Perhaps he and the others were leaping to wrong conclusions. All in all, Alex did find the scenario garish and a bit too weird. But it fit the facts as they knew them. Besides, they simply couldn’t afford to take chances.
“We’ll deal with the taniwha ourselves, then,” George Hutton had summarized at the end of the meeting.
“It’ll be hard to set up the resonators without anyone noticing,” Alex reminded everybody. But Pedro Manella had agreed with George. “Leave that part to Hutton and me. We’ll provide everything you need.”
The portly Aztlan reporter had seemed so relaxed, so confident. No sign remained of the emotion he’d shown on first hearing of the monster at the planet’s heart. Even a slim hope, it seemed, was enough to fill him with energy.
Alex felt uncomfortable putting such trust in a man who—by his own recent reckoning—had ruined his life. Of course it was actually thanks to those riots in Iquitos, triggered by Manella, that his own crude Alpha singularity had fallen and he’d been forced to go looking for it. If not for the fellow’s meddling in Peru, Alex would probably have paid no more attention to the center of the Earth than …
He leaned back in his swivel chair and realized he had no adequate simile for comparison. The center of the Earth was essentially the last place one thought of. And yet, without it where would any of us be?
In front of Alex, the planet’s many layers glowed fulgent in the final schematic presented at the now-adjourned meeting. This ghostly, near-spherical Earth circumscribed a geometric figure—a tetrahedral pyramid whose tips pierced the surface at four evenly spaced locations.
EASTER ISLAND (RAPA NUI): 27° 6′ 20″ S, 109° 24′ 30″ W
SOUTH AFRICA (NEAR REIVILO): 27° 30′ 36″ S, 24° 6′ E
IRIAN JAYA (NEW GUINEA): 2° 6′ 36″ S, 137° 23′ 24″ E
WEST GREENLAND (NEAR GODHAVN): 70° 38′ 24″ N, 55° 41′ 12″ W
Four sites. I’d rather have had twelve. Or twenty.
He’d said as much to Stan and George and the other geophysicists. There’s no telling what will happen when we start pushing at Beta in earnest. It’s certain to drift and tumble. That array of resonators should be a dodecahedron or icosahedron for full coverage, not a pyramid.
But a pyramid was all they could manage.
It wasn’t a matter of money. That George had in plenty, and he was willing to spend every farthing. His political contacts in the Polynesian Federation meant two sites would be readily available, no questions asked. But to set up beyond the Pacific basin, their tiny cabal would need help. Especially if word wasn’t to leak out.
Back in the last century, undercover, secret maneuverings were more the rule than the exception. Nations, corporations, drug cartels, and even private individuals habitually concealed monumental schemes. But arms inspections were followed by tourism, as jetliners and then zeps began nosing through swathes of sky once reserved for warcraft. Data-links laced metropoleis to donkey-cart villages. Of the three great centers of TwenCen secrecy, state socialism had collapsed before Alex was even born, and finance capitalism met its ruin soon after that, amidst the melted Alps.
In hindsight, the Helvetian tragedy probably hadn’t even been necessary, for not even the fabled gnomes could have kept their records private much longer in a world filled with amateur snoops—data hackers with as much free time and computing power as ingenuity.
That left the third relict, and the strongest. The great nation states still maintained “confidential” services—permitted the victors by the same treaty that had ended such things for everyone else. Those agencies could have helped the Tangoparu team set up their gravity-wave array in total secrecy. But then, those same agencies were almost certainly the enemy, as well.
George thinks they made Beta and are hiding their mistake to save their own hides, even if it means eventually dooming everyone.
Alex couldn’t imagine that kind of thinking. It made him ashamed to be a member of the same species. To hear Teresa Tikhana describe her Colonel Spivey, though, she might as well be talking about a creature from another planet.
Were Spivey and his collaborators even now struggling to find a solution as well? Perhaps that’s what Teresa’s husband had been working on, out in space. If so, the government boys never seemed to have stumbled on the gravity laser effect. And at this point, Alex would be damned if he’d give it to them.
Of course if we succeed the secret will come out near the end anyway. It’ll be hard to ignore a sunlike fireball rising out of the Earth, accelerating toward deep space at relativistic speeds.
By then, he and the others had better have prepared to go into hiding. In addition, Alex himself would feel compelled to take memory destroyers as soon as Beta was safely on its way, to prevent spilling what he had learned by coincidence and accident and mental fluke. In principle, it was only what he deserved, of course, for the sin of hubris. Still, he’d regret losing his mental image of the knot singularity, its intricate ten-space foldings, its awful, ignescent beauty. That loss would haunt him, he knew. Almost, he would rather die.
As if I’ll get a choice. It’s a long shot this will work at all.
They were taking a terrible chance. Using gravity-wave recoil to move Beta sounded fine in theory. But some of their initial test gazer beams for unknown reasons had interacted with matter at the planet’s surface—coupling with an earthquake fault in one case, with man-made objects in another. It was still a mystery why this happened or what the consequences might be once they really got started.
But what choice do we have?
Alex looked at the glowing points where the tetrahedron met Earth’s surface. Four sites where they must build mammoth superconducting antennas without anyone finding out. And they had so little time.
The resonators had to be evenly spaced and on dry land—not easy to arrange on a world two thirds covered in water. It had taken his computer two whole seconds to search and finally find the best arrangement.
“We only have a few months,” Teresa Tikhana said, interrupting Alex in his brooding. The American astronaut sat across the table from him in the darkened room, watching the same display. They had both fallen silent after the others left, each thinking alone.
In response, he nodded. “After that, Beta will be too massive to budge, even with the gazer. We’d only excite resonant states Stan thinks could make it even worse.”
Teresa shivered. When she sat up, she looked around in a way Alex had noticed before—as if she were checking her surroundings in some manner he couldn’t fathom. “You’ll be setting up the resonator on Rapa Nui, won’t you?” she asked, suddenly.
“Yes. That’s the anchor point, so—”
“It’s a special place, you know.” Her voice was hushed. “That’s where Atlantis is.”
“Um … Atlantis?” Perplexed, at first he thought she must be referring to the island’s eerie Neolithic history, or the haunting monoliths to be found there. Then he remembered. “Oh. The space shuttle that crashed long ago. Is it still there?”
Teresa Tikhana’s jaw tightened briefly. “It didn’t crash. Captain Iwasumi made a perfect emergency landing under impossible conditions. It was the fools in charge of bringing Atlantis home … they dropped her.”
It must have happened when she was only a child, yet the woman covered her eyes in pain. “She’s still down there, stripped, a shell. A monument on a pedestal. You should visit her if you get the chance.”
“I’ll do that. I promise.”
She looked up. Their eyes met briefly, then Teresa sighed. “I’d better pack. Dr. Goldman and I have a plane to catch.”
“Of course.” He stood up. “I … I’m glad you’re with us, Captain Tikhana. Your help is going to be vital.” Alex paused. “Also … as I said. I’m so very sorry about your husband—”
She raised a hand, cutting off another embarrassing apology. “It was an accident. If anyone’s to blame for blindness—for not picking up on what was happening …” She t
railed off, shaking her head. “We’ll drop you a coded message when we get to Godhavn, Dr. Lustig.”
“Have a safe trip, Captain.” Hesitantly, he offered his hand. After a moment, she took it. Her slim, calloused grip betrayed a single faint tremor before she quickly let go again. Then she turned away, departing for her quarters in another part of the cave.
“And good luck,” Alex added softly after she had gone. “We’re all going to need more than a little of that, too.”
World Net News: Channel 265/General Interest/Level 9+ (surface transcription)
“Central Amazonia. This is Nigel Landsbury reporting in real time for the BBC I’ve come here to this desolate land to cover a scene both tragic and historic, as Brazilian national forces pursue Tupo rebels to their last redoubts.
[Image of desert. Scrub bush and cracked clay. Heat waves rise from the hardpan all the way to a blurry horizon: A reporter’s voice carries over the sound of crackling burning.]
[ For raw footage voice-link “AMAZONIA One” now.]
“Here an armed detachment of FLS fighters was caught an hour ago, just short of the edge of the Chico Mendes National Salvation Park …”
[ For background reports, link “FLS REBELS” or “CHICO MENDES PARK.”]
[Camera pans, and viewer suddenly sees smoke rising from burning vehicles surrounded by strewn bodies. Military helicopters shred the plumes as uniformed soldiers hustle past, prodding prisoners with hands on their heads.]
“The campesinos who died or were captured here today could not have hidden for long in their rain-forest refuge. The sensor technology [ link “SENSOR-TEK”] that cuts short so many would-be guerrilla movements nowadays would be no less effective under the canopy. Their cause was lost as soon as it turned violent, with the massacre of the last Quich’hara Indian village, two weeks ago.”
[Still panning, camera takes in the reporter himself, tan clothes whipped by a relentless dry wind. Just to his left, startlingly, there appears the sharp edge of a towering forest … a sudden transformation from caked clay to tight-packed, slender, swaying trees.]
“But there is a further, ultimate irony … that this forest the rebels wanted to claim for their impoverished families … their paradise for escape from the strict regimen of the crowded urban poor … is doomed anyway. Yesterday, the Brazilian government admitted the failure of the “preservation islands” approach to saving Amazonia, recognizing at last that you cannot save a patch, here and there, of a whole ecosystem.”
[Closeup on the reporter’s face, awash with memory of tragedy]
[ Report Braz. Nat WeRe 6309467/q/3509.]
[ Rebuttal: NorAChuGa 2038-421/Pres. IsI.]
“Contracts have already been signed to harvest the dying hardwoods of Chico Mendes Park, removal of the large animals to life arks, and cryosuspension of as many insect and plant seed types as can be catalogued in time. This systematic approach, tested last year with some small success in Manaus Province, has never before been tried on such a vast scale. Experts doubt more than five percent of the remaining species can be registered before harvesters must complete their work.”
[Closeup of the forest edge … yellowed leaves crumble to dust in a human hand.]
[ Contract: Braz. Nat PaRe 9867984/1/567.]
[ Contract Life Ark 62 LeSs 2393808/k/78.]
“Still, what is to be done? How can you keep alive a rain forest where there is no rain?”
[ Link WEATHERNET ALPHA-YEAR SUMMARY 2037—2956a*.]
[Cut back to the resigned features of the reporter.]
“Transpiration, evaporation, humidity renewal … science can give names to all the reasons why the preservation islands plan failed. Some blame the worldwide warming. Whatever the reason, however, it is we who must live with what remains. And it is the poor who in the end are caught in the middle.”
[Camera returns to the scene of burning. One dusty corpse, arms outstretched toward the supposed refuge of the forest, can be seen clutching a single green leaf.]
[ Real-time image NorSat 12. $1.12/minute.]
“This is Nigel Landsbury … reporting from Amazonia.”
[ Reporter bio: N.LANDSBURY-BBC3. Credibility ratings: AaAb-2 Viewer’s Union (2038). AaBb-4, World Watchers Ltd. (2038).]
[Reporter looks upward, and the camera follows his gaze to a sky dun with floating dust.]
• MESOSPHERE
Stan Goldman watched Auntie Kapur stir the fire with a crooked stick. A mist of ash lifted in its wake, and the coals brightened briefly to compete with the old woman’s blue-flickering computer display. Beyond those twin pools of light, the ocher columns of the meeting house melted into moist shadows of a New Zealand mountain forest. Auntie preferred this setting for their final meeting before everyone dispersed to Earth’s four corners. Beginning such a covert enterprise in darkness seemed appropriate to their dim chances.
“Rapa Nui will be easiest,” the priestess told Stan and George. The glinting sparks set her chin tattoo designs in eerie motion. “My sisters there will provide every facility, and the Chilean authorities will be no problem.”
“That’s good,” Stan said. He rubbed his eyes, blaming exhaustion and bits of drifting ash for the stinging. It was long past his normal bedtime—as if anything were “normal” anymore. But at least Ellen would be waiting up for him, and he hoped to salvage something of their last night together.
“That island’s the anchor point,” he went on. “Site one has to be there, with no allowance for error.”
“Then it’s agreed, that’s where Alex must go,” George Hutton said.
Stan nodded. “Of course. Alex should get the safest site, and the one where the most delicate control is needed, since only he truly understands that thing down there.”
“Do not count on Rapa Nui being safe.” Meriana Kapur regarded Stan severely. “It is an island of awful power. A place of death and horrible old gods. I agree Lustig must be the one to go there, to that focal point. But not because it is safe.”
Auntie had a way of making statements one could not answer. Stan glanced at George and saw his friend nod reverently. As a pakeha kiwi—a white New Zealander, and one who hadn’t even been born here—Stan felt it wiser simply to defer to the Maori when they spoke of such things.
“Very well. We still have to finalize the teams to go set up the other three resonators.”
George Hutton spoke gruffly. “I’ve decided I’ll handle Irian Jaya myself.”
Stan turned and blinked at him. “But we need you to coordinate everything. Our equipment …”
The billionaire waved one hand. “All can be accomplished by hyper, using company codes and colloquial Taupo speech. But some things have to be done in person. I must be there to arrange matters with certain friends among the Papuans.”
“Do you have a specific site in mind?”
George smiled. “The perfect site. I discovered it during a resource survey ten years ago … a series of deep caves even greater than the Mulu caverns, in Borneo.”
“But I never heard. How did you keep them secret? And why?”
“How is easy, my friend.” George put one finger to his lips. “Besides me, only chief engineer Raini knows about it, and she swore me an oath. It didn’t qualify as a “mineral resource,” per se, so we simply neglected mentioning it to the Papuan government.”
“But it is a resource! Caves like the Mulu generate income from tourism …”
Stan stopped, suddenly aware of the irony. No more than a kilometer away were the grottoes of Waitomo, wonders of nature now reduced to yet another brief stop in the travel itineraries of millions, its ancient floors trampled, its limestone seeps forever altered by rivulets of vapor condensed from myriad human exhalations, its glow-worm constellations demoted from silent, awesome mysteries to a few more frames in the next tourist’s automatic camera.
“That’s why enough for me,” George answered. “Another reason I want to take this task is to see the Irian caves once again. If there??
?s time near the end, you too must join me there, my old friend. You’ve never seen their like. We’ll drink a toast to Earth, down where no stone has ever felt the brush of human voices.”
The look in George’s eye told more than his words. But Stan shook his head. “If it gets that close and we know we’ve lost, I’ll take Ellen to Dunedin to be with the grandkids.” He shook his head. This was getting much too morbid. “Anyway, I’ll be doing a job of my own up north, at site three. That’ll be plenty vivid enough for me, staring at all that ice.”
Auntie Kapur was still studying her screen and the map overlay Alex Lustig had prepared. “According to our Pommie genius, your requirements are less severe. You can set up your small Greenland resonator anywhere within several hundred kilometers of the tip of our mythical pyramid. Do you have any place in mind?”
“I have some friends working on the Hammer Dig, east of Godhavn. Everyone knows I’m interested in the project, so it won’t be much of a surprise if I show up with a team to do some local gravity scans. It’ll be a perfect cover.”
“Hmm.” Auntie Kapur was clearly worried. Sites one and two were within the Pacific Rim, in reach of her network of sympathizers and coreligionists. There were Gaians in Greenland too, of course, but of a completely different sect. Stan and Teresa would be pretty much on their own up there.
“You know all this is going to make us subject to the secrecy laws,” Stan said dryly. “We could get in trouble.”
The others looked at him, then burst out laughing. It was a welcome if momentary break in the tension. Normally a serious thing, breaking the provisions of the Rio Treaties was at this point the least of their worries.