"She has that clearance already."
"We're sitting on political chaos as it is," Toller said. "What you've done is bring back a lit fuse for Axis City's bomb. All, of course, in the name of duty."
"You will inform the President immediately?" Olmy asked, picting a sidebar request for permission to return to his work.
"As soon as possible," Toller replied. "You'll prepare a full report for us, of course."
"It is prepared," Olmy said. "I can transfer it now."
Toller nodded, and Olmy touched his torque. High-speed transfer of the report was accomplished in less than three seconds. Toller touched his own torque in acknowledgment of receipt.
Suli Ram Kikura lived in the outer layers of Central City, in one of three million tightly packed units reserved for single young corporeals of middle social and job standing. Her rooms were smaller than they appeared; the reality of spaciousness was far less important to her than it seemed to be to Olmy, who kept more primitive and larger quarters in Axis Nader. But part of what attracted her to Olmy was his age and differing attitudes, and his habit of, every now and then, giving her something truly interesting to work on.
"This is the biggest challenge I've ever faced," Suli Ram Kikura picted at Olmy.
"I couldn't think of anyone more capable," he replied. They floated facing each other in the subdued light of her quarters' central space, surrounded by picted spheres on which were projected various interesting and relaxing textures. They had just made love, as they almost always made love, without enhancement and using nothing more complicated than the quarters' traction fields.
Olmy gestured at the spheres and made a face.
"Simplicity?" Ram Kikura asked.
"Simplicity, please," he affirmed. She dimmed the lights on everything but themselves and erased the spheres from the decor.
They had first met when he had inquired into the licensing process for creating a child. He had been interested mostly in a personality meld between himself and someone unspecified. This had been thirty years ago, when Ram Kikura was just beginning her practice. She had advised him on the procedures. Permission was easy enough to obtain for a corporeal homorph of his standing. But he had not carried it to the point of making a formal request. She had gathered that Olmy was more interested in the theory than the practice.
One thing had led to another. She had pursued him—with some elegance and no small persistence—and he had acquiesced, allowing himself to be seduced in a hidden corner of Central City's forested, zero-g Wald.
Olmy's work often took him far afield for years at a time, and what they had together, to most observers, would have seemed transitory, an on-and-off thing. Indeed, she had had relationships since, none permanent, even though it was once again the fashion to have relationships for ten years or longer.
Whenever Olmy had returned, she had somehow managed to be free of commitments. They never pressured each other. What existed between them was a relaxed, but by no means trivial sensation of comfort and a high level of mutual interest. Each genuinely enjoyed hearing about the other's work and wondering where future tasks would take them. They were, after all, corporeal and usefully employed; theirs was a position of considerable privilege. Of the ninety million citizens in the Axis City, corporeal or in City Memory, only fifteen million had important work to do, and of those, only three million worked more than a tenth of their living hours.
"You seem to enjoy the task already," Olmy said.
"It's my perverse nature. This is by far the oddest thing I've found you associated with. . . . It's positively momentous."
"It could be of staggering importance," he said out loud, his tone mock-sepulchral.
"No more picting?"
"No, let's think and talk this through slowly."
"Fine," she said. "You wish me to be her advocate. How much of an advocate do you think she'll need?"
"You can imagine," Olmy said. "She's a complete innocent. She'll need complete social and psychological adjusting. She'll need protection. When her status is revealed—which is inevitable, I think, whatever the President and Presiding Minister wish—there will be a sensation."
"You're putting it mildly," she said. She ordered wine brought to them, and three static-controlled liquid spheres drifted into their light. She handed Olmy a straw and they sipped. "You've seen Earth yourself?"
He nodded. "I went down the bore hole with the Frant on my second day in the Thistledown. I didn't think remotes would convince me quite as much as seeing with my own eyes."
"Old-fashioned Olmy," Ram Kikura said, smiling. "I'm afraid I would have done the same thing. And did you see the Death?"
"Yes," he said, staring up into the darkness. He rubbed two fingers along the black fuzz dividing his three bands of hair. "Only by remote at first—there was a battle in the bore hole and I couldn't possibly have gotten through. But after the fighting stopped, I took the ship out and saw."
Ram Kikura touched his hand. "How did you feel?"
"Have you ever wanted to cry?"
She looked at him carefully, trying to gauge how serious he was. "No," she said.
"Well, I wanted to. And I've wanted to many times since, thinking about it. I tried to purge the feeling with Talsit on the way back—quite a few sessions. But Talsit couldn't cure all of it. I could feel our beginnings. . . a smudged, dirty, dead and dying world." He told her about Patricia's grief. Ram Kikura turned away in distaste.
"We cannot release as she did," he said. "It isn't in us anymore, and perhaps that's something else we've lost."
"Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status."
"There are orthodox Naderites who still have the capacity," he said. "They find grief a noble sentiment. Sometimes I envy them."
"You were organically conceived and born. You had the capacity at one time. You knew what it was like. Why did you give it up?"
"To fit in," Olmy said.
"You wished to conform?"
"For higher motives, yes."
Ram Kikura shuddered. "Our visitor is going to think us all very strange, you know."
"It's her privilege," Olmy said.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The storm began as a series of accelerated risings and fallings of air, circular cells rubbing against each other and generating a thick, tortured layer of clouds throughout the first chamber. Western bloc scientists in the middle of the chamber along the zero road made quick measurements before retreating to their trucks. Dust and sand were kicked up in immense, slender twisters, which in turn uncoiled and gave way to thick curtains of dust. The dust clouds billowed and spread, bouncing from cap to cap like waves in a channel. Cameras at the bore hole recorded the phenomenon, but there was nothing that could be done to control it. Either the storm was a planned part of the chamber's weather system, or the chamber had no effective weather control. It had not, after all, been a steadily occupied part of the Stone. Weather control might not have been thought necessary.
In the years of the Stone's reoccupation, nothing of this violence and strength had ever happened. The dust clouds covered the valley floor and slowly settled into a soupy, opaque layer a few kilometers thick. Above the dust, water clouds became darker and darker.
By 1700 hours, 6 hours after the storm's first high winds, rain fell through the dust and landed as great drops of mud. In the first compounds, people huddled in the bungalows, both alarmed and thrilled by the sudden change.
Hoffman watched from her mud-splattered window, chewing on a knuckle with eyebrows raised. The surcease from tubelight was welcome. This was the closest to night that anyone had experienced on the Stone, and it made her feel drowsy and content.
Lightning crackled throughout the chamber and engineers and marines braved the wind and rain to fasten conducting rods to the buildings.
In the Russian command bungalow, at the middle of the second compound, the storm and darkness were ignored. The argument over the politi
cal and command structure ran late into the sleeping period, with Belozersky and Yazykov most vehement, and Vielgorsky staying in the background.
Mirsky insisted on a military organization and refused to reduce his power in any way, or to share it equally with (and he emphasized the point) junior officers.
Belozersky proposed a true Soviet structure, with a central party committee, led by a general secretary—Vielgorsky was suggested—and a president and premier acting through a Supreme Soviet.
Just the day before, Mirsky and Pogodin—the commanding officer in the first chamber—had supervised the beginning of construction on a Russian compound in the fourth chamber; permission had been granted to harvest wood from the thick forests. Tools were at a premium; everything was at a premium.
Negotiations over the second chamber had grown heated when NATO archaeologists protested the potential desecration of what they regarded as their site. Mirsky had brusquely informed Hoffman that the Potato was no longer a monument; it was a refuge.
That had worn him down. His long sessions in the third chamber library—often instead of sleeping—had added to his fatigue; and now, this.
"We must situate our people before we decide the final political structure," Mirsky said. "All we have are makeshift tents and this compound, and Hoffman—"
"That bitch," Belozersky commented dryly. "She's worse than the fool Lanier."
Vielgorsky touched Belozersky's shoulder and the martinet sat down obediently. Vielgorsky's ascendancy among the political officers did not surprise Mirsky; neither did it please him. Mirsky was sure he could handle Belozersky, but with Vielgorsky's cunning, reserve and authoritative speaking voice—and Yazykov's razor-sharp legal mind—Mirsky felt a nasty challenge brewing.
Was there some way he could "turn" Vielgorsky and Yazykov, put their talents to his own advantage?
In his favor, he felt, was his continuing education. Or, perhaps more accurately phrased, his enlightenment. Never before had he been able to wander at will through such a huge and diverse source of information. Soviet libraries—military and otherwise—had always been severely restricted, with books available only to those with a demonstrable need to know. Simple curiosity was frowned upon.
He had been unsure even about the geography of his own country. History had been a subject in which he had never felt much interest, other than the history of space travel; what he learned in the third chamber library was turning him around completely.
To his colleagues he revealed none of this; he took pains to conceal the fact that he now spoke English, German, and French and was working on Japanese and Chinese.
"On the contrary," Belozersky said, glancing at Vielgorsky, "political considerations must always be foremost. We must abandon neither the revolution nor its ideals; we are the last fortress of—"
"Yes, yes," Mirsky said impatiently. "Now we are all tired. Let us rest and start again tomorrow." He glanced over his shoulder at Garabedian, Pletnev and Sergei Pritikin, senior engineer from the science team. "Comrade Major Garabedian, will you escort these gentlemen to their tents and make sure our perimeters are secure?"
"There is more to be discussed than we have time for," Vielgorsky said.
Mirsky fixed his gaze on him and smiled. "True," he said. "But tired men become angry men, and frustrations make for bad thinking."
"There are other. . . things which lead to weakness and bad thinking," Vielgorsky said.
"Indeed," Belozersky concurred.
"Tomorrow, Comrades," Mirsky persisted, ignoring the barb. "We need to be fresh when we face Hoffman and continue the negotiations."
They filed out and left Pritikin and Pletnev with Mirsky. The senior engineer and former squadron commander sat down at the tank-baffle table and waited as Mirsky rubbed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. "You realize what happens if Vielgorsky and his puppets take control," Mirsky said.
"They are not reasonable men," Pritikin said.
"Yet I believe about a third of the troops supports them wholeheartedly, and another, third supports nobody—general malcontents," Mirsky said. "I am the commander, so the malcontents dislike me. If it was Belozersky alone, I wouldn't worry—the malcontents hate political officers even more. But Vielgorsky has a velvet tongue. Belozersky lashes with words, Vielgorsky strokes. He can control a dangerous majority."
"What do we do then, Comrade General?" Pletnev asked.
"I want five men to guard each of you. Hand-picked by Garabedian or me. And I want four squads with AKVs around this bungalow. Pritikin, I want the science team confined to the fourth chamber by the day after tomorrow. Vielgorsky will not trust intellectuals; he may not tolerate their existence if push comes to shove."
The two left and Mirsky was alone. He sighed and wished for something to take his mind away for the rest of the evening—a bottle of vodka, a woman. . .
Or more uninterrupted hours in the library.
Never in his life had he felt more aware, and more hopeful, then he did now, even though surrounded by ignorant vipers.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The tuberider was on automatic pilot and all four of them slept in the cabin.
Heineman had limited the tuberider's speed to nine kilometers per second. Something in the tuberider's construction caused a violent shudder beyond that.
Lanier lay awake, restless, strapped to his reclined seat and staring up at the softly glowing orange light overhead. Heineman was breathing steadily across the aisle from him; the women slept behind a curtain Carrolson had rigged across the middle of the cabin. Carrolson snored faintly. From Farley he heard nothing.
Sexual passion had seldom dominated Lanier; his drives were normal enough, but he had always been able to ignore them, or control them in inappropriate situations. His two-year celibacy on the Stone had been less a hardship for him than it might have been for others. Nevertheless, he had never been hornier in his life than he was at this peaceful moment.
Despite the advantages, he had always felt faintly shamed of his lack of masculine anguish, as if it made him some sort of cold fish. Now the passion was upon him with a vengeance. It was all he could do to keep from stealing back through the curtain and fondling Farley. The desire was both funny and agonizing. He felt like a pubescent teenager, sweaty with need and unsure what to do about it.
The psychiatrists in his head worked overtime. Death, said the Freudian, only strengthens our desire to procreate—
So he lay sleepless, erect, unable to think clearly and refusing to masturbate. The very idea was ridiculous. He hadn't masturbated in well over a year, and never except in complete privacy.
Did the others feel this way? Heineman certainly never let on. Not once, in fact, had Lanier ever heard Heineman make a sexual comment except in the most isolated and theoretical sort of joking.
Did Farley feel this way?
Just as a test, one hand reached up to pull aside the thin thermal blanket covering him. He forced the hand to pull it back. Madness.
Finally, after an eternity, he slept.
At 100,000 kilometers, the V/STOL's forward-looking radar reported a massive obstruction ahead in the corridor. Heineman searched the corridor bore-hole science records for any echoes from such a distance and found none. "Looks like the physics people just shot a radar beam along the singularity," he said. "And what we're looking at now is a circular wall with a gap in the middle."
The wall obstructed passage to a height of twenty-one kilometers, leaving a hole in the middle about eight kilometers across. The plasma tube and singularity were not interrupted.
"Let's pass through and see what's on the other side," Lanier suggested. "Then we'll decide where we want to come down."
At a mere six thousand kilometers per hour, Heineman eased the tuberider down the singularity. The wall was a dirty bronze color, smooth and featureless. As they approached the hole, Carrolson trained a telescope on the wall's upper surface—with some difficulty.
"It's only a meter thick
at the top," she said. "Judging by the color, I'd guess it's made out of the same stuff as the wells and the corridor."
"That is, nothing," Farley said. "Patricia's spatial building blocks."
Heineman reduced speed to a few hundred kilometers an hour and they glided through the hole. On the opposite side, the view of the corridor floor was crystal clear, unobstructed by atmosphere. The floor was a chaotic mess of hundred-kilometer-long gouges, black marks and broad strips of revealed bronze corridor surface. The instruments confirmed their suspicions.
"No atmosphere," Farley said. "The wall's a plug." Heineman decelerated until they came to a stop two thousand kilometers past the wall, now reduced in size to a tiny patch in the corridor's merciless perspective. "What'll it be?" he asked.
"We slide back and find a well circuit," Lanier said, "just like we planned. We check that out, then we proceed—and we don't waste time. Research is really secondary."
"Yessir," Heineman said. He swung the V/STOL around on the tuberider to face the opposite direction. "Hang on; full reverse coming up."
Four hundred kilometers south of the wall, they located a circuit of wells and slowed to prepare the V/STOL for its descent. All loose objects were made fast while Heineman unlocked the aircraft from the tuberider. With a gentle nudge of the attitude jets, they eased away from the singularity. Heineman oriented the craft with its nose toward the corridor floor.
Unlike in the asteroid chambers, where some sort of push was required to move away from the axis, the V/STOL began a slow, accelerating descent immediately, repelled by the singularity—or attracted by the floor, whichever way they cared to think of it. After falling four kilometers, Heineman kicked in the rocket engine for three short bursts and pointed the plane's nose north. "I wouldn't land this way in a chamber," he said, "but it's the best tactic in the corridor. We won't hit the atmosphere on a spiral course here. So I'm going to take advantage of a long glide down. Garry, take hold of your controls and get the feel of what I'm doing."