And of course Korolev and his colleagues had been shown the grotesque, the nightmarish magmass levels and, far more importantly, the core, the shining sphere Gate itself.
Down there in the core—where thirty years ago the world’s worst yet most secret accident had occurred when an atomic pile imploded, ate itself, and created the Gate—they had also seen the stinking remains of a burned and bullet-ridden creature not of this world. Its leather and wooden saddle, reduced to little more than charcoal now, had clearly defined this thing’s function as a mount…but for what strange species of rider? For if he was half as fierce as his beast…
Twice the size of a horse, but unlike any horse or beast of burden ever seen before, there was something about that cadaver where it lay on the steel, fish-scale disk surrounding the Gate—something other than its obviously alien origins—that Korolev’s party found deeply disturbing. For paradoxically, despite its otherness, there was that about the thing’s limbs, its eye sockets and entire skull, that hinted of freakish mutations and even of some unthinkable human lineage…which only served to make even more anomalous the creature’s incredible jaws, teeth, and acromegalic paws equipped with claws like chisels.
And yet this thing from the Gate—a mere fighting brute, a mindless warrior—had worn a golden bit in its mouth, a golden plate with a spike to protect its skull, golden chains and attachments on its saddle, and a ring of gold weighing half a kilo in its armoured nose…
Sitting around the brazier, it was the ratlike physicist Igor Gurevich who, unable to suppress a shudder, blinked first. Yuri Borisov, a squat bulldog of a man seated on Aliyev’s left, noticing Gurevich’s discomfort, pointed at him and said, “Hah! But you have been two shades lighter ever since you saw that thing, eh, comrade? Think nothing of it, for you’re not alone. Myself, I no longer venture anywhere near the core, for I’ve seen more than enough of that thing. What? It gave me nightmares! It was three-quarters dead when it burst through, but the sight of it set men screaming like women before they managed to kill it. I was one of them, and I’m not afraid to admit it. Most of those holes in its mangy skull were put there by me!”
“What, do you read minds?” Gurevich grimaced.
“No,” Borisov grinned, “just expressions. I could see that thing reflected in your eyes. A creature like that, it makes a nonsense of your physics, your science, eh?”
And Korolev said, “Is that the reason why you haven’t gone through? For fear of monsters like that waiting for you on the other side?” He spoke directly across the brazier to Galich.
“It could be one of the reasons.” Galich’s purr was more a growl now. Stung by what he considered an accusal of cowardice, a slur, he narrowed his eyes. “On the other hand, we are loyal in our way to the General. He told us to stay here and wait on his return. Myself, Borisov, and Kreisky, we’ve since agreed to do just that. And anyway, why should we spoil a good thing? We have a limitless supply of vouchers that we exchange for whatever we want at the penal garrison in Beresov, and compared to life in a gulag Perchorsk is a holiday camp.”
“No offence,” (now Aliyev spoke up) “but it’s clear to me your waiting is in vain. And loyalty be damned—at this rate you could spend your whole lives here! But that alien gold you wear: can you imagine what you could do with a ton of it?”
“Oh, we have imagined,” Sol Kreisky, a pockmarked, bearded giant of man—and a mass murderer of women—answered. “And we’ve long since decided on the split. All that remains for us to do is figure out a way to bring it out!”
“Ah!” said Gurevich. “There is after all a problem, then?” He nodded knowingly, and went on, “I thought that might be the case. This portal is in my line of work, you see; its properties are fascinating to a scientist such as myself. When we were down there in the core, I noticed how you men stayed well back from the Gate and asked myself why. I’m still waiting for an answer. But I remember the Perchorsk accident; it was all hush-hush, and I could get no sensible answers to my questions then, either. There were various fantastic rumours, however, about a Gate with properties like those of a black hole, which once it has drawn you in permits of no return.”
“There you have it,” said Galich. “Yet another good reason why we haven’t followed Mikhail Suvorov through the Gate.”
“But not good enough,” said Korolev, taking command of the conversation again. And Igor Gurevich felt the industrialist’s elbow in his ribs, warning him to shut up for the time being.
“Not good enough?” said Galich. “Again you hint of cowardice. Perhaps you would undertake to lead us through this Gate, eh, ‘comrade’?”
“And again you have misinterpreted my comments,” Korolev tut-tutted. “I make no accusation of cowardice; indeed, everything you’ve told us so far makes perfect sense. But insomuch as you lack a scientist’s understanding of the problem, your approach is wrong. You see only the action and never the reaction—or vice versa, whichever.” He shrugged dismissively.
“Oh?” said Galich. “And are you a scientist, too? Both you and this…this ‘physicist’ here? One glance at the Gate and you’ve figured it all out? Is that it?”
Korolev sighed, shook his head, said, “No, my knowledge of science isn’t the equal of Igor Gurevich’s. But then again, we don’t share the same field of expertise. You see, where Igor’s science is theoretical, mine is practical. I am an industrialist, and as such far better at mechanics than physics.”
“Mechanics?”
“It’s the science of the action of forces on bodies,” Korolev explained. “Kinetics, statics, and mechanical interactions. Er, are you any the wiser?”
“Please go on,” Galich purred, beginning to frown a little. “By all means enlighten me.”
“First tell me,” said Korolev, “is it a fact that once you enter that sphere you have to go on?”
Galich nodded. “First the General and his expedition, they experienced this problem. They thought it might be a temporary effect and proceeded anyway. But then, they had no choice. And eventually three of ours followed them—well, in fact we made them go through. There is honour, you see, even among thieves, and we had caught them stealing. So, they had a choice: go and see what Suvorov was doing—see if they could help him in any way—or refuse and die. We were testing the General’s theory that this was a temporary thing. But…it wasn’t.”
And now Gurevich came in again, with: “And yet that creature had no trouble at all when it came through from the other side.” (And again Korolev dug him in the ribs.)
“I know,” said Galich, still frowning. “I have no explanation.”
“But I have!” said Korolev. “The portal acts like a seesaw, or better still, a piston! Once up there is only one way to go, and that’s down again.”
“I still don’t understand,” Galich shook his head.
“Do you know how a slingshot works?” said Korolev.
“Of course!”
“Well, this is the same thing. Just as you can fire a stone from both sides of the catapult, so you can use the Gate. It’s simply a matter of which way you stretch the elastic. And like a piston, you can’t return until you’ve first gone all the way forward.”
Galich was on his feet now. Excited, he was finally beginning to “understand”…and simultaneously falling for Nikolai Korolev’s clever “explanation,” his lie. “In order to return,” he said, “first we must go right through to the other side? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Exactly!” said Korolev.
And Gurevich, seeing the lie of the land, said, “Of course! You are precisely right, Nikolai! The Gate is a two-way shunt!”
But Galich had sat down again. And staring hard at the visitors through the brazier’s flames, he said, “Then tell me, why hasn’t Suvorov returned? And likewise the thieves we sent after him?”
“Which brings us back to that unfortunate conclusion,” said Korolev, “but one which we must surely draw. Listen, and please try not to be offended. I understand you
r loyalty to the man—your loyalty to any man—who would set you free. But can’t you see how he needed you? He needed you, yes, to guard this place, while he established his rights and amassed his fortune on the other side.”
And as once again Galich—and also Borisov, and Kreisky—began to come to their feet:
“Now listen!” Korolev quickly went on. “Gold is gold, yes, but it’s only one kind of wealth. I have known Mikhail Suvorov for a long, long time and I know him well. I cannot imagine he would stay long in an inhospitable world without meat and good strong booze—and certainly not without lusty, willing women! Is it any wonder that he and his party are still there? Not at all. They are taking that place for all it’s worth! And do you really think there’ll be room there for you?”
“But—” said Galich, his voice a growl now.
“—But, isn’t it perfectly obvious what happened when Suvorov went through?” said Korolev, also risen to his feet. “Him and his men, his soldiers—his own heavily armed, elite special forces—they wiped out the local inhabitants on the other side, that is what happened! And as for that dead monster down there in the core: fatally wounded in the fighting, it escaped into the Gate and found its way here. And by now…by now my good friend General Mikhail Suvorov rules in a rich, beautiful parallel world that he will make his own…before he returns to take this one!”
“If he can return,” Galich snarled. “You see, I’ve not yet accepted your theory. You’re pushing it too hard.”
Now, tired of this circular argument, Korolev felt obliged to play his ace card. “Then accept this,” he snapped. “There’s something else you haven’t thought through—another possible reason why it’s taking Suvorov so long to come home.”
“Oh?”
This time when Korolev jabbed Gurevich, the physicist knew just exactly what to say. It had been on the tip of his tongue ever since they got here. “Mikhail Suvorov’s expedition wasn’t an entirely military operation, you know,” he said. “He didn’t only take soldiers with him, but some very capable scientists, too. For all we know they could be working to create a Gate of their own! And if they do…what price then for your loyalty and your allegiances, eh?”
Galich sat down yet again, but very heavily. “I don’t want to believe it,” he said after a while. “And yet—”
“And yet you must!” Korolev told him. “And you most surely will, when you and your men—under command of officers loyal to us—go through and take it all back again. Only this time there shall be fair shares for all. Of gold, yes, and whatever else this alien world has to offer. Now, what do you say about that?”
“I say,” Galich snarled, springing up, and reaching inside his leather jacket—and Borisov and Kreisky flanking him, duplicating his actions—“I say I’ve had enough of military and ex-military bastards trying to make fools and dupes of us! And if this alien world is all you say it is, then what do we need you for?”
The three had guns in their hands, and likewise their men, who came surging forward out of the vast service bay’s shadowy areas. But if they were armed, so were their VIP visitors. And cold metal glinted in the red firelight.
At which point there came a disturbance, shouting from outside the great doors…
Transported by Jake in two parties, Ben Trask and the E-Branch team had arrived just a minute or so earlier. On a broad ledge under an overhang on the far side of the ravine, they crouched behind drifted snow and observed the entrance to the complex.
Now Trask spoke quietly to Jake. “How come you’re familiar with this ledge? I mean, these coordinates?”
“I remember them,” Jake answered matter-of-factly. “Harry Keogh was here once. In fact he was all over the place. Inside that complex, it’s like a maze with many levels.”
“I know,” said Trask. “Me and Goodly, we’ve been in there, too. We probably won’t ‘remember’ it as well as you, though.”
Turchin touched Trask’s parka-clad arm. “You see that jet-copter? My enemies are here. Our timing couldn’t be better.”
“You can say that again,” said Trask, “because I think our enemies are here, too. Or they’re about to be. Listen…”
A moment later and they all heard it: the faint throb of a small VTOL aircraft’s engines; a throbbing at first, but as it grew louder a sudden change—an obviously irregular sound—the sporadic sputtering and juddering of failing engines. And:
“Look!” Millie gasped, craning her neck and staring at the wide strip of moonlit sky, where a delta-shaped silhouette was descending on spasmodic bursts of fire.
“She isn’t going to make it,” said Trask. “That plane’s out of fuel. Malinari and his bloody friends have pushed it all the way, pushed it to the limit—and beyond!”
“And Liz is on board!” Jake breathed. “I can make a jump.”
“Can you?” Trask grabbed his arm. “Can you? Look at the way she’s falling, steadying up, then falling again. There’s no way you can judge it. What if your coordinates are wrong? You could end up underneath her, frying in her jets!”
“Frying or flying—fuck it!—I have to try,” said Jake, conjuring a Möbius door.
But at the last moment Goodly stopped him. “It’s all right, Jake,” the precog said. “It’s all right! We’ll all be there at the end, remember? And that includes Liz.”
“She’s steadied up,” Millie gasped, her hand to her mouth. “Look, she’s going to land close to the jet-copter.”
The VTOL Scimitar was down to their level now, maybe fifty feet above the gently domed, reinforced-concrete canopy behind the dam wall. But her vertical thrusters were sputtering again, and just when it seemed she was actually going to make it, two of them cut out entirely.
The plane yawed wildly, port wing and tail tilting, striking the concrete canopy and tearing free. If there had been any fuel left in the tanks, that would have been the end of it. But the fuel was gone, used up, and with its passenger cabin incredibly intact, the Scimitar crashed the last twelve or so feet to the deck. As she hit, torn metal screamed and bits of tailplane and crumpled wing went flying. Then she shivered and lay still, the lights in her cabin went out, and a mess of white foam came flooding from her ruptured belly, a standard protection against fire.
On the other side of the ravine, men in parkas were hauling on the service bay’s huge doors, dragging them open. While from the cavern itself shouted orders came echoing, as running, gesturing figures spilled out, casting eerie shadows in the slowly widening arc of yellow light.
In a matter of seconds more than a dozen armed men were out onto the ramp, while in the bay an engine coughed into life and a tracked snowplough came rumbling into view.
With binoculars to his eyes, Turchin said, “Those three men standing together, the ones who aren’t doing anything. They are the ones I want dead! If you think the Earth is threatened now, you can’t imagine how much worse it will be if they should survive this.”
Trask said nothing but took the glasses from him and looked where he had indicated…
The three “bosses” had finished ordering their men into action. Now Karl Galich came running, stuck a machine-pistol in Nikolai Korolev’s ribs and said, “Is this your doing, ‘comrade’? A task force to back up your jet-copter? Those officers you mentioned, who’ll place us under their command? No way! You may have been a General in your time, but I’m very glad I didn’t serve under you. As a tactician you’re a total failure. Your men certainly won’t fire on us while we are holding their leaders.”
“Are you mad?” Korolev rounded on him. “We’ve no idea what this is all about! Can’t you see that’s a private airplane? It has nothing to do with us. As for troops: how many soldiers do you think you could cram into that thing? In any case, what on earth are you worrying about? If the people in that plane survived the crash, they’re almost sure to be severely injured.”
“But if they’re not yours, what are they doing here?” said Galich.
“How should I know?” Korolev p
ut away his pistol, threw up his hands, and turned to his companions. “Excuse me for enquiring,” he snarled, “but can one of you perhaps explain this? Is there something I don’t know? Some precaution that someone may have taken without mentioning it to me?”
Gurevich and Aliyev looked at each other disbelievingly—then at Korolev—and as a man said, “Fuck you, ‘comrade’! You are the one with all the mouth, so you explain it!”
Korolev puffed himself up and looked about to explode, but before he could do or say anything else, there came a burst of static from a side pocket in his overcoat and a tinny, excited voice that said, “Chopper One to General Korolev: what’s going on? What do you want us to do?”
Korolev looked at Galich and said, “There. Does that sound like this is something we planned? Of course not! Let me speak to my pilot.” Taking a miniature walkie-talkie from his pocket, he extended the aerial.
Shoving harder with his weapon, Galich said, “Be very careful what you say.”
Korolev grimaced, paused a moment to nod his understanding, then answered Chopper One, saying, “Do nothing. We have no idea what’s happening. How about you?”