Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  “Hold the box as close as you can to the steering column, and remember to depress the clutch.”

  Good idea. He recalled belatedly the significance of that particular pedal, and stamped on it hastily.

  “I will produce the necessary effect.”

  A moment later, the engine spluttered into life, and Richard found the car rolling slowly off the sloped tarmac into the street. The box was still in his ‘gear lever’ hand, and he thumped it back on the dashboard, hitting the glass quite hard, and grabbed the steering wheel. Thinking quickly, he selected first gear and let up the clutch while the car was still moving.

  Too fast! Richard berated himself for his clumsiness, but the car lurched and then recovered when it seemed on the point of stalling. Some pressure on the gas pedal took them back to the corner, and, once he had negotiated that hazard successfully, Richard accelerated and shifted cautiously into second with a slight grinding sound.

  “I’d put my seat belt on, if I were you.” He pulled the driver’s belt around his lap and shoulder to demonstrate the attachment. It clicked reassuringly into place, and he heard Karen’s buckle follow suit a moment later. Feeling quite pleased with himself, Richard slipped the gearshift neatly into third and continued on up the hill and past the last couple of houses. His next glance took in the instrument panel, which had just become illuminated, as he had delayed switching on the headlights until they were out of the line of sight of the area to which Karen had sent the agent that she had distracted.

  “No gas!” He realized he had almost shouted out in his anxiety.

  Karen opened her eyes, then looked across at the offending dial.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, blankly.

  “We don’t have any fuel,” he answered more calmly, looking up from the indicator, which seemed to creep closer to zero as he spoke. “It’s a recurring problem of ours.”

  The trees on each side of the road seemed to shrink back as they neared the highway; Richard contemplated turning around and searching for gas along Main Street, but just then something glimmered through the trees at the end of the long curve ahead. The bright lights of an all-night gas bar located at the ‘T’ junction seemed to beckon them. Richard pulled in and stopped within inches of the pump, stalling the engine. He climbed out, realizing, as the cool night air chilled him, that he was sweating profusely. He took off the gas cap. Glancing over at the attendant, through the windows of the convenience store, Richard watched as the man relaxed his head onto his arms and settled into his seat until his straggly hair was barely visible over the window frame. After several minutes, the pump cut out automatically, but Richard worked it again and again, until a trickle of gasoline ran down the paint-work. He replaced the cap and climbed back into the car.

  Karen looked at him, her eyes like pools of ink in the shadows inside the car.

  “Will it run, now?”

  “Should do. All I need to do is to learn how to drive it.” He muttered the second part of his response under his breath, and Karen, perhaps because of her extreme exhaustion, failed to catch his fact-based humour.

  “Take the box to the store – there’s a surveillance system.” Tutor explained.

  Richard got out of his seat again and walked into the store. Sure enough, behind the counter there was a small television, and a rather ancient but operating recording system. Richard held the remote near it and waited. Nothing happened. He was about to ask Tutor, when the voice he had come to rely on so completely announced that a magnetic pulse had wrecked the workings, leaving the system looking good, but with absolutely no recording capability.

  “Clever!” Richard started back to the car.

  “One other thing,” Tutor announced in Richard’s ear. “There should be license plates on this car. Hold up the remote unit, please.”

  Richard paused as he neared the vehicle and raised the dark box above his head uncertainly.

  “There are a couple of cars around the back of the gas bar. Take the unit with you and check them out.”

  Karen twisted around in her seat and watched while Richard walked hurriedly off. A couple of minutes later he returned, carrying the box, and two metallic rectangular sheets; he bent down at the back of the car, then, after a couple of scrapes were heard, he moved to the front of the vehicle. The sounds were repeated, then Richard got in and held the box next to the steering column once more. There was a strange sound like a strangled groan, and the car lurched forward. He muttered to himself, then pulled up the handbrake and put the gear-stick into neutral. Tutor worked the same magic as before on the engine, then, after some prompting from Tutor, Richard jumped out and positioned the box carefully on the roof. It clung to the surface like a limpet, using the powerful magnetic field recently demonstrated as an anti-surveillance device. Climbing back in, he selected first, and, with a slight squeal of tyres, pulled away from the gas station. As they turned onto the highway and worked gradually up to speed, Richard smiled over at Karen.

  “That guy, do you think he’ll sleep for long?”

  “If he’s half as tired as I am...”

  Richard relaxed as he finally put the car into fourth gear and settled down for what he hoped would be a long and boring drive to Springfield.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  WYSIWYG

  Ed Baynes sat up with a start. He looked around, suddenly wide awake; he could still hear an intermittent buzzing noise coming from somewhere nearby. He guessed this was the noise that had just awakened him. The monitors were all showing the same views he remembered seeing, what must have been only moments before. I must have dozed off. Eric Kirouac was clearly visible at the front end of the truck, stretched out in his chair, his head back at a crazy angle. Ed suddenly realized that the noise that had awakened him was the sound of Eric snoring. Both of us wouldn’t have fallen asleep at the same time! Baynes checked his watch and jumped to his feet in alarm. What the – ! He ran over to the section where Judy and Leroy had their bunks and brushed back the heavy black canvas curtain on the lower bunk.

  “Fraser, wake up!” he shouted as he shook the Negro’s bare shoulder roughly.

  “Wassa madder?” Leroy responded, lifting his head up rapidly.

  “You’ve got to search the video recordings – there’s been a security breach.”

  Fraser swung his legs out of the narrow bed and shook his head to clear it, then looked over at the marine. Incredibly, Eric was still sleeping. “Gas?” Leroy pulled his shirt back on, letting it flop over his boxer shorts, and got up.

  “I don’t know… get busy; I’ll wake the others.” As Baynes stood up straighter to pull back Brisson’s curtain on the upper bunk, he found it already drawn. She was sitting up on one elbow, pushing her hair back from her eyes. The effect of being in a deep sleep for just a little under two hours was hard for her to shake, too.

  Brisson blinked at him glassily through the lenses of the spectacles that she had just put on. “What happened?”

  “Somehow both Kirouac and myself were knocked out. We’ve been out of action for…” he glanced at his watch again, “… over an hour.” Ed started down the trailer towards the only remaining sleeper.

  Judy flipped back the blankets and jumped down from her bunk. In the process she caught her oversize tee-shirt/night gown on the metal frame, causing a rip several inches long. She glanced down, annoyed, then realized that the tear only exposed a little more leg than usual, so she ignored it and moved over to watch Leroy locate the suspect video record on his equipment. As she leaned on the back of Fraser’s chair, Eric’s head lolled to one side, and he woke up to find activity all around and his boss right in front of him. He jumped up, grabbing his M16 from its position against the wall.

  “Kirouac!” Ed exclaimed. “You’re just a little late. We’ve both been unconscious for more than one hour. It must have been some kind of gas.”

  Eric groaned as Baynes explained the situation to him.

  “I’ve got it, sir.” Leroy, his bare le
gs hidden under the table, turned around from his console to see Judy behind him in her rather basic nightclothes. A quick glance took in the legs that had previously been hidden under loose-fitting jeans, and the old-fashioned glasses that were usually relegated to their case by unobtrusive contact lenses. Judy looked at him with her patented ‘cold owl’ stare, so he turned back to his equipment quickly.

  Ed and Eric took up positions on either side of Judy, and watched the screens. Fraser activated the playback; the scene progressed from screen to screen as the action occurred. Groans came from more than one of the team as it showed two people who walked out from the bushes, around the end of Citadel, and down the rough grass towards the road. They climbed over the fence, turned and walked towards the truck. Leroy adjusted the selection to include the surveillance cameras normally under Eric’s control, so that they could watch the couple from the vantage point of the truck itself when they went past it. As they approached, Ed and his team got a clear view of both of them.

  One was male, over six feet tall, with thick but short, dark hair, and was carrying a dark box about nine inches long under one arm. With the other arm he was supporting a short, rather young-looking female with platinum blonde hair pulled back into a single ponytail. Both were dressed in dark clothes somewhat like the jump suits that were popular a few years previously.

  The team watched in silence as the two walked past the truck and down the road towards the town. From the rear view it could be seen that the girl’s ponytail extended all the way to her waist, like a sisal rope, and that she really was leaning heavily on the older and considerably larger young man. Nothing was said until they finally disappeared around the next curve in the road.

  “Back it up,” Baynes commanded, once it was apparent that no further action was forthcoming. “No, just a little more.” He indicated the portion of the record just before the two could be seen stepping out of the bushes. “I want to see where they came from.”

  Leroy adjusted the controls on his microprocessor enhancement system until the area behind Citadel was discernible, despite the almost total lack of illumination. He played the sequence through once more, but at a quarter speed.

  “What was that flicker... just before they appeared?” Judy leaned over Leroy’s shoulder and touched the relevant screen.

  “I’ll run it again, frame by frame.” Fraser stepped the recording through the section and stopped as the first flicker became visible. Then he typed rapidly for a few seconds and the image was transferred onto a large computer display below the monitor screens. “Here’s the outline of the structure superimposed on the view.” He added some curved lines to indicate what would otherwise be difficult to see in a grainy still, then selected the section that showed some change in illumination, and pasted that into the top left corner of the screen. While the others watched patiently, he repeated the process with the next few frames, until he had a whole series of slightly different images lined up across the screen.

  Judy leaned further forwards until her face was only inches from the glass. “In the second frame, I see what looks like part of a leg emerging from the structure.” She touched the screen in the area to which she was referring.

  Eric found himself distracted by the amount of leg emerging next to him as Judy reached over Leroy and stretched out her arm, inadvertently pulling up on her ripped tee-shirt. She’s sure one for surprises; would you look at that! Now is not the time, he reminded himself, still allowing his eyes to feast on the unexpected but distinctly attractive curve of her upper thigh.

  Brisson settled back on her heels and coloured more than a little as she noticed his interest in her anatomy. The look she gave him was enough to make him realize what a big mess he had just made of his work relationship with this enigmatic girl.

  Don’t blame me for noticing your body; I didn’t ask you to parade it in front of me! Eric felt a little angry with himself, but mostly he was angry at Judy. He moved forwards and turned away, so that he would not find himself sneaking another look at her shapely legs.

  “Yes, it looks like...” Leroy selected the area and applied another enhancement routine, unaware of the disturbance behind him. His hands flew across the keyboard as he tried out various other options, until he sat back, satisfied that he had rung out every last possible detail from the data. “What do you see now?”

  Judy glanced at Eric to check that his attention was where she considered it ought to be, then leaned forward for a moment to take another look. She backed off slightly, still deep in thought.

  Ed checked out the result and shook his head in amazement. “There’s got to be something wrong with this recording.” And we thought this thing was solid...!

  “Well?” Fraser persisted, turning slightly to look Judy in the eye.

  “They just stepped through–” Judy stopped abruptly, and grabbed Leroy’s shoulder. “Can you edit out everything but the flicker?” she asked, interrupting herself.

  Fraser nodded and performed the adjustments with effortless efficiency. “There. I see what you mean; it does make it clearer.” He laid out the images so that the flickering frames were underneath the original set of frames, then moved them sideways so that the first flickering frame was beneath the second original frame. Finally, he ran a matching routine. “There’s a positive match with a ninety percent certainty,” he concluded, almost grimly.

  “I didn’t want to say it until I was absolutely sure, sir, but that clinches it for me.” Judy turned to Ed, unaware that her hands were gripping the back of Leroy’s chair like the proverbial vice.

  “What happened?” Eric frowned at the multiple images in confusion, his concentration broken by his voyeuristic experience, with the result that he was unable to acknowledge the only possible explanation.

  “You think they just walked through the wall?” Ed finished for her. He ignored Eric’s rather pathetic question; the others did not consider it worthy of a response, either.

  Brisson nodded, uncertain that her voice would sound controlled. A profound silence descended on the occupants of the ‘removals truck’.

  Baynes cleared his throat uneasily, breaking the brief but significant silence. “Fraser, see if you can beef up the contingent for the blockade. Yes, I know, it’s a bit like building a better safe after the gold bullion has been stolen, but perhaps this is only the first of many things to happen here. Contact High Trick and get them to do a sweep of the entire town; it’s possible, however unlikely we may consider such a possibility to be, that they are still here. They were on foot initially, after all. We’d better get that satellite repositioned, too, like we had considered doing earlier. I don’t want to miss anything else.” He turned to Judy, noticing her outfit, or rather the brevity of her outfit, for the first time. “Brisson, see if you can determine the cause of our security breach here; I want to know if there are any traces of the knock-out gas left, if that is what was used.”

  “Yes, sir.” Judy turned to get her gas chromatograph going.

  “But first,” he called her back in a noticeably lower voice. “Get some clothes on; you’re breaking regulation one hundred four point four!”

  Judy nodded humourlessly at Ed’s facetious comment and obediently returned to her bunk, pulling down her jeans from the cubby-hole at the end.

  “Eric! What are you doing?” Ed turned to find his marine putting blacking on his hands and face.

  “I won’t rest until I know if that opening is still there, sir,” he explained, glancing down the truck’s gloomy interior at Judy as she pulled on her jeans, exposing a lot more of the pale flesh of her long legs in the process.

  Ed took in the glance and the statement, and somehow figured out in a flash of inspiration the gist of what had happened while he had been concentrating on the video play-back. Judy’s a mass of conflicted emotions; I guess Eric knows that now! He managed to control and smother the smile that threatened to break out all over his face. Well, I suppose he can play the hero if he wants, but if he think
s he’ll impress her, well, I’m not so sure. As for a reaction from the now truly vacant ‘house on the hill’, I bet there just won’t be one. “All right, Kirouac. But leave the assault rifle here; just take your hand gun. We don’t want to provoke a frightened response.”

  Eric nodded and slipped out into the night, unaware that the final part of Baynes’ statement was another tongue-in-cheek comment, a part of his unique and dry humour.

  Baynes pulled up a chair beside Leroy to watch the action. Fraser continued his radio-calls to the military, without a pause. A little way down the interior of the truck, Judy checked that both men were occupied, turned her back to them as a final precaution, put her glasses on the bunk and pulled the torn nightshirt off over her head. Quickly she replaced the bra she had taken off when she had turned in, just two hours earlier, and a moment later she had restored herself to her normal nondescript appearance by the addition of a thick, oversized striped sweater to counter the increasingly cool air in the truck.

  “What’s he doing, sir?”

  Ed looked around at the sound of her voice as Judy walked across, and mentally approved of her choice of clothing. “He’s checking out two things. First, is that opening still there, and second, will close approach elicit some kind of defensive response.”

  Judy stopped beside him, folding her arms. Leroy glanced up at the screen and stopped talking in mid-sentence as Eric appeared suddenly from within the trees, and crawled across to the bushes in front of the mysterious door.

  “No, I’m sorry; that’s good,” Fraser muttered into his headset. “Look, I’ll call you back and give you more details later.” He sat back and watched with the others as Eric crawled around and through the bushes, and finally up to the suspect location. Leaning back against the cold, hard surface beside the spot, he reached out with his right hand and ran it across the exact location of the lower portion of the exit/entrance. A moment later, and he was on his feet, stretching upwards in a vain attempt to find some seam or crack in the surface that would indicate that the doorway was still there, or indeed, that it had ever existed. The surface was cold, hard, and exceptionally smooth.