Lanier stood in the broad, clear luminosity of the library, face twitching. He hadn’t actually sat down before one of the chromium teardrops for months. He didn’t wish to, even now.
The experience had not been physically unpleasant, but it seemed that all his present troubles had emerged from one of those seats—the one now festooned with inactive equipment.
Three Apple- and Uzi-armed marines stood uneasily behind him; Gerhardt had insisted they accompany Lanier, in case any of the Russian SPETSNAZ had this far infiltrated.
He walked between the seats. Like Patricia, he eschewed the cluttered seat. He stopped and turned around to survey the plaza, then sat down on the chair and flipped open the control box. At the press of his fingers, queries floating before him.
The library still addressed him in clear twentieth-first-century English. Perhaps it remembered him; perhaps it knew who they were, even why they were here.
“I need to learn twenty-first-century Russian,” he said. “Early twenty-first. Pre-Death. How long will that take?”
“Do you wish a reading knowledge, speaking knowledge, colloquial facility, or all of these?” the library narrator asked.
“I need speaking knowledge, colloquial, right away. I suppose the others as well, if it doesn’t take much more time.”
“You can be taught a command of spoken colloquial and technical Russian in two hours. An additional hour will be required to teach you to read and translate.”
“Then give me all of it,” he said.
“Very well. Please relax; you are a little tense. We begin first with the Cyrillic alphabet ... “ I am relaxing, he realized with some surprise. As the lessons developed, he slipped into the bath of knowledge with a deep mental sigh. I’m enjoying this.
He had never had a talent for languages. Nevertheless, within three hours, he spoke Russian like a native Muscovite.
Muscular, balding and florid-faced squadron commander Lieutenant Colonel Sergei Alekseivich Pletnev and his four crew disembarked the tethered heavy-lifter from the aft hatch and were guided into the first dock airlock. By the agreement negotiated several hours before, the remaining heavy-lifters maintained their positions outside the bore hole.
The Russians removed their suits and were escorted by seven Apple-bearing marines across the staging area and into the communications center. Kirchner greeted him—his words translated by Lieutenant Jaeger—and explained the procedure.
“The senior officer for your men in the Stone is in our second chamber. According to a message from your Major General Sos— Sos—”
“Sosnitsky,” Jaeger finished for him, translating.
“Sosnitsky has promoted an officer named Mirsky to lieutenant general. That means we have to negotiate passage across the first chamber; your comrades have us blocked off here. Our only alternative is to fly you across the axis, and I don’t think anyone relishes that thought.”
Pletnev listened to Lieutenant Jaeger, and nodded vigorously.
“I will speak to them again,” he said. ”This time directly.”
“You don’t have seniority over them. They may think you’re a traitor.”
“I can only try,” Pletnev said. ”Perhaps I go down alone, or with my crew, and try to convince them ... “
“They don’t seem anxious to be convinced. Your transmissions have been broadcast to the troops and they’ve continued fighting.”
“Yes, so?” Pletnev blustered, his face becoming even redder. “We try again.”
“We try again,” Kirchner agreed. ”First, we’ll let you transmit to the first chamber. Tell them everything; what our situation is here, what you plan on doing, what happened on Earth.”
“Yes, I am no idiot. That is what I will tell them.” He glared at Kirchner and then offered his hand again. ”You butchered us,” he said.
Kirchner hesitated, then shook the hand firmly. ”Your men fight bravely.”
“Show me where to go now.” Pickney suggested he follow her to a communications post. She pinned a wireless microphone to his lapel and tuned the equipment to a frequency used by the Russians.
Pletnev spoke with a Lieutenant Colonel I. S. Pogodin in the first chamber. The German translated most of the rapid exchange for Kirchner.
“—You cannot have forgotten me, Pogodin. I instructed your class in Novosibirsk.”
“Yes, indeed, you sound like Pletnev—“
“Lay down your fears, Pogodin! The battle is over. I need to cross your territory to speak with Colonel Mirsky—now Lieutenant General Mirsky. Will you allow—” He glanced at Kirchner.
“Yourself, one of your crew and an escort of four marines,” Kirchner said.
“Two of us and four of them to cross?”
There was no reply for a moment. ”We have no communication with the second chamber, or any other chamber. Our own Colonel Raksakov is dead. I am not senior officer in this chamber; there is Colonel Vielgorsky.”
“Then get together with Vielgorsky and make a decision, Pogodin.”
There was a few minutes’ wait until Vielgorsky came back with a reply.
“You may cross unarmed. I will want to speak with you in person.”
Pletnev cast a querying look at Kirchner. ”Unarmed? Is that acceptable?”
Kirchner nodded.
“We will come down, then—”
“By the zero elevator to the science team compound,” Kirchner instructed, and the German translated. ”We’ll need a truck released from the compound to cross the chamber.”
Pletnev passed on the requirements. Vielgorsky added that one of his men must accompany them in the truck to the second chamber. After a moment’s consideration, Kirchner agreed. He then spoke with Gerhardt and confirmed the plan.
“Lanier and two of my men will be on the opposite side of the bridge as soon as we reach an agreement with whoever’s in charge of the second chamber,” Gerhardt said. ”Lanier’s learned Russian. We think one of the Russian science team should go with him, too, if everyone’s agreeable.”
Pletnev pursed his lips and mumbled something the German could not understand. Then, in passable English, he asked, “Pliss, is there washroom? I have occupied suit for a week.”
Belozersky crouched beside Mirsky as the cease-fire instructions were relayed over the loudspeaker in the enemy camp.
“This could be very tricky,” Belozersky said, shaking his head. “We cannot be sure what sort of misinformation they will bring.”
Mirsky did not react. He listened intently, then passed orders through Garabedian for his battalion to heed the instructions. ”Plemev will be here in an hour,” he said as he took a cigarette offered by Garabedian. ”We can question him to our heart’s content. If what he says is indeed true, then we decide.”
“There must be no retreat from principles,” Belozersky grimly.
“Who suggested retreat from anything?” Mirsky countered.
He disliked the little martinet with his tight-pressed lips and nervous gestures.
“If Pletnev tells the truth,” Belozersky pursued, “then we must establish a stronghold of the revolution right here, on the Potato.”
“They call it the Stone,” Garabedian said.
“The Potato,” Belozersky repeated, glaring at him.
“No one disputes you,” Mirsky said with perhaps too much patience.
“We must be equal partners in this venture.”
“They have all the women,” Mirsky observed. Belozersky scrutinized him as if he had made a bad joke.
“Yes? Comrade General, I do not see—”
“We cannot go home—if Pletnev is correct,” Mirsky said. “To carry on the ideals of the revolution, there must be ... women. That seems obvious.”
Belozersky had nothing to say to this.
“Perhaps on our science team ...” Garabedian suggested.
“Most of them are men,” Mirsky observed. ”Remember the briefings? Very prestigious assignment, the Potato. Senior academicians and their assistants only. Maybe fifteen women. Spread among seven hundred soldiers.” He laughed and squashed the quickly smoked cigarette butt against the concrete foundation.
Belozersky sat with his back against the concrete and stared down at his clasped hands where they rested on drawn-up knees. ”Not everything in Russia has been destroyed,” he murmured. ”There redoubts, fortresses. You have heard of these, Comrade General, surely.”
“They reveal nothing to those who do not need to know,” Mirsky said. “Rumors don’t equal reality.”
“But at Podlipki— the secret hangars, the helicopters and airplanes waiting ... surely the Party Secretary, the Defense Council—”
“Perhaps,” Mirsky said, more to shut the man up than to agree.
“They will communicate with us, then.” Belozersky looked up, eyes bright. ”We must have our own outside channel of communication. If we negotiate, we must demand—”
“I have thought of that already,” Mirsky said. ”Now please be quiet. I have a lot of thinking to do before Pletnev arrives.”
The truck rolled past the lines of foxholes and the barbed wire fences scavenged from the science compound. Russians in incongruous arctic camouflage peered at them, some still wearing their spacesuit helmets.
The suits themselves had long since been discarded—they littered the drop zones in the first chamber, along with the para-sails and bodies of unlucky soldiers.
“Never such an action as this,” Pletnev said flatly. “Never.”
Major Annenkovskye—representative of the Russians in the first chamber—stared sadly through the truck windows and ran his hands through brick-red hair. ”I am grateful to be alive,” he said.
Lieutenant Rudolph Jaeger translated for the two marine escorts in a low voice. The truck passed through the checkpoint by its demolished guardhouse and headed north.
At the northern end of the zero bridge, Lanier glanced at his watch: 1400 hours. The marines nodded to each other and they began crossing on foot, as agreed.
“I just hope those insurgents got the word,” the young sergeant said, looking back at Alexandria.
Through cameras in the first chamber bore-hole opening, Kirchner monitored the progress of the truck on the same console that had conveyed photos of Earth’s death just thirty hours before. Behind him, Link jerked up in her seat and quickly tuned in a signal.
“Incoming OTV,’ advised one of the soldiers on watch in the exterior dimple. ”Not a Russian. One of ours.”
Link gestured with one hand, the other punching buttons in rapid succession. ”Captain Kirchner, we have an OTV from Station Sixteen. It’s damaged and couldn’t go to lunar settlement ... Sir, they say they have Judith Hoffman on board.”
Kirchner swiveled in his chair. ”I’m not surprised,” he said laconically. ”Bring ‘em in. Miss Pickney, where did I leave my jacket?”