Molé nodded. “I mean to say exactly that.”
“Wunderbaarlik. Well, if they’re anywhere in the Sperrgebeit either my patrols or our programmed searchers will find them. I assure you that if they’re within two hundred kilometers of Nerens they’ll be located and picked up.”
“These are very resourceful people.”
“Because they’ve managed to avoid you for so long?” Molé twitched ever so faintly at the slight, but not so faintly that Kruger failed to note the reaction. Good, he thought. That should even up the “nonoffensive” commentary a bit.
“It is astounding what the most ordinary people can do if sufficiently motivated,” the visitor responded calmly. “By subsist, by a desire for power, by sex. Although from what I have learned I do not think the last motivator applies in this instance. It is true that I thought I had successfully run these people to ground previously. Twice, in fact. On each occasion they managed to escape me. They will not this time.”
Kruger was on firm ground now. “Not if they come anywhere near my security perimeter they won’t.”
Molé leaned slightly forward. Despite himself Kruger’s right hand moved surreptitiously toward a desk drawer when the tip of the unprepossessing cane appeared to incline in his direction. Neither man commented on the security chief’s instinctive reaction. Indeed, Molé would have been disappointed had Kruger not reacted.
“Your confidence is reassuring but possibly misplaced. Belying their backgrounds, these two have managed to elude not only myself but others who would like to take possession of the storage thread. Its significance cannot be overemphasized nor its importance to the company overstressed.”
“All right, all right; I get it, Mr. Molé. This thread is important and these people are tricky.” His heavy eyebrows drew together slightly. “If you don’t mind my asking, if they’ve stolen something that’s so valuable to the company, why on Earth would they try to bring it here, where company security is as tight as anywhere on the planet?”
“Of that I am not sure. But having had more time than I wish to consider all the possibilities, I believe they are coming in hopes of learning what is on the thread. They cannot sell it, for example to those other interested parties to whom I just referred, without knowing what it contains. I cannot imagine any other reason for taking such risks as they already have.”
Kruger nodded. “That makes a certain twisted sense. To a crazy person.”
“They are not crazy,” Molé assured his host. “They are driven. These are not always so very different.”
“Their motivation is immaterial to me. If they enter the Sperrgebeit they’ll be detected and picked up. And if their intent is to try and slip into Nerens itself, the closer they come the tighter they’ll find security.” He smiled, ready to relax. “Meanwhile, you must be tired from your trip. Bouncing all the way from the Cape to the Namib isn’t my idea of a peaceful journey.” He nodded suggestively toward the door that led to the reception area. “You sure you don’t want Danae to show you the ropes?”
Molé smiled back. It was different from his earlier smiles. “Not unless you already have someone else in mind for the vacancy she would leave.”
Het Kruger was not a man whose blood was easily chilled. But with a single expression the old man seated in the big chair before him had managed to lower the temperature in the office by several degrees.
11
From what Ingrid could remember of Ouspel’s map and directions Gwi followed a similar though not identical route. After days of struggling through the hostile desert landscape on their own it was almost relaxing to have an actual live guide. That he talked occasionally at night but hardly at all during the day had nothing to do with shyness.
“SICK searchers listen as well as look,” he told her when she inquired as to the reason for his persistent silences.
They were traveling almost due west now. Whenever Whispr would question if they were headed in the right direction Gwi would point out a landmark that was familiar to him. Most of what he singled out for attention did not look like landmarks to Ingrid: a twist in a dry riverbed, a single lonely kokerboom tree, the way two hillside slopes came together to form a particular angle: sometimes their guide’s “landmark” consisted of nothing more than a discoloration underfoot. All were road signs to the young San.
They were very close to Nerens when he bade them stop and crouch down behind a sandy hillock. A few twisted sprigs of Sarcocaulon pattersonii, better known as bushmen’s candle, held forth against the wind from the crest of the sandy bulge. Ingrid looked around anxiously.
“I don’t see anything. What’s wrong?”
As he swung his small pack off his back and began fumbling within, Gwi put a finger to his lips. “Forget your eyes,” he told her. “Listen.”
She went silent. An irritated Whispr was about to say something when the sound of distant laughter made him pause. Hints of hilarity odd in timbre, it was deep and drawing near. Staying on his belly, he scrambled to the top of the hillock and peered into the distance, trying to locate the source of the ongoing incongruous merriment. Several minutes elapsed before he could, at the absolute limit of his vision, make out a dozen or so shapes running toward them. Not, not running, he corrected himself. Loping.
Spotted hyenas.
“Magified melds. Components of Nerens security.” Gwi whispered tightly without looking up from working with the contents of his pack. Removing a small cylindrical shape from a package, he carefully unfolded its wings, tail, and propeller, locking them in place. Whispr admired the result.
“Model airplane? You’re going to fight maniped carnivores with a model airplane?”
“Maybe he has a model bomb.” Ingrid no longer had to strain to pick up the excited yapping of the oncoming predators, who made up for their awkward gait with surprising speed and unsurpassed endurance.
“No bomb.” Another transparent plastic container he took from his pack contained half a dozen capsules. Flicking open the container’s cap he carefully removed one of the pills, snapped the container shut, and replaced it inside his pack. As Ingrid watched he opened a compartment in the underside of the toy plane, slipped the capsule inside, and snapped the lid shut. The deep-throated coughing laughter of the hyenas was very loud now. Whispr eyed their guide meaningfully.
“You better have a gun to go with that toy.”
“I work in sanitation, my friend. No one at the facility is allowed to have weapons except Security personnel. But I have this.” Using the hillock for concealment he shifted onto his knees and held the small drone high in his right hand.
Ingrid was trying hard not to panic. Being picked up by and having to try to explain themselves to SICK security was one thing; what the patrolling carnivore melds might do to them quite another. With a person, even a lod, you could reason. But magified hyenas …
“I am going to release this on ‘three’,” Gwi whispered. “Before I say ‘three’ you should take a deep breath, cover your mouth and nose, and try to hold your breath as long as you can.”
“I don’t underst …,” she began.
There was no time to explain even had the San been so inclined. The howling of the pack was nearly upon them. “One, two”—their guide inhaled deeply—“three!” On “three” he released the drone. Propeller whirring, engine whining softly, it promptly shot off at high speed directly toward the oncoming pack. Within moments it had begun to release a vapor from its underside. Too flustered to prepare properly, Ingrid forgot their guide’s admonition and took in a breath through her nose.
The stench that assailed her nostrils and sinus cavities hit her insides like a shot of zero gravity.
As she fell forward, cheeks bulging, Gwi threw himself on top of her. Divining the San’s purpose and still holding his own breath, Whispr joined him. Together their two bodies managed to smother most of the sound of the doctor’s retching. They laid thus for more than a minute, at which point the struggling Whispr had to gulp air. T
o his great relief he found that much of the stench had cleared off.
So had something else. The maniacal braying of the pack of magified hyenas was receding rapidly into the distance. In another moment it was gone completely.
Sucking fresh air like a diver surfacing on an empty tank, Ingrid rolled over and wiped at her mouth. Whispr’s short-lived gallantry did not extend to helping her clean herself. “I’m sorry,” she sputtered, her expression twisting in disgust. “It all happened so fast.” Sitting up and still wiping at herself, she coughed and spat. “What was—what did you do?” Turning slightly to her left she listened intently, but of the hysterical choir of approaching four-footed death there was no sound. “What about the hyenas?”
“Running for their kennel, I should think.” Gwi was rearranging the contents of his pack. “The drone is a simple, inexpensive toy one can purchase anywhere. I like it because it is wholly mechanical. It is powered by compressed gas and made of maize-derived organic polymers. When it runs out of fuel it will land itself. Eventually it will disintegrate under the force of the elements. With the exception of the small gas cylinder that will quickly be covered by blowing sand there will be nothing for a searcher to find.
“But the smell …” She put her hand over her mouth as mere memory of the noxious odor threatened to once more overwhelm her insides.
“The drone is an antique model of what used to be called, I think, a crop duster. It is designed to spray a fine mist of water. The capsule I loaded into it is filled with something different.”
“Essence of skunk?” theorized a curious—and grateful—Whispr.
Gwi shook his head. “Lion urine, concentrated about fifty times.” For the first time since the ominous chortling of the pack had been heard he allowed himself to smile. “Traditional enemy of all hyenas. At that concentration the Melds must have thought they were coming up on a lion the size of an elephant.” Turning, he crawled swiftly to the crest of the mound. “Gone. Out of sight. Still running, I am sure. They will run all the way back to the Security kennel.” He stood and beckoned. “Come. If we move fast we will be able to reach the facility by midnight. That will be an excellent time to enter.”
Ingrid would happily have forked over several hundred for a change of clothing. As that was not to be had, she made herself rise and start off in the guide’s wake. She had to content herself with the fact that she did not smell anywhere near as bad as the horrible concoction that …
A thought caused her to put her own sorry hygiene out of her mind. “Gwi? Tell me: where does one get highly concentrated lion urine?” Before the San could reply Whispr interrupted with a question of his own.
“Never mind ‘where.’ ” Striding alongside their guide he leaned over to catch the younger man’s attention. “How do you get concentrated lion urine? And I swear, sandman, if you say ‘very carefully,’ I will personally snap one of those capsules under your nose.”
Gwi told them. The explanation made perfect sense to Ingrid. But then, she was a doctor.
IT WAS SO DARK that she could barely see the crouching shape of the San in front of her. In such reduced light Whispr’s slenderness rendered him almost invisible. She was convinced that if any of them was going to show up on a security monitor it would be her own recently maniped self. But no harsh spotlights sprang to life to blind her and no voices, human or magified, called out to them in the darkness. They were almost to the access well.
“We should have been spotted long ago.” As he paralleled their guide Whispr could not keep from marveling at the lack of attention. “I would have thought security here would be impenetrable.”
They halted beside the metal cylinder. Thrice Whispr’s height, it looked to Ingrid as if a smokestack had been removed from an ancient steamship and plunked down in the middle of the desert. Even in the darkness she could see that it had been painted to exactly match the surrounding terrain. In the distance, still farther to the west, a few lights were visible.
“There is every kind of security you can imagine.” Removing an electronic tablet from his pack Gwi held it up to the softly glowing oval seal that was set hip height flush into the curved side of the cylinder. He interrupted the process of entering code only to glance briefly at his chrono. “But everything at Nerens is self-contained and self-sustaining. It has to be. There is no connection to an external grid. There is no grid to connect to for hundreds of kilometers. So every sector operates on an individual sequence. Each sector requires between two and three minutes to cycle between power sources, during which time it is down. Receiving, aircraft monitoring, climate control, sanitation—even Security. This always takes place late at night so as to inconvenience as little of the facility’s work and staff as possible.” His fingers danced over the tablet he was holding.
Whispr frowned. “I’d think Security, at least, would cover the couple of minutes of downtime by using some kind of backup power.”
“One would think that, yes. But since no one has ever succeeded in breaking into Nerens and since outer perimeter security is considered impenetrable, the company does not seem worried about a couple of minutes of downtime in the middle of the Namib in the middle of the night. Perhaps the necessary switching to a backup source for a mere couple of minutes is more work than they wish to deal with. Even in a village, what is ordered by those at the top is not always put into practice by those at the bottom.” When he smiled his teeth gleamed in the darkness.
“I break in and out all the time. So do several of my colleagues. We alternate our unscheduled ‘holidays’ so that no more than one of us is away from the facility at any one time.”
“No one misses you at work?” a dubious Ingrid inquired.
“My colleagues cover my work for me. This is Nerens. The movements of visitors, of scientists and engineers, of security personnel and drivers, those are monitored very closely. No one pays attention to those who deal with the facility’s waste except others who deal with the facility’s waste. It is expected that we will keep tabs on one another. Mine is not a popular department to visit.”
The almost invisible door set in the side of the cylinder hummed softly as it slid noiselessly aside. Photostrips painted on the interior wall revealed a molded spiral staircase leading downward. A primitive solution to an internal transport problem, Ingrid reflected. She found its presence, in lieu of a lift, encouraging. The more technologically downscale the area they were infringing, the less likely it was to draw attention from internal security. It was very much the same as in a hospital.
It was crowded with the three of them at the top of the stairwell. As the curved metal door slid shut behind them Gwi beckoned for them to follow as he started downward. He did not have to instruct them to descend quietly. Even so, Whispr could not resist asking one more question.
“You said the power was off to each sector for two to three minutes. What would have happened if we hadn’t gotten inside before that time was up?”
Glancing back as he led the way downward their guide’s reply was a soft murmur. “Most likely we would now be in custody of company security. Every alarm on the east side of the facility would have gone off at once.”
A somber Whispr digested this news. “Just out of curiosity, how much time did we have left?”
Gwi smiled cheerfully back at him. “About ten seconds, I think. No more talk for now, please.”
Whispr did not have to be told again. He was envisioning himself and Ingrid being thrown to the ground, wrapped in secure bands, and hauled off to the local version of a SICK interrogation chamber. Ten seconds …
Descending the steep staircase was not as bad as slip-sliding over scree and rocks in Sanbona, but by the time the San raised a hand for them to halt, Ingrid’s knees and calves were throbbing from the effort. In the dim light and with her thoughts otherwise occupied she had not tried to calculate the distance they had come. She asked Whispr.
“More than a few stories and higher than hell. That’s the best I can guess.”
>
“It doesn’t matter.” Spurts of adrenaline canceled out her exhaustion. “We made it, Whispr. We did it! We’re inside Nerens.”
“Yay,” he muttered flatly. “Whoopee. We don’t even know what part of the facility we’re in, except that it’s far belowground. Getting all the way from Savannah to here was the ‘easy’ part. Now we have to get from here into the research center. I hope you’re ready to play doctor, doc.”
She stiffened. “I don’t have to ‘play’ doctor, Whispr.”
He sniffed. In lieu of confidence he would proffer fatalism. He found himself wishing for drugs. “You know what I mean. You’re going to have to fool people into thinking you’re part of the staff.”
“Easier than trying to pass you off as a medical assistant.”
He smiled. “I can be your ambulatory demonstration cadaver.”
“You better hope I don’t feel like demonstrating dissection.”
“Wait here.” Without further comment Gwi started off down a long, dim, high corridor. It was lined with pipes and conduits, some of them of sufficient diameter to easily pass a person down their length. Water dripped from several. A strange, foreign sensation began to drape itself, coatlike, over the waiting Ingrid. It took her a moment to identify it.
She was cold. Here in the center of the world’s oldest desert, she was starting to shiver. The temperature did not seem to trouble Whispr. Thin as he was, he ought to have been feeling the chill even more. Maybe, she thought, his fear kept him warm.
Minutes stretched into hours. They sat, they talked, she shivered, refusing to condescend to the obvious by asking Whispr to huddle close or to pull her thin thermosensitive blanket from her backpack lest they have to move in a hurry. She doubted his body gave off any more warmth than his personality anyway.
Relief came in the form of sleep. Lying down on the floor and using her pack for a pillow she was just as cold, but she didn’t feel it. Watching her reclining there Whispr was reminded of why he had come all this way. His participation had begun as a quest for subsist. That avarice remained, but along the way it had become laden with affection. Without his company, without his aid, this brilliant stupid woman would by now be dead ten times over.