James P. Hogan (38 page)

McCain remembered seeing this in science museums when he was younger. “Okay,” he agreed. “Now what?”

“Now let’s repeat the procedure at the equator,” Rashazzi said. “Aries no longer moves in a circle around the center of the sky overhead, but rises and sets. We start the pendulum moving just as Aries peeps over the eastern horizon, and it continues to swing east-west. But six hours later, Aries will be overhead. Now, is the pendulum still moving toward and away from Aries as it was before? Hardly. It would have to be yo-yoing up and down, which would be a miracle. No, instead it’s still moving east-west with respect to Earth. In other words, an observer there would see no rotation of the plane it swings in. Between the pole and the equator both effects combine, and the plane will rotate not through a full circle, but through a certain angle and back again, which depends on latitude.”

McCain had been on
Tereshkova
long enough to know of the rim’s equivalence to Earth’s equator. “So a pendulum here should keep going in the same direction,” he concluded.

Rashazzi nodded. “Quite. But it doesn’t. The plane of the swing rotates. We’ve measured and timed it. Its oscillation period is eighty-eight seconds.”

“As the colony spins,” McCain said.

“Except that with the official dimensions as given by the Russians, and allowing for ten percent above Earth-normal weight, it ought to be about a minute,” Haber said.

Rashazzi looked at McCain quizzically for a second, as if challenging him for an explanation. “One answer that would give a slower rotation rate would be if the diameter of
Tereshkova
were considerably larger than it’s supposed to be.” He showed his palms briefly. “But that’s impossible, of course. Ever since the Russians started building it,
Valentina Tereshkova
has been studied by enough groundbased and spacebased telescopes and other instruments for us to be under no doubt that it is the size they say it is.”

McCain could only look at them in bafflement. “So what do you make of ft?” he asked them. “Anything?”

Haber shook his head.

“There’s something very strange about the geometry of this whole place,” Rashazzi said. “Never mind Eban’s escape projects. Even without them, we need to get out and conduct more tests all over
Tereshkova
. One look at it from the outside would tell us a lot. That’s one attraction of the idea you had. But right now, I can’t tell you what this business means.”

“Should we tell the escape committee about this?” Haber asked.

McCain shook his head. “Not until we know what’s behind it. Right now they don’t have any inkling of this. So it’s not something that could reach the wrong ears if any of them were careless. Let’s keep things that way for the time being.”

The amenities for privileged-category inmates at Zamork included a library that was larger and more diverse than the one available in the subsurface Core. In particular it possessed a more comprehensive reference section. Now, reference books tend to weigh a lot, and payloads hauled up out of Earth’s gravity well at considerable expense could be better devoted to other things. So the bulk of the reference material in the Zamork library resided in electronic form, and was updated by periodic transmissions from Earth. In fact, it was a subset of the main public library maintained in Turgenev.

Since Communists are supposed to exhibit a passionate zeal for setting constantly new records of production, this material included vast tables of industrial-output statistics, construction figures, agricultural yields, and five-year forecasts of everything from zip-fasteners on Aeroflot flight attendants’ uniforms to millions of barrels of oil from the drilling platforms in the Caspian Sea. In reality, few people were even remotely interested, and none of those who were believed the official numbers anyway. Hence, for all of the technological ingenuity and organizational skills that beaming these tables from Earth to
Valentina Tereshkova
and having them instantly accessible on library screens represented, they were hardly ever read by anyone, let alone checked. Hence, anyone who wanted to, and who had access to the necessary facilities down on Earth, could encode messages into those data with little risk of being discovered. Of course, the intended recipient would have to know what numbers to watch and how to interpret them. This was the method that “Ivan” had used to communicate from Earth into
Tereshkova
– the other half of the Blueprint dialogue, which had persistently eluded the NSA.

After the accident that lost Olga the special chip which Ivan had provided, the transmissions from
Tereshkova
had ceased. Coded messages from the Earth end had continued to appear, embedded in the statistical updates beamed into the library, but Olga had had no way of responding until she acquired the electronic chip that she had asked Paula to program for her. Three days after Paula gave her back the finished chip, Olga was waiting in the hut when Paula returned from her day at the Environmental Department. They chatted about local matters with Svetlana and Elena for a while, and then Olga suggested a walk on the hill above the reservoir.

“I was in the library today,” Olga said when they were alone. “A reply from Ivan has come in. He received our message. The link is working again!”

Paula was pleased. “So, there were no hitches. You’re in business again. I’m glad I was able to help.”

“I’m sure Ivan is feeling relieved now,” Olga said. “He must have been getting quite worried.”

They walked on for a while. Paula became thoughtful as some of the things that she had been brooding over during the past few days came back to her. “What kind of a person is he – Ivan?” she asked at last. “How well did you know him?”

A surprised look flashed across Olga’s face, but she shrugged and replied, “Well, I told you we were lovers once. He’s… well, quite sophisticated in many ways, I suppose you’d say, cultured —”

“No, I meant politically. You said he belonged to that dissident organization that you were part of back on Earth. Does that mean he’s opposed to the Soviet system? Is he… well, how loyal does that make him?”

Olga frowned. “That depends. Obviously he’s less than completely happy with the present regime and what it represents. But he’s a strong nationalist. He loves everything Russian.”

“What about the international situation – all the tensions?” Paula asked.

“It’s something that concerns him deeply,” Olga answered. She slowed her pace and studied Paula’s face searchingly. “Very deeply, in fact. His main reason for being active in the dissident movement is to promote greater understanding worldwide. Why do you ask?”

Paula struggled for the right way to put the question. “How far would he go to achieve that, do you think?”

“I’m sorry. You’ll have to explain what you mean.”

“Well, take this channel that we’ve got now, down to Siberia. He’s in a communications station, with access to all kinds of equipment. From the way he’s able to read our signals and inject his own into the upbound beam, I’d assume his position there must be a fairly senior one.”

Olga nodded slowly, still looking puzzled. “Yes.”

“Do you think he might be willing to extend the link farther if we had a good reason to ask him – beyond the borders of the Soviet Union, for example?”

Olga stopped and turned to face Paula fully. “What strange questions you’re asking all of a sudden. Extend the link farther to where beyond the borders of the Soviet Union?”

Paula hesitated, then drew in a long breath. “Do you think he might relay a message from us here, into the Western military-communications system?” Before Olga could reply, she plunged on to explain. “You knew Maurice, the Frenchman who was exchanged. Svetlana told me he’d seen for himself that at least some of the weapons that are supposed to be up here don’t exist. He’ll have told his people as much of course, but it’ll only be one man’s word. Would he be believed? It’s information that could be crucial to policy decisions at a time like this. Through Ivan we could be in a position to corroborate it. Or even find out more… I don’t know…” But then, suddenly, a feeling of futility at even thinking about it overwhelmed her. She shook her head with a sigh and resumed walking. “Oh, forget it, Olga. It was a stupid idea. Why should a senior scientist want to risk his neck transmitting messages to the West? It just seemed —”

“Now wait a minute. I’m not sure it is such a stupid idea.” Olga was staring at her keenly. “Ivan is already risking his neck – I told you, he is very concerned about the present tensions. And look at it this way: if all we were asking him to do was relay confirmation to the West from a source it might trust – one of its own agents – of what the Soviets have been saying publicly anyway, they could hardly accuse him of betraying secrets or being disloyal, could they? I wouldn’t write it off so quickly as a lost cause. It might be worth a try.”

Paula frowned uncertainly, Olga continued to shoot questioning looks at her as they walked, but she kept quiet. Finally Paula asked, “Have you managed to get any news on Lew Earnshaw yet? If I could talk to him about it somehow, it would help a lot.”

“I’m still trying. As soon as I hear anything, of course I’ll let you know.”

“I see.”

“I could include a feeler to Ivan in my next message,” Olga offered.

“Don’t rush me. I need to think about it some more,” Paula said.

“As you wish.”

Hut inwardly Paula had already as good as conceded that in the end the decision was probably going to have to be hers. She didn’t even know if Earnshaw was anywhere within two hundred thousand miles.

Less than a hundred feet below the hill in an entirely different environment, McCain, Scanlon, Istamel, and Sargent were sitting, like a conspiratorial circle in some smugglers’ cave of old, in a pool of yellow light surrounded by darkness around a makeshift table of aluminum drums and wall pan-elling. McCain unwrapped the package that Rashazzi had left for them, revealing two pieces of charred, twisted plastic about the size of a credit card but thicker, which had obviously been severely burned. Istamel picked one of them up and examined it.

For the frame, Rashazzi had welded together plastic pieces cut from a razor-blade dispenser of an acceptably close shade of blue, which he had found in the general store. He had fashioned the securing clip from the clip of a ballpoint pen, using as a guide for its shape and dimensions the imprints of a genuine clip that Peter Sargent had somehow obtained in a bar of soap; and for the plastic-encapsulated electronics insert in the center, he cut a square out of a slice sawn from the base of a black chess king. Then he had incinerated his handiwork in a bowl of shredded rags soaked in alcohol. To a casual inspection, the result looked impressively like a standard Russian general-clearance badge that had been in a fire.

Istamel gave a satisfied grunt and placed the fragile object down again carefully. “It’s good,” he pronounced. He picked up the other and looked at it briefly. “I see no problem. These are fine.”

“Well, I’m pleased to hear it,” Scanlon said, sitting forward. “And now maybe ye can tell us what it is ye have in mind that we’ll be needing them for.”

The Turk drew his hands back to the edge of the table and ran his eyes quickly around the group. “I know of a situation that would suit our purpose,” he told them. “I am a doctor by profession – of physiology. In particular I specialize in the regulatory mechanisms of the circulatory system. I have privileged status here in Zamork because I agreed to work cooperatively in the Space Environment Laboratory at the hub. They develop different kinds of spacesuits, do research into conditions and effects of working outside – things like that,” He shrugged and thrust out his lower lip as if acknowledging that some kind of explanation was called for. “It enables me to pursue my own work and keep my knowledge up to date. So if helping their interests to a degree also serves my interests, why not? We’re all traders at heart, yes?”

McCain nodded curtly. “Sure, we hear what you’re saying. And?”

“The technical people there are Russian civilians – doctors and technicians from around the colony. Most of them carry general-clearance badges – which will give access to anywhere within the colony’s regular environment outside a few restricted zones, such as parts of Landausk and the Government Center, which require various grades of special-clearance badges.” McCain and Scanlon glanced at each other and looked more interested. Istamel went on, “I’ve noticed that when they change into their lab coats and working clothes, they tend to leave the badges on their regular coats, which they hang in a closet by the lab entrance. Now here’s the interesting part. Heavy-current cabling to an air compressor and some welding equipment passes through the bottom of that closet. Also, the space below the hanging rail is always piled with bags and boxes that contain who-knows-what. Now you see my point: if a fault developed that caused those cables to heat up and ignite something that happened to be in one of those boxes…”

“You mean you’d put a package in there of your own to make sure that a couple of the coats at least were destroyed,” Scanlon said, nodding.

“Exactly,” Sargent threw in.

“But could you guarantee that the cable would set fire to the package?” McCain queried.

“We don’t have to,” Istamel replied. “We make the package a self-igniting incendiary device – something that Razz and Haber can put together. We fake some kind of fault in the electrical system and cover the cables in the closet with something that will burn, simply to make it look like an accidental fire. So the way it works is, first we switch these” – he indicated the burned dummies lying on the table —” for two of the badges, and at the same time plant the materials to start the fire. Then, just when it’s due to go up, we put a short-circuit somewhere in the electrical system. Afterward, the Russians recover the two dummies, write them off officially as destroyed, and supply replacements to whoever they were issued to. Meanwhile, we have the real ones in working order.”

McCain thought for a while but couldn’t fault it. “Can you manage it all on your own?” he asked.