Oblivion (19 page)

“What’s with that cat?” Portia asked.

“She doesn’t like me.”

“No shit.”

Muffin finally let go of his leg and moved away from him. She was cleaning her fur, as if it were his fault that she was ruffled.

Portia put three teaspoons of sugar into the mug, took a sip, and added three more. Then she took a Bavarian cream donut out of the mess of donuts, and started to pick it into small pieces.

“Okay,” Cross said, grabbing an éclair. “What’s this crazy idea?”

“Well,” Portia said around a piece of donut. “You know, if we can’t shut the harvesters off, maybe we can attack them.”

“Attack them?”

“Sure. You know, develop our own nanomachines designed to attack alien technology. We’d have this megawar being fought on the molecular level.”

Cross frowned. He had no idea how this would work.

“You can develop this?”

Portia shrugged. “Don’t know until we try. But I wanted to check with you first. Any word from the government guys?”

“None,” Cross said. “That door is completely closed. Whatever their nanotech researchers are discovering, they don’t want to tell us about it.”

“Damn,” Portia said and popped the rest of the donut in her mouth. She chewed, chipmunk-like, and then swallowed, washing everything down with coffee.

Cross suddenly understood. “You don’t have enough workers to study the nanoharvesters and create some machines of your own.”

“No,” Portia said. Then she shook her head. “Well, that’s part of it. But not all of it. I mean, we’ve got some good people, especially after you told Jeremy that he could do what he wanted with what we discovered. But they’re not me, you know.”

He did know. There was no arrogance in what Portia said, only truth. She had the right kind of vision for this project. She would probably be the one to discover the shut-off mechanism for the nanoharvesters, or be the one to discover the kind of nanomachine that would defeat the alien machines. But she wouldn’t be able to do both.

Britt picked that moment to come into the living room. She was wearing a summer sweater with a pair of khaki pants, some Birkenstocks, and gold jewelry.

She looked gorgeous, but Cross knew better than to tell her that, this close to decision-making time. He had to bow his head so that she wouldn’t see him grin. He was in love with the woman. She was one of the most capable scientists he knew, and yet she had some of the best quirks he’d ever encountered.

“How’re the Muffin wars this morning?” she asked.

“Your coffee’s on the counter,” he said, “and I’ve already poured the milk.”

She kissed him on the top of his head. “You’re a god,” she said.

“Wow,” Portia said.

“And you can take that however you want to,” Britt said. “Good morning, Portia.”

“Hi, Dr. Archer. I hope you don’t mind me being here.”

“I hope you don’t mind if we eat and run,” Britt said. “We have to get across town.”

“We’re nearly done anyway,” Portia said as Britt disappeared into the kitchen. Muffin followed her, purring.

Cross shook his head. Cats. He’d managed to live his entire life without them. Why was he investing so much time in them now, when he had no time?

Britt, of course.

“So what do you think, Dr. Cross?” Portia asked. She was cradling her coffee mug.

He sighed. Resources. It all boiled down to resources. Then he smiled slightly. Resources for Earth—and for the tenth planet. “Can you work on the new nanomachines alone?” “No,” she said.

He cursed softly. “I don’t know, Portia. Nanotechnology is your area.”

“But the aliens are yours.”

He didn’t know how that had happened, but everyone seemed to assume he knew more about the tenth planet than he did. Still, inventing their own nanomachine to fight the aliens’ might have more of a chance. Portia would be developing something with technology she understood, not trying to figure out technology she didn’t.

“Leo,” Britt said as she came out of the kitchen. “If we’re going to fight the traffic, we’ve got to go now.”

Portia was still looking at him.

“I like the idea,” he said to her. “But I need some time to think about it. The choice is a tough one. Off the top of my head, I’m leaning toward developing our own technology, but I don’t like taking you off the current project.”

“It’s not as if we’re the only ones working on it,” Portia said. “And besides, we’re not even supposed to be. So I keep worrying if we do figure something out, no one will listen.”

It was a good point, and if the people weren’t so damn scared, it would be a valid one. “If you do figure something out,” Cross said, “I’ll make sure someone listens.”

Portia smiled and stood. She slung the monkey on her back, and only then did Cross realize that it had another Velcro slit on its back. It had a tiny carrying case built in, and Portia was using it as a backpack.

“I’ll get back to you,” Cross said. “In the meantime, continue on the same project.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Need a lift?” Britt asked.

Portia shook her head. “I’ve got my own, thanks.” She stopped to pet Clyde, then let herself out.

“Strange girl,” Britt said.

“Lonely one,” Cross said.

Britt looked at him. He shrugged, and handed her a glazed donut. “We don’t have time to eat,” she said.

“You don’t have time not to.”

“I’ll eat in the car.”

“Fine,” Cross said. He finished his coffee and waited while Britt poured hers into a travel mug. Then they gathered their things and left the apartment.

p>

They took Cross’s car, but Britt drove. She liked the new conveniences, and had, in the last week, taken five minutes to reprogram his navigation system so that he wouldn’t be stuck in traffic. He had had no idea you could program the system to monitor links that showed which roads had the most traffic, or traffic tie-ups, or road construction. When Britt realized how much he let technology abuse him, she had taken over, and he hadn’t minded.

He settled into the passenger seat, and thought about Portia’s idea. If it worked, it would be the answer to everything. But he’d learned long ago not to trust answers like that.

With Britt’s reprogramming, the car’s natural speed, and its programmed ability to hit the timed stoplights correctly, they made it to the meeting in record time. They arrived as General Maddox did. She nodded curtly at Cross, then smiled at Britt as if she were an old friend.

Most of the rest of the group was there. Three large pots of coffee sat in the center of the table, their plastic sides bearing the Starbucks logo. A plate of donut holes sat beside them.

“See?” Britt whispered to Cross. “Told you I didn’t need breakfast.”

He didn’t argue, but he remembered how many times in the last few weeks there’d only been institutional coffee and stale food.

“I tapped the military budget,” Maddox said as she took her seat. “If we have to be locked up in this remnant of the 1980s, we should at least be comfortable.”

The group chuckled. Britt smiled and looked down. Cross found that curious. Normally, she would agree on that point.

“What is it?” he whispered.

Britt shook her head, but he nudged her. Finally, she sighed, grabbed a donut hole, and then leaned toward him. Nice move, he thought as she did so. No one would know that her movement was connected to Maddox’s comment.

“The general believes,” Britt whispered so softly that he had to strain to hear her, “that we have to enjoy the good things in life while we can.”

Cross shuddered. He didn’t like the idea that Maddox was planning to lose this battle. He resisted the urge to look at her. Maybe she had always felt this way. Maybe she was naturally pessimistic. But now he wished that Britt hadn’t shared.

“No secrets.” Robert Shane rounded the table and poured himself a cup of coffee. Then he grabbed four donut holes with his left hand.

“Leave the lovebirds alone,” Jesse Killius said as she took her seat.

“Lovebirds?” Cross asked.

“Denial is not your forte, Dr. Cross,” Hayes said. “Leave it to the politicos.”

“Denial?” Britt asked.

“Hey,” Cross said spreading his hands, his half-eaten donut hole dropping crumbs on the table. “I’m not denying. I’m just stunned at the word choice.”

“What would you prefer?” Killius asked. “The ‘couple’? That’s so mundane.”

“And unclear,” Shane said. “The couple of whats?” Maddox was smiling. “You know, we do need to get down to business here. I understand our international uplinks are ready.”

Cross finished the donut hole, then poured himself a large cup of coffee. The last few meetings had gone on longer than he wanted, and he’d nearly dozed in one. Not because the information was dry—it wasn’t—but because of his lack of sleep, the stuffy room, and the fact that he had always despised meetings. He was stuck in them now. Maddox led the Tenth Planet Project meetings, but everyone still turned to Cross as the de facto leader.

He was beginning to mind that. This whole thing didn’t belong on his shoulders. He wasn’t superhuman. He was having as much trouble with this as everyone else.

He let out a soft breath, trying to calm himself. Portia’s visit bothered him more than he wanted to admit. Why did he have to choose which job she should do? If he chose wrong, Earth might lose everything.

Then of course, there were no guarantees that either path would work.

.. right, Dr. Cross?” Maddox was saying. The links were up. Conference tables in various rooms had people surrounding them, just like this one, and half the faces were turned toward him. Or so it seemed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She grinned. “I said, we’re ready to start, right, Dr. Cross?”

“Whatever you say, General,” he said, wondering why she was tormenting him this morning. Or maybe it was evidence of a good mood. Was there a reason the general was in a good mood? A reason he should know about?

He frowned, and decided to watch her more closely.

“The last few meetings have run over time,” Maddox was saying. “I’m going to do my best to push this one through. First, an update on the spaceships. What have you found?”

The same man who had been doing all the reports from the South American team stood. His name was Joao Agripino, and he was renowned in both physics and biology. Cross had read some of Agripino’s e-mail updates. It was inaccurate to call the team “the South American team.” That was simply where they were operating. The team itself was large—over a hundred of the best engineers and scientists from all over the world. Even a few of the SETI people were down there, and a few science fiction writers with strong science credentials. As Maddox had said, imagination was as important as direct knowledge, at least in this instance.

“The going’s slow,” Agripino said in heavily accented English. “This technology is quite foreign to us, which makes sense when you consider how different these aliens are from us physically. It took us most of the last week to determine where the command center of the craft is. There are still many sections of the spaceship that seem to be wasted space or have uses that we do not understand.”

“I don’t care if you can reproduce the entire ship,” Maddox said. “What we need, and we need now, is to know how those shields work. We want to know how they stopped our fighters.”

“Yes, General. We have received this request not just from you but from several other military leaders. Even from your president. But this is not one of your American stories where the hero figures out how alien technologies work an hour after seeing them. In order to understand a detail of the technology, which this is, we must see the larger picture.”

Two spots of color appeared on Maddox’s cheek. How many people had told her that this was not a movie or a novel? The comparisons to science fiction thrillers were being made in all comers, probably because of the aliens, and scientists were especially defensive about it. Cross personally had heard half a dozen scientists use this analogy, and he’d used it a time or two himself. He bet Maddox had heard it more because so many scientists saw her as military and therefore assumed she was stupid.

“I do understand your dilemma, Dr. Agripino,” Maddox said. “But you need to understand this: you don’t have the luxury of time. If you can’t gather all the information you need with the team you have, then get more people on this. If we don’t understand those shields by the time the tenth planet returns, we may as well hand this planet over to those aliens. It’s the same thing.”

Agripino’s body stiffened. On the small screen, he looked as if he had been jerked into position by an invisible string.

“Now,” Maddox said. “What do you know about those shields?”

“We have yet to figure out the controls in the command room, General,” Agripino said. “We are a bit leery of randomly touching buttons.”

“Defensive,” Britt whispered. Cross nodded.

“In other words, you don’t have anything beyond discovering where the control room is,” Maddox said.

“That is a major breakthrough, General,” Agripino said. “Not major enough,” Maddox said. “We need to understand those shields. Conrad, what have you got?”