Gerhardt and Lanier stood near several squads of soldiers guarding the entrance to the zero elevator. Gerhardt held up the field glasses. ”Little specks,” he said. ”Mosquitos. Most of them are coming down in this chamber. But quite a few appear to be crossing over.” He handed the glasses to Lanier.
“Into the second chamber.” The cool wind sliding down from the cap played with Lanier’s hair. Lanier kept track of two of the specks in the glasses, following their contrails along the axis. He lowered the glasses to inspect the defenses around the two science team compounds.
“Yeah. Expecting us to have a bigger force here, which we do.” He raised his glasses again and saw broader white dots at a much lower angle, near the southern cap. ”Parachutes,” Lanier said. ”Some are in the atmosphere now.”
“Jesus, what an effort,” Gerhardt said in admiration. He picked up his radio. ”Zero south tunnels, forces coming your way. Bore hole, keep your eyes open.”
Lanier could not concentrate. He kept thinking of the diversion; had they set fire to the world just to gain an advantage here? Hoping they could control the results with negotiation, keeping the casualties close to those of the Little Death? He suddenly grew sick of all the thousands of artificial modes of behavior conjured up by representatives of government, by military men, by patriots and traitors and fighters. He wanted to crawl away and sleep.
He could not keep from seeing in his imagination an image of Hoffman, on the road to Vandenberg in her limousine, hoping to escape the madness, to leave the dying aircraft and bail out—to come here, where the madness had spread, and not making it anyway; facing the blasts over Vandenberg.
“Do they know?” he asked.
“Know what?” Gerhardt said.
“Do the Russians know the Death has come?”
Gerhardt, who had never been in the library and had had none of Lanier’s forewarning, frowned at him. ”What are you asking, Garry?”
Lanier pointed up. ”They’re about to engage us in battle, but do they know neither of us have supreme commanders anymore?”
“Some leadership will survive,” Gerhardt said.
“Oliver, does it matter?”
“You’re goddamn fucking right it matters!” Gerhardt screamed at him, spittle beading on his chin. He wiped it away with the sleeve of his overalls, shaking his head and turning away, face reddening. “Don’t go under now, Garry. We need everybody we can get.”
“I’m going to fight,” Lanier said.
“It won’t be the first time, will it?” Gerhardt asked, his voice strained and harsh.
“On the ground, yes.” Modes of behavior. No rest, no end, even after doomsday. ”Where’s my weapon?”
They had made it through the second bore hole, despite sporadic fire from troops stationed there. More had died, but not many...
Would he ever stop falling?
Mirsky spun in his path to survey the city He had never seen such a city —as his thrusters pushed him a hundred meters away from the bore hole, then two hundred, then three. He spotted the landmark he was after—the zero bridge spanning the chamber-circling river—and pushed himself away from the Potato’s axis, toward the thin glow of the plasma tube.
Other soldiers had already fallen free through the atmosphere barrier and the plasma tube. Their informant had assured them passage was safe, as long as they did not linger—but Mirsky trusted only experience and survival. He could not see whether his comrades were alive or dead when he saw them at all, they were too tiny to make out details. They were dwarfed—how could a few hundred soldiers command an object as big as a republic?
The perspective changed very slowly as he fell away from the axis.
He felt no wonder whatsoever at how selfish his emotions were now, and how much hate filled him. Mirsky had felt these emotions many times before, during training or the horrid endurance tests. These were the emotions of soldiers in battle, hard and bitter, touched with fear but mostly with overwhelming self-interest.
He could not have cared less about the state, the Motherland, the revolution. There was no shame in him.
Only falling. Spiraling outward as the great cylinder turned around him. He kept place with the landmarks using his thrusters.
Silence, not even the sound of wind yet. He prepared his air-sled, fanning out and locking its segments.
Then he noticed he was drifting some degrees away from the bridge.
He corrected with another thruster burst. There was so little sensation he might go mad and yet he had been falling for only a minute or so, very slowly...
He felt—perhaps only in his mind—a tingle and knew he was passing through the plasma tube. Below that, but only by a few hundred meters, lay the upper limits of the atmosphere, beyond the restraining barrier.
He braced himself behind the sled and strapped his arms and legs to the concave inner surface. Whatever angle he first brushed the atmosphere, the sled would flip him around to the shape of least resistance. He would plummet through the upper air until he could hear the whistle of its passage, then he would kick free of the sled and begin his fifteen- or sixteen-kilometer dive, releasing the chute only two or three kilometers from the floor of the chamber. He would be lighter, falling; the impact would not be very hard at all.
Another soldier came close enough to wave—one he didn’t recognize, with the insignia of Sixth Battalion, from Rolls-Royce.
Mirsky waved back and motioned for him to prepare his sled. The soldier held it up—folded, in tatters from a projectile impact—and shrugged, flipping it aside. They were to maintain radio silence, but the soldier used his rockets to approach close enough that they could read lips.
—Can I survive without?
—I don’t know. Tuck up into a ball and present your back to the air ... if you can.
That was difficult to convey with lip movements, so Mirsky mimed by folded himself up as best he could behind the shield, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms around him.
The soldier nodded and signaled okay with his thumb and index finger.
They drifted apart—the soldier falling more slowly because of his thrust toward Mirsky. Mirsky watched the soldier thrust again to move away from the cap surface, toward which he was drifting, and then busied himself preparing for the entry.
He checked his position with relation to the bridge. One more adjustment with the thrusters. He could feel some pressure now against the sled. A vibration, weak nudges.
He made one more thrust and then unfastened and discarded the rocket pack. Where it fell he did not care, so long as it didn’t land on him.
For an instant, through the preparations and the near-fury of anticipation, he looked again at the city and wondered what the Potato’s secret actually was. Why were they fighting for it?
What could it bring them?
How would the West react, facing the theft of its greatest prize?
Or the attempt (he had heard rumors) to take out its orbital platforms and spy satellites?
How would Russia react in the same circumstances?
He shuddered.
The sled jerked and whirled around. He blacked out for a moment, then came awake to a bone-crushing slam and a high-pitched, wavering scream.
Coming down.
The sled swung around again and bucked but was now committed to one orientation. He was pressed against its inner surface, padded elbows and knees braced, hoping he had broken no bones. It had been more violent than the falls from three meters in training. He tasted blood in his mouth. He had bitten almost through his inner cheek—he could flap the tissue with his tongue. He closed his eyes against the pain—(And gathered up his chute in the golden grassy field, smiling at the burning sun, looking for his comrades, shielding his eyes to spot the distant specks of the transport plane) —And fell. He hastily unbuckled from the sled. The air roared around him. Then he grasped the straps loosely in his hands.
He flipped the sled over and it was torn from his fingers.
Made it! From here on it was a simple freefall and parachute exercise.
He tucked to roll, and spread his arms and legs to flatten out and stabilize. The bridge was still only a line of white over the blue-black river. Was it really the right bridge really the zero bridge?
Yet he could spot the tiny speck of a guard shack nearby and make out lines of defense and sandbag emplacements.
And he couldn’t have fallen so far wrong as to traverse a third of the chamber’s area ... He was right on, too close in fact—he would have to drift away some.
The wind hummed mildly past his helmet now. He checked his laser and Kalashnikov and made quick surveys of his equipment belt.
Chute release had to be gauged purely by eye. There was no sense counting from the axis, since everyone would fall at a different rate.
He held out his thumb. It covered the length of the bridge.
He pulled the rip cord and the chute leaped away, billowed, collapsed and billowed again, spreading wide in the shape of a package of small sausages.
Mirsky jerked and dangled and gathered his guidelines in both hands, pulling one, then the other, spilling a little air from one side of the chute to move in one direction, then from the other side.
He saw with relief that he would land some five kilometers from the objective. Unless they had far more men than reported—and radar-aimed automatic guns within the chambers, which their informant had told them they did not—they would probably not bring him down.
He saw others coming down beside him and above him, only a few below.
In all, hundreds of them.
Mirsky tried to hold back tears and could not.