Farside (35 page)

PRISONER

Josie Rivera was watching a comedy video on the main screen of her console. She was taking her assigned turn as flight control monitor, sitting alone in Farside’s cramped control center. Just two workstations, and the one next to Josie’s was unoccupied and dark.

Nothing coming in and nothing going out, Josie thought, bored almost to tears. We should just shut down the center altogether, there’s no reason to keep it manned. The Ulcer would have a fit, though. Everybody’s going through the motions, pretending everything’s normal, pretending there’s no threat, no danger.

The comedy she was watching was inane, a trio of grown men acting like irresponsible idiots. But she tried to concentrate on their dim-witted antics, trying to keep the fear at bay. The facility is infested with nanomachines, she knew. Somewhere, somehow, invisibly small monsters have invaded us, mindless, merciless things the size of viruses are chewing away at us and they won’t stop until we’re all dead, they’ll keep chewing away at us and kill everybody, each and every one of us, they’re going to kill me and—

Stop it! she screamed silently, pounding both fists on the console’s desktop. Stop it. Nobody’s chewing on you. Grant and Dr. Cardenas will find out what’s wrong and fix it.

Yeah, she told herself. You hope.

The phone on the console buzzed, making her twitch with surprise.

“Answer,” Josie said.

Nate Oberman’s lantern-jawed face appeared on the phone screen, a crafty smile on his thin lips.

Without preamble he asked, “How’d you like to make a couple thousand smackers … for doing nothing?”

*   *   *

“Unless what?” McClintock repeated.

Grant hunched forward slightly in his chair. “Mrs. Halleck was all stewed up about getting away from Farside.”

“Anita Halleck?” Edith asked. “She just came in here on the same flight with me.”

“She wasn’t happy about coming back here,” Grant said, “and she sure worked up a sweat trying to get out.”

McClintock nodded slowly. “Anita did seem unusually emotional about it. Not her normal cool self, not at all.”

“Because she knows we’re being attacked by nanos,” Grant said.

“We all know that,” Uhlrich snapped.

“But she knows better than any of us,” said Grant, “because she’s the one who brought the nanos here.”

“Anita?” McClintock said.

“Who else?”

Edith asked, “But why would Mrs. Halleck do such a thing?”

“I don’t know why,” Grant said, “but she’s done it.”

“How do you get her to admit it?” Cardenas wondered.

With a taut smile, Grant replied, “Simple. Just keep her here. She knows what the nanos are capable of. All we have to do is keep her here with the rest of us. Make her face the same danger she’s put us in. Make her sweat it out. Wait ’til she cracks.”

McClintock worried, “What if she doesn’t crack until it’s too late, until this place is collapsing around our ears?”

“It’ll be a race,” Grant admitted. “A game of chicken.”

Uhlrich shook his head. “And if you’re wrong, Mr. Simpson? What if she’s not responsible?”

“She is,” Grant answered firmly. “She’s got to be.”

Uhlrich looked unconvinced.

Turning to Cardenas, Grant said, “Let’s go down to her quarters and brace her. Tell her we know she’s the one who brought in the gobblers and she’s going to be killed by them along with the rest of us unless she tells us exactly what the nanos are and how we can kill them.”

“And what if she doesn’t care?” Cardenas argued. “What if she’s insane? Suicidal?”

McClintock broke into a mirthless chuckle. “Anita Halleck is not suicidal, I can assure you. Homicidal, perhaps. But definitely not suicidal.”

Grant pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “Come on, Kris. Let’s put it to her.”

*   *   *

“I’m not leaving,” Trudy said, sitting tensely on the sofa.

Halleck eyed her coolly. “You’d rather stay here and be killed?”

Oberman was already at the door. Halleck was standing between the desk and the bed, where her travelbag still rested. Trudy had watched, nearly stunned with amazement, as Nate had talked Josie Rivera into turning her back and allowing them to take one of the hoppers without reporting it to Professor Uhlrich or even to Carter McClintock.

“We’d better get going before Josie loses her nerve,” Oberman said.

“What you’re doing is wrong,” said Trudy, her fists clenched on her lap.

“What I’m doing,” Halleck said firmly, “is saving our lives. I have no intention of sitting here and letting the nanomachines kill me.”

“But—”

“No buts! If you come with me you’ll be safe. If you stay here you’ll die.”

“Along with a hundred others,” Trudy said. But she wasn’t thinking of the others. Only of Grant.

“There’s nothing you can do to save them,” Halleck insisted. “If you stay here you’ll die with them.”

Looking up at Halleck’s grimly determined face, Trudy asked, “How can you be so sure we’ll be killed? Dr. Cardenas is trying—”

“By the time Cardenas figures out what she’s up against, it’ll be too late,” Halleck said. “The nanos are spreading, just as they were programmed to do.”

“Just as…?” Trudy jumped to her feet. “You know about them!”

“I know what they can do,” Halleck admitted.

“You’ve got to tell Dr. Cardenas! Grant and the others. You can’t run away and leave them here to die!”

“I can and I will,” said Halleck. “And you’re coming with me.”

“No…”

“Oberman,” Halleck commanded, “pick her up and carry her.”

Looking surprised, Oberman hesitated.

“Now!” Halleck shouted.

Oberman crossed over to the sofa. “C’mon, Dr. Yost,” he muttered. “Don’t make this tougher than it needs to be.”

Trudy could feel her knees trembling. “But why?” she asked Halleck. “Why have you done this? Why do I have to come with you?”

A bleak smile curved Halleck’s lips. “As long as you’re with us you won’t be able to warn Uhlrich or Carter that we’re leaving. You won’t be able to tell them that the woman in the control center has been bribed to let us go.”

Trudy looked from Halleck’s coldly determined face to Oberman’s flinty expression. I can’t fight them both, she thought. What good would it do to try?

Her shoulders slumping, Trudy said, “All right, I’ll go with you.”

“Wise decision,” said Halleck.

But as she stepped out into the corridor, with Halleck in front of her and Oberman behind, Trudy wondered how she might get word to Grant. I’ve got to warn him! That one thought flashed through her mind over and over, like an old-fashioned neon sign blinking, glaring in her eyes.

FLIGHT

With Kris Cardenas beside him, Grant rapped on the door to Anita Halleck’s quarters. No response. He pounded harder.

“She’s not there,” Cardenas said.

Grant tried the door. It wasn’t locked. Sliding it back, he saw that indeed Halleck had gone.

“Where the hell could she be?” he wondered.

“Cafeteria, maybe,” said Cardenas.

With a curt nod, Grant headed for the cafeteria, Cardenas half a step behind him. He flicked open his pocketphone, but a brief scan through the surveillance cameras showed no trace of Halleck.

There were nearly a dozen people in the cafeteria, looking halfway between bored and scared. But no Anita Halleck. Grant stepped over to where Harvey Henderson was chatting with a couple of other technicians, his place at the table littered with empty dishes and crumbs.

“Harvey, have you seen Mrs. Halleck in here?”

Henderson shook his head. “Nope.”

“How long have you been here?”

With a shrug, Henderson replied, “Nearly an hour. Not much else to do … except wait for the nanobugs to eat through all the airlocks.”

The woman on Henderson’s left grumbled, “You’re such an optimist, Harvey.”

Turning to Cardenas, Grant asked, “Where the hell could she be?”

Cardenas looked just as puzzled as Grant felt.

“This place is too small for her to hide out for long,” Grant said. “Come on, let’s get over to the surveillance center. We can run through what the cameras have picked up over the past few hours.”

Once they left the cafeteria, Grant broke into a trot, jogging along the corridor toward the surveillance center. Cardenas kept pace with him, puffing slightly.

The surveillance center always reminded Grant of an insect’s eye. One lone technician sat in a padded chair, surrounded by screens that displayed all the public spaces in the Farside facility: labs, offices, corridors, the cafeteria, the flight control center. Grant saw Josie Rivera at flight control, idly watching a video.

Grant recognized the man on duty: Sherry Phillips.

“Hi, Grant,” Phillips said, looking surprised as he turned in his chair. “What are you doing here? Come to keep me company?”

“Have you seen Mrs. Halleck on any of the screens?”

Phillips smiled amiably. “To tell you the truth, buddy, I haven’t been watching that closely. Nothing’s going on. Everybody’s just moping around, wondering where the damned bugs’ll hit next.”

“Play back the last half hour on all the corridor cameras,” Grant said.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“No time to explain, Sherry. Just show me the playbacks. And speed ’em up.”

Grumbling a little, Phillips tapped on his central keyboard and a dozen screens showed fast-forward views of Farside’s corridors. People scampered along the cheerless passageways like marionettes on amphetamines.

“There!” Cardenas pointed. “That’s her.”

“Real time,” Grant told Phillips. The view slowed to normal and Grant saw Halleck and the two others making their way up the central corridor.

“What’s Trudy doing with her?” Grant wondered aloud.

“She doesn’t look very happy,” said Cardenas.

“And Nate Oberman,” Grant added. “Where could they be heading?”

In less than a minute the display screen showed the three of them entering the locker area by the main airlock.

“They’re going to suit up!” Grant said.

He glanced at his wristwatch, then checked the time back on the screen. Twenty minutes ago. They went into the lockers twenty minutes ago.

Grabbing Cardenas by the wrist, he said, “Come on! If we hurry we can catch them before they’ve finished suiting up.”

Running alongside him, Cardenas asked, “Why didn’t you see them when you scanned the surveillance views in your phone?”

“Because Nate must’ve disabled the camera in the locker area,” Grant replied without breaking stride.

“But why are they getting into suits? Where are they going?”

“Away from here,” Grant snapped. “Halleck wants to get away before the nanos wipe out this place.”

“But where’s she going? Selene won’t take her.”

“She’s got something in mind.” Why is she taking Trudy? Grant asked himself. Is Trudy working for Halleck? Is she part of this disaster? No, she couldn’t be. Not Trudy. She wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.

And Grant realized that whether Trudy was helping Halleck or not, he was glad that she was getting away from Farside and the destructive nanomachines.

But he knew that he had to bring her back. And Halleck along with her.

*   *   *

Standing engulfed in a cumbersome space suit, Halleck complained to Oberman, “Can’t you go any faster?”

“Gotta check out the suits,” Oberman replied as he plugged the life-support backpack into the torso of Trudy’s suit. “You don’t want to spring any leaks out in the vacuum.”

Trudy stood mutely while Oberman finished checking her suit. We’re going outside, she said to herself for the hundredth time. Whether I want to or not, we’re going outside.

Holding her bubble helmet in her trembling gloved hands, Trudy glanced up at the wrecked surveillance camera dangling from the stone ceiling. Oberman had ripped it loose from its mounting and smashed its lens.

“Nobody’ll see us in here,” he had assured Halleck.

Trudy hoped that Grant would notice the camera’s failure and deduce what Halleck was up to.

Hurry up, Grant, she urged silently. Stop her before she makes me go outside.

As soon as he satisfied himself that Trudy’s suit was functional, Oberman began tugging on the leggings of his own suit.

“And who checks you out?” Trudy asked softly.

Sitting on the bench as he pulled on his boots, Oberman grinned at her. “You do, honey. It’s not hard to do. Just make sure all the connector lights show green. That’s all there is to it.”

“Then why does it take so damnably long?” Halleck demanded. Like Trudy, she was fully suited up except for her helmet.

“Don’t worry, Mrs. Halleck,” said Oberman. “We got plenty time.”

“You may think so. I don’t.”

Getting to his feet, Oberman said, “Didn’t you see me reset the lock when we came in here and closed the corridor door? It’ll take ten, fifteen minutes for anybody to figure out the new combination.” He looked quite pleased with himself.

As he reached for the hard shell of his suit’s torso, Oberman went on, “All four hoppers are lined up just outside the airlock. They’re all fueled and ready to go: that’s standard procedure. The lobber you came in on, Mrs. Aitch, is sitting on the blast pad, so we’ll have to take off from where the hopper’s sitting.”

“Couldn’t that be a problem?” Trudy asked.

“Nope. Those little birds can take off from just about anyplace. And land anyplace. Not like the lobbers; they’re too big for that. They need a nice smooth pad to sit down on.”

Working his arms through the suit’s sleeves, Oberman said to Trudy, “Okay, now, Dr. Yost, you pick up my backpack out of my locker and connect it onto the clips on the back of my suit.”

Trudy did as she was told, seething inside with a desperate hope that Grant would break down the corridor door and save her before they forced her outside.

ESCAPE

Grant skidded to a stop at the closed door to the lockers, with Cardenas a step behind him. He tapped out the entry code, but the keypad flashed red and the door remained shut. Grant tried the code again; still no good.

“That sonofabitch Oberman’s changed the code,” Grant muttered.

“We can’t get in?” Cardenas asked.