Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  Tyler nodded. “All helpful. Okay, sit tight. But if Rudin or any of his folks make a move toward the tunnel, you go along.”

  “And do what?” Donna asked. Demanded.

  “Know whatever they’re seeing,” Tyler said. “If they go in as deep as the mummy, well, then the jig is up. At that point you’ll need to show them the footage of that first alien crumpling at a touch. It might convince them to take things slow. And keep me in the loop.” Yet another long pause. “That’s also when you’ll need to start keeping any dissembling to a minimum. It’s too easy to get tripped up in a lie.

  “Still, good call lying about the bot. It might be our ace in the hole. To sustain the illusion we’ll leave its solar panels vertical and facing west, as they were at local nightfall, even though Ethan tells me that means it won’t begin recharging till local noon, and then starting with a trickle. And two last things ….”

  “Yes,” Marcus asked.

  “Try not to worry, and good job.” The holo went dark.

  Had the need to feign composure not trumped Marcus’s need to pace, the cramped inflatable shelter would have done the trick. Instead of pacing, he kept his friends—and himself—busy. Watching the Russian shuttle through the camera mounted atop the shelter. Poring over the footage from Donna’s and his helmet cameras. Reassuring Donna that “show of force” had been a fleeting comment, as quickly dismissed, and that surely Tyler had never expected them to confront the Russians. Speculating what might lie beyond the aliens’ airlock. Worrying who besides the Russians—and, according to Tyler, Valerie—had seen through their prospecting-trip charade. Prepping dinner, although they were all too anxious to care. Ignoring, beyond texting kinda busy here, Valerie’s emails. And sneezing. A lot. The dust, worse every time they reentered the shelter, had all but depleted Donna’s supply of antihistamines; she had set aside the rest for emergencies.

  Above all, waiting for Tyler to radio back with some presidential guidance.

  * * *

  As Washington dithered, Rudin marched his team to the lava tube. Marcus and company hastened to follow. And Dirtside deliberations began anew, this time between the White House and the Kremlin ….

  Presidential guidance, when at last it arrived, divorced from its many circumlocutions, amounted to: cooperate with the Russians. Watch everything they do, while sharing with them as little as practical. Make do with the gear on hand, and with the people already on-site, because any resupply risked drawing further unwelcome (Marcus read that as “Chinese”) attention. Nor could anyone leave, lest anything there was dangerous or contagious—without the slightest hint when that precaution might be lifted. Report in at least daily. Assume Rudin and company have similar orders from their political leadership. Do not screw up.

  As for the president’s assertion that the Russian contingent would have received like directions, she was almost correct. Yevgeny’s orders had included one additional element.

  That accidents will happen ….

  Chapter 12

  At an all-clear chime from the tractor console, Marcus popped his helmet, unslung his oxygen tanks, and stowed both inside a locker. Leaving on the rest of his vacuum gear, he slipped behind the steering wheel. The seat felt all too familiar. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  On the tiny cabin’s passenger side, Yevgeny followed suit. The Russian was of average height and wiry build, his face sporting the sort of even, all-over stubble that took a serious commitment to maintain. His brown, wavy hair had begun to recede. His gaze was penetrating, his deep-set eyes a pale, somehow calculating, blue. Or maybe they only seemed calculating because Tyler had uploaded a CIA dossier naming Yevgeny Rudin an FSB agent. A spy.

  Not that the dossier had revealed much. Rudin had been abandoned in Volgograd as a newborn, then raised in a series of state orphanages. His childhood—an ongoing, brutal competition with other wards of the State for opportunities and attention—had, Company shrinks opined, instilled “serious trust issues.” (Did any spy anywhere not have trust issues? Tyler exhibited more than his fair share.) Rudin had excelled from an early age in math and languages. He enlisted in the Aerospace Defense Forces Branch at eighteen, as young as the ADFB would take him. There he became an aeronautical engineer and fighter pilot, flew combat missions in Syria, rose to the rank of colonel. After five years piloting orbital military shuttles, he abruptly retired—recruited by the FSB, the dossier asserted—to fly shuttles on the Moon for Roscosmos, Russia’s equivalent to NASA. And now he had shown up here. He was, it seemed, a talented spy.

  Settling into the passenger seat, glancing about the confining cabin, Yevgeny said, “I am quite accustomed to tight quarters. Still, I must admit, I would not have cared to drive half the distance you did.”

  “Yeah,” Marcus agreed, “this is pretty cozy.”

  Only there was nowhere but a tractor cabin to meet face to face. Rudin would not permit Americans aboard his shuttle, and Tyler—putting the words into Marcus’s mouth—insisted that no Russian ever enter the inflatable.

  Marcus hadn’t brought bugging devices. Why would he have? Perhaps Yevgeny hadn’t, either. But with the right design file (and Marcus figured it was only a matter of time till Tyler uploaded one), printing out bugs ought to be straightforward enough.

  Yevgeny smiled. “Then we should come to the point. How shall we proceed? Our organizations expect us to cooperate.”

  Our organizations. Tyler had been adamant that Marcus not admit to any CIA involvement. If the Russian even suspected Marcus had an inkling of him being FSB, would leaving that phrase unchallenged be as much as admitting to Marcus’s own CIA ties? But what if Yevgeny didn’t suspect? Was that wording innocent or a trap?

  Marcus temporized. “The two space agencies? Yes, I suspect so.”

  Yevgeny arched an eyebrow.

  “Anyway,” Marcus went on, “I imagine you’ve given the matter some thought.” As had Donna, Brad, and Marcus, even long after Tyler and his cronies had dropped off the secure link to permit the team from the observatory a few hours of sleep.

  “How?” Yevgeny said. “Keeping things simple. You and I meet each morning to decide upon that day’s activities. Our people work side by side. We share our findings.”

  If they were to make progress, how else but by sharing could this work? Only everyone expected the Russians to share as little as possible, and Tyler had told Marcus to do the same. That was why side by side mattered.

  “That could be doable,” Marcus said. Because Yevgeny’s companions—at least to the CIA’s best knowledge—were innocent technocrats drafted from Base Putin. Like Marcus and his team. They should be able to keep an eye on each other.

  “Not exactly enthusiastic.” Yevgeny chuckled. “Fair enough. Yes, assigning two persons to every task will often mean wasted resources. And yes, my group is one person larger than yours. This being so, may I assume you won’t mind if one of us sometimes works aboveground unchaperoned to sustain the illusion?”

  The illusion that all this activity concerned lunar minerals and geology.

  Did Marcus mind? Perhaps. An alien body on the surface had brought them here; artifacts or more bodies might yet remain on the surface. And perhaps not. Days his team had spent searching had yielded nothing alien outside the lava tube.

  Yevgeny took hesitation as a no. “Seriously, you object? You suppose it would be better that some explorations should have three people assigned?

  No, not better. Maybe, not even necessary. “Your gear has helmet cams? And the recordings are time-stamped?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ours, as well. We could record everything that goes on, then swap files.”

  Yevgeny nodded. “We can do that.”

  Because the Russians planned to share what they found? Or because Yevgeny would Photoshop the files before handing them over? Or because the FSB had a way to embed a virus or Trojan or ba
ckdoor or yet nastier nastyware in a vid file? Suppose that last case. Then wouldn’t Yevgeny decline to take American helmet vids, just as he refused to let Americans aboard his ship? No. He would accept and archive the files, unaccessed, lest Marcus tried to sneak in malware. Or he would dedicate an offline computer to viewing the American helmet footage. Well, Marcus could spare a datasheet for that purpose, too.

  Sigh. To swap files—of any kind—or not. Yet one more detail to run past Tyler.

  “Then are we in agreement?” Yevgeny prompted.

  “I believe so. But I’m eager to begin”—which had to have been the first sincere utterance Marcus had made since they had met—“so let’s defer the file-swapping mechanics for another time.”

  “Very good,” Yevgeny said. “Shall we gather our people, make some introductions, and get to work?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  They retrieved helmets and oxygen tanks from lockers. Marcus depressurized the cabin, blasting out some of the regolith they had tracked in with them, and popped the door. After you, he gestured.

  Though the cab’s keypad lock was doubtless inadequate for deterring spies, he made sure to engage it. He took a mental note to ask Tyler for designs to print motion detectors with a radio-alert feature. Nor would such sensors go only into their tractors; their inflatable shelter, as flimsily protected, also needed one.

  Till then, the CIA datasheet would remain in Marcus’s pocket any time he went out.

  * * *

  “I’m fine, Simon.” Valerie smiled at her datasheet to emphasize the point. “I’m on bed rest only as a precaution. The doctor is a worry wart.”

  “I’m worried about you,” her son repeated.

  Simon had accomplished the seemingly impossible: looking spindlier than when they had last spoken. Was it even doable to keep teenaged boys fed? Or maybe he had shot up another inch. All she knew was, she missed him terribly. Until this summer, he had never been away from home for longer than overnighters at a friend’s house.

  He had called from the quad of the college hosting his sailing camp. An unseen breeze rustled leaves and tousled his sun-bleached hair. A squirrel ran up a tree. Cottony clouds scudded across an azure sky. What she wouldn’t give to be outside herself!

  “It’s just a precaution,” Val said again. “Grandma shouldn’t have bothered you with this.” And if not for hints from her parents about them all maybe coming for a visit, she would not have told Mom.

  “A precaution against what?”

  Val was not about to discuss an incompetent cervix with her thirteen-year-old son, especially when it, and the corresponding prescription for bed rest, were CIA-invented fictions. But necessary fictions: knowing what Marcus was up to, she had to be involved. And that meant having an excuse to stay home. Alone.

  “Can we let it go at ‘lady stuff?’ ”

  “Umm. I talked to the counselors here about catching a flight home. With … Marcus away, someone needs to be there with you, helping.”

  Marcus. Not Dad. Why wouldn’t Simon be angry? And someday, when the truth came out, angry at them both. Would he ever trust either of them again? Her heart sank.

  “It’s sweet that you’re concerned, but honest, everything is under control. And as for Dad, he had a friend”—calling Tyler a friend was the least of the whoppers she had told of late—“arrange with a concierge service to do whatever I need. Bring in groceries, mow the lawn, pick up and drop off my laundry. You name it. Truly, sweetie, I want you to enjoy the summer we planned. As does Dad. I’ll be fine.”

  The Dad mentions each brought a fleeting frown. “And you’ll call if you need help?”

  “Promise.” Out of sight of the datasheet’s camera, she rapped hard on the coffee table. “Listen, Simon, I gotta go. Someone’s at the door. Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  She broke the connection before she had to lie about anything more. Simon, her parents, her sisters and their families, her boss and coworkers, earnest young Jay Singh, close friends and good neighbors … she had lied to, and pushed away, all of them. For the best of reasons, she told herself. It still felt wrong.

  Secrecy. Deception. Guilt. They were eating her alive. She could not imagine how Marcus stood it.

  * * *

  In the long shadow of a massive, somewhat pyramidal boulder, the seven explorers formed a loose circle, linked helmet to helmet in a daisy chain of fiber-optic cables. Gathering in shadow allowed them to forgo polarizing filters, to see one another’s faces and not just pressure-suit colors and personalizing decals.

  Marcus only half-listened to the getting-to-know-you small talk. What’s your specialty? Where are you from? Are you married? Any children? How long since you’ve been Dirtside? Where did you go to school? He knew all that and more from a CIA upload (even if, in the quick skim that was all Marcus had managed to find time for, the dossiers—apart from Yevgeny’s—looked to have come in significant measure straight from public records). It begged the question how much Yevgeny already knew about the American team. Shave off Nikolay’s unkempt new mustache and all three Russians were the spitting images of pictures in their Agency dossiers.

  And so, while others spoke, Marcus observed—noting that Yevgeny did the same.

  Nikolay Bautin had the sturdy physique, leathery skin, and tanned, deeply lined face one might expect of a long-time field geologist. The man had an owlish, tentative air about him, from his shuffling gait to the hesitant manner with which he had hung back (to the extent the comm cables allowed) as everyone became acquainted. For all Nikolay’s accomplishments—and anyone with a PhD from Moscow State Geological Prospecting Academy was accomplished—he was shy and apologetic. According to the CIA’s dossier, Nikolay had once, absentmindedly, excused himself to a door he had bumped into. Forty; divorced; no serious relationships since; no children.

  Ilya Orlov was, in a word, stolid. He was broad-shouldered, with a round, wide face, a broad forehead, and salt-and-pepper hair almost as thick as fur. He did not smile, but sometimes, as he spoke, Marcus glimpsed patently fake teeth from the man’s hockey-playing days. And while Marcus’s first impression was peasant stock, that was, beyond judgmental, wholly unfair. Only a genius earned a PhD in experimental fusion physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, much less a tenured faculty position there and a lunar sabbatical. At fifty-nine, the oldest member of either group. Married to a flutist in the Moscow Philharmonic. One grown child: a son, an economist at Lukoil.

  Ekatrina Komarova was short and wiry, with a coiled-spring air about her. She was blond, with an asymmetrical, short bobbed hairstyle somewhere between tousled and messy, more or less Swede meets Slav. The engineer was all business: no-nonsense in expression, clipped patterns of speech, and even her restrained gestures. Also, prickly—behavior some nameless CIA shrink chalked up to insecurity from a working-class background and childhood hardships. Ekatrina had been the first in her family to attend college, a financial struggle after her father’s death in a naval disaster. (Marcus only vaguely remembered the Kursk incident. He had neither interest in, nor any time for, the twenty-some pages the Agency had provided about that sub’s loss with all hands near the turn of the century.) Her dossier also stressed defensiveness about the provincial school, Murmansk State Technical University, she had attended, and that she held “only” double master’s degrees, in electrical engineering and computer science. Supposed neuroses notwithstanding, Marcus was impressed with her practical, hands-on experience in rocket guidance systems, robotics, and AI. At thirty-seven, the youngest in either group. Single and unattached.

  The women were first to segue from social pleasantries to discussing their assignment: photographing and X-raying the mummy from every possible angle. That shift set Ilya and Brad to discussing their task, using cameras and laser range finders to capture every twist, bump, dimension, and change in texture of the lava tube an
d the wall with which it terminated. Only once both projects were finished—and Dirtside archeologists gave the go-ahead—did they dare risk any physical contact with the body or the alien airlock.

  Yevgeny projected over a swelling cacophony. “It would appear the introductions are done. You will do better to finish planning in your small groups.”

  “I suppose I can talk to myself as I survey,” Nikolay said. “Oh, wait. I am supposed to talk to myself.”

  Because hackable, scripted radio chatter was essential for whoever might be monitoring—as the Chinese, Tyler had grimly promised, would be. And so, Nikolay and Dirtside experts had had two interminable conference calls, debating what sorts of things—at once geologically significant enough to merit the team’s continuing presence while mundane enough not to attract anyone else—should be overheard. The debate over which obscure minerals they might “find,” much less how such discoveries were reconcilable with satellite imagery, soon went over Marcus’s head. He left sanity-checking all that to CIA assets.

  As Marcus fretted about who else might show up to further complicate the situation, two of the Russians reached up to unplug their fiber-optic cables. He hastily reminded, “Everyone, cameras on at all times as you work. We meet back here no later than five.”

  He caught Yevgeny’s arm as the Russian went to unjack the cable between them. Marcus said, “I feel I know your folks a little better. But you haven’t shared much about yourself.”

  “Let us not pretend. You will have read all about me. About the four of us.”

  And you about me and my guys. “Give me something personal, Yevgeny. Anything. We’re going to work together, I suspect, for awhile.”

  “Very well. My favorite food is New York-style pizza. Pepperoni.”

  “Small moon. Me, too.”

  The Russian smiled. “In fact, you prefer sausage and mushrooms, on a thick crust. You once likened thin-crust pizza to ketchup on cardboard.”