Fear the Survivors (29 page)

And so Captain Samuel Harkness of the Royal Air Force had become the first human to move out of what we perceived as normal space, to enter an area that existed only in a fifth and sixth dimension. With all her storied scientific knowledge, Birgit still found it difficult to truly grasp the implications of this.

She and Minnie grappled with mental images, like the diving of a submarine to move underneath the waves, still there, but not visible, but that did not cover anything like the full extent of how this new dimension functioned in relation to ours. Minnie, born as she was from the combined knowledge of Amadeu and Birgit, and lacking the physiological flaws that inadvertently lead to imagination and creativity, was no more capable than Birgit of explaining it fully, though the two of them could come closer than most.

As they communed in the harmonious quasi-language that was the right-brain’s codex, Birgit felt the queasy sense of splitting again as Minnie ‘spoke’ to her left brain once more.

Minnie:
<¿maybe I should create an avatar, to allow me to move physically?>

Minnie could feel Birgit’s uneasiness at the sudden shift, and computed that she had probably caused it.

Minnie:

Minnie did not mean it.

Birgit:
‘no, no, minnie, it is ok. i did say you could do it.’

Nearly everyone else that had ‘spoken’ with Minnie had quickly demanded she not communicate with both sides of their brain about different things, not only because it was very disconcerting, but also because it implied a level of lack of control over their own thoughts that was profoundly disturbing.

Amadeu got a perverse pleasure out of it, but then he was a very strange young man. For Birgit’s part, she allowed it more out of a sense of responsibility for the young mind she and Amadeu had formed. Like a parent allowing a child to ask those uncomfortable questions, or going away for the weekend even though you knew the kids might have a party and wreck the place. You did it because it had been your decision to create this person, not theirs, and you had a responsibility to help them become an independent entity, an adult, no matter how uncomfortable it might sometimes be for you.

In the end, Birgit supposed, she did it out of love.

Which was, of course, another irrational concept Minnie would never truly grasp, and maybe she was the better for it.

Minnie:

And there was that disconcerting feeling again.

Birgit:
‘no, minnie, like any parent, i really don’t want you to have to go through that, no.’

Birgit laughed, both inside and out, and knew that even though Minnie was still learning, the growing brilliance that was her ‘daughter’ did get her sense of humor, indeed Minnie shared it, in as much as she had a sense of humor at all. Minnie knew pleasure as a sense of accomplishment, humor as a juxtaposition of reality and perception, and Minnie was capable of ‘feeling’ it, in her way. Birgit sensed Minnie’s reciprocal smile as a warmth in her mind, and their shared amusement was amplified.

- - -

Four hours later, still engaged in conceptual discussions about hyperspace and physical manifestation, Minnie pointed out their location to Birgit.

Minnie:

Their shared experience suddenly leapt outward and downward, and Birgit could see the Climber from the ground, a rising speck moving upward, a smooth bump on the cable, like a meal moving through a preposterously long snake’s belly.

As she snapped out of their ongoing game of visualizing dimensional relativity, Birgit was at first queasy and then struck by the beauty of it all, of humanity’s new reality.

She realized with a jolt how blasé she had become about the marvelous world they was stepping into. While their motivation may be raw survival, that did not change the fact that Birgit was riding a fusion-powered train into space, carrying with her a machine for generating a gap in reality.

Minnie:

Thought Minnie to Birgit, as they studied the view.

Birgit:
‘yes, it is. we have achieved a great deal, in a very short time.’

Minnie’s sight merged the image from a telescope on the ground with the view coming from Terminus itself, and her own copies of the blueprints of the space station, and the ship that was forming next to it.

The combined conceptualization appeared to Birgit, but it was too much. This moment called for simplicity. Without fear of hurting the young Mind’s feelings, Birgit forced the compound image away, returning to the singular view from the ground.

Birgit:
‘minnie, every now and then, it can be beneficial to look at it from one perspective at a time.’

Minnie:
<¿why?>

Birgit:
‘because perspective can be important. understanding becomes more complete when you view things from different angles, not all at the same time, but individually.’

Minnie:

Birgit:
‘exactly. try to
see
this,
just
this.’

Their view focused. As the Climber drew itself up the cable, the full size of the journey became real to Birgit, and, on some level, to Minnie as well. They had all seen images from the ground, telescopes watching the lowering of the cable. And in the distance, as if dangling above the abyss, the construction of the ever-evolving Terminus and the mighty New Moon One.

The station, whose sapling had been the merged hulks of the two Orion modules, had grown to include various living and mechanical modules that sprang from the main mass; rotating wheels set at strange angles to the original hub to provide working and living space for the growing community, each spinning independently to add some modicum of gravity.

Birgit:
‘¿you see how the station begins to dwarf the original modules? and now, from this perspective, you see how the ship that is forming next to the station dwarfs it all?’

They had built it farther out along the tether that linked them to Earth, using its growing weight as a counterbalance to allow larger loads to be carried by the Climbers ferrying to and from the surface.

Minnie:
if
it will be. plans are not certain. they grow more so as completion nears. ¿this is the perspective of time?>

Birgit felt a wave of pride.

Birgit:
‘yes, minnie.’

Two months into their preparations, the ship had indeed truly started to take shape, and its potential was already clear.

Birgit:
‘and now see it for its uniqueness. it is not like any ship we have dared to attempt before. it is an amalgamation of sheer power. ¿what is this the perspective of?’

Minnie:

Birgit did not reply. She knew Minnie could feel her approval, and she felt Minnie’s response. The image of the ship became loaded with new meaning now, as Minnie followed Birgit’s line of thought. Each of its eight massive engine shells now gleamed with the vast fusion power that would be their final roles, but not as certainty, but as potential. She felt that power, set within the shielded reservoirs of frozen oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen that would be their fuel sources, and it was seen as new, as if for the first time.

Now Minnie went further. Focusing on one engine, she understood it within the context of its purpose. The shell outlined the massive cigar shape each engine would form, over three hundred feet long and nearly sixty feet wide at their waists, pointed at one end, and open at the other, and black as night along its entirety. The eight engines were arranged in a circle, each of their smooth, deadly looking bodies pointing toward the sky like a vast Stonehenge.

But they were also each independent and detachable, existing as separate entities linked by a network of nanotube spars to a central, tubular nexus, itself as long and as wide as each of the engines that surrounded it. This tube was currently empty. The back half, level with the exhaust nozzles of the eight black engines around it, would contain the living quarters of the ship’s crew. The middle of the central cylinder would eventually house the Accelosphere Generator that would envelope the entire ship in its protective shield.

And eventually the whole was to be capped by a complex array of sensors and the powerful laser armament that would take out any particles the ship would no doubt encounter when maneuvering alongside and tethering to the asteroid.

The Earth was already travelling at over sixty-seven thousand miles per hour on its annual journey around the sun, but the ship needed to complete that journey in less than half that time. Some of that saving would come from cutting the corner on its journey around the sun, but the ship would still reach speeds measured in hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. If all went well, it would catch the asteroid in just over three months from departure, giving it five more months to decelerate the massive rock into Earth’s orbit.

All this raced through Birgit’s mind for the thousandth time as the Climber approached the range of the Earthbound subspace tweeters through which their connection was possible.

Minnie:

Birgit:
‘i am here,
you
are
there.
’

Minnie:

Birgit was touched, and found herself more affected by the coming departure than she had thought she would be.

Birgit:
‘yes, but it is not permanent. loss is not pleasant but we have a saying: absence makes the heart grow fonder. the heart in this case …’

Minnie:

Birgit:
‘you do not know it, but you are actually quite funny, minnie, and very sweet. all the more so because it is unintentional.’

Minnie:

Birgit:
‘yes, minnie. i know you did.’

Minnie:

Birgit:
‘goodbye, minnie.’

The emotion she felt from Birgit was powerful in the moments before disconnection. It would be the subject of much conjecture by Minnie over the coming weeks. It was alien to her, but it was also somehow analogous to a sense she had when she contemplated Birgit. Like all children, she was learning that which her parents knew she must, but feared nonetheless.

Chapter
26: Standard Procedure

Thousand
s of miles below them, and far, far away to the northwest, deep in the forgotten heart of Asia, Lieutenant Malcolm Granger sat back, his feet parked on the desk in front of him, while he flicked through a copy of a cheap but still disconcertingly appealing adult magazine that a friend had sent him from England.

Life on the diplomatic compound in Ashgabat had returned to its usual ambulatory pace after he had been dispatched to help a mysterious group of Americans across the border into Turkmenistan months ago. He had smuggled the strange group into the British embassy, and kept them there for a few days. But then they had departed, taking the discombobulated young girl they’d had in tow away with them, and so life had returned to normal. The whole episode proving to be but a small island of excitement in a sea of tedium.

Looking back on it now it was a blur, but if Malcolm had couched any doubts as to the incident’s importance, then two notable conversations he’d had immediately afterward had dispelled them. The first had been with the British ambassador himself, who had assured Malcolm that he had done the right thing, but this was necessarily “delicate” and should thus remain ‘under wraps,’ replete with a tap on the nose, a-la cliché.

The second had been more direct, and from an even more surprising source. The British Army Liaison had dropped by, a man commonly suspected to be a member of MI6 by pretty much everyone at the embassy. The fact that this was such a widespread assumption may have seemed incongruous, considering Colonel Huxley’s supposedly clandestine position, but despite Hollywood and Pinewood’s efforts to convince us otherwise, it turned out that in reality most spies were well known by both sides. Well, if not known, then suspected at the very least. But as long as they were never caught in the act, it remained a play of wits, a carefully constructed game played where the players were careful to stay within the boundaries of international diplomacy.

If they stepped into touch or were caught offside it was another matter, but as long as they remained subtle, their very prominence made them untouchable without tangible proof, and the same applied to their counterparts on the other side of whatever net they were tasked with peering over.

And so, over a seemingly innocent cup of tea in the officer’s mess, a seemingly innocuous Colonel Huxley had reinforced the ambassador’s warning, and elaborated a little further on Britain’s involvement in the smuggling of Quavoce Mantil, Major Toranssen, Captain Falster, and a young girl named Banu.

Knowing that the bomber downed over Iran only a few days beforehand had been identified as American, it was suspected, correctly as it turned out, that all US assets in neighboring nations were being watched closely by agents of Iran’s intelligence service.

And so, as a way of aiding the foursome without alerting the Iranians, the British had been involved. In fact, the colonel would have gone himself if he hadn’t known that he was also under surveillance by Iranian agents, though for a thoroughly different reason.

With the incident behind them, and Malcolm having been proven reliable by force of circumstance, Malcolm had since become one of the few people on the base that the colonel could somewhat trust. And so, in the intervening few months, Malcolm and Colonel Huxley had spent many an evening at the bar in the officer’s mess.

Thus, Malcolm was not as surprised as he should have been when the colonel interrupted his review of cheap English pornography with a phone call.

“Malcolm, it’s Nick, where are you?” the tone was curt, and Malcolm sat up, glancing around his small room, even though he knew he was alone.

“Err, in the barracks. Why, what’s …” Malcolm began, but he was cut off by a hurried response from Colonel Huxley.

“Meet me at my office in civvies, five minutes.” And without further ado, the line went dead.

Malcolm stood. Something in the colonel’s tone screamed alarm bells in his head. He was already in his evening clothes: jeans and a grey T-shirt. Now he quickly shouldered his holster and grabbed his standard issue P226, removing its trigger lock and checking its magazine before clipping the gun into the holster and pulling on a thick jacket. He grabbed his Consular ID and ran from the room.

He was at Nick’s door within two minutes of being called. He knocked and then went to open it, but it was locked. A moment and a click later, and it opened. Nick wordlessly waved Malcolm into his office. The room was a small windowless affair, in the middle of the building. Malcolm’s attention was taken by the host of equipment that had materialized on Nick’s desk: guns, radios, IDs.

Nick locked the door behind them, and then switched on his stereo. Malcolm then noticed his friend was holding a small, silenced Walther P99 Compact, certainly not standard issue, and he became even more concerned.

Nick stepped up to Malcolm, the music masking his words as he spoke into Malcolm’s ear, “Keep your voice low.” said Nick, rather redundantly, “Something is happening, and I am afraid we are going to need to get out of here, right now.”

Malcolm tensed, but Nick went on, “I’ve just gotten word that Kazakhstan has signed an accord with Moscow and joined what is apparently being called the New People’s Federation.”

Malcolm’s stomach knotted. Kazakhstan was by far the largest of the former soviet satellite states in the region. That it had voluntarily joined the burgeoning totalitarian republic that had once been Russia was next to impossible. As impossible as the former Russian president inexplicably committing suicide during the military coup three months ago.

“Jesus, Nick, what do you think will happen here?” said Malcolm.

“It gets worse.” said Nick, “We have unconfirmed reports that Uzbekistan and Tajikistan have done the same thing.”

Malcolm’s heart started racing, “How unconfirmed?”

“Well, we haven’t
confirmed
that nessy is a load of bollocks, either, but we are pretty confident. Listen, I have been ordered to fetch a specific person, see to it that they are secure, and get them off base. Normally I would probably have tapped you for sec detail anyway, but it turns out you are the person I am supposed to be fetching. So it’s just going to be you and me.”

“Me?” said Malcolm. He would have been more than a little surprised if Nick had tapped him to help with getting some sensitive personage to safety. Honored, but surprised. That
he
should be the one that needed saving was not surprising so much as disturbing.

“Apparently your involvement with the incident at the border a few months ago may make you ‘of interest’ to the Russians, and I have been informed that, if possible, I am to get you out. I
was
going to disguise you and smuggle you out with the ambassador’s immediate family, but they have already been refused access to the airport. The Turkmen government says they want to ‘escort’ them to safety, so I think we are going to have to go off reservation.”

Malcolm looked into the eyes of the other man, seeking an answer to a question that was nagging at him, “And if you
can’t
get me out?”

“Let’s not get into what my orders are then, but it won’t come to that.” Nick’s frankness was unsettling, and yet somehow it also negated the threat as well. Malcolm knew that a bullet in the back of the head was the likely option if he was indeed ‘of interest’ and could not be kept out of enemy hands. And if the Russians wanted him, and Malcolm could think of no reason why Nick would make that up, then a bullet in the head would probably be preferable to what they would do to him if they got hold of him.

That still left the obvious question of why the fuck he was so important, and that Malcolm couldn’t begin to guess. Nick sensed his colleague’s growing confusion as fertile soil for panic and spoke firmly.

“Look, Malcolm, I am going to do everything I can to get you out of here. And I can do quite a few things, trust me. I make you this promise: if we get out of this, I will tell you everything I know about why you might be of interest, which isn’t much but it may answer some questions. Unfortunately, knowing that now would only make you even more valuable to them, so I am afraid, for now, you are just going to have to trust me.”

He looked at the man, “Malcolm, you can trust me. I’m with you all the way on this. OK?”

He looked a question at Malcolm, ‘are we good?’

But it was not as if he was offering the man many options, and without much of a choice Malcolm shrugged and nodded slightly, prompting Nick to go on.

In truth, Malcolm’s only crime was having seen the face of the Agent formerly known as Shahim Al Khazar, and two of his accomplices. Ayala couldn’t be sure, but it was possible Mikhail Kovalenko and Pei Leong-Lam still didn’t know for certain that Shahim Al Khazar was alive, let alone fighting for the other side. If, or rather
when
the Russians arrived in Ashgabat to complete the job they had started earlier that evening in Kazakhstan, they would rifle the embassy, its computers, and any supporting documentation from the Turkmen governmental agencies, and would eventually find records of how the three Americans sighted briefly in Iran had escaped its grasp.

Knowing discovery of Malcolm’s role might be imminent, Ayala had initiated efforts to extract the soldier who had been Shahim’s unwitting liaison back into the Western world, or, if necessary, have the leak stemmed in other ways.

“OK, first off, let’s get your jacket off.” said Nick.

Malcolm resisted mostly out of surprise, as Nick began manhandling him out of his clothing.

“They’re going to want you alive,” said Nick, “so our only advantage is that if they find out who you are then they probably won’t shoot to kill.”

Nick thrust a suit of body armor at Nick, not of the quality now being employed by Ayala’s private army, but its Kevlar plates would absorb much of the punch from a body shot, and the woven ballistic fabric that linked them would resist even the most ardent blade. This was followed by a specialized holster, into which a second silenced Walther P99 Compact fitted smoothly.

“If we have to kill anyone, it will be subtly.” said Nick, as Malcolm arranged himself in his new armor.

Five minutes later the two men were walking off the base, past the guard, a code word slipped to the sergeant at the gate making him enter two erroneous names in the logbook as they passed.

And so it went.

As swiftly as the former USSR had faltered and collapsed, the New People’s Federation spread its wings once again and enveloped the southern block nations that had freed themselves from its grasp only thirty years beforehand. Many had questioned how Russia could maintain its hotly contested occupation of Pakistan from so far away, even with the tacit approval and permission of the intervening states of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. But now that approval was tacit no more.

In a flash, the governments of those three massive nations had signed accords binding them to the new Russian Union. The announcements came almost as one, late in the evening. After their respective governing bodies had supposedly convened for the evening, they were taken into ‘protective custody’ and their congressed voices were co-opted to give blessing to the sham. The halfhearted military interventions that the local armed forces were able to muster were quickly squashed, with blistering speed and efficiency.

Meanwhile, Nick and Malcolm walked to a nearby parking lot and retrieved a car Nick kept there for covert purposes, its plates registered to an unsuspecting farmer outside the city. As they drove out into the night, a force was already descending onto the city, a dark force. They came without warning, and took up carefully coordinated positions.

By morning it was over, and Russia once again owned every patch of land from the Caspian Sea in the west to the border with China in the east, and from border with Iran in the south all the way north to the Arctic. Only a brief strip of mountainous Afghanistan kept them from opening up a clean route all the way to the Indian Ocean. For now.