The Company of the Dead (38 page)

“Martin’s doing a fine job, Tom.”

Agent Collins sauntered over to the jeep.

Hardas wiped the sweat away from his brow and muttered, “We’re
never
getting out of here.”

“When can we expect you back, Major?” Collins asked.

“Not too sure, maybe a week. When does Shaw get here?”

“Friday at the earliest. Some problem with the new recruits at Bravo.”

“New recruits are always trouble,” Kennedy said. “I’ll contact him from Las Vegas in three days. He can make a full report of any teething problems then.” He slapped the dashboard, giving the signal to move. Collins’s salute turned into an uncomfortable wave as the jeep lurched away and sped through the gates.

They turned off the road thirty miles from the camp and headed north over a plain of sand and parched scrub. Somewhere beneath them, coiled below the loose sand and dense strata, lay Red Rock’s lifeline. An umbilical cord capable of diverting all of Alpha’s power into Red Rock’s quiescent heart. Barely perceptible, a trail was forming here, the product of the infrequent journeys they’d made over this land in the last few months.

Ghost music boomed from the cartridge player jammed between their seats. Kennedy turned down the volume, and when Hardas turned to face him he said, “We’re going to have to find another route.”

“Was thinking the same thing myself.”

The sun was low. Tendrils of heat wafted in the middle distance, rising from the sands. It appeared as though they were driving into a landscape newly formed or slowly dissolving; when Kennedy thought about it, maybe both. The sky held that impossible blue tincture that heralded twilight in the desert.

“When do the others arrive?” Hardas asked.

“Saturday. Morgan gets back from Belfast tomorrow. He should be here Sunday.”

Hardas shook his head. “Why does he have to be here at all?”

“Same reason he’s going back with us.”

Hardas’s face twisted into a scowl.

“Okay, pull over.”

If anything the jeep might have sped up. Kennedy turned the player off and wrapped his hand around the handbrake.

“
Pull over
.”

The jeep skidded to a halt in a shower of sand. Kennedy reached for the canteen. He swallowed a mouthful and, dabbing a finger to the cap, ran the moisture under both eyes and across the bridge of his nose where the grit and powder had accumulated.

“Here.” He passed the canteen to Hardas. “We’ve a big day ahead of us, Commander. What exactly is your problem with Mr Morgan?”

“I may not feel too cosy around your ghost dancers, but at least they’re pros.” Hardas took a couple of swigs before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Morgan’s a liability. He’s told us what he’s got on the ship, and he’s checked out Lightholler. What else does he have to offer? Seems to me like he’s done.”

“You brought me the journal, David. There are times when I can’t thank you enough, and there are times when I curse your name to hell. But tell me, what else do
you
have to offer?”

Hardas narrowed his eyes. “Well, I guess when you put it like that, you had to recruit me or kill me, didn’t you.”

“I always figured that killing the messenger was a waste of resources. I feel the same way about Morgan. Look, Shine’s the best hunter-killer I’ve got, but I have to consider every possibility. Say he fails.”

Hardas’s look was sceptical.

“Say he does,” Kennedy continued. “Then everything comes down to the
Titanic
. We’ll need Lightholler in case we have to make a move on the ship. He knows it inside out. We’re going to need an expert on the era. So Morgan comes along. As for Doc—”

“I know why we need Doc.
Both
reasons,” Hardas said pointedly, “but why do we need me?”

“You know how it is, Commander. Every group needs its malcontent, its card-carrying asshole. I like to have someone around who makes me feel a little better about myself. Plus, there’s a spare seat on the carapace.”

“And you’re calling
me
an asshole?” Hardas shook his head. “Can we go now, Major?”

Kennedy turned the music back on. “Giddy-up.”

“Now that we’ve covered the basics—environment suits and controls, restraints, fire control, user’s interface and information acquisition—tell me, are you guys happy with manipulating the partial insertion and extraction devices?”

Doc replaced the pointer on the makeshift lectern and leaned forwards onto his fists, surveying his audience of two. Behind him was a chalkboard bearing the list of topics he’d mentioned, accompanied by a series of timelines. A model of the time machine, constructed from steel and brass, sat in two parts on a table beside him. Afternoon sunlight slanted across the room from a single window in the west wall. Peering through retreating storm clouds, it beat against the clay walls of the adobe so that they shone with sweat, but the air retained the scent of the recent downpour. And outside that window, under a tarpaulin still slick with rainwater, squatted the carapace.

Mission time was less than twenty-four hours away.

Kennedy had constructed the foundations of the Red Rock installation on the ghost of Jenkins’ original base; had started to build around the sand-crusted shell of the machine he’d discovered here less than a year ago. In the journal it said that the largest airstrip in the world had been here, along with fifty years of black ops and secret science.

This room was where he felt it most.

There were other places he had visited since discovering the device where the shadows hinted at that other world. Where that true reality was distinctly palpable. In the dusty town of Las Vegas, with its unpaved roads and a solitary truck stop that never closed and a church that hardly ever opened, there were times when he sensed a panoply of bright lights around him, and heard a low hum almost ringing in his ears.

There were places in New York where the Japanese and Germans he encountered seemed to
know
that they didn’t belong, and exuded an awkwardness beyond their own comprehension. But Red Rock was the worst. Here was the nexus point. From here, things had travelled from beyond the sight of God and Man. Some rift still remained. Blink, and you might see a row of buildings where nothing stood. Tell yourself it was a trick of light and shimmering sand and heat. Deny the twist and exposure of a deeper architecture of reality. But count the moments till you leave this place.

Mission time was less than twenty-four hours away.

Are you guys happy?

“Maybe we should take a break,” Doc said into the silence.

“We’re fine,” Kennedy said.

“Doc,” Hardas said, “when you ask about manipulating the partial insertion and extraction devices, do you mean do we know where the ‘on’ and ‘off’ switches are?”

Doc wore a pained expression on his face. “Essentially, yes.”

“I’m not trying to be a smartass. It’s just that the carapace is preprogrammed. It’s only a partial insertion, so the carriage remains here and we travel in the pod. All we do is sit back and enjoy the ride.”

“
This
time it’s just a partial,” Doc said. “It won’t be next time. What if you need to use the environment suits?”

“Frankly, Doc, if we need the suits that means the pod has crashed, which means we’re pretty much fucked up. We’re only going eighteen months into the future, so why should we need the suits at all?”

Kennedy spoke up. “If we knew what to expect, we wouldn’t need to go in the first place. Go ahead, Doc.”

“Okay, we have limited information. Basically we have the journal. Apart from that, we have experimental data from limited unmanned partials performed on-site. This is as important as it gets, so if you’ll indulge me,” he peered meaningfully at Hardas, “I’ll go over some fundamentals.

“We have no idea why the carapace can act in either partial or complete movements across space–time,” he continued. “In partial movements, it works like one of those paddleballs. The paddle is the carriage, the ball is the pod. The carriage provides kinetic and chroncentric energy. Power for launch comes from the generator. Failing that, we can access juice directly from Alpha.

“The carriage slings the pod in either direction across space–time for a limited duration. The further you go, the briefer you stay. Energy released by the return voyage sustains battery power that’s used for life support. We assume that a partial insertion is mainly for observation, reconnaissance perhaps, as it seems to place a minimal strain on the carapace. Our simulations confirm that there’s only a ten-year radius in either direction.

“A complete insertion, on the other hand, is quite different. Then the carapace is both slingshot and projectile. It appears to drag itself across space–time, pod and carriage. We have only three examples of complete movements. The journey that Wells made back to 1911 from his reality; the return unmanned insertion to here, where you guys found the damn thing; and Roswell.”

“And we know that no one walked away from that,” Hardas interrupted softly.

Kennedy recalled a passage from the journal:
Some kind of explosion. Only one body was recovered from the wreckage. Quite dead.

“The crash in Roswell in true 1947,” Doc replied, “is difficult to explain.”

“Gee, Doc, have you considered hobgoblins?” Hardas said dryly.

“Commander?” Kennedy said.

“We don’t know what we don’t know. That’s all.”

“That’s right,” Doc admitted. “We don’t know shit. But one day, the good Lord willing, we’ll do a complete insertion. Now, while the partial is a discrete movement back and forth across time, we know that a complete insertion requires staging. Think of it as skimming a stone across the surface of a lake. For a hundred-year journey we’re looking at two stages: initially two hours, then approximately two hundred hours into the past. From there, the final movement slings us to the target. All things being equal, the entire carapace will re-establish itself there and then. No returns, and no comebacks, because if all goes well there won’t be anything recognisable to return to.”

Doc drew a breath, then continued. “I said the crash at Roswell was difficult to explain.” He cast his eyes on Hardas. “I think that what happened there was a complete insertion, but an
unstaged
one. We have no idea which era the original time machine came from. We have to assume, however, that the journey it was making was a complete rather than partial. It’s hard to imagine that the machine came from anywhere within a ten-year radius of 1947, whichever reality you’re considering.” Doc sighed. “This is where it gets esoteric.”

“That’s one word for it,” Hardas said.

Doc nodded. “To paraphrase Doctor Wells, we’ve been in uncharted waters ever since day one, so don’t look at me for direction. All I can do is give you what we know, which is precious little.”

“Sorry, Doc. Go ahead.”

“Tomorrow you’re going partial. It’s a partial ’cause we can’t be sure ... we can’t be
certain
about a return trip. You go, you activate the information acquisition devices. You capture any radio or television transmissions. You obtain
one
soil sample.
You do not try to leave the carapace
.”

Hardas and Kennedy glanced at each other, each of them trying not to smile.

Kennedy said, “We’re not leaving the carapace, Doc.”

“Damn straight.”

And so it went, each significant comment Doc made being parenthesised by the phrase “we think”.

The people of some unimaginable era who had constructed the first carapace were beyond consideration; but Jenkins and the men of that other world, that “True Earth”, had been engineering this machine for nearly fifty years. Even working with that time frame, things had gone wrong. At least one test pilot had experienced a significant head injury, as was confirmed by the journal. And this same machine had been in Kennedy’s possession for little more than six months...

Everything was, at best, conjecture.

Tomorrow would bring about the confirmation of their dearest hopes, or a swift death. And with that, at least, the end of all desires.

Once upon a time, two men embarked upon a journey.

For the shortest measure of what might be called time, they became the focal point around which all that we know of as reality whirled.

Reality folded.

It twisted upon itself, writhed and unwound.

Reality unfolded.

Smoothed and spread itself out anew. The world worm, Ouroboros, swallowing its own tail.

Chronometers aboard the carapace measured a mission time of thirty minutes. Information acquisition devices were activated. An attempt was made to capture transmissions. A soil sample was obtained.

No one left the vessel.

Revelation, when it came, was the butterfly’s broken promise to the chrysalis.

They sat close by the embers. They might have been mistaken for pagans worshipping in the shadow of a single raised obelisk. The rock towered over the landscape. Night had bled all colour out of the formation.

If anyone noticed anything different about the sand, they weren’t talking, but it was there for all to see. The shiny scar of earth around the tarpaulin had widened; shards of time, encroaching upon the adobe wall.

Kennedy had been planning this discussion since the previous night, grasping at each thought, pursuing it to a conclusion that seemed reasonable enough to be said aloud.

“It rained here yesterday,” he began. “Check the papers a year from now and it will still have rained. That’s a constant truth. That’s unchangeable.” He paused, thoughtfully. “It’s
supposed
to be unchangeable.”

No one said a word.

“A ship leaves Southampton dock, bound for New York. She’s the most magnificent means of transportation constructed to date. She’s supposed to be unsinkable. She had design flaws, but it would have taken a certain perspective to recognise them.”