The Last Aerie (24 page)

A “defensive system” which had backfired from day one, the Perchorsk Projekt had been intended as the USSR’s answer to America’s SDI or Star Wars scenario. The object was to create an impenetrable dome of destructive energy twenty miles high in the sky, which would “kill off any and all incoming enemy missiles. An umbrella, so that no one in the whole wide world could ever again threaten to rain on Mother Russia’s parade. As soon as it had proved itself in an exhaustive series of tests, a device such as this would on its own elevate the USSR to an unassailable position as the planet’s Number One Superpower.

That was what Perchorsk had been all about… until its epic failure had jeopardized not only the USSR but the entire human race. As Trask came more fully awake he started to think back more clearly on what he knew of the whole can of worms:

The Russians had built and tested the Projekt—tested it just the once, and disastrously—back in the early eighties. But despite their best efforts at technological camouflaging, the results of that test were seen and recorded not only by American spy satellites but also by friendly forces on the ground. And when all of the reports had been processed …

At the time, and while no one had known
exactly
what was going on down there in the guts of the Perchorsk ravine, still it had been sufficient to kick-start the USA’s Space Defense Initiative into real being. And in small, powerful, very secretive circles throughout the Western World there had taken place a good many worried discussions about such things as APB powered lasers, even aooui a tneorencai iviagma muiui which might tap the gravitational energies at Earth’s core.

Finally the first-hand report of a western sympathizer had come leaking out of one of the logging camps east of Perchorsk. Trask had been privy to the contents of the document and remembered them to this day. Not the work of an educated man, indeed that of a peasant in forced exile—a “relocated” ex-Ukrainian dissident—still the wording had been vivid and evocative.

It had been a bright clear night, with the shimmer of aurora borealis like a pale shifting curtain in the northern sky. The observer, a lumberjack out hunting near the mountain pass, had been aware as always of the distant hum of giant turbines, transmitted through the earth from the Projekt some four kilometres away. But as the whine of the engines had wound itself up, the man had stopped and looked back through the evergreens—to see the rim of the Perchorsk ravine bathed in a wash of flickering light like pale foxfire!

Suddenly, it had seemed that the night held its breath … only to expel it in a great gasp or sigh. And as the whining of the turbines had climbed higher yet, a beam of pure white light had shot up from the ravine, turning night to day as it bounded into the sky! A pulse of light, which lasted just long enough to leave its after-image burning on the eyeballs and then was gone. And in its wake—

—A bright clear night … until then. But as the weird white searchlight had blinked into and out of being and Perchorsk’s turbines fell abruptly silent, so a hot wind had blown down from the crags, and within the hour clouds had boiled up out of nowhere to rain a strange warm rain. Then, as if intensified by the rain, a smell of burning—an acrid, electrical burning, like ozone maybe?—had seemed to permeate the damp night air. But before that, indeed within minutes of the flash of light itself, there had been the sirens. Perchorsk’s sirens, like the voice of the ravine wailing its agonies. But in fact they were the agonies of men.

There had been an accident, a big one. And for the next fortnight… helicopters shuttling in and out, ambulances in the mountain passes, and men in radiation suits decontaminating the walls of the ravine. And the one whisper that got out as local Soviet authorities moved to shut down certain “fifth column elements” in the logging camps was this: blowback! The Perchorsk experiment had discharged itself into the sky, all right, but at the same time it had backfired into the underground complex that housed it. And like some fantastic, free-wheeling incinerator—melting men and machinery alike—it had almost blown the lid off the place before burning itself out!

After that… Trask remembered several things which the Soviets had not been able to cover up: like the apparent mass migration of many of their top-flight doctors, mainly radiation specialists, from Moscow, Omsk, and Sverdlovsk, into the understaffed and ill-equipped frontier hospitals in Beresovo, Ukhta and Izhma. No one had experienced much difficulty figuring out what that was all about: as well as all of the dead, they must have taken a good many badly injured men out of the ravine. Since when the experiment if not Perchorsk itself had been abandoned.

And so there had been only the one test firing, but one too many. The damage it caused had been permanent, and Turkur Tzonov was correct to liken Perchorsk to the Chernobyl Sarcophagus. Trask would go even further; in his mind both places had much in common with Pandora’s box: they each harboured plagues which, in their diverse ways, might oh so easily have endangered and even doomed the entire world. And one of them—Perchorsk itself—might do so even now …

The jet-copter’s passengers sensed rather than felt its landing as the aircraft gentled to a touchdown on the dam wall. Just as surely, Trask’s thoughts also came back to earth. Looking out through windows already blurred by a thin sheath of ice formed from the mist of the dam’s cascade, he made out a figure in a white parka waiting in the safety margin beyond the lethal glimmer of the fan. Then the high-pitched whining of the rotors wound down to a reassuring
whup, whup, whup
, and the co-pilot came hunch-shouldered from the cockpit to let down a curving side panel into preformed steps.

Signaling that they should watch their heads, Tzonov ushered Trask and Goodly down onto a rubber-clad surface and guided them through the rotor’s bluster towards the figure in the parka: a statuesque platinum blonde whose looks were classically Scandinavian. Smiling a welcome, she handed parkas to the British espers and helped them shrug into them. Then, turning to the head of Soviet E-Branch, she hugged him, covered his shoulders with a wing of her own hugely oversized parka, and hurried him towards an open jeep where a driver sat waiting. Smiling blandly, pampered and proud of it, Tzonov offered no slightest resistance to any of this. Trask and Goodly exchanged covert glances, and the latter raised a querying, even wistful eyebrow which Trask answered with a shrug. There was nothing for it but to follow on behind Tzonov and his lady.

Trask took the seat alongside the driver, which left his precog colleague to cram himself into the back of the vehicle with Tzonov and the girl, where they huddledlike lovers. Quite obviously, they were lovers. Introductions would be out of the question over the throb of the jet-copter’s engine, the stuttering cough of its idling rotors, and the clatter of the jeep’s exhaust; Tzonov didn’t even attempt it but confined himself to hugging the girl and whispering something in her ear. Her answering laughter was whipped away by turbulence from the rotors as the jeep turned right off the dam wall onto a road dynamited from the face of the ravine.

A hundred and fifty yards up the precipitous road, the driver brought his vehicle to a halt on a level hardstanding and leaned on his horn until massive, motorized, steel-jawed doors under a frowning overhang rumbled open. It was the way into Perchorsk, the “throat” of the subterranean complex. And as a swath of light blazed out and the jeep drove through it into a brightly illuminated interior, so the jaws closed again, shutting out the gaunt ravine from view. Finally the jeep’s motor was switched off and its row faded to an almost painful silence.

At last Trask and Goodly could hear themselves think, and now they must guard against others hearing them think. As they climbed out of the jeep, Tzonov said, “Welcome to the Perchorsk Projekt … or rather, to the system of passageways and caverns which once housed it. For now, of course, the Projekt exists in name only, and the complex houses something else entirely.”

From the jet-copter to this place—these outer environs of the Perchorsk complex—had taken no more than a minute and a half maximum, but Trask was glad of his parka. Likewise Ian Goodly; in such a short time, the bitter cold of the ravine had seemed to eat right into his bones. Both men rubbed their hands briskly and Trask turned to the girl. “We really ought to thank you for these excellent garments, Miss, er … ?”

“Dam!” She held out her hand and grinned mischievously. “No, not a swear-word, just my name! Sigrid Dam—or Siggi, to my friends.” Like Tzonov’s, her accent was scarcely noticeable. What there was of it wasn’t Russian, but Trask believed he’d detected … what, a Swedish lilt? Or Danish? Possibly. The surname was Danish, certainly.

“Ben Trask,” he smiled. “And this is my colleague, Ian Goodly. I’m sure we’ll enjoy being your friends.”

As she shook hands with the gaunt, gloomy-seeming precog, Turkur Tzonov snapped his fingers, exchanged concerned glances with all three and exclaimed: “Ah! Unforgivable! What must you think of me, to forget the introductions? But … there was no opportunity … you must forgive me, my dear.” And turning more fully to his guests: “Siggi is … my constant companion.”

“A mutually stimulating friendship, I’m sure,” Trask said, and tried desperately to keep his thoughts to himself. But with a girl like this (no, a
woman
like this, as he now saw), it was difficult not to envy his Russian counterpart.

Sigrid Dam was thirtyish, taller than average, and (Trask guessed) slim and athletic under that parka. The garment seemed cut for a giant and covered her like a poncho half-way down her thighs, yet still looked stylish on Siggi. But then, she would probably have the same effect on a potato sack. From the bottom of the parka down, her long tapering legs were clad in shimmering black ski-pants, while beneath it she wore a matching black top. The wide bottoms of the pants formed bells over fur-lined calf-boots.

Under expressive blonde eyebrows, Siggi’s eyes were the deep blue of summer fjords; her mouth was perfectly shaped if a little cold; her nose was just a fraction tip-tilted, hinting at a strong, even aggressive personality.

All in all, and while her skin was marginally paler than Tzonov’s, the general impression which Trask received was much the same: one of radiant good health. And yet … the picture was marred; something didn’t add up. Something about her eyes, maybe? Trask thought he knew what it was but would wait and see what developed.

And meanwhile he wondered about Siggi’s relationship with Tzonov—their real relationship. That is, he wondered if it
was
real. In which case …

Just seeing this woman in the company of Turkur Tzonov (and despite that they were not opposites), Trask could easily understand their mutual attraction. In a world full of mainly mundane, unexceptional people, a pair such as this would naturally gravitate together. Why, they might easily be the leading roleplayers in a Hollywood epic from Trask’s youth: people too rare or beautiful to even exist—except among their contemporaries in a surreal, celluloid world apart.

Trask caught her looking at him … what, appreciatively? At which moment she blinked and said: “Anyway, it’s Turkur you must thank for the parkas. They were his idea. Your overcoats may be just the thing in London, but we’re fifteen to twenty degrees colder here!”

Goodly turned to Tzonov, and in his somewhat fluting voice said, “It’s all very considerate of you. You seem to have taken our welfare so much into account—and all so far in advance.” There was something in his wording which caused Trask to glance at him.

But Tzonov merely grinned. “Ah, yes, of course. Your
penchant
for the future, Mr. Goodly—er, Ian?” And then to his woman, by way of explanation: “Ian is a precog, Siggi.”

She clapped her hands. “But in that case … perhaps you had foreseen the provision of the parkas?”

Goodly shook his head, shrugged apologetically. “Far too specific,” he said.

“Anyway,” Turkur was enjoying this, “I didn’t arrange for the parkas until twenty minutes before we landed!”

And Trask thought (but to himself),
Oh? When you were supposed to be sleeping?
He’d known, of course, that Tzonov wasn’t asleep … but if not asleep, what then? Merely resting? Or had he been talking to Siggi Dam? Now Trask saw how everything fitted. Like the pale purple in the orbits of Siggi’s eyes, which betrayed her telepathy—but only to someone who knew his business. To most other men that slightly bruised look would only serve to complement her sensuality, might even be mistaken for a symptom of her dissipation lingering over after the excesses of a long night. Once again he was aware of her sharp glance, but this time she was frowning.

Goodly offered a rare if somewhat tortured smile. “And so Siggi’s a powerful telepath. I thought so. But such beauty and talent combined! It hardly seems fair! I suppose I should have foreseen it—” he looked at Tzonov:”—that you two would be a perfect match.”

“Birds of a feather?” Tzonov answered his smile. “Aren’t we all?” And to Siggi, before anyone could say anything else: “My dear, will you see our guests to their rooms? It won’t be the Ritz, I’m afraid, but as Siggi pointed out this isn’t London. An hour or so on your own—time enough to clean up and rest a while after your journey?—and then I’ll collect you for a tour of the place.”

Trask nodded. “During which … will we get to see your visitor?”

“Certainly,” Tzonov answered. “And a lot more than that into the bargain. This is a fascinating place, Ben, with a fascinating history. But with all the good will and the glasnost in the world, it’s not the sort of place you get to see every day …”

A few minutes later in the privacy of their “rooms”—a pair of steel-walled, interconnected cells, more like—Trask and Goodly conversed in lowered tones. Despite that in accommodation this austere it was difficult to see where bugs could be hidden, Goodly had already checked his own room. Using a tiny detector which doubled as a pocket calculator, he’d satisfied himself that the place was clean. Then he’d gone through into Trask’s—what, compartment?—to sit on his lumpy army bed and watch the other wet-shaving over a dented aluminium wash hand basin. As they talked, their glances met in the mirror over the basin.