It’s like we only first entered for the first time an hour ago, Teresa thought, coaxing an illusion. Nothing in the intervening weeks has been real I made it all up—Beta, the trip to Greenland, the gravity laser …
As Pedro stepped ahead of her down the tree-lined path, his shadow moved aside at one point to let glaring afternoon brightness fall upon her face. Teresa fumbled for her sunglasses.
Just, a fantasy, that’s all it’s been, she continued wishing, including all that stuff about interstellar enemies sending monsters to devour our world.
It was a good effort, but Teresa had to sigh. She lacked enough talent at self-deception to make it work.
While you’re at it, might as well go whole hog and pretend you’re nineteen again, with all life’s adventures still ahead of you—first flight, first love, that illusion of immortality.
Southern autumn was ebbing fast, chilling toward winter. A breeze riffled her hair—now again her own shade of brown, but longer than at any time since she’d been a teenager. It felt at once sensuous, feminine, and startling each time it brushed against her neck.
Distracted, she suddenly collided with Manella’s massive back. “Hey!” Teresa complained, rubbing her nose.
Pedro turned, glancing at his watch, an agitated expression on his face. “You go on to the car,” he said. “I forgot something. See you in a nano.”
“Sure. Just remember I have a plane to catch at fourteen hundred. We—” Her voice trailed off as he hurried uphill, disappearing round a right-hand fork in the path. Strange, she thought. Didn’t we come down the left branch?
Maybe Pedro had to visit the gents’ before the long drive. Teresa resumed walking downhill again, one hand lightly on the guide rail overlooking steep forest slopes. Rain-damp ferns brushed in the wind. The tourist group had gone ahead and were probably spilling into the parking lot to seek their buses or rented runabouts. Perhaps the traffic jam would have cleared by the time Pedro caught up.
Teresa’s bags were already in the car. In them lay a packet of doctored photos, depicting her at an Australian hermitage-resort for the past month. They should get by any cursory inspection. And she’d gone over her cover story umpteen times. Soon, at the Auckland airport transit lounge, she would change places with the woman who’d been taking that holiday in her name. After the switch, at last, she’d be Teresa Tikhana once again. No reason for NASA ever to think she hadn’t done what they’d asked—taken that long-delayed recuperative holiday.
A new swarm of tourists loomed ahead, a big, intimidating group of determined sightseers climbing rapidly, staring about with their total-record goggles, holding tightly onto their shoulder bags. The tour guide shouted, describing the wonders of these mountains—their hidden rivers and secret byways. Teresa stepped aside to let the throng by. Several of the men looked her up and down as they passed, the sort of cursory, appreciative regard she was used to. Still, though the odds of being recognized were infinitesimal, Teresa turned away. Why take chances?
I wonder what’s keeping Pedro? She chewed on a fingernail as she looked across the rain forest. Why do I feel something’s wrong?
If she were in a cockpit right now, there’d be instruments to check, a wealth of information. Here, she had only her senses. Even her data plaque had been packed in the luggage below.
Glancing behind her, she realized something was distinctly odd about the tour group passing by. They’re sure in a hurry to see the caves. Is their bus behind schedule, or what?
Every one of them carried pastel shoulder bags to match their bright tourist gear. Four out of five were men, and there were no children at all. Are they with some sort of convention, maybe?
She almost stopped one to ask, but held back. Something seemed all too familiar about these characters, as she watched them recede upslope. Their movements were too purposeful for people on holiday. Under their goggles, their jaws had been set in a way that made Teresa think of—
She gasped. “Peepers! Oh … burf it!”
Helplessly she realized what her inattentiveness might cost. Without her plaque, she had only her slim wallet to use in an attempt to warn those below ground. Teresa took it from her hip pocket and flipped it open—only to find it wouldn’t transmit! The tiny transceiver was jammed.
There was a telephone though, in the gift shop by the park entrance. Teresa backed downhill till the last “tourist” vanished round a bend, then she turned to run—
—and crashed into several more men taking up the rear. One of them seized her wrist in a ninety-kilo grip.
“Well. Captain Tikhana. Hello! But I heard you were in Queensland. My goodness. What brings you to New Zealand so unexpectedly?”
The man holding her arm actually sounded anything but surprised to meet her here. Despite Glenn Spivey’s scarred complexion, his smile seemed almost genuine, empty of any malice. Next to Spivey, making useless any thought of struggle, stood a big black man and an Asian. Despite the ethnic diversity, they all seemed cast from the same mold, with the piercing eyes of trained spies.
A fourth man, standing behind the others, seemed out of place in this tableau. His features, too, were vaguely oriental. But his stance shouted civilian. And not a very happy one, either.
“You!” Teresa told the peeper colonel, cleverly.
“I hope you weren’t planning on leaving so soon, Captain?” Spivey replied, apparently bent on using one old movie cliché after another. “I wish you’d stay. Things are just about to get interesting.”
“… warn you, George! The place is swarming with soldiers! They’ve already taken the thumper and my crew. You and Alex and the others better clear out …”
A hand reached past George Hutton to turn off the sound. The holo unit went on visually depicting an elderly man in a heavy parka, obviously worried but now speaking only mime into a portable transmitter. Behind Stan Goldman loomed a titanic, icy palisade.
“I’m afraid the warning wouldn’t have done much good, even if it had come earlier,” Colonel Spivey told Hutton and the assembled conspirators. “We snooped all your files, of course, before running this kind of operation. Can’t afford to be sloppy, you know.”
Teresa sat in her old chair, across from Alex Lustig and two seats from the exit, now guarded by Spivey’s ANZAC commandoes. This time, the underground meeting room was packed with everyone, even the cook. Everyone except Pedro Manella, that is.
How did he know? She wondered. How does Pedro always seem to know?
She was feeling numb of course. Another few hours and she’d have been on her way to Houston, back to her comfortable apartment and her loyal NASA publicity flack.
Now though?
Now I’m cooked. Teresa’s thoughts were scattered like leaves. It was only natural, of course, when you contemplated a future in federal prison.
She glanced across the table at Alex and felt ashamed. Certainly he wasn’t worried foremost about saving his own neck. This event would have effects on more than just one life. All right, then. We’re all cooked. There was little solace in the reminder.
“How long ago?”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Hutton?” Spivey asked.
George levered his heavy body to sit up at the head of the table. “How long ago did you snoop our records. Colonel?”
Teresa noticed he didn’t ask how Spivey’s team had broken the Tangoparu security screen. Obviously the great power alliances possessed better infotech than even the best Net hackers. With the deep pockets of governments, and many of the old loyalties to call upon, they could stay two, three, even four years ahead of individual users. So Spivey’s next admission took her a bit by surprise.
“You know, it’s funny about that,” the colonel answered openly. “We looked for you guys a long time. Too long. You had someone running awfully good interference for you, Hutton. We pierced your caches just three days ago, and then only thanks to some anonymous tips and help from civilian consultants like Mr. Eng here.”
Spivey nodded t
oward the vaguely oriental-looking man Teresa had seen on the trail, who blinked nervously when his name was mentioned. Obviously he was no peeper.
One of the Tangoparu technicians stood up to loudly protest the illegality of this invasion. Pulling a cube from his jacket, Spivey interrupted. “I have a document here, signed by the chiefs of NATO, ASEAN, and ANZAC, as well as the New Zealand national security authority, declaring this an ultimate emergency under the security sections of all three pacts and the Rio Treaty. What you people have been up to justifies that label, wouldn’t you say? If anything in human history does, a black hole eating up the Earth surely qualifies as an ‘emergency.’
“And yet you kept it to yourselves! Hiding it from the press, from the net, and from sovereign, elected governments. So please spare me your righteous indignation.”
In the holo tank, Stan Goldman’s silent image turned away as he saw someone approaching. Sighing in silent resignation, he reached for a switch and the image cut off abruptly. In its place the familiar cutaway globe rotated again—the Earth, depicted as a multilayered ball of Neapolitan ice cream.
Ah, if only it were true. An ice cream planet. What a wonderful world it would be.
Forcing aside giddiness, Teresa mentally added—Good luck, Stan. God bless you.
“Until only a little while ago we thought you people were the ones who made the damned monster!” June Morgan shouted at Spivey. “You and your secret cavitron laboratories in orbit and your cozy great power agreements. We felt we had to keep our work hidden or you’d interfere to save your own asses!”
“An interesting, perhaps even plausible, defense,” Spivey acknowledged. “But now you know it wasn’t we nasty government brutes who manufactured the …” He paused.
“The Beta singularity,” Alex Lustig prompted, his first comment of the afternoon.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Alex nodded enigmatically.
“Yes, well. A few days ago you folks seem to have decided the monster was sent this way instead by angry aliens.” He shrugged. “I’m not yet convinced by that colorful scenario. But be that as it may, once you believed that, and knew we weren’t Beta’s makers, wasn’t it your duty then to tell us? After all, aren’t we supposed to be the experts at dealing with external aggressors? We’re the ones with the resources and organizational skills to take your shoestring operation and—”
“We were arguing about just that when you and your men burst in,” George said abruptly. “In hindsight, maybe I was wrong to hold out for continued secrecy.”
“Because now it will remain secret.” Spivey nodded. “You’re right in your implication, Mr. Hutton. The alliances I represent see great danger in this situation—danger going far beyond the immediate matter of getting rid of Beta. The last century’s proven how dangerous new technologies can be when they’re misused. But once it’s widely known that something’s possible, there’s never a second chance to stuff the genie back into its bottle. Do you doubt it’ll be different when people hear about gravity lasers?”
He looked around the room. “Be honest now, would any of you like to see Imperial Han or the East Asia Coprosperity Sphere, learn how to make these knot singularity things? Or Sea State, for heavens’ sake?”
“There are science tribunals,” June Morgan suggested. “And on-site inspection teams.…”
“Yes.” Spivey nodded. “A combination that’ll work fine, so long as manufacturing such things requires large industrial facilities. But hadn’t we better make sure of that, first? That these things can be controlled by the peacekeeping agencies? After all, Dr. Lustig’s already shown you can use very small cavitrons to make impressive singularities.”
“Not that impressive,” Alex cut in, showing his first sign of irritation as he gestured toward a whirling representation of Beta.
“No?” Spivey turned to face him. “With all due respect for your admitted brilliance, Professor, you’re also notorious for truly major screwups. Can you be so sure you’re right about that? Can you absolutely guarantee that Joe Private Citizen won’t be able to make planet killers someday, in his basement, any time he’s angry at the world?”
Alex frowned, keeping his mouth shut. Suddenly Teresa thought of her conversations with Stan Goldman, about the mystery of a universe apparently all but empty of intelligent life. Putting aside Lustig’s theory about alien berserkers, there was yet another chilling possibility.
Maybe it is trivial to make world-wrecking black holes. Maybe its inevitable, and the reason we’ve never seen extraterrestrial civilizations is simple … because every one reaches this stage, creates unstoppable singularities, and gets sucked down the throat of its own, self-made demon.
But no. She knew from the look in Alex Lustig’s eyes. He’s not wrong about this. Beta’s beyond our ability to duplicate, now and for a long time to come. Bizarre as it sounds, the thing was sent here.
“Hmph.” George Hutton grunted. The Maori geophysicist clearly saw little point in arguing over things already beyond his control. “Mind if I consult my database, Colonel?”
Spivey waved nonchalantly. “By all means.”
George picked up a hush-mike and spoke into it, watching streams of data flow across his desk screen. After a minute he looked up. “You have our stations in Greenland and New Guinea. But the other sites—” He paused.
Spivey looked to his left. “Tell them please, Logan.”
The civilian consultant shrugged. He spoke with a soft but startlingly incongruous Cajun accent. “My computer model of recent Earth, um … tremors, indicates the third site has to be on Easter Island. The last one’s inside a fifty-kilometer circle in the northern part of the Federation of Southern Africa.”
George shrugged. “Just checking. Anyway, I see here all is normal at those two. No troops. No cops. You haven’t got them, Colonel.”
“Nor are we likely to.” Spivey folded his arms, looking quite relaxed. “None of the alliances I represent have any jurisdiction in those territories.
“Oh, we could sabotage your sites I suppose. But if you people are right—if you’re not all deluded or crazy—then Earth needs those resonators. So I imagine zapping them would be a little self-defeating, wouldn’t it?”
That actually won a weak chuckle from a few of those gathered at the table. He continued with an ingratiating smile. “Anyway, our objective isn’t to slam you all into jail. Indeed, formal gravamens have been prepared against only one person in this room, and even in that case we might find some room to maneuver.”
Teresa felt all eyes turn briefly toward her. Everyone knew who Spivey meant. The list of likely counts against her was depressing to contemplate—misappropriation of government property, perjurious nondisclosure, dereliction of duty,… treason. She looked down at her hands.
“No,” Colonel Spivey continued with a smile. “We’re not here to be your enemies, but to negotiate with you. To see if we can agree on a common program. And first on the agenda, by all means, is how to continue the work you’ve begun, putting every resource into saving the world.”
Everything the man said seemed so-o-o reasonable. Teresa found it infuriating, frustrating … all the way down to realizing her own role in Spivey’s game. While others dove right into the subsequent freewheeling discussion, she just sat there, resigned to a pawn’s mute, helpless role.
Clearly, with the New Zealand authorities committed to their alliance, extradition proceedings would be straightforward. Spivey could lock her up and throw away the key. Worse, she’d never fly again. No leak to the Net, no public outcry, not even legal gambits by the best live or software lawyers would ever get her back into space again.
The others were in jeopardy too, even though their cases weren’t quite as clear-cut. Teresa watched George Hutton’s mental wheels spin. With canny shrewdness, the Kiwi entrepreneur poked away at Spivey’s cage, testing its walls.
Prosecutions would mean disclosure, wouldn’t they? No one knew how deeply Spivey?
??s aversion to publicity really went. Did he seek to keep the secret for months? Years even? Or just long enough to give his side a head start?
The Tangoparu cabal had cards to play, as well. Such as their expertise, which no one else could duplicate in time. George emphasized the point, though it was a weak bluff and everyone knew it. Could they go on strike, refusing to use those skills, when the entire world was at stake?
Spivey countered by taking a lofty tone, making a strong case for teamwork. He dropped hints the criminal cases might be dropped. And within hours of an agreement, the times of short supplies and sleepless nights would end. Fresh manpower would arrive, fresh teams of experts to work round the clock, relieving the tired technicians, helping them guide Beta’s orbit slowly outward while making sure the worst tectonic shocks missed populated areas.
Teresa realized Hutton and Lustig were trapped. The benefits were too great, the alternatives too hard. All that remained were the details.
Of course, no one was asking her what she thought. But in fairness, she probably looked as if she couldn’t care less right now.
“We’re particularly interested in this coherent gravity amplification effect of yours, Dr. Lustig.” The speaker was one of Spivey’s aides, a black man dressed for tourism, but with the bearing of a professional soldier and the vocabulary of a physicist. “Surely the implications of the gazer haven’t escaped you?” he said.
“Its implications as a weapon? Oh, they occurred to me.” Alex nodded suspiciously. “How could they not? Want to destroy your enemies with earthquakes? Blast their cities into marmite …?”
The officer looked pained. “That isn’t what I meant, sir. Other means of triggering quakes have been studied before. You’d be surprised how many there are. All were discarded as worthless bludgeons, lacking precision or predictability—useless in the present geopolitical arena.”