Doomsday Game, page 8
‘Take it,’ said Kip. ‘Put it in the compound armoury until I do figure out what to do with it.’
The Major picked the rifle up with exceeding care. ‘I’ll brief my men,’ he said, ‘and get them ready for transfer as soon as possible. You can rely on me, sir.’
‘Of course,’ said Kip. ‘It goes without saying.’
The Major turned to Randall, who still sat hunched on his chair, his expression morose. ‘I could use your insight during the briefing, Mr Pimms.’ He nodded to the door. ‘If you’d care to join me?’
‘Sure.’ Randall stood slowly and carefully.
Kip put out a hand as the Major pulled the door open, as if something else had occurred to him at the last moment. ‘Actually, Major,’ he said, ‘there’s a matter I’d like to discuss with you, if I may.’
Randall looked between the two men from beneath a furrowed brow. ‘I’ll go ahead,’ he said, pulling the door shut after him. After another minute, Kip saw him through the window, stepping out onto the street, still zipping a hazmat suit up over his own clothes.
‘He’s having a hard time,’ said the Major, watching him go.
‘You’d think a man who’d seen a whole world die could cope with the death of just one individual,’ said Kip.
‘Unless you’ve known that individual for a particularly long time,’ the Major pointed out.
‘Of course.’ Kip shook his head. ‘According to Randall’s report, while he and Oskar were captured, Merritt claimed the Pathfinder Project was facing imminent closure. You were back home recently—did you hear anything?’
Howes sighed. ‘There are rumours—bar-room talk, but nothing remotely official.’
‘Nothing official, yet,’ suggested Kip.
‘Sir…there are rumours, and then there are rumours. In Washington, depending on who’s saying them, some can carry more weight than a presidential directive.’
‘So you think Merritt was telling the truth?’
‘I can’t see any reason not to.’
Kip felt as if he’d grown suddenly heavier and sat carefully on the edge of his desk. ‘I suppose I should have seen this coming.’
‘Sir,’ said Howes, ‘perhaps it’s for the best. Yesterday, I had to write a letter to the family of the man who died from being caught in the rain. And I’m almost certainly going to be writing more of those letters before this week is out. Maintaining a base on this alternate makes less and less sense now we have Terra Nova.’
‘It’s the Pathfinders I’m concerned about,’ said Kip. ‘We haven’t made any contingency plans regarding them whatsoever.’
Howes shrugged. ‘They’ll be evacuated to Terra Nova, along with everyone else when the time comes.’
‘I suppose.’ Somehow, Kip didn’t think it was going to be quite as easy as all that.
Howes cleared his throat. ‘You know, sir, you might not have to worry about them as much as you think.’
Kip frowned. ‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
Howes glanced towards the door, then stepped a little closer to the Director, as if sharing a confidence. ‘I’ve been aware that some of our supplies have been going missing for some years now,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can’t say for certain who’s been taking them, but I have a pretty good idea.’
Kip gazed at him through narrowed eyes. ‘Are you talking about the Pathfinders? How much, exactly?’
‘A lot.’ Howes paused. ‘Enough to set up in some remote part of Terra Nova, if they wanted to. Or even some other alternate entirely, if they had the coordinates.’
‘Well.’ Kip blinked owlishly.
‘They’re not the only ones,’ Howes continued. ‘I’ve heard of people charged with preparing Terra Nova for the mass evacuation disappearing into the woods over there, loaded up with heavy backpacks and never coming back.’
‘I see,’ said Kip. He’d been to Terra Nova a handful of times: it was an untrammelled wilderness of an alternate. A man could easily lose himself in vast forests that spread unchecked across an Earth that had never known men.
‘Now, back home they don’t like to talk about it too much,’ Major Howes continued. ‘But the fact is Washington doesn’t have nearly as great a hold over us as they did before we had Nova Terra. And now we have the means to find other viable—’
Just then the door opened. Borawicz, Kip’s aide-de-camp, stood there with a sheaf of papers under one arm regarding them both carefully. Kip felt a sudden flash of guilt and wondered if the man had been listening.
‘Sir.’ Borawicz nodded to Kip. ‘I just got handed the latest toxicity reports. Do you want to see them now, or…?’
‘Of course.’ Kip took the papers from Borawicz and he departed. Outside, he heard the sound of an engine drawing closer and glanced towards the window. A harried-looking Rozalia Ludke, wearing a hazmat suit, dismounted a motorbike before stepping up to the front entrance of Government House. He could hear her talking to Borawicz.
Kip stepped past Howes and into the corridor outside his office. Borawicz was arguing with the Pathfinder, telling her she couldn’t just walk in without an appointment.
‘It’s all right, Borawicz,’ said Kip, and the aide-de-camp fell silent. He nodded to Rozalia as she unzipped the hood of her hazmat suit, tucking it under one arm. ‘You look like you’re in an all-fired hurry. What is it?’
‘We need to talk,’ she said, her voice urgent. ‘Right now.’
Kip motioned to her to follow him into his office. Once inside, she nodded to Howes, who regarded her with apparent bemusement.
‘What is it, Roz?’
‘I saw something,’ she replied immediately, a wild look in her eyes. ‘Up north.’
‘Up north,’ Kip repeated. ‘When?’
‘This morning.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’d taken the bike out for a run and—’
Kip put up a hand. ‘It’s been raining heavily all morning, Miss Ludke. There’s a reason for the curfews and restrictions. It’s far too dangerous to be—’
Rozalia made a disparaging sound. ‘The number of post-apocalyptic alternates I’ve visited, and you think I don’t know how to look after myself? Listen to me—I saw Agent Greenbrooke. He’s still alive.’
‘Agent—’ Kip caught himself. ‘Did you say Greenbrooke?’
She nodded rapidly. ‘I got caught in the rain and figured I could take shelter at the fishing hut. When I got there, I saw them.’
A look passed between Kip and the Major, who stood behind and slightly to one side of the Pathfinder. ‘You got caught in the rain?’
Rozalia pushed both hands through her hair. ‘Look, I know this sounds nuts, but I saw Greenbrooke, alive, along with more than a dozen others. They were all ragged, all skinny like they’d been starving. And then I realised what was happening. We’re being invaded, Kip—from another alternate.’
Kip touched Rozalia’s elbow and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring look. ‘Wait one moment,’ he said.
Kip stepped back out of his office and approached Borawicz at his post. ‘Call the clinic,’ he told the aide-de-camp in a half-whisper, ‘and ask Doctor Rodriguez to come here. Tell him we may have another patient for him. Bring him into my office and do whatever he tells you.’
Borawicz’s eyes widened slightly. ‘Sir,’ he said, and reached for a telephone mounted on the wall just inside the front entrance of Government House.
Kip returned to his office, carefully closing the door after him. ‘How long were you out in that rain?’ he asked her.
‘I—’ she paused, her skin flushing. ‘What are you saying, that I was seeing things? I had my hazmat suit on!’
‘Did you actually speak to Greenbrooke?’ asked Howes.
‘No, I only saw them from a distance.’ She clenched her fists. ‘Kip, listen to me. I’m telling you the truth.’ She stabbed a finger towards the window. ‘If you don’t believe me, go see for yourself!’
‘I want you to understand I’m not doubting you,’ said Kip. ‘When you saw these men,’ asked Howes, ‘was it before or after it started raining?’
Something like fear spread across Rozalia’s face and she started backing away from the two men and towards the door. ‘Listen, Kip,’ she said, putting up both hands as if to ward them off, ‘whatever you’re thinking, it’s wrong. Look—maybe I could have found a better way to put it, but—’
She looked around, startled, as the door behind her banged open. Rodriguez stepped into the office, accompanied by Borawicz. There were dark circles under the doctor’s eyes; he’d spent most of the night dealing with patients who needed to be kept under constant sedation. The office felt suddenly much too small and crowded with all five of them in there.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Rozalia shouted. ‘I’m not delusional. I see weirder stuff pretty much every time I step on a transfer stage. I—hey. Hey!’
‘I’m sorry, Miss Ludke,’ said Rodriguez as he and Borawicz grabbed hold of her by either arm. ‘This is for your own safety.’
‘Let go of me!’ she shouted. She looked at Kip with pleading eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Kip, what are you—?’
Kip moved out of the way as the two men fought to manhandle her out through the door. She kicked out, knocking a standing lamp over, still struggling like a wildcat. ‘Fuck you, Mayer!’ she shouted at Kip. ‘You are so going to regret this!’
Rodriguez pressed something against her shoulder and within seconds Rozalia became limp, her head rolling forward and her voice becoming a half-coherent mumble.
Kip watched from the window of his office as Rozalia was half-carried away. He walked back over to his desk and sank into his chair.
‘Tell me I’ve done the right thing,’ he asked, looking at Howes.
‘You know,’ said Howes, ‘one of my men currently under Doctor Rodriguez’s care apparently got it into his head to try and swim to the Chilean mainland.’
Kip frowned. ‘But that’s—?’
‘All of three thousand miles away.’ Howes favoured him with a grim smile. ‘We were lucky we got a boat out to him before he drowned. He acted like setting out to swim to the nearest continent was the most reasonable thing in the world to do. You did the right thing, Director Mayer.’
Nadia
En route to Gamma Three
Upon arriving at the compound earlier that same morning, Nadia, along with Yuichi, Chloe and Jerry, got to work prepping for the mission to Gamma Three.
A robot had already been zapped over to that alternate: its job was to check the terrain was safe enough to transfer across. The Pathfinders meanwhile put on lightweight pressure suits with heavy air tanks and took turns checking each other to make sure everything that needed to be was sealed or plugged in the right way. Finally, at 0900 hours Alpha Zero time, they boarded a vacuum-adapted EV truck and drove it onto a transfer stage.
The stage powered up, and the transfer hangar, along with Alternate Alpha Zero, vanished. Nadia experienced a familiar rush of vertigo, there and gone in a flash, and then they were on Gamma Three.
Nadia looked out through the windscreen at a perfectly black sky above an expanse of broken tarmac. External pressure readouts showed there was vacuum outside the truck. Her gaze was drawn to a metal sign on top of a concrete post, lettered in Cyrillic. Thanks to her long-departed grandmother, Nadia knew just enough Russian to understand they were in a car park on the outskirts of what had once, apparently, been an industrial estate.
Compared to most post-apocalyptic alternates she’d visited, Gamma Three had clearly been through some spectacularly rough times. Pancaked cars and vans lay crumpled up against the side of a nearby building. Everything above the first floor of the building was gone, presumably torn away during the maelstrom caused by the sudden appearance of the wormhole.
Opposite the car park, a dome-shaped monitoring station with a rigid interior frame stood between concrete pillars that supported a concrete canopy extending out above the front entrance of a second building. The dome, which could be entered through a zippered outer airlock that gave it the appearance of a futuristic igloo, was several metres in diameter, easily big enough to fit all of them inside.
Nadia was about to ask Yuichi why the dome had been placed beneath a concrete canopy when she worked out the answer. Without any atmosphere to stop them, micro-meteorites could easily puncture the station’s thin outer shell, making it impossible to pressurise and, hence, useless for return expeditions. Placing it under cover reduced the chances of it being damaged.
‘Helmets on, everyone,’ said Nadia. ‘It’s quicker just to depressurise the truck than cycle us out of the airlock one after another.’
They put their helmets on, then waited as a hidden pump sucked the air out of the truck. ‘Comms check,’ Yuichi said over his radio. His voice sounded loud enough inside Nadia’s helmet to make her wince and she dialled down the sound levels. ‘Everyone receiving?’
Nadia grunted a reply. Chloe and Jerry both confirmed they could hear him and vice-versa.
‘Good,’ said Yuichi. ‘First one who makes a crack about this place having no atmosphere loses their oxygen privileges.’
Chloe made an irritated sound. ‘You tell that same joke every time.’
Jerry was first out of the truck. He unloaded a trolley stacked with equipment and got to work setting up a temporary return stage—a circle of miniaturised field-pillars spaced evenly around the truck. Nadia meanwhile lifted spare air-tanks onto a second trolley and wheeled it next to the monitoring station. Yuichi and Chloe worked together to attach the tanks to nozzles protruding from the dome. Within minutes the dome had been fully re-pressurised and proved to be lacking any holes whatsoever. They then took turns cycling through its single tiny airlock before taking their helmets off.
Chloe headed immediately for a heavy-looking insulated crate sitting in one corner of the dome. She opened it up and lifted out a rugged-looking laptop computer, placing it on one of several tin trestle tables left behind by the previous expedition. Once the computer had booted up, she tapped at its keyboard for several minutes.
‘I hate alternates like this,’ said Jerry, placing his helmet on the floor of the dome. He looked flushed and pink.
Yuichi chuckled. ‘Then you’re in the wrong business.’
‘NTPD’s, I mean,’ Jerry explained. ‘At least if there’s plague or an ice age or the animals start attacking everyone then some people have at least some chance of surviving.’ He shivered. ‘But there’s no chance of surviving what happened here—none whatsoever.’
‘Something’s weird,’ said Chloe, staring at the laptop screen, her expression intent. She erected a second table in the centre of the dome, then rummaged through a backpack she’d brought with her from the truck. She pulled out a rolled-up map and spread it out on the second table. When Nadia went over to see what it was, she saw detailed drawings of hills and roads. The top left of the map, however, showed nothing but a wide black curve entirely lacking in detail.
‘This,’ said Chloe, tapping a gloved finger on the map as the others surrounded her, ‘is the terrain immediately north of us and extending towards the EM storage facility we’re headed for.’ She moved her finger closer to the top of the map. ‘The facility itself is located here, on the outskirts of a settlement seventy-five kilometres south-west of the Tunguska forest. It lies directly between us and the wormhole itself.’
Jerry looked over her shoulder. ‘And where are we, exactly?’
‘Here.’ Chloe moved her finger again, until it was close to the bottom right corner of the map. ‘A road leads from here directly to the facility.’
Nadia raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not just transfer over to some point closer to the facility, so we don’t have to drive all that way?’
‘The terrain gets more and more impassable the closer you get to the edge of the wormhole,’ Yuichi explained. ‘It’s all torn up and covered in wreckage from when the wormhole first appeared. We spent most of the last expedition just trying to find a clear path to it.’
Jerry gave Chloe a concerned look. ‘You said there was something weird?’
‘The previous expedition placed monitoring equipment at different distances from the wormhole.’ She nodded at the computer she’d pulled from a crate. ‘The idea was to keep an eye on it and see if there were any changes over time.’
‘And?’
‘This map,’ she said, ‘shows the terrain surrounding the wormhole as it was when the last expedition was here. But when I asked the computer for updates, it gave me new measurements suggesting the nearest edge of the pit is forty kilometres from here, instead of seventy-five.’
Yuichi frowned. ‘So we made a mistake with our measurements. Or the computer’s futzed.’
‘Or,’ said Chloe, ‘the pit got bigger between now and when you were last here.’ She gave him a significant look. ‘Maybe a lot bigger.’
Jerry looked between them. ‘Is that possible?’
Yuichi shrugged. ‘Who knows? The only way to be sure is go and look at the damn thing.’
‘Now, the measurements could be wrong,’ Chloe conceded. ‘But the safest thing is to assume they’re correct.’ She looked around them all. ‘If they are correct, the wormhole’s already thirty metres wider than it was just a month ago, and more than thirty kilometres wider than when we first sent an expedition here. That means it’s been slowly getting bigger over time.’
Yuichi rubbed at his chin, clearly bemused. ‘Makes you wonder how big it’ll get.’
Jerry, Nadia noted, at least had the grace to look utterly horrified. ‘Just to clarify things,’ she asked Chloe, ‘how far has the edge of the pit grown in relation to the facility we’re here to find?’
Chloe sucked air through her teeth. ‘Honestly, judging by what the monitoring equipment is saying, I think there’s a pretty good chance the whole thing’s already gone tumbling into that hole.’
Jerry stared at her. ‘So our mission’s a wash before we even got started?’
‘Doesn’t mean we don’t still have to take a look,’ Nadia said levelly.
