Nemesis (27 page)

“One last thing, Ollie. The Secretary of Defense wants a personal briefing from the team tomorrow evening at a secure location. We’ll need to know how you’ve progressed. You’ll be in Italy but contact us at Willy’s beach house, which is in Solana Beach, California. As before the line will be secure at the American end but just remember that telephones are death. It’s a question of balancing risks. Use a public booth, and if you have a shadow of doubt don’t phone.”

“I’ll give you my number to memorize in the car,” said Shafer.

“Herb,” Noordhof said, “I’ve got some bad news.”

Back in his room, Webb put his laptop computer into its case and squeezed clothes and papers into odd spaces. He stepped out of his room and moved down the stairs, along the corridor and out the front door.

Into the winch house. The car had locked into place, its door half open. Webb ignored it and crossed to the control
desk. A vertical metal panel below the controls was held in place by four simple screws. He took out a pen and bent the clip, using it as a screwdriver, glancing back at the main building as he did. The panel came off easily.

Webb stuck his head inside, keeping well clear of the thick, live cable which rose from under the concrete and disappeared into the On–Off switch. A slight crackling of his hair told him that he was dangerously close to a high voltage. The design of the switch was simple. When the switch was moved to On, two metal prongs would make contact with two metal studs and so close the circuit. However at the back of the studs were two strong electromagnets, placed in such a way that, if current flowed through a second cable, the studs would be pulled back and no contact made whatever the position of the On–Off switch. This other cable, Webb assumed, went all the way to the upper platform. It was a device to ensure that the cable car could be moved only from whatever platform it was currently at.

But someone had earthed this second cable: a shiny new wire had been wrapped tightly round it and joined on to a metal rod freshly driven into the concrete. Which meant that the cable car was now controlled from the ground. Which meant that an ill-disposed individual on the ground could wait until Leclerc had stepped halfway out of the car and then suddenly pull it away, leaving Leclerc, off-balance, to fall into the gap between car and platform. Webb’s scalp began to tingle and he couldn’t have said whether it was his discovery or the electricity.

Webb pulled his head out just in time to hear the observatory door close. He had been in plain view; but had he been seen? Hastily, he screwed the panel back into place. He walked briskly back to the observatory. Kowalski, in the corridor, was looking stunned. He shook his head without a word. Sacheverell’s voice came from the common room; it was raised in anger. Webb passed by to the Conference Room and logged in to Virginia’s home page. And while he
transferred her Vincenzo files into his laptop computer, he pondered. There was a lot to ponder:

1. Fraudulent signals from a telescope;

2. a murdered colleague;

3. Leclerc’s disappearance before his murder;

4. a missing 400-year-old manuscript;

5. somewhere out there, a billion-ton asteroid, closing at twenty or thirty kilometres a second; and now

6. someone determined to make sure they didn’t find it.

Shafer took the wheel and Webb flopped into the passenger seat, the lack of sleep suddenly catching up on him. In a moment Judy appeared. Webb scrutinized the contours of her tracksuit as she approached. She caught him at it and gave a bleak smile as she settled into the back seat. The curves, Webb decided, didn’t leave room for a pencil, let alone a weapon. He began to wonder if exhaustion was bringing out some latent paranoia.

They took off smoothly, Shafer taking the big car down round the hairpin bends with ease. Webb found himself peering anxiously into the trees. As they dropped below the snowline, the temperature rose marginally, and by the time the Pontiac had stopped at the gate separating the survivalists from Piñon Mesa, the air was mild. A smell of woodsmoke met Webb as he pulled the gate open.

They drove through the settlement, past a couple of dirty red Dodge trucks. An elderly man was sitting at a porch with a pipe and a gallon jar of some brown juice at his feet. He raised his hand in a friendly gesture as they passed. Shafer said that, given Nemesis, maybe the survivalists had the right idea, and Judy said that wasn’t funny.

Down the last stretch of hill; turn left; and put the foot down on the open road. Webb began to tremble; he couldn’t analyse the reason, but thought it was probably relief. Shafer turned on the radio and they listened to a rabid evangelist for a minute before replacing him with dentist’s waiting room
music: Country and Western, easy on the mind, brought to you by Jim Feller and his Fellers.

A helicopter flew high in the opposite direction, its twin rotors glinting in the sunlight. Webb wondered if it was Leclerc’s hearse, with its specialist undertakers, but kept the thought to himself. Judy’s perfume was beginning to intrude again.

Some twenty miles to the south of Eagle Peak they pulled into a little cluster of shops and a café. Shafer bought Judy coffee in a paper cup while Webb disappeared into a nearby camping store. He emerged minutes later in a Hawaiian shirt, purple-rimmed sunglasses and Bermuda shorts, carrying a big brown paper bag.

They stared, astonished. Judy tried not to giggle. “Are you changing your personality, Ollie?” Shafer asked.

“You should see the underwear,” the astronomer replied, climbing into the Firebird. “No, I’m just trying to confuse the enemy. Who would connect Mister Showbiz with the quiet academic who arrived at Tucson Airport three days ago? So you’re the man who blew the Standard Model. A cool insight.”

“Hey, a theory screaming with singularities and eighteen free parameters? There had to be a better way.” Shafer thundered past a posse of bikers.

“But an electron as a Mobius strip? And what about your new stuff, a mind/vacuum interface? That is
weird
.”

“It’ll take a generation to become mainstream. Now listen to words of wisdom from your Uncle Willy. These days, Einstein wouldn’t get a job as a lab technician.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“You have two possible career routes, Oliver. The easy route is this. Don’t stick your neck out, keep to beaten paths and get on lots of committees. In a word, look and act like Establishment Man. And in no circumstances, whatever—I emphasize this—step outside the mainstream. Don’t get any new ideas.”

“And the hard route?”

“Get a new idea. But one thing above all.”

“I’m gasping, Uncle Willy. More wisdom, quick.”

“Find Nemesis. Or your generation’s cancelled.”

Judy leaned forward, speaking to both men. “What are our chances?”

Webb said, “I’m scared to think about that.”

“You have less than two days to play your hunch, Ollie, and a big hunk of that will be spent flying,” she pointed out.

“Something bugs me about this,” said Shafer. “It’s the Zhirinovsky factor. The guy’s been in power for a couple of years, right? Say you were in his position. How long would it take you to get something like Nemesis going?”

“A lot more than two years,” said Webb thoughtfully. “To track an Earth-crosser with enough precision would take at least that long.”

“And we’d need to know just what we were pushing around,” Judy added. “Look at how variable the responses are in the simulations. It would mean a lot of spectroscopy, maybe even a soft-landing. Only then could you shepherd the asteroid in.”

“I guess it would take ten years and a lot of clandestine space activity,” Shafer proposed. “Which puts its origins right back in the Putin era. Well before Zhirinovsky.”

“So?”

“So all Russia wanted before the food riots was peace to develop their capitalist experiment.”

“What are you saying, Willy?” Webb asked.

“Something bugs me is what I’m saying.”

Judy suggested, “There was always an undercurrent of dissatisfaction in the Red Army. Maybe a small group has been cooking this up for years, without knowledge of successive Russian Presidents.”

“Is it possible?” Webb asked.

“Undoubtedly,” she replied. “Big countries have mechanisms for keeping secrets, Ollie. A group of high-level conspirators could pull these levers to hide the Nemesis project from their own leadership.”

“For ten years?”

“It bugs me.”

Soon, they were speeding along broad streets and through prosperous Tucson suburbs. Shafer followed signs for the airport. They pulled over briefly at a trash can where Webb dumped the brown bag containing his RAF-supplied suit and Glen Etive pullover. At the terminal entrance, Shafer and Webb shook hands. Whaler gave him a wave from the back of the car, and then they roared off.

At the terminal, Webb found reassurance in the teeming crowds. He bought a psychedelic pink backpack with a Save the Whales motif and a few toiletries. The American Express card seemed to be an infinite source of funds and he momentarily played with the idea of a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro.

He joined a long line at a TWA reservation desk. After fifteen minutes of increasing frustration it became clear that the queue was static. He gave up and crossed to a cluster of telephones. A parcel-laden woman with a mouthful of keys made it just in front of him. She started to look for coins and Webb muscled her aside. A passing man let loose a stream of outraged invective. Webb literally snarled and the man backed off hastily. He dialled through to the TWA desk. A mechanical voice said please do not hang up you are on hold and he was treated to Mantovani’s “Music of the Mountains” for one, two, three minutes. Then one of the girls picked up the phone and he watched her as she typed at the computer terminal and said No sir, the Airbus is fully booked likewise all our flights to Rome this being the Christmas period but if Sir is really that desperate there is a flight to Paris in an hour and forty minutes and you might be able to connect from there except that everything is choc-a-bloc in Europe too and Air France are on strike oh it doesn’t leave from here, didn’t I say? Phoenix. Have a good day, sir.

Webb ran gasping to the taxi stand. A fat taxi driver was reading a newspaper. Webb said, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars for every minute less than a hundred minutes it takes
you to get me to Phoenix airport. Plus the fare. Your time starts now.”

A wide range of human emotions expressed themselves in the taxi driver’s face, culminating in a delighted grin. Webb jumped in. The driver did it in ninety-five minutes, with cold desert wind streaming around Webb’s face from an open window and heavy metal blasting from the rear loudspeakers. At Phoenix, Webb handed over a fat wodge of notes to the grinning driver. Boarding was in progress and he made it with two minutes to spare.

First class on the BA flight to Paris via London was, incongruously, half empty. A Sophia Loren lookalike offered to tuck him in under a blanket but Webb, his head spinning with exhaustion, resisted the temptation.

Hello Ollie!!

You finally phone me! From sunny Arizona! When I’m naked!! I always knew you had hidden depths, Ollie, but WOW, what psychic timing!! And all that heavy breathing. So, will you teach me some new stuff when you get back? I still haven’t got past bondage and leather knickers. Anyway, here’s your historical background to
Phaenomenis
and I hope you rot in hell you cold unfeeling miserable robot fish on a slab.

Saving myself for you alone (but not for much longer),

Virginia (still).

PS. These big-breasted cowgirls. They sag after forty.
PPS. They all have AIDS.

She likes me, Webb told himself. He looked down on a range of snow-covered mountains, golden in the sun, wondered briefly where Nemesis would hit, and settled down to the story of Vincenzo.

“We have nearly ten thousand strategic nukes. Seven thousand active, and another two on the reserve list.” Judy was wearing large gypsy earrings, a white T-shirt, classic Levi 501’s and Nike trainers. Dark sunglasses protected her eyes from the strong sunlight which streamed in through the cockpit window. Incongruously, she was wearing a pearl necklace.

McNally’s tone revealed his surprise. “The USA still has seven thousand bombs?”

“But they’re mostly the W-series, just a fraction of a megaton each. Great for knocking off cities and the like but no way do they have the punch to deflect a small asteroid. Not on our hundred-day guideline. No, Jim, if you’re looking for real action you have to go for the old B-53s. And we only have fifty of these.”

“One will do,” McNally declared.

“I don’t believe so. They’re not neutron bombs.”

“Let’s run with your B-53s for a moment anyway.” The NASA Administrator glanced at the compass and made a tiny adjustment on the joystick. Desert drifted below them. He had flown straight from Toulouse to Tucson where Judy and the jet had been waiting. He was now
en route
to the Johnson Space Center at Houston, first dropping Judy off at the Sandia National Laboratories, twelve square miles of nuclear wisdom tucked securely inside Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque. Judy was briefing him as they flew.

She produced a bar of dark chocolate, broke off a couple of squares and offered them to the NASA chief, who accepted happily. “Okay,” she said. “They’re the oldest nukes still in service. They’ve been operational since 1962. But they’re also the largest and they’re pretty lightweight for their power. That’s one of the nice things about nuclear weapons: the yield to weight ratio increases with power. The bigger the bomb the more punch per pound.”

“These B-53s—just how much punch are we talking about, Judy?”

“Nine megatons. Now that is destructive enough for any conceivable military target, but the bomb itself weighs only four tons. It’s a three-stage weapon. That’s classified information, by the way, but in the circumstances . . .”

“Don’t you people have anything bigger? I seem to recall the Russians exploded a fifty-megatonner once.”