So I suppose you want to get away from it all. Feel like it’s very remote.
—Yes.
Go chasing down the corridor after her. Why?
—To save my goddamn soul, that’s why.
You haven’t done badly.
—The Earth is in ruins, the Stone is half-occupied by surly Russians, and I’ve lost the one person I was specifically told to protect.
But the Stone is still here, and the situation seems to be stabilizing —Belozersky. Yazykov. Vielgorsky. OM-liners, hard-liners. Yes. They’re trouble, and shouldn’t you stick around to blunt their particular axes? You’ll leave Hoffman with all the problems.
—She’ll let me go because she knows I’m at the end of my rope. I can’t take any more. I’m of no use to her or the Stone ... except to go find Patricia.
Lanier opened his eyes and looked at his wristwatch: 0750 hours.
He felt paralyzed. The voices continued in his head, back and forth.
His mind was trying to cope with the intolerable—and to find his place in a new situation.
He kept thinking of Earth, of people—friends, co-worker’s, perhaps the very people he had met a few weeks before—crawling through the rubble.
Very likely, there was not a single person alive on Earth whom he knew personally. That was good statistics but a lousy thought, lousy psychology. Most of his contacts (his people) had lived in cities or worked in military centers.
One exception was Robert Tyheimer. A submarine commander, he had been married to Lanier’s sister, who had died of a stroke two years before Lanier was assigned to the Stone.
They hadn’t talked since a year after her death. Tyheimer might still be alive, under the ice, waiting. If he hadn’t already contributed to the general destruction, then Tyheimer would guard his warheads and wait ... and wait ... for the next exchange. For the final blows.
“I hate you,” Lanier said out loud, eyes closed again. He didn’t even know whom he meant. Three psychiatrists gathered in his head and discoursed; one, a cliche Freudian, always twisted the worst and most sordid interpretation out of his every fleeting glimmer of thought.
Yes ... and your mother ... and what did you say then? Meant yourself, didn’t you?
Another sat quietly, smiling, letting him hang himself in his own ropy confusions.
The third nodded and recommended work therapy. The third resembled his father.
He turned over in the bed and opened his eyes again. No sleep, no rest. How long would it take for the people on the Stone to crack? How many, and how seriously? Who would contend with the problem, himself or Hoffman?
But the decision had already been made. He had given Hoffman the grand tour—and had encountered Mirsky in the third chamber library, sitting before a teardrop. The Russian lieutenant general had been accompanied by three bodyguards, even though the library was otherwise empty. He had appeared exhausted, and ignored them.
Showing Hoffman to a seat some distance away from the Russians, Lanier had taught her how to use the facilities. He had passed the keys to her, and she had welcomed them.
He sat up and flipped on the intercom. Blakely was back at her desk and still in charge of the central switchboard.
“I can’t sleep,” he said. ”What’s Heineman’s schedule now?”
“He’s awake, if that’s what you want to know,” she said.
“Fine. And in the seventh chamber, no doubt.”
“No, schedule here says staging area in the southern bore hole.”
“Call him, please.”
“Will do.”
“Tell him I want to leave tomorrow, early, eight hundred hours.”
“Yessir.”
The crew of the V/STOL had already been chosen: himself, Heineman, Carrolson—perhaps the only one Hoffman would have difficulty doing without—and Karen Farley. The mission was simple and direct: they would travel a maximum of one million kilometers down the corridor, assuming it extended that far, stopping at several points along the way and descending to the floor. Who knew what the nature of the corridor would be that far north? They would then return, with or without Patricia or any evidence of her whereabouts.
There were a lot of uncertainties, but they were of a type Lanier welcomed. He had been dealing with horrors for so long that a sleek, cleanly dangerous adventure seemed like heaven.
He dressed and gathered his personal kit into a little black bag.
Toothbrush, razor, change of underwear, slate with package of memory blocks.
Toothbrush.
Lanier started to laugh. The laughter seemed forced, but it gathered in waves until he was helpless. He lay on the bunk and doubled up, his face knotting painfully. Finally he stopped, gasping, and then thought of the tiny lavato on the aircraft, with its tiny shower. He thought of taking a crap as they rode the singularity and the laughter broke out anew.
Minutes passed before he could control it, and then he sat up straight on the edge of the bunk, taking deep breaths and rubbing his sore jaw and cheek muscles. ”God in heaven,” he sighed and stuffed the toothbrush into the little black bag.
The dead Soviet trooper floated twenty meters from the research scaffold in the seventh chamber bore hole. How he had gotten so far was anybody’s guess. He did not seem to have been wounded; perhaps he had feared the fall and stayed near the axis until his air gave out.
He was slowly drifting back down the bore hole, toward the sixth chamber. There wasn’t enough time to snag him and bring him down. He cast a tangible gloom over the farewells. He seemed to watch with great interest, his pale face visible behind the faceplate, eyes wide.
Hoffman hugged Lanier, Carrolson and then Farley, their bulky suits interfering with the intent if not the emotion.
Heineman was already aboard the V/STOL, which was attached remora-like to the tuberider.
They stood around the blunt end of the singularity for a moment, silent, and Hoffman said, “Garry, this isn’t a wild goose chase. You know that. We need that little Chicana. Whoever took her away from us may have known how much we need her. Of course, I’m suspicious by nature. At any rate, you folks are on a very important mission. Godspeed.”
Farley turned toward Hoffman. ”We reached a decision last night—Hna Ling and the rest of us, all the Chinese. It wasn’t to he announced until this evening, but nobody will object if I tell you now. We are with the Western bloc. The Soviet science team made some overtures, but we decided to support you. I think the Soviet scientists wish they could follow our lead. But I just wanted you to know, before we left.”
“Thank you,” Hoffman said, gripping Farley’s glove.
“We’ll be curious. No need to tell you that. Learn all you can. There’s a few hundred or more of us who wish we could go along.”
“That’s why I volunteered first,” Carrolson said.
“Time’s a-wastin’,” Heineman drawled. ”All aboard.”
“Shut up and let us be sentimental,” Carrolson scolded him.
“Everything will be fine,” Hoffman told Lanier as they hugged again and held each other back to peer through faceplates.
“Let’s go,” Lanier said. They hooked their safety lines to a long pole stretched out near the aircraft and kicked away one by one to enter the hatch. Two people fit into the airlock; they cycled twice, Lanier waiting until last. With the hatch sealed and air pressure restored, he removed his suit and folded it into the compartment beneath the airlock controls.
With only four passengers, the aircraft interior was spacious.
The forward part of the cabin was filled with boxes of scientific equipment; Carrolson and Farley checked them out before strapping in.
Lanier joined Heineman in the cockpit.
“All fuel and oxygen cables clear,” Heineman said, checking the instruments. ”I’ve run the diagnostics on the tuberider. Everything’s go.”
He looked expectantly at Lanier.
“Then go,” Lanier said.
Heineman swung out the pylon which held the tuberider controls and locked it before him. ”Hang on,’ he said. Then, over the intercom, “Ladies, barf bags are in the pouches of the seat in front of you. Not suggesting, you understand.”
He depressed the clamp controls. Slowly, smoothly, the tuberider began to slide along the slender silver pipe of the singularity. ”A little more,” he said: Lanier felt himself pressed back into his seat.
“And a little more still.”
They were heavy now, lying on their backs in a cockpit and cabin suddenly upended. ”Last bit,” Heineman said, and they effectively weighed half again more than they would have on Earth. ”There’s a rope ladder I’ll unroll down the aisle, just in case anybody has to go to the bathroom.” He grinned at Lanier. ”I don’t recommend the lavatory in these conditions. We didn’t get enough specs to design for comfort. I’ll let up on the clamps if anyone gets desperate.”
“Count on it,” Carrolson said from the cabin.
Lanier watched the corridor moving slowly, majestically around them.
Through the windscreen, the floor of the corridor merged in the distance with the pearly central glow of the plasma tube ... stretching perhaps forever.
“The ultimate escape, isn’t it?” Heineman asked, as if reading his thoughts. ”Makes me feel young again.”