tools Fye had in his bag of tricks. Cam floated next to the wall-mounted cot as Ochoa inserted the instrument into Mark’s left nostril. Mark lay strapped in place, eyes partially open but insensible. Looking into Mark’s eyes, Cam couldn’t help thinking of his father’s eyes after the stroke, like burnt-out lightbulbs.
Fye floated above them, head angled, legs drifting, elfin in his chubbiness. Cam glanced toward the hub. Blake and Lewis stood guard at the surgery hatch. Lesha was next to Cam, her hand resting on his shoulder.
Ochoa depressed the instrument’s trigger. The instrument made a slight hiss, like pneumatic brakes letting out air, and Mark’s face scrunched, not in pain, but as if an insect had flown up his nose.
Ochoa turned to Cam. ‘‘The nanogens need a little time to adjust to the new medium.’’
‘‘And what’s the new medium?’’ asked Cam.
Ochoa’s eyes narrowed. ‘‘Brain tissue.’’
They waited.
After five minutes, Ochoa took a large needle and administered epinephrine directly to Mark’s heart. Mark’s back arched, his eyes went wide, his teeth clenched, and the corners of his lips curved downward in a spasm. He inhaled with a jerk, his breath scratching against his dry throat like fingernails against the skin of a tambourine. A semblance of sensibility came to his eyes, and he turned to Cam.
‘‘What happened?’’
It took them a while to explain things to Mark, and at first, as the nanogens went to work, rearranging his brain, he had a hard time putting it together. The blankness in his eyes, combined with a hint of perplexed alarm, told everybody the young scientist didn’t remember much, had no knowledge of his midnight forays to Cremona, and couldn’t recall one speck of code he had typed into the Guarneri nodes.
John Quang floated past the hatch, his flat Asian face illuminated to a pale shade of indigo by the violet guide lights. Blake told him to go away. Quang, not looking surprised, just nervous, mumbled an apology in the perfect English so many PRNCers spoke. This apology seemed to irritate Blake, for he feinted at the observer, as if he meant to hit him, and Quang maneuvered away, instinctively trying to swim, frog kicks with his legs, dog paddles with his hands—but stayed in one place until he latched on to a handhold and pulled himself up.
Fye reached into his kit and withdrew something else: an epipen-style injection device such as one might use on oneself during a severe allergic reaction.
‘‘What I have here, Mark,’’ he said, holding the instrument up, ‘‘is a form of scopolamine. It’s going to help you remember what the implant told you. I’m sure you understand we have some hard choices to make. We don’t know what you’ve put into the nodes, they’re so well hidden, but they might compromise the whole mission. If we were to activate the anti-Ostrander field—and we have to activate it sooner or later or we’re going to lose our chance—we might damage it in some unforeseen way, perhaps sabotage it completely, thanks to the new language you’ve backgrounded into it. So that means we’ve got to find and deactivate the code you’ve entered before we can proceed safely.’’
Fye gazed at the unit affectionately. ‘‘As I say, we have scopolamine in here. We also have some good old-fashioned LSD. There’s nothing like LSD to unlock the mind. And of course at VIP-Med, nanogens are all the rage, so we’ve got some of those, too. These nanogens are going to search out deep memory. Stuff that’s right in your subconscious. We just want you to talk, Mark, that’s all. And type. We’ve hooked up this keyboard, and anything you remember you can type in here. It’ll download immediately into a segregated file of Guarneri, ready for upload when Dr. Conrad has cleared it. Do you think you can do this, Mark? Everybody back home is really counting on you. The sun goes red giant if you don’t help us.’’
Mark gazed at Fye with his lower lip drawn so that his bottom row of teeth showed, looking like a man who had just been asked to jump out of an airplane. He nodded but the nod was fretful, and tiny in its range of movement, a spasm of the neck that made Mark’s cranium duck a few times.
Then Fye handed the unit to Ochoa and the doctor injected the VIP-Med cocktail of relaxants, hallucinogens, and nanogens into Mark’s arm.
Now another veil came over Mark’s eyes, a deeper, more meditative one, softening the jangle of razor-edged adrenaline that had been crawling around the periphery of his pupils after the epinephrine. He grew less agitated, and as this artificial calmness spread through his body, he turned to Cam, as if hoping Cam would get him out of the surgery.
Fye made a general announcement. ‘‘If we could clear the surgery.’’ Because they had spoken about this, too, how the ‘‘need-to-know’’ rule had come to roost, and how it was important that the Chinese find out as little as possible about what was going on.
All nonessential personnel drifted away.
Once they were gone, Fye said to Cam and Ochoa, ‘‘That John Quang. Not his real name at all. Wouldn’t you know it.’’
As Mark slipped more deeply into a dream zone, the submerged part of his brain started to remember the implant’s previously transmitted instructions.
Over the course of the next couple of hours, Cam and Mark went systematically through Guarneri node 1. It reminded Cam of strip-mining for iron, having to take huge truckloads of ore to a processing plant, then sending it through the separator, only to come up with a proportionately smaller nugget of useful information. Often, the code that Mark typed seemed to be mixed, or have nothing at all to do with Guarneri, and they had to straighten it out, rewrite, polish, and test until the system-read gave them a green light and a correlate.
During this time, Fye disappeared for an hour and a half, then came back to check on progress. ‘‘Anything?’’
Cam sighed as his lips came together. ‘‘Take a thousand shredded documents. Then laboriously tape all the documents back together. If you get it wrong, you have to start over. That’s a lot of taping. And, Oren, I don’t think we have the time if it’s just me and Mark. Vet a few more of my people.’’
Fye’s lips pursed. ‘‘Have you gotten anything useful?’’
‘‘So far, it’s just a lot of encrypted transmit code with special boost capability to get it through the radiation.’’ He motioned toward the hull. ‘‘They’ve got something out there, a stealth-capable orbiting communications relay using the same new pierce design, and it’s fairly close by.’’
‘‘So they’re sending all our plans back home.’’ Fye shook his head. ‘‘I knew that pierce design shouldn’t have been a joint venture. Is it still sending?’’
‘‘Not now that I have a lock on it.’’
‘‘So in other words, they can’t compromise us more than they already have.’’
‘‘Yes, but that’s not the point.’’
‘‘And the point is?’’
‘‘We’re running out of time.’’
Fye considered this with raised eyebrows. ‘‘So just go ahead and start Guarneri up?’’
Cam’s brow creased. ‘‘We can’t do that.’’
‘‘Why not?’’
‘‘Because I’ve found a number of suffixes in seven backgrounded lines that indicate a sabotage program, as we suspected. It’s extremely easy to blow something like the Guarneri array sky-high. We’re dealing with subatomic reactions here. If it’s not controlled precisely, any of the arrays could turn back on themselves and self-destruct. I’m seeing suffixes that tell me the Chinese, once they’ve finished with their transmits, intend to destroy Guarneri. It’s as if those elements in the PRNC that are still loyal to Po Pin-Yen don’t understand the danger we all face.’’
Fye studied the screen. ‘‘They don’t want us to get the upper hand once and for all. And with Builder technology we would.’’ The large man turned to Cam, and in a philosophical tone said, ‘‘The PRNC War is still going
on, Dr. Conrad, even in spite of the overthrow. It’s just going on in a different way. And they’re good. They’re a formidable and worthy adversary. Do you know how many times we checked John Quang? And since you broke this whole thing open, you can’t imagine how much manpower we’ve put into getting new information on him. We’ve lost several good agents. But it’s been worth it. We even got a nugget or two on Loftus Hua. They don’t know it yet, but they’re both scheduled for VIP-Med treatment as well.’’
Cam nodded, now accepting that he was a soldier in all this. ‘‘In the meantime, we’ve got to find a way to further penetrate this program and disarm it. I’m focusing specifically on the destruct program, but it’s like eking information out of thin air. Given enough time, I think Mark will ante up. You’ve got enough medication?’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘And I’m going to need more people.’’
‘‘Who do you want?’’
‘‘We’ll start with Lesha Weeks. If I can’t do it with her, I’m going to have to include Blaine Berkheimer. Meanwhile, I think you should make it known to the president that he’s got to get in diplomatic contact with elements of the old Po Pin-Yen regime and tell them that what they’re doing is suicidal.’’
Fye shook his head, as if Cam were woefully unschooled in the ways of the world. ‘‘It’s not going to happen, Dr. Conrad. If Po Pin-Yen doesn’t get his way, he doesn’t give a damn if the sun goes red giant.’’
After eight hours, they moved Mark to the dormitory for a rest. Cam’s thoughts dwelled on the Builders.
Did they sleep? Did they eat? Did they breathe? Bleed? Or reproduce? Were they pure energy, or pure information, so many zeros and ones constructed in a massive array that spanned NGC4945?
‘‘I sometimes wonder if they might be white holes,’’ he told Lesha as they maneuvered an exhausted and only partially conscious Mark down the hub.
