James P. Hogan (33 page)

He found the edge of the hole with his fingers. Rashazzi had already gone down. Haber reached out in the darkness and handed him a purloined flashlight and a cloth bag containing tools, some nylon rope, and other items that might come in useful. McCain patted the German’s arm, and then lowered himself full-length down into the opening between the bunks. He felt hard protrusions and structural beams around him, all the more constricting and entombing in the total darkness now pressing in from every side. Then he heard the floorplate being replaced above him.

Light appeared ahead, silhouetting Rashazzi’s form against a clutter of supporting members, pipework, and cabling. There was little clearance, and McCain’s first thought was to wonder if the expedition might have ended already, right there. They began examining the surroundings methodically inch by inch, shifting their flashlights to opposite hands and rolling over to study first one side, then the other. Rashazzi spent some time on his back, examining the conduction strips from the underside. One of the tasks for tonight would be to install a second bypass circuit below the floor, so that in future they’d be able to lift the plate up again without repeating the whole procedure every time. They found no sign of surveillance devices in the below-floor space. Then Rashazzi began worming his way forward. McCain could see nothing of what lay ahead, since Rashazzi’s body was between him and the light.

After he had progressed eight feet or so, Rashazzi stopped and began moving the light around to reconnoiter, McCain moved up behind him. It was a tight squeeze. Then, as Rashazzi continued angling his lamp this way and that, a glint of light caught McCain’s eye for an instant, reflecting off something
below
. He pointed his own lamp down between two of the metal ribs he was lying on, and brought his face close to peer along the beam. There was a much roomier space down there, with glimpses of machinery. Suddenly McCain realized that he and Rashazzi were not truly in the below-floor space at all. They were lying in a shallow frame carrying pipes and cables immediately beneath the flooring; the true interdeck compartment was still beneath them. He tapped Rashazzi’s leg, and light blinded him as Rashazzi aimed his lamp back to look over his shoulder. McCain pointed at the metalwork beneath them and jabbed his finger up and down several times. Rashazzi understood and probed the darkness beneath with his beam, but from where they were, there was no way down. Rashazzi continued wriggling forward, stopping after another ten feet or so to let McCain catch up.

By now they were well under the next billet, if not beyond, with a steady background of humming and throbbing coming from the darkness beneath. Rashazzi shone his lamp ahead to check the next stretch. Then he emitted a soft “Ahah!” and resumed crawling. McCain followed and saw that a large pipe that had been walling them in on the right made a sudden turn away, leaving a gap in the side of the frame large enough to squeeze through. Rashazzi was already lowering himself down. Then he provided the light while McCain joined him.

They were in a space barely high enough to stoop in, standing on a metal floor. Around them were runs of ducting, blowers and other machinery, pillars and braces supporting the deck above, and a maze of pipework. Shining their lights upward, they could see the frame they’d been crawling inside. They spent some time checking again for surveillance devices, but could find nothing. “It looks clean,” Rashazzi whispered, finally. “You know, I think we might just have done it – a place where we can avoid surveillance, without having to get out of Zamork.”

“Maybe “McCain replied. “Let’s check out some more of it.”

They had already agreed that to get as far from the known parts of Zamork as they could, they would continue exploring downward rather than laterally if they did get below the billet, and accordingly they set to work examining the floor. It consisted of reinforced metal plates secured by spot-welds. Rashazzi had made a hand-operated trepan-like device for cutting sheet metal away around such welds, but it would be tedious and time-consuming. Rather than commit themselves to such a task, they moved along to the next panel, but found the same thing. And with the next; and the next. But the one after that was different: it was secured not by welds, but by snap fasteners.

“Considerate,” McCain grunted. “Must be removable for maintenance or something.”

Rashazzi shrugged in the torchlight. Without further ado, he loosened the panel and lifted it aside. Below was a shallow space containing a lighting fixture in what was apparently the ceiling of yet another level below. The Israeli felt in one of his pockets for an electrician’s screwdriver tipped with a neon indicator and squatted down to probe around the connections. The neon failed to light. “It’s not live, anyway,” Rashazzi said.

They turned their lamps off while McCain tested the ceiling panel. It lifted freely and showed no trace of light from below. Rashazzi switched his lamp on again, while McCain swung the panel upward on its cables and lodged it to one side. They peered down through the gap and made out more machinery, with portions of metal flooring some distance below; but it was difficult to judge how far. McCain unraveled the rope from his bag and lowered one end down while Rashazzi tied the other end to a pillar, McCain checked that his bag was securely tied at his waist, then swung his legs into the hole and lowered himself down hand over hand until his feet found the floor below. Rashazzi followed.

They were in a narrow walkway that could have been intended for maintenance. It led between pumps, transformers, and large, squat cylinders wreathed in pipes, that seemed to be storage tanks. Or perhaps it could have been used during construction of
Valentina Tereshkova
, for the absence of power in the ceiling light suggested that the place was visited infrequently. “I wonder where this leads,” McCain said. “We might have an open gateway here, right out of Zamork, anytime.” The floorplates this time, however, were solidly seam-welded, precluding any possibility of penetrating further in the downward direction without enormous effort. They began exploring the surroundings.

Farther on, another walkway went off to one side. They followed it between the last of the storage tanks and girderwork abutting a bulkhead to a series of bays containing power-distribution equipment and banks of enormous batteries – a backup supply system for emergency power. An intermediate deck split the space beyond into two levels. The upper level was cluttered with more piping and structural work. But the lower space, the floor of which was actually sunken a few feet to make it considerably deeper and roomier than it appeared from even a short distance away, was comparatively empty. Conceivably it had been left as expansion space in which to install more equipment at some later date. McCain and Rashazzi glanced at each other In the torchlight, then moved closer and lowered themselves down into the space.

It went back perhaps twenty feet, ending at a solid bulkhead wall, which Rashazzi estimated could well be the near side of Gorky Street, extending down to the lower levels. That fitted with the mental map that McCain had been constructing, too, A wall of cable guides running between roof supports closed in one of the sides, while the other was semi-open to a forest of supports and tiebars that disappeared away into the blackness behind the storage tanks.

Rashazzi stroked his chin and looked around. “I don’t know where we might be able to get to from here,” he said. “It will take some time to check. But you know something, Lew? Think of it – here we are in a pretty secluded place, with another whole level above full of machinery making nice background music to screen out noise, If we could run some power into here from somewhere, this would make the perfect workshop that Albrecht and I were looking for,” He nodded and looked around again with evident satisfaction. “Yes, I’d say that tonight’s expedition has already been well worth the effort.”

The warm, dry summer had done wonders for Myra’s health, and by the middle of August her face had regained its color and filled out again. “Yeah, I figure you’ll last a few more years yet, at least,” Foleda told her approvingly as they sat sipping iced orange juice at a sunshaded table on the veranda at the back of the house.

“Doesn’t she look so much better,” Ella said from where she was sitting with her legs dangling in the pool, watching Johnny and two other boys of about his age from along the street playing in the water on the far side. “You look like a brand-new woman, Mother.”

“I feel like one,” Myra replied.

“See,” Foleda said. He always managed to look outrageous on his days off, and on this occasion was wearing Bermuda shorts of a deafening tartan, sunglasses, and a straw hat. It reminded Ella of pictures she had seen of Churchill in some of his wartime outfits. “That’s what having an attentive husband does for you.”

“Are you going to let him get away with that, Mother?” Ella asked Myra.

“Sure, if it works both ways,” Myra said. “Because I score higher. I mean, look at the state of him. He hasn’t had a day sick for years.”

“And people always think that kind of work is so stressful. You’re a fraud, Dad – and living off us taxpayers, too.”

“Nonsense. I work hard all the time, It’s the best deal you people ever got – worth every penny.”

“How come no heart attacks, then?”

“The light heart and inner tranquility that come from being honest.” Myra laughed delightedly. “How can you possibly mean it, Bernard? What about the fuss you had last week with the attorney general over that Argentinean minister’s hotel suite your people bugged?”

“Hell,” Foleda grunted. “I said honest, not legal.”

A call-tone came from the screenpad lying by the tray on the table. Myra picked it up and acknowledged. It was Randal, Ella’s husband, from inside the house. “Is Bernard there?” he asked. Myra passed the pad over.

“What?” Foleda said.

“There’s a news item just coming in about that Russian space colony you’re always interested in,” Randal told him.

“
Tereshkova
?”

“Yes. I thought maybe you’d like to see it right away…. Or I could store it for later.”

“No, I’d like to see it now,” Foleda said. He started to get up.

“Want me to put it through on the pad out there?”

“No, I’ll come inside. Why spoil the party?”

A bright-red beach ball bounced on the surface of the water and bobbed against the poolside, with Johnny splashing after it. “Where are you going, Grandpa?” he called up.

“Just inside for a minute.”

“Ask them, they’ll know,” one of Johnny’s friends said, coming across behind him.

“We’ll know what?” Ella asked them.

“Which
did
come first, the chicken or the egg?”

“Ask your grandma,” Ella answered. Johnny looked at Myra.

“Ask your grandfather,” Myra said.

“Didn’t they teach you at school that birds evolved from reptiles?” Foleda said as he made to leave.

“Sure.”

“Well, there’s your answer: dinosaurs were laying eggs before there were any chickens.”

Foleda found Randal sprawled along a couch in the window-lounge a half level below the kitchen and dining area, a handpad resting on his knee. “What have we got?” Foleda said, perching himself on an arm of one of the chairs facing the wallscreen across the room, Randal touched a button and the screen came to life with a view of Moscow’s Red Square, showing the Kremlin wall and St. Basil’s Cathedral. After a few seconds it switched to columns of parading tanks and missile carriers, and then a line of heavily muffled Soviet leaders saluting from the reviewing stand atop the red-marble mausoleum of Lenin’s Tomb. “It came in live a few minutes ago,” Randal said.

The commentator’s voice-over narrated: “News from Moscow today of a big break with tradition. The customary military parade held every November seventh to celebrate the uprising that brought the Communist Party to power, which has long seemed an inviolable national institution, will not take place in this, the Revolution’s centenary year. A spokesman for Tass, the Soviet news agency, announced this morning that this year the occasion will be commemorated out in space. Instead of reviewing the traditional military parade in Red Square – which tends to be a cold business around November time in Moscow – the Soviet leaders will be traveling en masse to the experimental space colony
Valentino Tereshkova
, two hundred thousand miles from Earth” – a view had appeared of
Tereshkova
hanging in space, followed by standard shots of a transporter docking at the hub, a view of the Turgenev urban zone, and a harvesting machine at work in one of the agricultural sectors, while the voice continued —” to see not marching soldiers and rockets, but scientists, engineers, farmers, and spaceborne factories. So, what does it mean? Are they sending us one of those famous ‘signals’ we’re always being told about? Some of the experts will be giving us their interpretations later. Frank Peterson talked in Moscow with Mr. Gorlienko, the Soviet foreign minister.”

“What do you think?” Randal said to Foleda. “Doesn’t that look like a change? Come on, Bernard, give them some credit when it’s due. This is exactly the kind of initiative we need more of. We have to reciprocate.”

“We’ll see.” Foleda sounded skeptical.

“Dammit, anyone would think you people wanted a war,” Randal said, shaking his head in exasperation.

It was a subject they often argued about. Randal was a psychiatrist. He considered all nuclear weapons immoral and had pronounced the world leadership collectively insane. Foleda, on the other hand, contended that the nuclear’ tipped ICBM was the most moral weapon to have been invented since the days when kings led their soldiers into battle. It put the wealthy and the powerful of all nations right up in the front line, where the risks were no longer exclusively other people’s. “With true democracy,” Foleda maintained, “everybody is in the trenches.”

On the screen the Soviet foreign minister was telling an interviewer, “Yes, you could describe it as a gesture. We see it as symbolizing the direction of the Soviet Union’s commitment to the twenty-first century. Coming in the one hundredth year of our existence as a modern nation, the completion of
Valentina Tereshkova
is a model to the world of what can be accomplished under a communist system. Your economists and experts said it couldn’t be done – that our system was too inefficient to achieve any significant nonmilitary goals. They discouraged the emerging nations of the world from trying to emulate us. But we have shown them! Tell us now what we are or are not capable of achieving. That is the direction in which we will continue to grow – stronger and more prosperous. And is it not appropriate that on our centenary, when this policy becomes a demonstrable reality, that is where our leaders should be?”