James P. Hogan (40 page)

“If it happens,” Paula had said before she realized it.

Elena looked at her curiously. “Naturally it will happen. Why shouldn’t it?”

“Oh…” Paula sat back on the bench and looked around. “The way the world is…. Are the leaders on both sides smart enough to handle it? Take all the fuss there’s been about this place, for example. You’d think it would be a simple enough matter to settle once and for all if it’s a battle platform, wouldn’t you? But apparently it’s not so simple. Now they’re saying —”

“Of course it isn’t a battle platform,” Elena said. Her tone of voice left no room for doubt. “I’m sorry, but that really is a figment of your Western imagination – paranoia at its worst.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Common sense tells you.” Elena inclined her head to indicate a bespectacled man with a ginger beard, who was talking animatedly to a group at the next table. “Do you know who that is? Professor Valdik Palyatskin, one of the Soviet Union’s authorities on low-temperature fusion. The woman across from him is a specialist in genetic diseases. The skinny man over there, in the center on the far side, is one of the engineers who built the largest aluminum refinery in Siberia. I know it’s insane that such people should be in here because of their political views, but what matters for now is that they constitute a valuable potential resource to the state – in fact, if you want my opinion, I think that’s the whole reason why this place was set up as it is. This is the last place anyone would concentrate them in, if it were a battle platform. It would be a prime target. They’d be much safer down underneath Siberia somewhere.”

Elena pushed her plate away and looked up; but Paula’s face had taken on a distant look, and she didn’t answer. Of course. It was so obvious. But Western intelligence didn’t know the caliber of the people who were interned up here – not to mention many of the civilian population, who had come by choice. The Russians didn’t publish directories of names for anyone who might be curious. Here was something else that the intelligence advisers to the West’s decision-makers needed to know about.

For a moment Paula thought of simply going to General Protbornov and telling him that she wanted to communicate with the West, and why. Surely it would be in everyone’s interests. And as Olga had said when they talked about using Ivan, it would only be corroborating what the Soviets themselves had been saying publicly. But as she thought more about it, her enthusiasm waned. Coming through on an official Soviet communications channel, what would the chances be that her story would be believed? True, as was standard practice with all agents, she had memorized a coding method to indicate whether a communication was being sent freely or under coercion. But agents could be genuinely turned; the best people could be fooled and misled. And besides, the thought of cooperating with the Russians and then having to face Earnshaw later was enough to put the idea out of her head without further consideration.

But there was still Ivan.

“Are you going?” Elena asked, surprised, as Paula started to rise.

“Excuse me. Yes, I have to leave.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“I have to find Olga urgently.”

Water pumped up by subterranean backstage machinery emerged near the top of the hill abutting the outer-hull wall to feed a stream that flowed back down to enter the reservoir at the beach. Behind the beach, the stream curved around a flat, open stretch of grass and sand that the privs used as a recreation area. Paula found Olga there, with a group of spectators who were watching some gymnasts vaulting. It seemed that Olga had been searching for her, too. Two Russian guards were looking on idly from a distance.

“Very well, I’ve decided,” Paula said without preliminaries. “I want to try making contact with the West through Ivan.” Olga opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say anything Paula went on, “I’ve just been talking with Elena, There are more things that they ought to know about this place – more than Maurice will tell them. When do you plan to send your next message?”

“That’s what I was looking for you to tell you about,” Olga said. “We already have it!”

“Already have what? I don’t understand…. What are you talking about?”

“We have a channel to your people in the West, via Ivan.”

“That’s impossible. How could we?”

Olga moved her face closer to Paula’s ear. “If I told you that a communication has come in over it from Tycoon, directed to Pedestal/Fox, would that mean anything to you?” She leaned closer and slipped a piece of paper into Paula’s jacket pocket. “That is a copy of it.”

For a few moments Paula could only stand and stare, dumbstruck. In front of them, one of the performers took a tumble, provoking derisive comments from the group watching.

“We should get some of the dirt they’re sending up from Earth. Maybe it would grow better grass for you to fall on.”

“Let’s hope it’s good, black soil from the Ukraine,” another said. “I’d rather have better food.”

“The whole business is so stupid,” someone grumbled.

“Well, that was how a Party bureaucrat somewhere obeyed orders when he was told to send Russia into space,” the first replied. The others laughed.

“Tycoon” identified Bernard Foleda in his capacity as head of the mission that had brought Paula and Earnshaw to
Valentina Tereshkova
. “Pedestal” was the code name for that mission, while “Fox” was part of the validation-coding system that labeled the message as authentic and would permit her, by her form of reply, to do likewise. “But how?…” she stammered.

Olga took her elbow and steered her away from the crowd, in the direction of rising terrain toward the hill. “I’ve learned more from Ivan since we restored the link. As was to be expected, he’s been under observation by the KGB since my arrest. But with somebody of his status, they have avoided confronting him directly until they have solid evidence. Well, apparently he felt the way the wind is blowing and is looking for insurance – he’s talking to the West about defecting.”

“Talking?…” Paula checked herself and nodded. “Yes, of course. In his position it wouldn’t be difficult, would it?”

“Exactly. And he’d have told your people about his position at the groundstation. My guess is that they put pressure on him to see if he could make contact, just as you wanted to.”

Paula frowned. “But how could they have known about his private line to you?”

“I’m not certain that they did” Olga said, “Maybe that was just a gamble.”

They sat down on a couple of rocks in a cluster that had doubtless originated from some part of the Moon. Forty years ago the material would have been priceless. Now it was used for unremarkable landscaping props – or, more likely, had simply been dumped by a construction team.

“I assume you’ll want to reply,” Olga said.

As things stood, Olga used any BV-15 computer to load her messages to Ivan into one of the chips that Paula had programmed – after what had happened to Ivan’s original, they weren’t relying on having just one – and then her undisclosed accomplice substituted the chip for a standard one contained in the encoding equipment inside the Communications Center. Although this method did require the chip to be switched every time there was a message to go out, they had judged it safer than leaving the chip in place permanently and attempting to access it from a remote terminal, which would have left a nonstandard piece of hardware waiting to be discovered. To send a message of her own, Paula could handle the first part of the operation herself, but not the second.

“I can use the spare chip,” she told Olga. “But I’ll need your accomplice to switch it for me.”

Olga nodded. “There should be no difficulty.” Obviously it would make no difference to Olga’s accomplice whose message was in the chip.

The signal that she finally composed during her next session in the graphics lab was headed
TYCOON
/
HYPER
FROM
PANGOLIN
/
TROT
, 09/22/17. It read:
MESSAGE
RECEIVED
.
PEDESTAL
NEGATIVE
FOLLOWING
DISCOVERY
/
ARREST
DURING
ACCESS
TANGERINE
.
CURRENTLY
DETAINED
MERMAID
/
ZAMORK
.
CONDITION
GOOD
BUT
DENIED
COMM
’
N
RIGHTS
.
NO
NEWS
SEXTON
BUT
BELIEVED
ELSEWHERE
HERE
.
MUST
CONSIDER
TANGERINE
LOST
.
HOWEVER
,
BELIEVE
OTHER
INTELLIGENCE
MIGHT
ASSIST
EVALUATION
,
E
.
G
.
KEY
INMATE
NAME
LIST
.
CAN
SUPPLY
,
CONFIRM
INTEREST
.
ENDS
ENDS
.

“Sexton” and “Pangolin” were Earnshaw’s and her code designations respectively, Paula strung three copies end-to-end as a single data block for redundancy and tagged the message for transmission.

The validation system was based on a list of unique key words that each agent memorized, which were known to nobody else. Foleda’s department kept a master file of all the lists. Each word in a list was a compound of two parts, chosen such that the first part could be combined naturally in English with many second parts to give a valid completion. For example, the word “ice” could combine with “cube,” “bucket,” “berg,” “breaker,” arid many more equally valid completions. Only one, however, was correct for a particular list. Thus, whether a message originated from the agent or from the department, a correct completion from the same list confirmed both that the message was authentic, and that it was not being sent under coercion.

In the specific case of the reply sent by Paula, the “Trot” after her code name completed the compound word that Foleda had cued with “Fox.” She in turn had selected the first part, “Hyper,” of another compound and included it in her response. The completion “Golic” in the next message she received would confirm that it was indeed from Foleda, and not a forgery manufactured by someone with access to the communications medium.

The medical orderlies took Albrecht Haber away again halfway through the afternoon of McCain’s day off. It was his second relapse in a week. An hour after the midday meal, he had gone to lie down, complaining of nausea and stomach pains, and not long after that he had become fever-ish.

“Barbarians, that’s what they are, keeping an old man like him in a place like this,” Oskar Smovak declared to the others sitting at one of the tables out in the B-Block mess area. “What harm can he be to anybody? He ought to be sent home.”

“Did anybody notice what he was eating at lunch?” Luchenko asked, standing a few feet away accompanied by Kong.

“What does it matter?” Smovak replied. “With the muck they serve, it’s a wonder we’re not all in the infirmary.” Luchenko grunted and walked back into the billet, followed by his wooden-faced shadow.

“It’s your move,” Leo Vorghas said.

“Oh, was it?” Smovak returned his attention to the chessboard between them.

“Charlie Chan’s got a new joke about the food.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not hear it.”

At the end, near Smovak, Koh turned a page of the book he was reading. McCain was sitting a couple of feet away, leaning forward with his arms folded on the edge of the table while he watched four of the Siberians rolling marbles across a pattern of chalked lines and symbols on an open area of the floor. It was a new game they had worked out with Rashazzi. As usual there was a lot of arguing and cursing, with tokens and slips of paper changing hands constantly to keep track of the scores and bets. Buried in the design were special marks that Rashazzi had made to measure accurately the trajectories of the rolling balls across the surface. But on this particular occasion he wasn’t present. He had worked a series of bracelet-insert-swapping deals and was now able to remain virtually full-time in the Crypt without interruption.

“So you really never had heard of Sam Caton, eh?”

McCain realized Smovak had moved a piece and was talking to him. He turned his head back. “Nope. Never had.”

“I thought everyone in America must have heard of him. I was testing you, you see.”

“I know.”

“You can’t be too cautious.” Smovak looked at Koh. “Did you ever visit America?”

“Of course he has,” Vorghas threw in without looking up from the board. “Where hasn’t he visited?”

“You were in California at one time, I think you mentioned once, Mr, Earnshaw,” Koh said, lifting his face toward McCain. “I know some parts of it. Where exactly did you live?”

“I was born in Iowa. But I grew up some of the time in and around Bakersfield. Went to college in L. A.”

“Ah yes, Bakersfield, I have a cousin not far from there – in Fresno, as a matter of fact. He’s an attorney, and he also restores antique clocks and musical machines.”

“We should have guessed.” Smovak shook his head disbelievingly. “He’s even got a cousin in Moscow, did you know that? Has the franchise to run a Japanese restaurant there. I ask you – a Japanese restaurant to Moscow! There isn’t anywhere on the planet that the Koh tribe hasn’t reached.”

Koh marked his place with a piece of card and set down the book. “It’s just as well, too,” he said. “It was mainly immigration from the East that saved the United States. Fifty years ago, everyone was being frightened by scare-stories about runaway population explosion. But even at the time, the facts were exactly opposite. It’s perfectly natural and healthy that when nations industrialize and their living standards improve, their populations should grow geometrically for a while – it happened in Europe in the eighteenth century, America in the nineteenth, and is still happening to a degree in Asia. However, they level out again as lifestyles change…. But the wise man looks at the dry distant mountains and prepares for a drought, even while the river is in flood. The point everyone missed was that populations
decrease
geometrically, too. And even while the panic was at Its highest, the West’s birthrate had not only declined, but fallen below the replacement level. They were facing a catastrophic population collapse. That was what almost ruined West Germany. So I’m afraid, gentlemen, that you’ll have to resign yourselves to being a small minority in the world ahead. Fortunately, with the kind of civilization that I see emerging, I don’t think it will matter very much.”