Alternities (9 page)

Peter Robinson finished scanning the two-page summary of that morning’s submarine contact and pushed it back across the nineteenth-century mahogany table toward the Secretary of Defense.

“This will do for the FNS, but it’s not enough for me,” he said. “A simple answer, please, Gregory. Did we know that sub was sitting in New York harbor? And don’t bother to tell me that it wasn’t actually in the harbor. You know that’s how it’s going to read in the damned Times tomorrow.”

Gregory O’Neill looked pained. He had already endured a minor dressing-down in the Cabinet Room, before a hastily convened meeting of the National Security Council senior membership. Now they were alone in the President’s private meeting room, and it could only get worse.

“We knew it was in the area,” O’Neill said. “There’d been contacts off and on for the last two days. But no, we weren’t on it right at the moment she surfaced.”

“And after?”

“We tracked it for twenty-six minutes. She picked up the liner
Kestrel
and ran with her for a while, right under her keel a hundred feet down. Then she turned south and went deep and we lost her.”

Robinson leaned back in his chair and toyed with a pencil. “I’ve given the Navy fifteen billion dollars for Cyclops on the promise that I’d know when a Russian sub had its nose up our ass. What’s going on here, Gregory?”

“That’s about the busiest waterway we have, sir. I think the boys with the headphones did a good job to stay with it as well as they did.”

“Are you telling me that this is the best I can hope for?”

Conscious of past history, O’Neill hesitated. He had survived longer than either of Robinson’s previous Secretaries of Defense, but the common element in their departures had been an attempt to explain to the President why something he had asked for wasn’t possible.

Robinson read the hesitation and guessed the reason for it. “Shoot straight, Gregory. You’re not in that much trouble with me—yet.”

With a rueful nod, O’Neill complied. “Operationally, we’re right there. Communications are first-class. The Bell Labs people have really come through. It’s the front end that’s weak. We’re pushing the limits of this generation of sub detection technology. This isn’t news to you.”

“No.”

“The moored sonobuoys are sensitive but not reliable, not as reliable as something that hard to get to needs to be. The look-down rigs in the P-5 planes aren’t worth a damn in shallow water. We don’t have enough ASW frigates to patrol the whole coastline. On top of which their Horizon-class boats are quiet as a whisper at a hundred paces. So, yes—this is the best you can hope for. For now.”

Robinson mulled that for a moment. “What about our friends in Boston? Is there anything better in the pipeline?”

“Nothing that I’m aware of.”

Idly, Robinson drummed his fingers on the desk. “What’s the head count?”

“As of about two hours ago, fifteen subs within the two hundred-mile range of the Javelin batteries.”

“And if I gave the order to take them out, how many would you expect to survive?”

“Under present conditions—with no war alert?”

“Under present conditions. This very moment.”

There was something about the way Robinson had framed the question that disturbed O’Neill, but then the whole Javelin program had never sat well with him. It was hard to see the defensive value of fixed coastal missile batteries against a mobile submarine force, especially when the same money could have bought badly needed patrol boats.

The Javelin batteries had some PR value domestically, that was true. But the only tangible impact of their presence so far was to prompt the Soviet Naval Command to bring in extra deep-water boats on both coasts, presumably to target the batteries. Within ten minutes of the outbreak of war, the batteries would be gone.

The way O’Neill added it up, unless they were used preemptively—an idea which deserved no consideration, in light of the total strategic picture—the Javelins were next to worthless. It didn’t much matter how many subs with empty silos the Coast Guard sank. It didn’t matter to the Russians, and it didn’t matter to the targets of the inbound missiles.

But there was no point in arguing the point. The Coast Guard was delighted with their expanded role, the Navy was officially indifferent, and Javelin was the issue over which Robinson’s first Secretary had departed.

“Five,” he said curtly. “Minimum. Maybe as many as eight.”

“That’s not good enough.”

“I know. Not when we’re targeting boats with a hundred men in them and they’re targeting cities of a hundred thousand.”
What would you say if I told you we could get them all?
he wondered.

“So what are you doing to do about it?”

O’Neill bristled. “We’ve increased our capability five hundred percent since Cyclops deployment started—”

“It looks like another couple hundred percent is in order.”

“With all due respect, sir, you’re not making allowance for the difficulty—”

“I make no allowances for people who tell me they can hit a target and then fall short.”

“Rayedon Electronics made the promises, sir, not DOD. And I specifically cautioned—”

“Then pull the contract out from under them and give it to someone who can do the job,” Robinson said quietly.

“The learning curve on the technology the NRC is fronting to Rayedon—”

At that moment the telephone rang. On the second ring, O’Neill started toward it, but Robinson stopped him.

“Don’t. It’ll be for me.” Just as a playful child might have, Robinson backpedaled from the table in his chair, coasting on silent casters to the corner table where the telephone rested.

“Yes, Walt. How are you? Just a moment.” Robinson looked back toward O’Neill. “Push it, Gregory. Find an answer.” Then he swiveled a half-turn in his chair, turning his back on O’Neill, dismissing him.

“No, I wasn’t aware of that—”

The Tower Guard courier was waiting in his usual place, seated on the upholstered bench in the entry foyer. He came to his feet as Endicott came through the front door.

“Good afternoon, Senator.”

“Collecting already, Donovan?” Endicott asked lightly. “I thought I already paid you for this month. Well, come on in.”

It was an old joke, and the young courier answered it with a polite smile as he fell in behind Endicott. In the courier’s brown case was another Cleveland
Plain Dealer
, also bearing that day’s date. There the similarity ended.

This was the real paper, the one that described the world Endicott had left behind. This one was feisty, opinionated, defiantly liberal. This one was important enough to justify the trouble involved in getting it into his hands. And this one could not be casually discarded. Donovan would wait until Endicott was finished reading, then take it away again to wherever the Guard filed or destroyed outworld originals.

At first it had annoyed Endicott that Tackett refused to trust him with permanent custody of so much as a photograph clipped from the social pages. Who did the bastard think he was going to betray the secret to? The house was safe. Divorce was unaccountably difficult in this world, but Grace had effected an equivalent separation by staying behind in Cleveland. Endicott lived alone, and his one live-in servant had long since proven his discretion concerning matters easily as sensitive.

But his annoyance had fallen on paranoia-deafened ears, and Endicott had fallen into the habit of reading the papers back to back just to be rid of the courier’s presence as quickly as possible. Sometimes, just to twit the courier, he would leave them both lying on the table side-by-side when he was done, both tangibly real, and yet both completely contradictory.

Invariably, the courier would gather up that which he had brought with barely a glance at the other. It seemed sometimes to Endicott that the Guard selected for a lack of curiosity. Even its leadership was painfully parochial. Their world was real—the others were false, mutants, shadows.

Well, he had lived in one of those shadows and knew better. It was this world, with history books full of Presidents named Vandenberg and Stevenson, where Tennessee Williams never wrote
A Morning of Mourning
, where a Triple-Crown winning horse named Stalwart had turned the memory of Citation to a yes—but—it was this world that was hard to take seriously.

Donovan followed him into the study, politely closed the door behind them, and spun the dial on the pouch’s combination lock. “Here you go, sir,” he said a moment later, handling the paper over.

“You keep on hitting the flowerbeds, there’ll be no tip for you,” Endicott said with mock gruffness.

Donovan grinned; that was a new variation, and welcome for its novelty. “I don’t know how many more of them there’ll be,” he volunteered, retreating to his chair by the door. “The director is talking about shutting down operations in Red.”

“I’d be sorry to hear that,” Endicott said lightly, settling in an armchair which caught the afternoon sun from the sheer-draped windows.

He said nothing more, but the comment opened a second channel in his thoughts which remained busy until after Donovan was gone. Then he moved to the telephone and dialed a number from memory, a number the very possession of which denoted power.

“Peter, this is Walter. Yes. I won’t keep you long, Peter. I understand that the Guard is considering terminating its operation in Alternity Red. That’s right. Well, then Albert isn’t doing his job. I want you to know that I wouldn’t be pleased by that. I wouldn’t be pleased by that at all—”

Rayne Wallace stood at the pickup chute outside the Tower’s west entrance shivering in the wind. The temperature was just above freezing, a record cold for Boston on that date, thanks to a front which had moved down from Canada overnight, surprising everyone, Wallace most of all. When he last left home two days ago, it had been sixty degrees and Indian summer was in the air. Time to get the heavy coat out of the box.

Predictably, two smoke-belching flesh-haulers stopped before the company van appeared, one for the Dorchester route, the other headed for Arlington. They swept up most of those waiting with Wallace, leaving him feeling not only cold but abandoned. Wallace accepted it fatalistically. Riding the company van was considered a privilege, but sometimes the advantages were more perceived than real.

He advanced to curbside and stood there with arms crossed over his chest, looking hopefully down Marlborough toward the mouth of the garage. A few moments later, another of the waiting joined him there, a hook-nosed man with hair the color of his gray tweed coat.

“You run today?”

Wallace took a second glance at the man. Ops. Or Tech Transfer. Too old for the Guard, anyway. “Yeah.”

“Where to?”

“Red.”

The man shook his head. “It’s getting nasty over there.”

“I know,” Wallace said, looking back down the street. “From what I hear, we won’t be there long.”

“Yeah.” The man hesitated. “Listen, do you ever get over to Yellow?”

Wallace knew what was coming—he had heard it at least twenty times before. “I’ve got papers.”

“They have a perfume there that just drives me crazy. Fire and Ice—from Revlon. I guess it’s in all the stores. My wife got some from a friend about six months ago, and I tell you, friend, it made her feel like—you know how some women change when they put on a slinky dress or climb into a nice pair of heels? That’s what it was like—”

Amused, Wallace let the man chatter on, careful not to give him any of the standard cues that said he was interested. Officially, runners were sternly forbidden to bring any alternity-specific materials back through the gate or any unscreened materials from Home through the other way.

But enforcement was more a matter of honor than strict gate security, and there existed a minor black market in outworld commodities. From what little Wallace knew of it, perfumes from Yellow were a popular item, along with fine stone jewelry from White and pornography from Green. Wallace had also heard of an avid philatelist, supposedly a Tower executive, who had posted a standing offer of $40 for any post—1950 mint U.S, stamp from beyond the gate.

The bootleggers were tempted by the lure of pure profit, since in most alternities their stock could be purchased with “funny money”—the Guard’s perfectly authentic Home-minted counterfeit currency, issued freely to runners and moles for their expenses. Wallace was not tempted, especially not today. The security his family enjoyed because of his Guard appointment was too valuable to risk. He had enough cause for worn—already on account of the fiasco in Red.

But the hopeful buyer prattled on, his voice showing a touch of nervousness over Wallace’s continued silence. “The damn thing is that it was just a half-ounce bottle and it’s just about gone. I wrote to Revlon and they said they had a perfume by that name thirty years ago, but they stopped making it. Can you imagine that? The most intoxicating scent I’ve ever found on a woman and they stopped making it! I told them I’d pay a hundred dollars to get hold of some more—”

“Sorry,” Wallace said finally, as a blue-gray twelve-seat van nosed out of the Tower garage and headed their way. “I can’t help you.”

“Oh. I’d never ask anyone to bootleg some.” the man said, backpedaling quickly. “I was just talking to pass the time. About time the damn van came, eh? Cold enough today to turn a man soprano—”

“Katie-cat!” Wallace called as he opened the door to apartment 2E-16. He whistled. “Where’s my Katie-cat?” There were two new cats in the nexus within the last month, and Katie had taken to crawling around on the back of the couch and meowing endearingly.

But the answering voice was mature and edgy, not childlike and joyful. “She’s next door with Christa,” Ruthann said, appearing at the bedroom door. “Where have you been. Rayne?”

“Working.” He took in her rumpled hair and reddened eyes. “Where’ve
you
been? You look like hell, honey.” he said, scooting forward for a quick hug and a forehead kiss. “Be back in a minute.”

His daughter was seated crosslegged on the Watkins’ living room floor, intently coloring a tree bright purple while Christa attacked a sheet of paper with blunt-tipped scissors. Katie threw down the crayon when she saw him. “Daddy, I knew you would be home,” she said, running toward him.