Fundamental Force Episode One (7 page)

“Here we go our
different ways,” said Shelby, releasing the straps and getting out
of his seat. “You will fly to the base from here and I shall stay
here to work. Your spacecraft is already waiting.”

He pointed to
the other end of the hangar then pulled his suitcase from under the
seat.

“We left the
campus in such a hurry that we don’t have our things with us, but
we can get everything we need when we reach the Lunar Base.”

The three of
them stepped out onto the floor of the brightly lit hangar.

“Well, best of
luck, lads,” said Shelby, shaking their hands in turn.

“What is your
job?” asked Clive.

“We have to
change the parameters of the portal. The president should not have
blurted out the fact that we have developed this technology, so we
have to be cunning, to confuse whoever might try to take advantage
of the situation. We shall have to open the portal somewhere
else.”

Shelby gestured
towards a spacecraft standing in a far corner of the hangar.

“That’s where
you have to go.” He went along with them to show them the way.

“What about
communication? When we are on the other side of the portal, will we
be able to communicate?”

“Unfortunately,
live communication will not be possible. We have not yet mastered
the technology for transmitting information in the gravity
waveband. But we shall regularly open the portal for this purpose
and send you a package with instructions. You will do the same,
that way there will still be some sort of contact.”

“I reckon
that’s better than nothing,” said Steve as he tried to keep up with
Shelby, who, in spite of his short stature, was walking so fast
that he was finding it difficult.

“When we were
working with the aliens’ portal, we couldn’t communicate live
either, on account of the distance,” said Clive.

“Yes, so you’re
already used to it,” replied Shelby, without slackening his
pace.

“Good luck to
us all, then.”

“Good luck. And
Clive: try to be more careful this time.”

The deafening
noise of thousands of loudspeakers resounding through the hall made
his whole body vibrate. The human mass on the dance floor, like a
swarm of insects, was moving in time to music more like the roar of
a waterfall. Laser beams played inwards from all directions,
illuminating everything around in frequent flares and making the
head throb. How could anyone stay here of their own free will for
more than ten minutes?

Were it not for
the drink, a bottle of which Zach was holding in his hands, he
could hardly have put up with this punishment. It’s true what they
say, the music of the younger generation is designed to irritate
the older. Up until that moment he had not considered himself old,
but looking at the ecstasy on the faces of those around him, he
suddenly realized that he belonged to a different generation. In
his day, having fun really meant enjoying yourself, not like
this.

After taking a
swig of his drink, he set the bottle of dark brushed metal on the
table, where several identical but empty bottles were already
standing. This new-fangled gnat’s piss had the same effect on the
head as alcohol mixed with amphetamines. It was the very thing for
a joint like this, but the taste was pure poison, sickly-sweet but
impossibly acidic at the same time.

After the
second bottle, the multi-colored laser beams took on an unusual
appearance. People’s movements seemed to slow down and the music
didn’t sound so loud. Now he could understand how those jerks at
the next table were able to keep chatting to each other in spite of
all the racket. He looked towards them again. Their table was
groaning under the weight of similar empty bottles and their eyes
appeared glazed over, even from this distance. Well, that was
probably enough of this muck for today. It was supposed to be
comparatively weak according to the label, but not being used to
it, he hadn’t known what to expect. A bottle of cold vodka would go
to his head more than this poison, but at least he would recognize
the feeling. This stuff just made him feel odd. His body was still
under his control, but it felt different. Still, he had to make a
pretense of thinking everything here was OK by him.

Zach reached
blindly for the bottle again, but instead of the cold dew-covered
metal, his palm touched someone’s sweaty hand. All his muscles
tensed immediately and his other hand crept into his pocket for his
gun. His face remained the same, but his internal muscles
compressed into a ball, ready to jump into action if the
circumstances required.

Zach drunkenly
turned his head. Sitting next to him and staring straight at him
was some jerk with long dreadlocks, a multitude of piercings and
fluorescent tattoos. How could he have reached the table without
Zach having noticed him? His stare was too intelligent and
unnaturally penetrating for the sort of degenerate he seemed to be.
It was out of kilter with his appearance. Usually these doped-up
junkies hardly knew what planet they were on, but this one clearly
knew what he was about.

“What do you
want?” asked Zach, looking at him. His eyes were partly closed, as
if he were drunk. He winked, deliberately moving his eyelids
slowly, creating the impression that he was barely able to move his
tongue.

“Shall we
dance?” asked the junkie.

Zach looked
around. What sort of game was this?

“I think you
have the wrong table, chum,” he replied, carefully releasing the
safety catch on his gun and aiming it at the junkie’s crotch
without taking it out of his pocket.

The guy’s face
expressed neither protest nor annoyance. He was not in the least
surprised and did not try to persuade Zach, but simply put his
bottle in front of Zach’s nose and sighed in disappointment as he
clumsily came out from behind the table. Zach pushed the bottle
aside in disgust with his fingernail, but then realized that there
was something rolling around inside it. His body felt a shock.
Could this jerk really be the one?

Zach waited a
few minutes, periodically bringing his bottle to his mouth, but
only pretending to drink it. Then he got up and cautiously
exchanged the bottle in his hand for the one left by the junkie and
shakily, clumsily, disappeared into the toilet.

Inside one of
the WCs, he raised the bottle to his ear and shook it carefully.
There was no liquid inside, only some object bouncing around in the
bottom. He overturned it onto his palm. A holographic cube, shining
in the light with all the colors of the rainbow, fell onto his
hand. So the junkie really was his contact. That was funny, they
usually sent him girls...

Fifteen minutes
later, Zach was three blocks away from the disco. It was not
possible to read all the information from the cube at once, it only
displayed brief fragmentary messages, apparently aligned to its
position in space.

The first
message contained only the coordinates of somewhere in the city,
about 20 minutes’ walk from the disco. Zach walked quickly, trying
to conceal his inner turmoil. He kept catching himself in the
thought that he looked too worried and forced himself to slow down.
He had a corrosive thought incessantly on his brain. Something was
different this time. He didn’t understand what, but internally he
felt something burdensome taking control of his mind.

Only a few
hundred yards remained to the place indicated by the cube, he just
had to turn off into a side street that was a dead end. The dark
silhouette of a minivan was visible behind the garbage bins. If you
looked carefully, you could make out its headlamps, reflecting the
pale moonlight imperceptibly. He checked the map. The minivan was
positioned exactly on the coordinates he had been given.

Once he had
turned into the side street, a long series of apparently
meaningless figures and letters appeared on the display of his
augmented reality spectacles. Zach glanced through them but, unable
to understand what they meant, went on. Unless something had
changed, he was on the right track.

He carefully
approached the minivan. It was impossible to make out anything
inside it through the dark glass since there were no street lights.
He looked at the outside of the vehicle. The rear wheels were well
settled down, as if the minivan had a full load of bricks inside
it. Strange...

He pulled the
door handle, more out of curiosity than any desire to open the
door, but it clicked and slid aside, revealing a wide entrance. An
unlocked minivan with no alarm in this part of town?

This thought
had barely flashed through his mind when the interior light came
on. A cold shiver ran down Zach’s spine. Inside were two infantry
robots. Where there should have been faces, dark, wide visors could
be made out in the darkness. Standing up, they would have been more
than two meters tall, but compacted for travel, they fitted easily
inside a normal minivan.

People like
Zach disliked these humanoid independent killing machines in the
same way that mice dislike cats. The very appearance of the things
was horrifying, but they were even more dangerous than you would
think from their external appearance. Zach had seen them in action
and not just as an observer, but as one of their targets. It was a
miracle that he had survived, but since then the sight of these
machines, even a silhouette of something like them, aroused mortal
terror in him.

They were on
his team now, however, and Zach was too experienced a mercenary for
dirty work to call off the mission simply at the sight of some
metal hardware. Overcoming his primeval terror, he took hold of the
handrail to look inside. His mouth went dry at once and his heart
beat wildly, just as on his first parachute jump. He pulled on the
handrail and stepped inside.

One of the
robots instantly came to life and rose up threateningly, its
hydraulics whining as its body leaned slightly forward.

“Code?” it
asked curtly in a low voice.

Such politeness
only meant one thing. The robots were carrying out an advanced
program. They usually preferred to express themselves by a burst of
large-caliber bullets or pulse discharges. That was a good thing.
Iron idiots firing stupidly at everything around them was certainly
not what Zach wanted.

He broke into a
sweat, but did not let go of the handrail. These machines would
break his neck in an instant no matter how brave he was, although
he wasn’t feeling very brave now. He was standing face to face with
his phobia, but he knew that if he gave way to it now, he would not
only have to live with it for the rest of his life, but it would
make him unemployable in the sort of work he did.

He coughed
briefly. Wetting his dry lips, he took a deep breath.

“3V9G4V 53BNX4
3GS57S 3GGS45 G563F4 N29GS3 4BD8S5 T74NCN V234CC”

The robot moved
its body back, as if it had lost all interest.

It took Zach
some effort to make himself sit in the only seat in the van, facing
these steel monsters with their heavy weapons. Compared with their
large-caliber barrels, the miniature pistol in his own pocket was
like a child’s toy.

His feet
touched something under the seat. There was a bag on the floor.
Inside was a pulse attack rifle with a sawn-off barrel and several
spare battery cartridges. He had seen such weapons before, but had
never held one in his hands. It was one of the latest models too.
Zach gripped the handle firmly, allowing its built-in scanner to
read and record his DNA.

The driverless
minivan had been tearing along the motorway for four hours now. The
only thought filling Zach’s head was how to explain to the vehicle
that he needed to take a leak. It was cramped inside the van and if
he had to do it right here, he couldn’t avoid splashing the robots.
He knew they were only machines and that they were there to protect
him, but he was not comfortable with the idea of pissing on two
robots armed to the teeth. Not comfortable at all. He would just
have to wait. Goddamn it, if he had to travel as far as this, they
might have provided a ship!

Without slowing
down, the minivan suddenly turned off the motorway and continued on
a dirt road, bouncing over the hummocks. Zach clung on tight to the
seat handles to avoid hitting his head on the roof. With each
hummock, the moment when he would be forced to relieve himself drew
closer. He could already sense his bladder’s pulse quite clearly.
That lousy new-fangled gnat’s-piss...

The minivan
slowed down. The road started going downhill and grass could be
heard brushing against the body. They turned off the dirt track and
continued across grass. He could only hope that the wheels of the
overloaded minivan would not get stuck in the rough ground. As it
was, he was being flung first one way, then the other, but the
electronic brain cleverly compensated for the loss of control and
instantly corrected its errors.

The road
suddenly started going steeply uphill. The minivan’s electric
motors roared loudly, barely able to cope with the load on them. It
seemed that the two robots weighed more than a vanload of people.
After another turn, the vehicle’s front end dropped and it was
going downhill again.

The autopilot
repeatedly applied the brakes. Several times it seemed to Zack that
they would overturn, but the program knew what it was about. Unlike
a human driver, it knew exactly the wheel braking coefficient, the
height and location of the center of gravity and the road’s angle
of inclination. Its precise knowledge of the boundary
characteristics enabled it to drive the van to the limit of its
capabilities.

The wheels
locked completely and the vehicle skidded to a halt, leaning
slightly to the right. They had reached their final destination.
Zach did not know why they were there and the holographic cube was
in no hurry to explain. It simply showed a new code, even longer
than the last one.