Identity Matrix (1982) (33 page)

I saw it as he said it and pulled over once more. He got out, removed some very substantial-looking brush, revealing a rough and overgrown dirt track. I drove up
it, and he quickly replaced the brush, which seemed wired together, and rejoined us. "Just follow the track to the end and park under some trees," he ordered.

I did as instructed. The road curved and twisted and hadn't been used in what looked like years, and it took all my reflexes to keep us on track. Finally, though, it ended at a small stream under a clump of small trees. This was not really tree country, but it offered some concealment.

He got out again and beckoned for us to follow, which we did. There was a small trail, hardly noticeable now, once you crossed the stream, leading a half a mile or so farther along to an open meadow strewn with large and small rocks.

He studied the area for a moment, then went over to a particularly large rock and strained to lift it.

"He'll never lift
that
boulder," I said, and, as I said it, the whole thing seemed to flip up. We went over to it curiously and saw that the rock was something artifi-cial. Revealed now was a faceplate with several sets of ringlike markings on it. His fingers tapped on the rings in what looked like random order but had to be some prearranged code, and suddenly one of the rings glowed a dull red. He nodded again to himself, looked satis-fied, and closed the "rock," then exhaled deeply.

"Well, that's that. You don't know how I had nightmares that I'd find this place booby-trapped or melted or the power gone."

I looked up at the sky. "How long before it gets here?"

He thought a moment. "An hour, maybe more. It'll have to sneak itself out of wherever it's hiding and figure the best emergency approach in and out. We don't want to attract missiles or any other attention until it's too late."

"You don't
know
where it is?" Dory asked.

He
shook his head. "Nope. It's a pretty smart little mechanical bugger. It thinks for itself pretty much. I just hope it comes before we have company."

I looked around nervously. "You think we will?"

"Oh, sure—sooner or later. Later, I hope. The only tail you had as far as I could see was the one pickup truck and you passed it. I expect they're discovering you're gone right about now, but until our baby lands they won't find us unless they spot the car from a helicopter. It's a risk we had to take."

I shivered. This was going to be a
nervous
hour. "Who did you kill for that hunk?" Dory wanted to know.

He shrugged. "No appeasing you, is there? If you
must
know he was a pimp and a drug pusher in Eureka I happened on. Believe me—he's no loss to this world. I picked him for that, and also because he was a black male, which gives us physically three major races and both sexes."

"Is that important?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Trust me. I'm trying to load the dice as much as possible, like I told you."

We sat and waited because there was nothing else to do. The temperature was comfortably in the seventies, and the only sound and annoyance around seemed to bethe buzzing of some particularly large mosquitoes. Swat-ting at one brought another thought to mind.

"Dan—your people. The Urulu. What are they like?
Physically, I mean."

He thought a moment. Finally he said, "Do you
have any prejudices against jellyfish?"

I shivered slightly. The fact was,
I did
have a little against them. Every summer in Chesapeake Bay the stinging sea nettles would make water fun impossible without a protective net. "You're a jellyfish?"

He chuckled. "No, not really. Nothing like one, actu-ally. But the Urulu might remind you, superficially, of jellyfish."

"Whew! That's a relief," Dory responded sincerely. "I had visions of scaly horrors with big eyes and nasty teeth."

We both just looked at her strangely.

"I always liked monster movies," she said defensively. "Dan—shouldn't you brief us?" I asked him. "I mean, we're going into this pretty cold turkey."

"It's got to be that way, Misty. If you're coached they'll know it and we'll blow it. Don't worry—I’ll be there to lend support. Just be yourselves. I don't think either of you really realizes what really superior human beings you are."

There was no reply to that. Neither of us believed it for a minute but it was pure balm for the ego.

The time did not pass quickly, partly because we expected to hear a helicopter screaming overhead or the bark of guns from the brush at any moment. It was incredible we'd gotten this far.

Finally, however, the thing came. It came in a crazy, impossible fashion, coming in incredibly fast just above ground, keeping distance from whatever terrain, and then stopping on a dime as if for all the world the laws of inertia had been repealed. There was a
crack
sound
,
once.

It wasn't large—in fact, it wasn't much bigger than a small truck—and it wasn'

t saucer-shaped. It looked, rather, like a stylized, very thick pair of wings, or per-haps a boomerang, with rounded corners. It hovered there, a couple of inches above the ground making no sound at all. Pauley approached it, and although that computer or whatever had never seen him before in that body it seemed to recognize something. One of the "wings" rotated with a slight humming sound, reveal-ing an opening about four feet square.

"Let's go," he shouted. "In the hatch as quickly as possible and move down!"

I hesitated a moment, but then heard the sound of helicopter blades not too far off and the sound of en-gines in back of us. Both Dory and, I ran for the opening which Dan had already entered. He reached down, pulled her in, then strained to help me. There was a strong vibration all around us, and I lost my balance as the hatch rotated closed, falling on the smooth, seamless floor.

And then, quite suddenly, Dory gave a yelp and fell, too, and before I could do or say anything a giant fist seemed to slam us back down hard. I could already feel the bruises.

We seemed held there, unable to move, breathing with difficulty, for a fairly long time, and then, just as sud-denly as it appeared, the pressure lifted. I picked myself up, groaning a little, and rubbed my rear end. "Ow! I wonder if I'll be able to sit down tomorrow," I said.

"Don't expect any sympathy from me," Dory responded weakly. "You got
a lot

more padding than I do, and you were already down!"

I got to my feet and helped her up as well. The whole ship vibrated slightly, but otherwise there was no noise, no sensation of anything at all. We seemed solidly an-chored to the deck, too.

"Damn! At least I thought we'd get to find out what it's like to do it in no gravity!" I pouted.

The ceiling was just a couple of inches above my head—my hair rubbed against it when I stood up, and the chamber we were in was quite small, no larger than, say, the back of a pickup truck. There seemed no doors or windows, and I looked around. "Now what? Where's Dan?"

She shook her head. "He headed forward as soon as he dragged you in." She looked at the solid wall. "How, though, I don't know."

The wall shimmered, and Pauley stepped through, having to crouch down to get in. "Sorry for the fast lift," he told us, "but I had to give the go-sign. They were already shooting at us. Come on forward and we'll relax a little." He turned and more or less duck-walked through the wall.

I shrugged. "If he can do it I guess
we
can, too." I went up to the wall, hesitantly, and pushed against it. I felt a tingling, and the place I touched seemed to shim-mer and become intangible. I stepped through, getting the overall sensation of walking through a vibrating shower. It felt pretty good, really.

The other side was not much larger than the entry chamber, but had a soft, furlike padding all over it that you kind of sunk into a little. It was all over, a nice baby blue, on the walls, floor, ceiling. All over. There was nothing else in the room. Pauley was sitting against the wall, watching me with faint amusement.

Dory entered and looked around the chamber with the same surprise I did. "I expected a big, fancy control room or cockpit," she noted. "But, then, I guess a pad-ded cell
does
fit better."

Pauley laughed. "Take a seat. Anywhere you're com-fortable. This thing wasn't built for anything except fast landings and fast getaways, I'm afraid. We're in the half set up for humans—the other side is for Urulu."

"Where do you pilot the ship from?" I wanted to know.

"We don't. It does it itself. I just tell it what I want and it does the rest."

"Where are we?"

He shrugged. "I have no idea. It took the fast way out—sorry for bumping you around, but I didn't know if that helicopter had some nasty weapons, or if they were training missiles on us at that very moment."

I shivered. "You're forgiven. But—you mean this is it? No great pictures of Earth from space? No fancy stuff? We just sit here for who knows how long in this blue room?" I seemed to remember it'd taken three days just to get to the moon.

"I'm afraid this
is
it," he answered. "I mean, we have ships with those kind of things but this isn't designed for it. Sorry—not very exotic, I know. But we've already left the Earth's magnetic field, and, in a few minutes, the ship'll have all the data it needs for a jump—allowance for gravitational forces, solar wind, stuff like that."

"Jump?" Dory said uneasily.

He nodded. "Don't worry. It's a little too complicated to explain, and since I don't understand it myself there's no use in me explaining it. When the ship's ready, it'll give us a warning, then you just lie down flat on the rug, here, and relax."

"Faster than light drive," I noted. "So Einstein was wrong."

"As far as I know nothing can exceed the speed of light except for some little subatomic particles that do nobody any good," he replied. "No, the way it was explained to me once was that the ship kind of punches a hole in space/time, goes through it, closes the hole behind it, travels along until it gets to where it wants to go, punches another hole, re-emerges, and that's it."

I frowned, "Dan—where does it punch a hole
to?
"

He shrugged. "Damned if I know. All I know is that it isn't in
our
universe, that's for sure. I'm not even sure anybody knows—it just is, that's all, and you can use it. The ship flies at about two-thirds of light speed there, then emerges."

"Two-thirds of light speed," I echoed. "That's damned fast—but unless we're staying in the solar system we're going to be
years
getting to where we're going!"

He nodded. "Probably fifty or sixty at least. But, don't worry, you won't feel a thing. We'll be in a nice, safe, state of suspension. Physically we won't age a bit."

"But we'll get back a hundred years too late to help Earth!" Dory protested.

"Nope. That's the crazy thing about this no-space business. We'll reenter this universe about two or three minutes after we left it. I admit it wouldn't have been practical without the state of suspension, but it's conven-ient, and seemingly fast.

Just wait and relax. You'll see. The effect is almost as if it's instantaneous."

Dory shook her head and looked at me for help but I couldn't say a thing. It made no more sense to me than to her.

There was a sharp, irritating buzzing sound. Dan looked up, although there was nothing to look at. "O.K.—here we go. Just lie down flat, face up and comfortable, on the floor here, and relax." He did it himself, and we did likewise.

I didn't know how Dory felt, but I felt queasy as all hell, and I found her hand, took it, and squeezed it. She squeezed back.

There were two short buzzes, a slight pause, and then the world went green.

No, I don't mean the rug changed color—everything was a sparkling, translucent green, including the air inside, and it all seemed to shimmer slightly. A tingling went through every part of my body much like the feeling I'd had passing through the wall or whatever it was—very pleasurable, like an all-over vibrator.

And then, suddenly, the green clicked off, and all returned to normal again.

There was a long buzzing sound.

Pauley stirred, sighed, and got up to a sitting position, stretching. "Well," he said, sounding a little hoarse, "that's it. We're here."

***

I turned slightly. My mouth felt really dry and my eyes hurt a little like they had mild eyestrain, but otherwise I felt just fine.

"That
it?
"
I managed, sounding a little hoarse myself. "That was barely a couple of minutes—not fifty years."

He smiled. "It was really a long, long time. It just doesn't seem that way. We need some fluids, though, and fast. The process is very dehydrating to human type bodies." He reached over against the wall and a small hinged panel revealed itself. Reaching down, he brought up a large cube with a strap attached to the top, put it in front of him, and touched a small area on the side. The top slid back, and he took out three tall canisters, about a liter each, and three small wrapped blocks. Dory and I each took a canister and followed Dan's example, turning the top until a slot appeared.

"Go ahead—drink it," he urged, and took a swig of his.

I put it hesitantly to my lips, then drank, overcome with sudden thirst. I drank quite a bit, then put it down for a moment. "It tastes like orange juice!"

He nodded. "That's because it's basically orange juice, with additives that'll help get your body quickly back in balance. The stuff's matched for each race likely to use this thing. The cakes look and taste like gingerbread, by the way, but will give you a lot more than plain old gingerbread ever did. My predecessor, who set up this ship for Earth, liked the tastes."

I tried the cake, and it
was
good. My stomach felt as if it had a lump in it, but the juice and cake seemed to go down quickly and dissolve the lump in a matter of minutes. The thought of fifty-year-old, half-digested food had a sort of repulsion about it, but I'm not quite sure I bought Pauley's explanations and time frame anyway. I wondered if they would give anything real that might clue in some future Earth scientist in the way IMC had been born.