Prisoners of Tomorrow (41 page)

“That’s impossible. How could we?”

Olga moved her face closer to Paula’s ear. “If I told you that a communication has come in over it from Tycoon, directed to Pedestal/Fox, would that mean anything to you?” She leaned closer and slipped a piece of paper into Paula’s jacket pocket. “That is a copy of it.”

For a few moments Paula could only stand and stare, dumbstruck. In front of them, one of the performers took a tumble, provoking derisive comments from the group watching.

“We should get some of the dirt they’re sending up from Earth. Maybe it would grow better grass for you to fall on.”

“Let’s hope it’s good, black soil from the Ukraine,” another said. “I’d rather have better food.”

“The whole business is so stupid,” someone grumbled.

“Well, that was how a Party bureaucrat somewhere obeyed orders when he was told to send Russia into space,” the first replied. The others laughed.

“Tycoon” identified Bernard Foleda in his capacity as head of the mission that had brought Paula and Earnshaw to
Valentina Tereshkova.
“Pedestal” was the code name for that mission, while “Fox” was part of the validation-coding system that labeled the message as authentic and would permit her, by her form of reply, to do likewise. “But how? . . .” she stammered.

Olga took her elbow and steered her away from the crowd, in the direction of rising terrain toward the hill. “I’ve learned more from Ivan since we restored the link. As was to be expected, he’s been under observation by the KGB since my arrest. But with somebody of his status, they have avoided confronting him directly until they have solid evidence. Well, apparently he felt the way the wind is blowing and is looking for insurance—he’s talking to the West about defecting.”

“Talking? . . .” Paula checked herself and nodded. “Yes, of course. In his position it wouldn’t be difficult, would it?”

“Exactly. And he’d have told your people about his position at the groundstation. My guess is that they put pressure on him to see if he could make contact, just as you wanted to.”

Paula frowned. “But how could they have known about his private line to you?”

“I’m not certain that they did,” Olga said. “Maybe that was just a gamble.”

They sat down on a couple of rocks in a cluster that had doubtless originated from some part of the Moon. Forty years ago the material would have been priceless. Now it was used for unremarkable landscaping props—or, more likely, had simply been dumped by a construction team.

“I assume you’ll want to reply,” Olga said.

As things stood, Olga used any BV-15 computer to load her messages to Ivan into one of the chips that Paula had programmed—after what had happened to Ivan’s original, they weren’t relying on having just one—and then her undisclosed accomplice substituted the chip for a standard one contained in the encoding equipment inside the Communications Center. Although this method did not require the chip to be switched every time there was a message to go out, they had judged it safer than leaving the chip in place permanently and attempting to access it from a remote terminal, which would have left a nonstandard piece of hardware waiting to be discovered. To send a message of her own, Paula could handle the first part of the operation herself, but not the second.

“I can use the spare chip,” she told Olga. “But I’ll need your accomplice to switch it for me.”

Olga nodded. “There should be no difficulty.” Obviously it would make no difference to Olga’s accomplice whose message was in the chip.

The signal that she finally composed during her next session in the graphics lab was headed tycoon/hyper from pangolin/trot, 09/22/17. It read: message received. pedestal negative following discovery/arrest during access tangerine. currently detained mermaid/zamork. condition good but denied comm’n rights. no news sexton but believed elsewhere here. must consider tangerine lost. however, believe other intelligence might assist evaluation, e.g. key inmate name list. can supply. confirm interest. ends ends.

“Sexton” and “Pangolin” were Earnshaw’s and her code designations respectively. Paula strung three copies end-to-end as a single data block for redundancy and tagged the message for transmission.

The validation system was based on a list of unique key words that each agent memorized, which were known to nobody else. Foleda’s department kept a master file of all the lists. Each word in a list was a compound of two parts, chosen such that the first part could be combined naturally in English with many second parts to give a valid completion. For example, the word “ice” could combine with “cube,” “bucket,” “berg,” “breaker,” and many more equally valid completions. Only one, however, was correct for a particular list. Thus, whether a message originated from the agent or from the department, a correct completion from the same list confirmed both that the message was authentic, and that it was not being sent under coercion.

In the specific case of the reply sent by Paula, the “Trot” after her code name completed the compound word that Foleda had cued with “Fox.” She in turn had selected the first part, “Hyper,” of another compound and included it in her response. The completion “Golic” in the next message she received would confirm that it was indeed from Foleda, and not a forgery manufactured by someone with access to the communications medium.

The medical orderlies took Albrecht Haber away again halfway through the afternoon of McCain’s day off. It was his second relapse in a week. An hour after the midday meal, he had gone to lie down, complaining of nausea and stomach pains, and not long after that he had become feverish.

“Barbarians, that’s what they are, keeping an old man like him in a place like this,” Oskar Smovak declared to the others sitting at one of the tables out in the B-Block mess area. “What harm can he be to anybody? He ought to be sent home.”

“Did anybody notice what he was eating at lunch?” Luchenko asked, standing a few feet away accompanied by Kong.

“What does it matter?” Smovak replied. “With the muck they serve, it’s a wonder we’re not all in the infirmary.” Luchenko grunted and walked back into the billet, followed by his wooden-faced shadow.

“It’s your move,” Leo Vorghas said.

“Oh, was it?” Smovak returned his attention to the chessboard between them.

“Charlie Chan’s got a new joke about the food.”

“Thanks, but I’d rather not hear it.”

At the end, near Smovak, Koh turned a page of the book he was reading. McCain was sitting a couple of feet away, leaning forward with his arms folded on the edge of the table while he watched four of the Siberians rolling marbles across a pattern of chalked lines and symbols on an open area of the floor. It was a new game they had worked out with Rashazzi. As usual there was a lot of arguing and cursing, with tokens and slips of paper changing hands constantly to keep track of the scores and bets. Buried in the design were special marks that Rashazzi had made to measure accurately the trajectories of the rolling balls across the surface. But on this particular occasion he wasn’t present. He had worked a series of bracelet-swapping deals and was now able to remain virtually full-time in the Crypt without interruption.

“So you really never had heard of Sam Caton, eh?”

McCain realized Smovak had moved a piece and was talking to him. He turned his head back. “Nope. Never had.”

“I thought everyone in America must have heard of him. I was testing you, you see.”

“I know.”

“You can’t be too cautious.” Smovak looked at Koh. “Did you ever visit America?”

“Of course he has,” Vorghas threw in without looking up from the board. “Where hasn’t he visited?”

“You were in California at one time, I think you mentioned once, Mr. Earnshaw,” Koh said, lifting his face toward McCain. “I know some parts of it. Where exactly did you live?”

“I was born in Iowa. But I grew up some of the time in and around Bakersfield. Went to college in L.A.”

“Ah yes, Bakersfield. I have a cousin not far from there—in Fresno, as a matter of fact. He’s an attorney, and he also restores antique clocks and musical machines.”

“We should have guessed.” Smovak shook his head disbelievingly. “He’s even got a cousin in Moscow, did you know that? Has the franchise to run a Japanese restaurant there. I ask you—a Japanese restaurant in Moscow! There isn’t anywhere on the planet that the Koh tribe hasn’t reached.”

Koh marked his place with a piece of card and set down the book. “It’s just as well, too,” he said. “It was mainly immigration from the East that saved the United States. Fifty years ago, everyone was being frightened by scare-stories about runaway population explosion. But even at the time, the facts were exactly opposite. It’s perfectly natural and healthy that when nations industrialize and their living standards improve, their populations should grow geometrically for a while—it happened in Europe in the eighteenth century, America in the nineteenth, and is still happening to a degree in Asia. However, they level out again as lifestyles change. . . . But the wise man looks at the dry distant mountains and prepares for a drought, even while the river is in flood. The point everyone missed was that populations
decrease
geometrically too. And even while the panic was at its highest, the West’s birthrate had not only declined, but fallen below the replacement level. They were facing a catastrophic population collapse. That was what almost ruined West Germany. So I’m afraid, gentlemen, that you’ll have to resign yourselves to being a small minority in the world ahead. Fortunately, with the kind of civilization that I see emerging, I don’t think it will matter very much.”

Mungabo and Scanlon had come in from Gorky Street and sat down to catch the tail end of what Koh had been saying. Scanlon pulled a box of playing cards from his pocket and began laying out a solitaire array. “And what do you see emerging, Koh?” he inquired. “Will this be the fella to replace Western Man?”

“Maybe,” Koh said.

“Got a name for him yet?” Mungabo asked.

“Next will come the Nonlinear Man—Interplanetary Man—who will emerge among the offplanet worlds that will soon take shape,” Koh replied. “He will take Classical beauty, Western science, Chinese pragmatism, Japanese dedication, and maybe Russian realism, along with other stones from other rubble, but he will build them into a new edifice which will be his own. His children will accept as self-evident the concept of evolution as a succession of discontinuities, and take for granted the impossibilities of today becoming commonplace tomorrow. They will go out to populate a universe which by its very size and extent, stretching away beyond the range of the most powerful instruments, symbolizes a reality that imposes no limits on how far their civilization can grow, how much it may achieve, or what they may become.” Koh looked around the table. “There are no finite resources, only finite thinking.” He opened his book again, looked down, and resumed reading.

Scanlon continued moving and turning the cards. Smovak picked up a knight and thumped it back down on the board. “Check.” Vorghas put his chin between his hands to study the new position.

McCain leaned forward and moved a red five onto a black six. “Busy day at the hub?” he asked Scanlon casually.

Scanlon scooped up the cards again and dealt two gin-rummy hands. McCain picked up his hand and inspected it. “As a matter of fact, I heard they had a little bit of excitement there today,” Scanlon said. “A fire, no less—in the Space Environment Lab, it was. An electrical fault, by all accounts.”

“That’s too bad,” McCain murmured. “Anyone hurt?”

“Ah, no, it was nothing serious. . . . But I’m told some things in a closet up there were burned pretty badly.”

McCain sent a questioning look over the top of the fan he was holding, and Scanlon returned a faint nod. They played for a while. When they finished, Scanlon put the cards back in the box, slipped it into his jacket pocket, and rose to leave. Then, as if struck by an afterthought, he turned back, took the box from his pocket again, and handed it to McCain. “If you’re going back inside the billet, do me a favor and give these back to Chan, would you? I’ve to meet a man in the compound in a couple of minutes.”

“Sure,” McCain said, dropping the box into his own pocket. But it wasn’t the same box, and there weren’t any playing cards inside. Instead, it held a package containing two functioning general-clearance civilian badges.

A day later, Haber had undergone an amazing recovery and was returned to the billet. With him he brought the remaining components which, together with the ones he had purloined from the pharmaceuticals lab during his previous two visits from the infirmary, enabled him and Rashazzi to construct an accurate balance scale in the Crypt workshop. They used it to measure the weights of objects at various heights in the elevator shaft that connected the Crypt deck, via the surface and Hut 8, back down to B-12 billet and gave the escape committee’s “elevator route” its name.

“Things should weigh less at higher levels as you get nearer to the spin axis,” Rashazzi explained to McCain after the results had been compared. “And in fact they do. But the decrease is far less than it ought to be. At this level in the rim, a weight should change by two point one percent if it’s moved twenty meters nearer the axis. But the amount we measured was less than half that.”

Haber took off his spectacles and began polishing the lenses with a handkerchief. “The baffling thing is that once again the results are consistent with the idea of the colony’s being larger than is officially stated.” McCain had been thinking about that since the scientists described the results of their tests with the pendulum. He wondered if weapons could be concealed in the extra volume that seemed to be indicated. But Haber demolished the notion when he continued, “But to give these figures, the diameter of the ring would have to be something like four and a half kilometers, which is well over twice the quoted figure. I really don’t know what to make of it. A discrepancy that large would have been public knowledge years ago.”

Nobody could offer any satisfactory answers. But the matter was put aside for the time being when Peter Sargent and Eban Istamel brought more news from the escape committee. In the course of exploring farther down below the elevator-route shaft, they had gained entry to a tube that appeared to be part of a robot freight-transit system that possibly ran all the way around the ring. If so, then it offered not only a way out of the limits of Zamork, but a ticket to anywhere else in the colony.