The Alejandra Variations (9 page)

Lazlo squinted as cigar smoke curled up about his face. He looked myopically at Nicholas. "When did you go under?"

Nicholas recalled his last scenario—and the circumstances under which he had gone into it. He gave Lazlo the date.

"Makes sense," the Captain muttered as the tray Jarre was pulling on finally yielded. Nicholas thought he was going to be sick.

The couch had been marked "Bolyard." Inside was a diminutive skeleton shrouded in the fibers of a blouse that had given away to the passing of the centuries. The skull, jarred by the motion of the tray, snapped off at the neck, falling to gaze directly up at Nicholas. A small necklace glittered like a constellation lost in a forest of bones. Blond-gray strands of hair still clung in places to Staci's skull.

"Oh, my God," Nicholas whispered, feeling faint.

"Thought so," Lazlo stated flatly, emotionlessly. "I don't think any of the others made it either."

The soldiers examining some of the other stasis couches all concurred with their Captain. The trays were full of bones and dust and the shards of ancient apparel.
A thousand years!
Somehow, when Nicholas hadn't come out of Mnemos, they'd moved him here, along with the rest of Foresee. How they did this—or when—he had no idea.

Lazlo said, "Let's get some more readings of the place, and get you back to DefCon. I don't think you should be burdened with all the facts at once." He puffed once or twice on his cigar, then said with a touch of sadness, "I think you know what's happened."

Lexie held onto Nicholas. She said, "I'll debrief him, Daddy."

Lazlo glared at her. "You'll do no such thing, young lady. This is a job for Class One Historians. We're just an exploratory team. No one's going to hog a discovery like this."

Nicholas swayed. The injection Lexie had given him helped him stay on his feet. The overhead lights were dreamlike, and the shiny metallic uniforms everyone wore cast the whole scene into a kind of unreality that nothing in his training had led him to expect. No scenario of the far future had come up like this. The last thing he remembered was the image of his dream wife and daughter in a fiery wind. He now knew that it
had
been a dream.

He found himself wishing this were one too.

Captain Lazlo turned and clapped his hands like an impatient impresario at his uneasy brood, who had returned to the far wall upon discovering the crypts of the Foresee dead. "Well, gentlemen, haven't we got business to attend to? We aren't here for our goddamn health, you know!"

The soldiers reluctantly began withdrawing instruments from their packs, and a few of them returned to the outer corridors. From the sounds of their footsteps in the hallway beyond, Nicholas surmised that the place was large indeed. Cameras were being set up and measurements taken, consoles disassembled and analyzed.

Lazlo faced Nicholas. "Don't let any of this bother you, son. Riordan will explain it all when we get back to DefCon.

Nicholas knew of no place named DefCon.

Lexie cooed beside him, tugging him closer to her breast. "I'll explain
everything
to him." Her lips seemed to be a naturally passionate crimson.

Lazlo curled up a fist and leaned close to his daughter. "You're not a Class One yet, missie, and don't you forget it! You're not going to screw up this venture for me!" He said to Nick, "My advice is to stay away from her."

The soldiers had been about their tasks for some minutes when a voice suddenly broke in from a button pinned to Lazlo's epaulet.

"Captain!" crackled the voice. Nicholas guessed it was the missing man, Sye, sent out a while ago.

Lazlo pinched the small disk on his epaulet. "What is it?" he growled.

"Captain," the voice continued nervously—not wanting to incur the not inconsiderable wrath of his leader. "I think I've picked up a shark headed our way."

Everyone in the room froze. Lexie had just pushed Nick's stasis couch back into the wall. She turned around in alarm and returned to Nicholas's side. Lazlo spoke back into the communication disk.

"Corporal Sye," Lazlo began slowly and carefully, "if you are upstairs smoking
genna
again, I'm going to climb up there and pull your goddamn legs off. Quit joking around." The bravado had gone out of his voice.

The other men in the room were staring at each other—and Nick—fear grown larger upon their mushroom-complected faces.

"I swear to God, Captain! It's a shark, and it's a big one, too!" Sye reported.

Nicholas could hear Lazlo breathing uncomfortably.

Lexie, her fingernails digging into the metal of Nick's uniform, had a sudden flair of courage, or anger—Nicholas couldn't tell which.

She said, "That's impossible. There aren't any more sharks. They'd be so old that…"

"Shut up!"
Captain Lazlo barked. He looked at Nicholas, as if embarrassed by the whole situation, and spoke into the disk. "Tell me what happened. How far away is it?"

"I was following a terminal lead and sent through a preliminary burst of power to see if I could trace it through the complex. The damn thing must've been sleeping up top. You'll be able to hear it in about a minute."

"He's wrong," Lexie said, suddenly indignant. "He's lying, Daddy. He just wants to get away from here."

"You know that sharks were dropped all over this part of the country," Lazlo snapped. "Figure it out,
Historian
. The only reason this place's still here is because the sharks didn't find it."

"Daddy, that's not true!" Lexie said.

Sye broke back in, having apparently picked up the conversation. "Captain, look. I'm not stoned. But you ask Jarre, he's got a reader there." Sye sounded frightened.

Lazlo stared over at Jarre. "Sergeant?"

Jarre, glancing from Lazlo to Nicholas, hesitated. Then he took out his pack, went down on one knee, and laid everything out.

He drew up a cylindrical device and made some adjustments on it. Attaching a pistol grip to it, he stood up and walked to the center of the room. He turned the instrument on, and held it in front of him. A tiny blue light glowed on the top as he waved it about. He then pointed it along a wall, ran it across the ceiling.

The device beeped faintly as he aimed it directly overhead.

Jarre read a minuscule digital screen on the pistol grip. "It's a shark, all right, Captain. Eighty feet surface-side and closing in fast. It's got a number of levels to go through first, but it knows we're here."

The other soldiers, apparently knowing something Nicholas did not, began hustling their equipment back into pouches and packs—and moving into the hallway. Nicholas suspected that his presence had a large part in their enthusiastic evacuation of the premises.

Lazlo took his cigar out and looked at it like an old, world-weary philosopher. "And everything was looking so good, too."

"Daddy!" Lexie suddenly said. "Let's go!" She had begun pulling at Nicholas's arm, moving him toward the door. He could now hear the men in the corridor making their hasty retreat.

A contradictory emotion sparked through him. He knew that he was in danger, but found he didn't want to leave the stasis couches. They were his only contact with the world he'd lost. And now they were taking even that away from him.

But the Captain pinched the radio disk at his shoulder. "Sye, where are you now?"

Sye's voice immediately returned. "One floor up in a computer room we missed. I found some old video equipment and data leaves that look real important."

"Forget it," Lazlo said aside into the receiver. "We don't have the time now. Better follow the boys down to the Bore."

There was a slight pause, then Sye's voice came back. "Lazlo, are you bringing the Eridani?"

"Goddamn it, yes! You think I'm just going to leave him here?" Lazlo was quite angry now. He switched the radio off. "The hell with it," he said to Nicholas. "If they can't live with you, it's their problem."

The weight of defeat hung heavily in Lazlo's voice. His shaggy eyebrows were dark with disappointment. "I guess the Class One Historians will have to settle for just you, Nicholas Tejada. This place was a gold mine, and it would've taken DefCon a good hundred years or more to explore it properly." He shook his head, his goggles glinting in the fluorescent light. "It's a goddamn shame, is what it is."

"Daddy!" Lexie urged.

"All right, all right! Let's do it."

Lazlo stepped out into the corridor. Nicholas had no choice but to follow. Lexie yelled down at the light machine that pursued them. "Follow us and don't get lost," she commanded. It acted as if it fully understood.

As in the stasis-couch room, the corridor possessed the sinister ambiance of a tomb. But it was clear that they were in some sort of military fortress.

"Wait, Captain!" Nicholas shouted. The lights overhead had begun shutting down; all they had to go by was the illumination given them by the glow-globes among them. Lazlo stopped.

"Look, why are we running? What is this 'shark' thing that's upstairs?"

Lazlo said, "I thought you knew. Jesus, son, they made them during your day."

"What, sharks? I don't even know what you're talking about."

Sergeant Jarre was at the far end of the long hallway. All the other men were out of sight, having clambered down the stairs into the dark. Jarre waved a small lantern for them.

"They're almost extinct now, if what the Historians say is correct." He gave his daughter a disparaging look. "They're mostly machines left over from the days of the Eridani."

"Wait!" Nicholas said as Lazlo and Lexie turned to go. "What's an Eridani?"

But Lexie pulled Nicholas up to her. "Come on, baby. We can't wait." She smiled playfully at him. Her suddenly shifting emotions baffled Nick. There seemed to be the unmistakable presence of sexuality between them, despite the present circumstances concerning the shark.

Sergeant Jarre yelled at them from where he waited down the hall. "The Bore's this way, sir! A shortcut!"

"Right," Captain Lazlo said.

At that moment they heard a horrifying explosion above them, followed by a resounding, tortured crash. On a reflex, Sergeant Jarre fell into a crouch—as did both Lexie and Captain Lazlo. The glass in the windows around them shattered into dust and the little glow-globes whirled to a halt.

"It's the shark!" Lexie breathed.

"Be quiet!" snapped her father.

Off in the sepulchral distance they could feel a temendous rending through the floor, as if something were trying to make its way through walls of cement and steel alloy. Nicholas didn't like the sound of its determination. It seemed to be at least one floor above them.

"Jarre," the Captain said.

"Right here, Captain," the sergeant said, leaping from his position at the stairwell.

Listening to the approach of the sounds above, Lazlo faced his right-hand man. "Let's have some fun. We might as well see what we can do with it."

Lexie protested. "Daddy! Let's go!" She still had her territorial grip on Nicholas.

Jarre kept his distance from Nick. He turned to his Captain. "What have you got in mind?"

"Let's see your crawler." Lazlo pointed to the man's shoulder pack.

"OK," Jarre said, dropping down to unlatch his pack. He sorted through it until he found what he was looking for.

"Daddy!" Lexie cried. "Come on!"

Lazlo puffed his cigar.

Jarre extracted a small device that had four wheels and looked like some kind of remote-controlled toy any kid in the twentieth century might have. After Jarre threw a couple of delicate switches, he set the thing on the floor.

"Which way?" Jarre said, looking up at the Captain.

They were at an intersection in the dark building. Lazlo pointed back to the way they had come. "It picked us up back there. It'll go there first."

"Right," Jarre said, touching a final switch.

Silently, the crawler shot off down the corridor.

Lazlo and Jarre, despite the gravity of the situation, watched the crawler speed off into the darkness as if they were children.

"I won't put up with this any longer," Lexie announced.

Jarre rearranged his shoulder pack. Lazlo bit on his cigar and faced his imperious daughter. "Well, then, missie. Make the shark go away. Go ahead! You got what you want, but we got a shark!"

Lexie tried staring him down, but it didn't work. She retorted, "You know that the instant we start up the Bore it'll go off!"

"Not if it decides to follow the crawler, it won't."

Jarre stood up, shouldering the pack and ignoring Nicholas as best he could. He walked past Lazlo. "It won't do anything if you don't stop bickering," he said, then handed Captain Lazlo a compact control unit.

Lazlo took the box and pointed it toward where the crawler had gone. He pressed a tiny button.

From down the hall they could hear the crawler begin to emit a squealing sound. It was much louder than their conversation had been, and it was obviously just the thing to attract the hungry shark as it gnawed through the centuries-old walls of the military fortress.

Nicholas watched as Lazlo observed a readout on the control unit. "Any minute now.…" he breathed.

"Daddy!"

Jarre was back down by the stairwell. Nicholas could hear him start to descend.

Lazlo began moving backward. "Got it! The shark's picked up the crawler and shifted direction. Let's get out of here."

Lexie seemed as proud of the accomplishment as if she had been responsible. "No shark's going to come between us, doll." Her breathing was sensuous with excitement.

Nicholas could hear the ruckus upstairs. It sounded as if things were being pushed aside in a hurry, but it was clear that the shark had taken the bait. It was receding.

They heard a roar like that of an engine starting up. Captain Lazlo jumped.

"It's starting to dig," he said quickly. "Bad sign!"

They ran for the stairwell, coughing through the dust of the ages, and dropped down into a larger corridor beneath. They rounded a corner, the glow-globes wobbling after them. Lazlo pushed open two large steel doors that looked like blast-protection doors to Nicholas. They swung freely but were cracked with rust and time.