Energized (29 page)

Thad kept turning down the heat to save energy for the scrubbers. Marcus guessed the shelter's temperature was somewhere in the thirties, because his breath hung in a white cloud. He told himself he should try to sleep.

Instead, obsessively, he watched Savvy's datasheet for some sign—
any
sign—of life.

*   *   *

More gravel, boulders, and dirt.

Snatches of conversation penetrated walls and came through ventilation ducts. Did Mount Weather ever sleep? Valerie guessed not. Though it was three in the morning, she kept expecting a knock on her door from someone demanding her expert opinion.

The gaping pit of an ice mine. A nexus of pipes. Lots more dirt.

Finally, bright “lights”: an array of corner-cube reflectors. The optical devices sent any incident light back in the exact direction from which it had come. These exploited the ever-scanning (and eye-safe) ultraviolet laser beam of her bot's lidar to mark the border. Beyond this point be intensive mining operations and the NASA base. Trespass and risk revocation of rental privileges.

Striding between markers, she kept going.

The top of an ice distillery peeking over the horizon was her first glimpse of Phoebe base. She cursed at her bot to speed up, even though that would drain its battery faster. Then, as the bot stumbled to a halt, as the imagery stuttered, she cursed herself for a sleep-deprived fool.

She had had her pick of bots in the corral, to which all must have been recalled for safety during the “CME.” The rental company had only one broadcast facility on the little moon; the radio-controlled bots, spread out across the tourist zone, relayed messages among themselves in an ad hoc network. Only with all bots but her one still inside the corral, there
was
no network.

She needed bots to daisy-chain a connection from the corral to the NASA base. She rented six—every bot with fully charged batteries—and sent them scampering toward the base. An ad hoc network opened and her forward scout resumed its many-legged scuttle.

The leading bot reached a packed-dirt plain scuffed with boot treads. She paused to look around. Nothing about the area seemed noteworthy. She resumed “her” progress toward the base and, coming over a low rise, saw a deep cave.

Only its surfaces were all planes. Every intersection was at right angles. The opening was man-made, not a cavern.

Scuttling closer, she saw coiled hoses and metal canisters along the walls. She could neither discern canister colors nor, if she were to sidle closer—not unless the labels had been written in ultraviolet-sensitive ink—read the descriptions. As natural as the grayscale holo appeared, it was all computer-graphic wizardry: the bot “saw” with lidar. The process of reconstructing images from reflections of a scanning beam was like the radar maps she so often worked with—as from-a-whole-past-life as mapping Titan now felt.

But color blindness did not matter, any more than did the mechanics of bot “vision” with which she was obsessing. Only physics was easier to contemplate than what
did
matter: that she had found the base's hopper garage—and it was empty.

Where could everyone have gone?

Almost, Valerie abandoned her search. She was at a dead end. The hoppers gone meant the people had gone. Doubtless she should tell someone what she had discovered. Tyler Pope, maybe?

And then what?

Maybe she couldn't bear to accept that Marcus and the rest had set out. If they had, all too likely their intent was—somehow—to retake PS-1 from the terrorists. If they had, there was nothing more she could do.

Maybe she couldn't bear the thought of more waiting.

Or maybe, she had a choice to make. She could take action, or she could defer to the debating society and hope they did something. She felt sudden empathy for poor Patrick, so many years ago. And she knew how Marcus felt about committees.

With her pathetic squad of tourist bots, she continued her search.

*   *   *

Valerie pounded on the flimsy wooden door. It rattled in its frame, and the knocking should have awakened Lazarus.

“I'm coming!” came the cross reply from inside. The door opened inward and Ellen Tanaka, bleary eyed, peered out. She was dressed (for the day, or, like Valerie, had she never gone to bed? Valerie guessed the latter). “What is it?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe Marcus and the others. Grab a datasheet, let's find an unoccupied office or meeting room somewhere where we can spread out, and I'll explain.”

At the end of an isolated corridor they found an empty room with a long table. Valerie plugged in her datasheet, pulling up a holo of Phoebe base's surface structures. She said, “Watch closely.”

“I don't see—”

“There,” Valerie said. “Did you catch that stutter in the image?”

“Ye-es. Wait a minute. How are we seeing this?”

“From a tourist bot I marched across Phoebe. The rental center has an independent uplink to comsats, I imagine so sightseeing doesn't compete for bandwidth with NASA business. The bot company's link rebooted after the faux CME. Now keep watching.”

The image hiccoughed three more times.

Valerie said, “Now I'm switching to another bot.” The glitches continued. “Another.” More hiccoughs.

“Interference?” Ellen asked.

“I think so. And when a bot backs away even a little, the interference is no longer noticeable. I'll bet we're picking up a weak signal from inside the base.”

*   *   *

Marcus had a pounding headache. He was exhausted, short of breath, and a little sick to his stomach.

He was succumbing to hypoxia.

A month's supply of oxygen waited in storage tanks outside the shelter's sturdy metal hatch. Ice to electrolyze into yet more oxygen lay beneath the floor and behind every wall of the shelter.

Breathing as shallowly as he could, Marcus hated the irony.

 

Saturday morning, September 30

Patrick rapped on the sturdy door of the Green Bank Observatory control room. He could hear music from inside. Half a minute passed without response, and he knocked harder. Still nothing.

He resisted admitting himself with the access code he was not supposed to know. Revealing he knew the door code was no way to put off guard whoever was on duty inside.

The observatory remained officially closed for the emergency, and Patrick had his choice of nearby empty offices to call from.

“Control room,” a man answered. Over the phone, the music was recognizable. Jazz, with wailing sax.

Patrick recognized the voice. If it had been anyone else, maybe he could have talked his way into what he needed. Not with Ian Wakefield. No matter how long they knew each other, Ian would never get past Patrick's reputation.

“Hey, Ian, it's Patrick. You drew the short straw?”

“Taking my turn.”

Because the big dish was too precious to go unused. Someone had to baby-sit the controls and monitor the readouts, even though observation requests could be submitted over the net. This emergency was being treated like the average blizzard.

“Would you let me in, please? Some status messages from the big dish look odd to me. I came in to review the system logs.”

“Okay.”
Click.

Patrick returned to the locked door. The music had stopped; this time Ian heard the knock. One of the control room's many computers streamed 3-V and showed a talking head. Audio was muted, but the crawl said plenty.

“New attack?” Patrick asked.

“Attacks. Tidal generator in Scotland. Several ethanol distilleries in Brazil.”

“Bastards.”

“Yeah.”

Patrick waved at the curved console. “Where do you want me?”

“Station six. Which system log?”

Patrick named it.

Ian frowned. “That's nothing privileged. I would've mailed a soft copy to you. You don't need to be in the control room.”

“The world is going to hell. I feel like company today, if that's all right.”

“Sure. Sorry.” A burst of typing. “Okay, you should have your log now.”

Someone needed to take action. Patrick had once flattered himself that he was a man of action. And by the actions he had taken, made everything
so
much worse.

He had to fix things. He
had
to.

A real man of action could have intimidated or coerced or just convinced Ian to provide the sysadmin password. But overweight, out-of-shape, middle-aged him? No way.
He
could not intimidate anyone.

But he could be devious.

After scrolling through the log file for a while, Patrick printed off a page—only what he printed came from a file he had tweaked on his office computer. He handed Ian the sheet, saying, “Something's screwy here.”

“The dish appears to be acting fine.”

“Maybe so, but the telemetry and this log don't agree.” Patrick slipped his hand into his pocket to activate the homemade device inside. It emitted a short clatter like jangling keys: auditory camouflage. He rolled his chair next to Ian's. “You see?”

Ian scratched his head. “Odd. Any idea what might cause the mismatch?”

“I once saw something like this with the forty-five-foot dish. It turned out that the diagnostic server was missing an operating-system patch.”

“Which data are correct? The telemetry or the detailed logs?”

Patrick shrugged. “I need to see the executables to know what patches are installed. Log me in?”

Ian turned back to his keyboard and pecked away. “There you go.”

Patrick spent ten minutes scrolling through binary files, making an occasional
hmm
for effect. “Everything looks fine, patch-wise. I'm going home to cogitate. Log me off?”

“Sure.”

Back in his office, Patrick took the recorder from his pocket. It collected the faint RF emissions of keyboard electronics scanning for keystrokes. It was sensitive enough to pick up keystrokes from twenty feet away—only not through the control room's shielded walls. The keystrokes immediately after Patrick had activated his recorder were what Ian had typed to log in Patrick.

He had Ian's sysadmin-privileged user ID and password.

*   *   *

“So are you ready to be a good little terrorist?” Jonas radioed.

Dillon was ready to be damn near
anything,
if it would release him from the claustrophobic shelter. “I won't interfere,” he answered cautiously.

“Good. Make sure you're sealed up, and I'll let you out.”

Dillon double-checked his suit. “Confirmed.” The hatch opened, and he stepped outside. “Where are Lincoln and Felipe?” Dillon asked.

“In shelters, taking a break.”

Overhead, Earth was at about half phase. They were over Central Asia. With his visor set to magnify, ominous black clouds dotted the Middle East. New petroleum fires?

“Our doing?” Dillon asked.

“Excellent choice of pronoun. We're in this together. And yes. Plus assorted other strikes that do not declare themselves so visually. A special today on ethanol distilleries and wind farms.”

No matter that Dillon had resisted many such projects, seeing them destroyed was worse. The world was a funny place. “Explain something to me: How much longer can this go on?”

“That's the big question, isn't it?” Jonas laughed mirthlessly. “While we can. Till someone loses patience and blows apart our home away from home.”

“You make this sound like a suicide mission.”

“You should work on your reading-between-the-lines skills. If only you had the time.”

Dillon shivered. “Why would you agree to such a thing? I certainly didn't.”

“Have you ever said no to Yakov and made it stick?” Pause. “I didn't think so.”

“Look,” Dillon said hastily, “don't get me wrong. I hate big engineering projects like, like … what we're standing on. Over the years, in my own way, I've held back lots of so-called progress. But resistance is one thing and”—he gestured overhead—“
that
is quite something else.”

“Missing your luxury suite already, boss?” Jonas's hand rested on the coil gun that hung from his tool belt.

Dillon edged away. “You don't want to die. I can feel it. We can all run and…”

“Right. Have Yakov sic the Russian intelligence apparatus on us.”

“We're dead if we
stay
. You said it yourself.”

“If the Russians don't nab us, the CIA will. It's not like either side's radars could fail to notice escape pods setting off or reentering the atmosphere. If we aren't quietly executed, or with a tad more formality sentenced to the chair, then what? Guantanamoed for life? After what we've done, how long would that be?”

“We have nothing to lose by trying,” Dillon protested.

“
We
don't. Our families do. If we don't follow Yakov's script, how do you think the world will treat our loved ones? They'll be associated forever with what
we
did. Disgraced. Ostracized. Hounded by reporters, the curious, and revenge seekers. And by the way, our wives will be left penniless after our victims' families sue.

“Accept it, boss. There is no way out. We keep attacking until PS-1 is blown apart. Then people can suspect whatever they choose. No one will be able to
prove
who was responsible.”

Hope of a sort, if only for Crystal. Dillon sought comfort in that, but a new implication shook him. Everyone on Phoebe had seen them. “So the people in the shelter on Phoebe…?”

“Collateral damage.” Jonas said. “Once the missiles come down our throats, no one will be up here for a
long
time. Debris will make it too dangerous.”

“And if no one blows us up?”

“Oh you innocent fool.” Jonas turned away. “There are oil-shale mines across Canada. Why don't we see if a bit more vigor will put us out of our misery a little sooner?”