Overture (Earth Song) (37 page)

“
Fascinating piece of alien technology,” he agreed and they both turned to regard it. “Say, what team do you work with?”

“
I'm a sort of xenogeologist.” She turned to regard him with a wry grin. “I've also dabbled in astronomy, from time to time.”

“
Ah! We have an astronomer helping out on the project. Mindy Patoy, maybe you've heard of her?”

“
We're acquainted, in a roundabout sort of way.”

“
Great. She's having a hard time on her part of the project; maybe you'd be interested in helping?”

“
I don't think so. Sorry, professional courtesy and all.”

“
I see. Well, be sure to check out with the guard when you leave. Security is getting lax inside the compound.” She nodded and turned back to the Portal so he moved toward the recording equipment, then stopped. “Sorry, I didn't get your name.”

“
You can call me Melinda.”

Osgood
smiled at her and went to his equipment. In a few minutes, he was going over the film of the incident over and over, the image resolution well over twenty megapix and almost infinitely manipulatable. It must have been a half hour later when he noticed a glow coming from the direction of the Portal.

She
was standing on the top of the dais facing the glowing holographic Portal. Osgood was about to open his mouth when she reached out and touched the glowing surface. Where she touched it, the surface flashed purple. Osgood’s jaw dropped as the aged woman touched four more places, each time receiving more purple flashes.

He
finally recovered himself enough to step back to the video console. A single button activated the recorders as she reached out a final time to touch the Portal. The icon she touched seemed to stick to her sun-weathered finger as she slid it along the ethereal surface up one side then down the other, trailing purple light all the way. The graceful movement completed, the entire circle of the portal pulsed green and inside it resolved into an image of another world.

“
Oh, shit,” Osgood gasped. She hadn't stepped through the Portal and it was still active. And the world most definitely was not the same. There was no arboreal forest, no grassy area, no Ft. Eden. Oh shit, for sure. The Portal showed an area that made Osgood think of a Mayan ruin, only Mayans didn't make doors that wide or that short. And they didn't put strangely speckled glass windows in their dwellings. And they didn't have Portals in their ruins. The sky was just visible over the building directly in front of the Portal. It was as blue as you could imagine blue could be, but not in an earthly way.

“
Farewell,” the woman said, “it was nice seeing you again,” And she stepped through. Osgood ran up the steps to the Portal entrance and almost slipped and fell through. It was afternoon on the other side and bright sunlight lit the side. The sun had an orange tinge to it. No, not Mayan.

On
the other side, she cast off the worn lab coat revealing a form fitting black jumpsuit, gold piping running up the outside of legs and arms. She smiled peacefully, then nodded to Osgood before the Portal closed. The stunned doctor walked back to a desk and picked up the phone. He dialed a number by memory.

“
Yeah,” answered a sleepy, yet alert Volant.

“
Wake everyone up and get them in here, something just happened.”

As
he waited for the others, Osgood went back up the dais steps until the Portal appeared. With a trembling finger he touched the icons in roughly the same location as the woman had. He got no flashes of purple light, or green for that matter. Osgood scratched his chin as he also noted that none of the little marker lights indicating uses had changed either. The first of the scientists and technicians began to rush in and he walked back down the steps. “I should have just gone to bed.” he said.

Mindy rolled over and looked at her alarm clock. Three thirty A.M., and she didn’t know what woke her up. It didn’t help that Osgood and his boys questioned her for nine hours on what happened to her camera. She’d known in her mind that the Portal was one way but it was just a natural response to catch the camera when it was tossed back to her. The scientists obviously thought otherwise and grilled her for hours.

So
why am I awake at oh, dark early in the morning?
She wondered as she got up. She put a hand on her stomach as it gave a grumble. Lately, she had been having indigestion often. “Must be the cheap food they’re feeding us,” she mumbled as she got up and padded across her bedroom naked. To avoid an incident with Harold, she pulled on her worn robe before going out in the main room. There she fired up the aged Mr. Coffee and sat at the table while it worked. She’d noticed as she filled the filter that they were low on coffee, and then remembered Harold told her the supply people who gave them their groceries said no coffee was available.

As
she sat listening to the gurgling machine, she realized how close the end really was. They hadn’t had fresh fruit for days, and items like coffee were disappearing. The global supply chain is disintegrating. As a customs broker in Portland, she was acutely aware of how most items in stores arrived only a day or two before they were purchased. The news was full of stories of businesses complaining about missing employees and random crimes. The smell of coffee drifted to her nostrils. “God, I wonder what South America must be like?” she said as she thought of where the coffee came from.

Thinking
of random crimes made her realize what day it was. May 14
th
was the day the results of the national lottery were to be released. She stared down into her empty cup as she thought about the hundreds of thousands who would get a letter telling them they would survive. None of them were really going to live, not one. It was the biggest lie in history. The biggest murder plot in history. The coffee machine gurgled and hissed to a stop and she gratefully filled her cup. It tasted good even though it was a no-name brand. The knowledge that a thing was now rare always made it taste better.

“
Couldn’t sleep?” asked Harold from the door to his bedroom. He wore the same faded green bathrobe he’d brought from Seattle and a pair of pink fuzzy bunny slippers Mindy had first seen him wear almost twenty years ago. She looked at the tattered floppy pink ears and shook her head. Harold just shrugged and headed for the coffee pot.

“
Something woke me up, couldn’t figure what it was.”

“
Probably sirens or gun shots,” he suggested with a yawn.

“
You’d think I’d be used to that by now.”

“
Going to get a lot worse once all those little telegrams are delivered today.”

“
I was just thinking that myself. All those people are going to think they will survive.”

“
Don’t forget the ones who won’t get selected. They could give up right then and there.” She nodded her head and sipped the coffee. It was having the desired effect and settling her upset stomach.

“
Tummy troubles again?”

“
It’s nothing, really.”

“
Still, you should see the doctor.” One of the advantages of working for the Portal project, if you could call anything about their condition an advantage, was that there was a doctor on staff at all times. One of the few times she saw Harold smile was when he commented that they finally had universal health care.

“
I’ll think about it,” she said and went back to her coffee. Just then the building went dark. So did the rest of the city.

“
Another damn power loss,” Harold said and Mindy could hear him rummaging for their flashlight. A second later it flashed to life and she got up to help him light the candles.

After
the first blackout last week, they requested and got a box of taper candles. She’d lived in some primitive areas while working as a radio astronomer and knew how to survive. They cut the long tapers in half and stashed them in handy locations with packs of matches. That was three power outages ago. In a few minutes, all the candles were lit and they were finishing their coffee.

When
the coffee was gone, Mindy went into her room and came out dressed. She picked up the flashlight and headed for the door. “Where you going?” Harold wondered out loud.

“
I think I’m going to go up to the roof and enjoy the dark,” she said.

“
I’m there,” he said and hurried to get dressed. Together, they headed to the roof.

“
Halt, who goes there?” called someone when they opened the roof door.

“
Mindy Patoy and Harold Binder,” she said, sounding as annoyed as she felt.

“
What are you doing up here?” asked the guard, who had, by then, found them with a bright flashlight beam.

“
We’re astronomers; I thought it might be nice to look at the sky.”

“
Very well, you may proceed.”

“
Oh gee willakers, thanks Officer Friendly!” Harold scoffed. 

The
flashlight went out and two friends worked their way out into the center of the roof, away from the service shack and antennas. The apartment building was only twenty-nine stories but still taller than most of those around it so it afforded a fine view. There was no light to speak of, telling them it was a wide-spread power outage. A waxing three-quarters moon provided the only real light, just enough to see cables and other rooftop hazards.

“
Oh shit, look at it,” Harold said, his dim outline pointing at the eastern sky. She followed his arm and there it was, shining like a silvery snowball trailing frost across the sky. Lebowski was the size of a dime and growing every day. “The luminosity from that metal makes it look ten times bigger than it is.”

“
It’s big enough,” Mindy whispered, as if the asteroid could hear them. She pulled her gaze away from the shining killer and across the sky. “I can see Orion’s Belt,” she said and pointed. “There’s Gemini, and over there’s Sagittarius.” She looked at the constellations, one after another, and enjoyed the nostalgic feelings they gave her. She could almost remember the shack she’d called home in Mexico, or the dormitory at Arecibo.

“
Really spectacular,” said Harold, obviously enjoying some of the same feelings. For a minute, they forgot they were virtually prisoners and Mindy stopped worrying about the deadline for finding the planet. All too soon, the lights began to come on across the Big Apple. It started from west across the Hudson and headed east toward them, several blocks lighting at a time. They both moaned as the stars began to disappear.

Mindy
leaned back to catch one last look and saw Sagittarius again as it faded from sight. The nearby galaxies M28 and M22 were still dimly visible just off the bow of Sagittarius. All that was left was the tip of the hooked bow. “Hooked bow?!” she suddenly yelped, making Harold jump. “Quick, help me find the arrow!”

“
It’s almost too bright,” he said and squinted against the growing light. “No, there it is. I can see M71. But it looks like an airplane or a satellite is moving through it.”

She
followed his arm and there it was: the four stars of the Arrow. With a practiced eye, she looked back and forth between Sagittarius and the Arrow. “Oh my God, that’s it!”

“
What?”

“
On the other side of the Portal there’s a pair of constellations I named Arrow and Hook. I called it the Arrow because it reminded me of Sagitta, only with five stars instead of four. The hook was just a curious little group of six stars in a hook shape formation.”

“
I can see the comparison between Sagitta and your arrow, but what about this hook and Sagittarius?”

“
Don’t you see?” she cried and ran for the door. The guard looked at her curiously as she ran by down the stairs. Harold was right behind her. She reached their apartment and burst through the door. It took a moment to find a pad and pen then frantically sketch Sagittarius by memory.

Harold
came in as she finished and held it up for him. “That’s familiar, but I still don’t get-”

“
Look,” she said and circled the end of the archers bow. It was six stars in a hooked formation.

“
Oh, shit,” he said. “What about that fifth star in your Arrow?”

“
I don’t know, probably a star in between Sol and that other system!” She tossed aside the pad and snatched up her computer. With frantic keystrokes and mouse movements, she went to work. Harold gave up watching her; she was too quick to follow, so he went about starting breakfast. A half hour before it was time to leave for work, she sat back and heaved a huge sigh. “Got it,” was all she said.

Harold
brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and synthetic bacon then leaned over her computer. The standardized star chart was displayed on one half, while the other was a bizarrely distorted view. He reached in and activated the animation. The strange view rotated and moved. Before his eyes, the foreign constellations morphed into familiar ones. A few stars and galaxies disappeared while others appeared. “Gamma Orionis?” he asked with a curious look. “I would never have figured a habitable planet could exist there.”

“
Yep, Bellatrix. The planet must be much farther out in the system than Earth. The primary is on its last gasp. Probably won’t last another hundred million years. The damn life belt must be only a few hundred thousand miles wide. The chance of life existing at all is practically non-existent!”

“
But there it is,” he said. “Your extrapolations are quite convincing. Leo will be proud.”

“
Two hundred forty light years in one step. Unbelievable!”

“
You can say that again. Better pack up your little buddy there, it’s time for work.” Even though it was a national holiday for the rest of the country, they still had to report in. Starting that week, they were on a six day-a-week schedule.

They
quickly put away their breakfast plates and headed for the door. There wouldn’t be many people out that morning. The entire country was at home waiting for a meaningless letter.

Saturday morning dawned across the nation known as America. For days, specially appointed people had been laboring with computer programs at the Social Security Administration. For the purpose of avoiding tampering, lists were transmitted to individual Social Security offices. Each office was surprised at how many local people had been selected for one of the nine bunkers. The fact that many of their own staff had been chosen as well made them keep these numbers private, even though the press hounded them incessantly.  

On
the appointed morning, thousands of social security employees, couriers, and others hired for the day spread out delivering letters. Those hired on the spot were not told what they carried, but after the first few deliveries there was little doubt. All told twenty million notices were delivered by the end of the day. A surprise in the notice was that all relatives would be considered for entry to the bunkers as well as unmarried spouses and their children. Anyone with access to the numbers involved would know the total of potential invitations for the nine hundred thousand beds was nearly eighty million people. Across the nation a temporary calm settled in as the majority of the people believed they were saved and set about preparing to move to their assigned bunker. Even most of those not picked knew friends or family who were, and thus had some hope to hold on to.

In
Washington DC, the phone and net connections set up to communicate with the evacuees were overloaded. Officials scratch their heads in confusion. The system had been set up to handle the less than one million notified parties. Across the nation, people slowly begin to notice that those picked to move into the bunkers were a much larger number than seemed possible. The mood quickly begins to change yet again, and the final mass exodus out of the cities commences.

Leo looked up from the computer and smiled at Mindy who was herself beaming ear to ear. “You did it, little lady.”

“
Bet your ass I did,” she laughed. Leo looked back down and watched the animation for the umpteenth time, shaking his head in amazement.

“
Eventually they would have figured it out over there, once a telescope was set up and a few thousand stars identified. You did it just by looking up at the night sky?”

“
Yes, during the blackout. A satellite or a plane flew across Sagittus, the Arrow constellation. All of the systems in Sagitta are fairly near to the Earth so they appear similar, except there are five stars in the constellation on that side instead of four. Probably an intervening star. Anyway, when I realized the hook on Sagittarius’ bow looks like my Hook constellation on Bellatrix, I looked back at Sagitta and there was that light lining up. Million to one shot but that’s all it took to put the pieces together.”