Lanier had kept the paper unread in his pocket on the shuttle and OTV, dreading that moment when he would have to know and have to act against a colleague, even a friend.
The OTV had docked with the Stone and he had disembarked, made a brief report to Roberta Pickney and the staging area communications team, and passed on his recommendation to Kirchner that Stone external security should be especially watchful.
As for internal security: It wasn’t really supposed to be his job.
Had Gerhardt already received the same information awaiting him in the folded paper? How had Hoffman come across the name, and why had she given it to him?
He received reports from the various team leaders by way of a messenger bearing a slate. He floated in a small anteroom adjacent to the staging area, wrapped in one of the mesh cylindrical slings that served as bunks for axis-bound workers; he read, and absorbed, and realized he was only delaying the inevitable.
Boarding the zero elevator, accompanied by a taciturn marine guard, he removed the paper from his pocket and unfolded it.
“As soon as possible, I’d like to take a track to the second well circuit,” Patricia said. Tagahashi held open the tent flap for her and she entered. Carrolson and Farley napped in one corner of the central room; Wu and Chang worked over slates and processors in another.
Takahashi followed her inside.
“On a mental roll?” he asked. Carrolson and Farley grumbled awake simultaneously and blinked at the intrusion and noise.
“We have to make space-time spot checks,” Patricia said. Her face was drawn and there were pastel purple smudges of fatigue under her eyes. ”I’ve asked Mr. Heineman to help. There’s a directional beacon on the airplane and we can pick up that signal with some security team equipment, feed it into a frequency analyzer, find out if we’re moving faster or slower in time by comparing our readings as the plane passes overhead.”
“You’ve reached some conclusions?” Carrolson asked, sitting up on her cot.
“I think so,” Patricia said. ”But nothing’s definite without evidence. I’ve made some predictions and if they’re corroborated, then I might hypothesize.”
“Want to tell us about the predictions?” Takahashi asked, sitting beside Carrolson on the cot.
Patricia shrugged. ”Okay. The corridor could be dimpled. Each dimple is a fluctuation in the corridor’s space-time, marking some point of potential entry into another universe. The dimples should reflect a minor change in geometric constants like pi; maybe in physical constants as well. Wherever there’s a dimple—or a potential for a dimple—we may also find time fluctuations.”
“Does that mean the corridor is full of potential wells?”
“I think so. Only a few have been selected, as it were.” She looked up at the roof of the tent, trying to find a way to explain what she saw in her head. ”The dimples butt up against each other. There could be an infinite number of them. And a well opened in a dimple—potential or already tuned—could lead to another universe.”
Takahashi shook his head. ”This is getting entirely too weird.”
“Yeah,” Patricia said. ”I’d like to hold off on more explanations until Garry returns.”
“He’s coming down any time now. He entered the bore hole a few hours ago,” Carrolson said. She slapped her knee and stood up. ”Which reminds me. We’re having a dance tomorrow in the first chamber. All are invited. It’s not exactly Garry’s homecoming, but it will serve as such. We all need to let down our hair a little bit.”
“I’m a good dancer,” Wu said. ”Foxtrot, twist, swim.”
“Listen to him! You think we thirty years behind the times,” Chang said.
“Forty,” Wu corrected.
“And if we can peel Heineman away from his toy,” Carrolson said, “I’ll teach the old coot a few hot steps.”
Lanier dropped the paper on his desk in the science team compound office and reached for the com button. He hesitated before pressing it.
He thought he had figured out why Hoffman had given him the name.
“Ann,” he said. ”I want to see Rupert Takahashi in the compound as soon as possible.”
He hoped he was doing what Hoffman had hinted he should do: defusing the bomb the Stone had become ...
Lance Corporal Thomas Oldfield, twenty-four, had spent the last six months on the Stone, and he regarded them as the most exciting time of his life, though in fact there wasn’t much overt excitement. Most of the time he stood guard duty in the second chamber, just outside the tunnel to the first chamber.
He spent many of his hours alternately keeping an eye on the road, the zero bridge and near city, and examining the distant curve of the opposite side. He was usually accompanied by at least one colleague, but today a special detail had been ordered to accompany a scientist into the first chamber from the subway terminal in the city, and now he was left alone. He didn’t expect any trouble. In the entire time he had spent on the Stone, nothing untoward had happened. He had never even seen a boojum.
He didn’t believe they existed.
Oldfield whistled to himself as he stepped outside the booth and looked down the length of the bridge. Deserted. ”Fine day, Private,” he said briskly, saluting ceremoniously. ”Yes, sir. Fine day, sir. Always a fine day.” He wondered if technically speaking it had been the very same day since he had arrived. One long-drawn-out day, no intervening night. The weather changed now and then—rain, sometimes mist from the river. Did that serve to divide the time?
He inspected his Apple and tested it behind the booth on a cement block lined with foil ration packages. Each invisible tooth of light blew a foil package off the block. When he was relieved, he would line up the pierced foil packages for the next watch to test their weapons.
It had become a ritual.
He walked around the booth to the door, stopped and—He couldn’t begin to describe what he saw.
He didn’t even think about the Apple. He thought about reports and making a fool of himself.
It stood about seven feet high, skinny, narrow head like a sidewise board with two jutting and unblinking eyes regarding him calmly. Its two long arms emerged from the torso well below where the shoulders should have been and were covered with something similar to the foil ration packets. The legs were short and powerful looking.
Its skin was smooth and reflective—not shiny or slimy, but polished like old wood.
It acknowledged his presence with a polite nod.
He nodded back, and then, under the pressure of all his past training, raised the Apple and said, “Identify yourself.”
But by that time it was gone.
Oldfield had the impression it had entered the tunnel, but he couldn’t be sure.
His face reddened with anger and frustration. He had had his chance.
He had seen a boojum and he hadn’t buzzed it down so others could see it. He had followed the pattern of everyone who had ever claimed officially—or unofficially—to have seen one.
Oldfield had always thought he was made of sterner stuff.
He pounded his fist against the booth and punched the emergency button on the com.