James P. Hogan (35 page)

Rashazzi picked up a dropper and used it to deposit spots of a purple dye at intervals across the liquid. Then he grasped the wire handle and, taking care not to disturb the water, slowly drew the plug out. The water began falling through into the bowl beneath. “The liquid has had over twenty-four hours to settle,” Rashazzi said, watching. “That’s to allow any swirling introduced during filling it to dissipate completely. Did you know that when water in a bathtub back on Earth forms a vortex, the direction of rotation usually doesn’t have anything to do with the way the Earth spins, as most people think? It’s an accidental consequence of the motion left over from when it flowed in and how it was sloshed about. To see the true effect of the Earth’s rotation, you have to eliminate such residual currents.”

“No, I didn’t,” McCain answered tonelessly, staring at the falling surface of the water and trying hard not to let his feelings show at that particular moment. If they were going to preoccupy themselves with this kind of academic fussing, the whole effort was a waste of time already. What good could come out of it?

As the water level in the dish fell, the drops of dye elongated into threads along the flow lines and traced out the counterclockwise swirl that was beginning to appear, slow on the outside and getting faster nearer the hole. Rashazzi leaned over the dish to read the measuring scale, and used a stopwatch to time the rotation speed at increasing distances from the center. “One, one point three; two, one point nine; three, two point four…” he recited to Haber, who scribbled the numbers down. McCain watched the process without interrupting.

When the dish was empty and the experiment over, Rashazzi straightened up and remarked, “Conservation of angular momentum, you know. That’s what makes vortexes form.”

McCain grunted noncommittally. The principle was the same as with twirling ice skaters, where pulling in the arms muses them to spin faster.

Rashazzi went on, “If an element of the fluid possesses momentum about the center, its rotational rate must increase as the radius it’s at decreases. The same thing causes tornadoes and hurricanes. You can see how the water in a tub at Earth’s north pole, for example, would be rotating.”

“Sure,” McCain said.

“And what about at the equator? Would you agree that the water in that case is not rotating?” Rashazzi asked, McCain looked uncertain. “It’s not rotating around the hole – in the plane perpendicular to the hole’s axis,” Rashazzi said.

McCain nodded. “Okay. So?”

Rashazzi looked across at Haber. “The situation on a rotating cylinder, such as a floor inside the ring of
Valentina Tereshkova
, is identical to that at the Earth’s equator,” the German explained to McCain. “There should be no vortex induced by rotation.”

It took a second for the point to register. Then McCain stared bemusedly at the bottom of the empty dish, looked up again, gestured vaguely with his hand. “But?…”

“Exactly.” Rashazzi nodded. “There’s something odd about the mechanics of this place. Since the colony rotates a lot faster than Earth does, the effect is much stronger here. It can overwhelm the residual currents I mentioned earlier. We’d have noticed it long ago if all the sinks and showers here didn’t have suction drains – not one good old-fashioned plughole anywhere.”

McCain shook his head as if to clear it. This was all completely unexpected. “Have you got any idea what it means?” he asked.

“Not really,” Rashazzi admitted. “But the motion of the colony must be more complicated than we’ve supposed. It wasn’t something we wanted to even talk about upstairs. I’m not sure what it might mean.”

“That game that Nunghan and his friends play out in the mess area was what first made us curious,” Haber said, “If you look very carefully, marbles don’t roll straight over long distances. There’s a slight curve. That’s something else you shouldn’t get in a rotating cylinder. We established that it wasn’t due to any slope in the floor, but it wasn’t possible to measure anything accurately without being conspicuous. That was why we needed a place like this.”

“And also the laser,” Rashazzi said, “If we can get it up to the surface level somehow, there are some other things we’d like to try with it. For example, if we can —”

At that moment a rasping sound came from a buzzer fastened to one of the supporting pillars. It meant that something had broken one of the infrared beams that Rashazzi had installed to cover approaches to the Crypt. Instantly Haber flipped a switch to put out the light. They moved back against the wall and waited. After a minute or so, lights flickered in the direction of the walkway through the pump and storage-tank area, accompanied by the sounds of people approaching. They came to the side branch that led to the Crypt and followed it. There were three lights, and a muttering of voices. McCain and the others tensed. The approaching figures were moving purposefully, not in the manner of people searching, but of ones who knew where they were going. They reached the edge of the sunken level and shone their beams down into the space below to pick out the three men crouching in the darkness. McCain, Rashazzi, and Haber moved out from the wall resignedly, holding their hands high and empty in front of them.

Then, from out of the darkness beyond the lights that were blinding them, an English voice said cheerfully, “Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you chaps. It’s just what you might call a good-neighbor visit.” It was Peter Sargent, from upstairs in B-12.

Rashazzi turned on the light again and Haber sat down weakly on a nearby box. McCain glared up as the three newcomers switched off their flashlights and clambered down into the Crypt. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he growled.

One of the two men with Sargent was swarthy-faced, with a short beard and dark eyes that were constantly darting suspiciously this way and that, He looked Indian. McCain knew his face from around the compound but had never talked to him. The other, McCain hadn’t seen before. Heavily built, with reddish curls fringing an immense brow, and a face that somehow managed to combine decisive, sharply lined features with a rounded, babyish shape, he was wearing a priv-category green tunic. He moved a pace forward into the light and took in the surroundings with a cool, dispassionate stare that could have signified ownership.

“We thought it was time to introduce ourselves personally,” Sargent said. He gestured toward the big man first. “Eban Istamel, who is Turkish…. And this is Jangit Chakattar, originally from Delhi.” He looked pleasantly at Mc-Cain. “We were delighted to hear that the information from the escape committee turned out to be so useful. But we also heard from Koh that you had doubts if the committee exists at all. I can assure you that it does.” He gestured toward himself and at his two companions once again. “You see, it was our present. We run the escape committee.”

McCain looked from one to another for what seemed a long time, in silence, but from the expression on his face his mind was working furiously. Finally he asked Sargent, “Which one is in charge?”

“Eban.” Sargent indicated the big Turk. “He is the chairman.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” McCain said. The Turk extended a perfunctory hand…. And McCain hit him squarely on the jaw.

The big Turk sat on a box with his back propped against one of the roof supports, dabbing a folded handkerchief at the swelling on one side of his mouth, McCain, Haber, and Sargent were also sitting in a loose circle, while Rashazzi leaned against the bench and Chakattar stood looking on from behind. “It’s all right,” Istamel had mumbled to his two astonished companions when McCain punched him. “He had the right. We used them.”

For what McCain had realized in the moments following the appearance of Sargent and his two friends was that he and his group in B-3 had been set up. The fact that they had come through without mishap was beside the point. They had been the ones at risk. Supposedly this had been necessary because the committee people occupied an upper-level billet, and penetration below decks required access from the lower level. But clearly the new arrivals had not come via the route that McCain’s group had been using, through the floor of B-3. That meant they had another way of getting into the belowdecks region. Moreover, Istamel’s presence showed that it connected with the privs’ level up on the surface, somehow. Very likely they’d had such an alternative all along, but had played safe by getting the B-3 group to try out the method first. McCain had guessed their appearance now represented a bid to take over the operation, and the disdainful manner that the Turk had exhibited did nothing to dispel the suspicion. But McCain’s action, in accordance with the rough-and-ready unspoken code by which such things were asserted, had symbolically redressed the imbalance of status which the advantage the escape committee had gained for itself implied. The meeting could now proceed as a discussion between equals.

“You people are really serious?” McCain sounded mildly incredulous. “This escape committee business. You think there’s a hope of getting away from a place like this?”

“Probably slim,” Sargent admitted. “But studying the possibilities does help keep the mind busy, all the same. It wouldn’t do to allow oneself to vegetate, would it?”

“What kinds of possibilities have you identified?” Rashazzi asked curiously.

“Really, you can’t expect us to divulge details of such things freely,” Chakattar protested from where he was standing. “Much effort was involved – all kinds of confidential things. We don’t know anything about you three.”

“True,” Haber sighed. “Nor do we know you.”

The eternal Zamork impasse. The position was ridiculous. McCain saw from his expression that the Turk was thinking the same thing. Somebody was going to have to make a first move. “Look,” he said, addressing the company in general. “We all know the problem. But we’ve all put a lot into finding a place like this, specifically to get away from the environment upstairs. You got the information to make it possible; we did the work. Now, if we’re not going to pool what we know, what’s the point of all this?”

Istamel glanced at his handkerchief and put it back in his pocket. “The problem isn’t so much of knowing who’s trustworthy, but the risk that if someone were caught, the more he knew, the more would be compromised,” he said. “So we are reluctant to give away anything without a good reason. I’m sure the same applies to you, also.”

“How are we supposed to help each other achieve our respective goals if we don’t share information?” Rashazzi asked.

There was a short silence. “Very well,” Chakattar said at last. “You talk about goals. Ours is very simple: to find ways of escaping. What is your goal?” Rashazzi and Haber looked at McCain.

It was McCain who had proposed that somebody had to start trusting somebody, and he accepted that the onus of making the first concession was his. Besides, he could see nothing to lose from appearing to be forthright by revealing to the present company what the Russians would already have concluded for themselves, anyway. “All right, I’ll be straight,” he said. “I was sent here on a mission by a branch of Western intelligence. That mission involves establishing the nature of equipment believed to exist in locations around
Valentina Tereshkova
. I intend if I can to carry out that mission, and to find a way of communicating the findings back to Earth. In other words, my immediate goal is to conduct “a reconnaissance of the entire colony and a detailed examination of certain parts of it. One piece of information that might help a lot would be knowing how you got in here.” He looked from the Turk to the Englishman to the Indian and spread his hands. “We have a common need here. You’re looking for ways to get out – a detailed knowledge of the place is essential for any specific plan. So, for the time being at least, our goals are identical. When the time comes to revise that, then hopefully we’ll all have gotten to know each other better.”

Istamel looked at Sargent and Chakattar, in a way that said it was good enough for him. Sargent gave a shrug and nodded. Chakattar, however, was still unhappy. “You want us to give you concrete information,” he pointed out. “But all you are offering in return is a promise of good intentions. That doesn’t seem like a good trade to me. What do you have that would be of tangible benefit to us right now?”

Rashazzi caught McCain’s eye for an instant, and indicated the drum at the rear with a slight questioning motion of his head. He was asking if they should mention the vortex experiment that McCain had just witnessed. McCain returned a barely perceptible shake of his head. They needed to know more about what it meant themselves, first. Instead, he looked back at Istamel. “It’s clear that your way in involves access to the surface level.”

“Maybe so.” Istamel shrugged. The expression on his babyishly round yet shrewd face remained neutral.

“But any serious plans about escaping would require freer movement around
Tereshkova
. You’d need ways of getting out of Zamork entirely. Do you have ways of accomplishing that?”

“There are the outside work details.”

“Yes, but they’re guarded,” McCain said.

“Guards can be bribed.”

“Sure,” McCain agreed. In fact, some of the things he’d been asking people like Gonares in B-3 to do involved just such arrangements. “But what I’m talking about is freedom of movement anywhere around the colony, without any hassle from guards or limits on time,” he said. “Interested?”

Istamel looked very interested. “You can provide this?” he said, sitting forward.

“If we can find a way to get out through the perimeter of Zamork itself,” McCain said. “And it sounds as if what you’ve done could already represent half the job. You see, this is the kind of way I’m saying we can work together.”

Sargent held out an arm and pulled back his jacket sleeve to display his wrist bracelet. “But even if you did get out of Zamork, you’ve still got a problem with these,” he said. “You’d trigger an alarm the first time you came within range of an interrogating sensor. And they’re all over the place.”

“Then, let us show you something we’ve discovered,” McCain said, “Razz?” He got up and walked over to the bench, while Rashazzi went to fetch a flat box from one of the racks before joining him. The others came over and gathered round. McCain took off his jacket and rested his forearm on the bench with the electronic unit of his own bracelet facing upward. As with all of them, it consisted of a square metal frame with rounded corners to which the bracelet attached and, fitted in the frame’s recess, a plain black rectangular insert that contained the electronics. Rashazzi took a scalpel and cut along one side of the joint between the edge of the insert and the frame, at the same time swabbing a solvent fluid into the crack. Then he began working along the second edge.