The Dying of the Light: Interval (23 page)

“You’re married?” he said, feigning innocence and surprise.

“Yes, he lives… lived… in Moscow. When I came here, he was not able to come with me, and now… Oh, Jim…” She began crying, leaning against his chest, and he automatically put an arm around her. “I don’t know if he lives or is dead or…”

He knew the rest of that sentence.
Of if he’s a walker
, he finished for her. “I’m sure he’s alive, Tatiana. Weren’t your people building bunkers, too?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I think so, but no one ever said, and I don’t know if he made it to one of them. I wish there were some way I could get a message to him, to tell him I’m OK. To tell him I’m alive.”

Ah
, he thought.
So that’s it. She wants access to the Shack
.

“But how would you do that?” he asked, still playing the fool.

“I do not know. At Russian base we had… how you say… the
sputnik
station? With talking to space?”

“Satellites. Yes, we have that capability here, too.”
How dumb does she think I am?
He thought, then glanced down.
Well, I guess I can be pretty dumb. It’s been a
long
time.
“Would you like me to send a message for you?”

She sat up, the fake smile he’d expected to see on her face, dabbing at her eyes. “You would do this for me?”

“Of course I would.”
It’s not like there’s anyone to hear it out there, anyway. Who cares, if it gets me her?
“Just bring me the message and I’ll send it tomorrow. Now where were we?” He moved toward her on the couch, but she stood up suddenly, pulling on her top.

“Oh, I must write message right away! Thank you, Jim, thank you!” She gave him a hasty kiss and rushed from his room, adjusting her clothes as she went. She was gone so fast he barely even saw her leave.

Smooth, Jimbo
.
Smooth. Next time, don’t bother waiting for her to ask. That’ll work even better.
He grabbed his shower kit and headed for the bathroom.
Just what I need; another cold shower
.
She better write fast
.

Chapter Ten

McMurdo Station

Atkins dogged the hatch tightly as he exited the communications building, ensuring that his safety line was attached—a necessary precaution given the winds this time of year. With gusts up to fifty miles per hour and temperatures as low as -25°F, he didn’t take chances.

He moved along the line, the lights of the Hub ahead of him bright through the drifting snow. What had started out as McMurdo’s famed ‘Hotel California’ had become, out of necessity, a much larger building, with spokes radiating in various directions. By the time he reached the door to the building, he was numb.

That’s what I get for going outside in the winter
, he thought.
After so long without a signal, though, someone had to check that the equipment still works
.

They were all waiting for him when he opened the inside hatch, standing in their ECW gear or pajamas or even less. Everyone wanted to know. He just shrugged, and was not surprised at the fallen faces and disappointed expressions. And—somehow scarier—those without expression.

Ten years without outside human contact will do that to you, I guess
.

Zavrazhny sidled up. The svelte Russian goddess wrapped an arm through his and drew him down the hallway. “What about my little request?” she asked, running her hands over his chest and arms.

He swallowed and nodded. “
Da
. I sent your message. Not that it is likely to do much good—”

She interrupted by pulling him in for a kiss, a kiss that promised much more.
Finally
, he thought.

AEGIS Bunker One

I’d just grabbed my
very
late dinner when I noticed the technician entering the mess hall. Hoping against hope, I refused to meet his eye, becoming suddenly and profoundly interested in my bit of freeze-dried fish and hydroponically grown vegetables and mashed potatoes. Which, no matter how much salt I put on them, never tasted quite right.

It didn’t work.

“Sir,” said the technician, running up to my table. “I have an urgent message for you, sir.”

I never get urgent messages
, I thought. “You sure that’s for me, son?” I asked.

He reddened. “Well, no, sir, but I couldn’t find the colonel.”

Ah, that explains it
. “That’s fine, I’ll take it,” I said, holding out a hand. The technician passed it to me, and I set it on the table, picking up my fork again. When he didn’t leave, I looked up once more. “Was there something else?”

He hesitated for a moment, then rushed ahead. “Well, sir, I think it might be urgent, you see, since it’s in Russian, I think, and I don’t speak Russian but why would we be getting a Russian transmission and I thought that the colonel might know only I couldn’t—”

I held up a hand, interrupting the poor man. “Take a breath, damn! Lemme take a look at this.” I picked up the message and looked it over. There wasn’t much to it, but then again, I don’t read Russian, so how was I to know?
He does have a point, though. Why the hell are
we
getting a Russian message?

As I looked over the message, I noticed one phrase that jumped out at me:
Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki
. I’d read enough spy novels in my time as a bookstore owner to recognize it. The SVR was the Russian version of the CIA.

What the hell is going on?

I noticed the technician was still there, looking at me expectantly. I had no idea what to tell him, but I knew what I
couldn’t
tell him: that we’d received a message either from or to an operative of the SVR somehow. There’s no telling what sort of rumors that would start. But what to tell him?

“Probably just some random transmission bouncing around. Nothing to worry about. I’ll run it by the colonel but there’s no reason for any concern,” I said, putting it back down beside my tray and starting to eat. He looked a bit surprised, but nodded.

“Sure, I can see that. But
someone
sent this, and that means that there are people out there—”

I forced myself to laugh, instead of choking on the broccoli at his very insightful comment. “Not really. See this bit here?” I said, pointing to a section at the beginning of the message. I was going to have to make something up so that this guy wouldn’t go tell anyone. “I’m pretty sure that says ‘This is an automated message.’ See how it repeats again toward the end?” He looked skeptical but noticed that the phrase did repeat. “Probably on a loop. I’d bet it’s an automated distress signal that got bounced around one of the satellites and finally ended up in our inbox. Nothing to worry about.”

He appeared to accept that explanation, a disappointed look on his face. “That makes sense, I guess. Thanks, sir.”

“No problem. Now can I finish my dinner?” I asked, smiling.

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. My apologies. Thank you, sir.” He turned and left at a brisk pace, obviously headed back to Ops. I waited until he was all the way out of the room before pushing my plate away and hitting the button on my earpiece to turn on my phone.

“Call Roger Maddsen,” I said, pulling the message back in front of me. As he picked up, I said, “Roger, hi.” Listen, you got a minute to do some Russian translation for me? Yeah? I’ll see you in about ten minutes, then. Thanks.”

A few minutes later, I looked around the table in the conference room at the other senior members of the bunker’s Advisory Board, none of whom were exactly thrilled at the news the governor had just given them.

“So…” said Sheila Cambridge, starting to speak, then stopping as she lost the gumption. She looked helplessly at Orville Seward, who cleared his throat as if to speak, then sat back.

“Does no one have anything to say?” asked Gates.

“I think they’re stunned, Governor,” said Kim. “As I was, when David brought this to me.”

I held her hand on my lap as she sat there next to me, and squeezed it gently when she looked my way. This was a big day for all of us.

“We have confirmation that someone still exists outside the bunker network,” said Gates, reiterating what we all now knew. “Our people have confirmed that it originated at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The question is… how do we reply?”

“I think the better question, Your Honor, is
if
we reply, at all.” Lonnigan Carter was the new head of the security forces trained by retiree Milford Rains. Neither Kim nor I much cared for him, as his brusque, paranoid nature—which naturally lent itself well to a security chief’s post—was grating when experienced in more than the smallest of doses.

“What are you talking about, Lonnigan?” asked Seward. “
Of course
we have to answer. They’re other human beings. Why
wouldn’t
we answer?”

Carter looked at Seward without expression. “We don’t know anything about them,
Orville
.” Chief Carter wasn’t a huge fan of anyone calling him by his first name. “They could be anybody. They could’ve done anything. Hell, the message is in Russian, man. Do
you
want a bunch of Russians traipsing around the bunker? Because that’s what we’re talking about, right? That’s where all this will lead, isn’t it? Some sort of damn-fool rescue mission?”

Gates coughed, and both men fell silent.

Say what you will about her as a governor
, I thought.
But she gets the respect she deserves. That’s for damn sure
.

“We are, of course, going to answer this message. It would be criminal—it would be inhumane—not to. But that doesn’t mean that we have to do it without the proper precautions. As for a rescue mission, we’re a long way off from that decision. And somehow I doubt that the Russians managed to take over the entire McMurdo Station, Mr. Carter.” Carter looked unconvinced, but subsided. “In any case, this message doesn’t give us much to go on.”

She reached down and picked it up, rereading what we’d all read a dozen times. “All it says is that this agent of the SVR is requesting immediate extraction. That’s it. It doesn’t mean anything without context.”

“My question is why an agent of the SVR is sending something like that in the clear, ma’am,” said Carter.

“‘In the clear,’ Mr. Carter?”

“Yes, ma’am. It means without encryption. I’m sure she has protocols for contacting her superiors, if need be. Why is she transmitting without encoding the message? And why is she sending it from McMurdo?”

“Those are excellent questions, chief. And ones I’m sure can be answered once we make contact. If, indeed, we can at all. Mr. Blake?” Gates turned my way.

“Ah, yes, ma’am. Our technician says the solar storm is playing merry hob with our satellites and transmissions. He told me it’s difficult to track a particular message’s full journey, but we don’t really need to. As part of the standard commsat protocols, the ‘origin station’ is encoded into the message along with the destination. Why we ended up with the message instead of Moscow he couldn’t say, but he said the origin is clear: McMurdo Station.”

“This all seems a bit far-fetched.”

“Oh, it’s not that unusual, really. Geomagnetic and electromagnetic storms have a long history of screwing with radios and satellites. Hell, even SkyLab! It fell out of the sky—the official phrase is ‘deorbited,’ if you can believe that—due to solar activity.”

“So we can get a message from us back to them? And for how long?”

“The tech wasn’t a hundred percent positive, ma’am, but he said it should be possible to get something to them, but as far as how long… it’s likely that once the storm dissipates, so will our connection. The signals are bouncing around the atmosphere all over due to the storm, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll last or that they’ll even go to the same place for very long.”

“‘Should’ is better than nothing, I suppose. Now, we just have to decide what to say, and as soon as possible. There’s no telling how long that storm will last. I’m listening, people. Let’s come up with something good.”

McMurdo Station

After being distracted by some people in the hallway who wanted to chat, Atkins and Tatiana were finally headed to his quarters… and then the base alarm went off.

That’s the communications alarm. What the hell?

“Where the hell is he?” yelled Warner as he ran around the corner, almost colliding with the duo. “Oh, there you are. Mind telling me what the hell is going on?” he asked.

“How would I know?”

“You were just in there, Atkins.”

“Everything was fine when I left, I swear! No messages, no contacts, nothing!”

“Well, it sure as shit ain’t fine now!” he said, anger flashing across his face.

“Take Sven and get back over there,” he ordered.

A few minutes later, Sven and Atkins were taking off their outer jackets in the Shack. “Sometimes I hate that guy,” Atkins said. “What a prick.”

“Yes. But we must work with him. None of us are going anywhere. Let us see what’s going on with that alarm.” Sven was, naturally, from Sweden, and was pragmatic above all else.

They moved into the communications room, and Atkins reached over to hit the button deactivating the alarm as he checked his half of the monitors. “Nothing here. You?” He turned around. “Sven, did…”

Sven stood motionless, staring at a display Atkins couldn’t see. He moved around the tall Swede to check it.

“Holy fuck,” he said.

“As you say, Jim. Holy fuck. Now is when I would wish to have working radios.”

“You and me both, brother.” Seconds later, they were racing for the Hub, leaving the message blinking on the monitor.

“McMurdo Station, this is AEGIS Bunker One. Do you read?”

AEGIS Bunker One

Ops had been cleared for this communication, and a guard stationed outside. Surely, that was going to cause some rumors, but the word would get out eventually, anyway. Now wasn’t the time to be worrying about that. We had bigger fish to fry.