Total Recall (28 page)

They hung from the scaffolding on opposite sides of the hole, then got their footing and scanned the vast reaches of the abyss.

“You’re right,” Melina whispered, awed. “I never saw this. It’s ten times as big as I ever imagined, and—”

“And a hundred times as complex,” he said, awed himself, though he had explored much of it in his prior visit and in his buried memory of that visit, and had experienced the No’ui explanation of it. “This is our future—man’s future—if we can get it started before Cohaagen destroys it.”

They continued gazing at it. An enormous metal truss stretched from the wall into space, reminiscent of the ancient Eiffel Tower laid on its side. Four such arches supported an immense round platform in the middle of the abyss.

The platform was a metal pegboard which braced a bundle of huge columns running through pegholes. The columns reached from the top of the abyss down toward its bottom, lost in darkness. Other arches and platforms braced the columns at various other levels, above and below.

Quaid climbed down and dropped onto the truss. “Come on,” he called to Melina, gesturing.

She climbed down next to him and contemplated the long treacherous bridge they had to cross, which stretched into inky darkness. This might have endured for millennia, but it seemed insecure now.

Suddenly a frightening crash thundered through the abyss, making them both jump.

“The mole,” Quaid said, catching on. It had reached the bottom. It had seemed like several minutes since they escaped it, but it had probably been several seconds; the splendor of the reactor had made their perception of time distort. He thought.

“They’ll be here soon,” Melina reminded him. “You have to do it first.”

“Let’s go!” he agreed. “How’s your nerve for skywalking?”

“Not great,” she admitted. “But considering what’s at stake, I’ll manage.”

“Good girl.” But she was no girl: she was a woman.

They started across the truss at as fast a clip as they dared, not looking down.

CHAPTER  26
Decision

T
he streets of Venusville were deserted. The people there had somehow managed to pull themselves back to their wretched hovels to die. In The Last Resort, a small cannister of air was passed from hand to hand. Tony sat on the floor, back-to-back with the bartender, cradling Thumbelina’s head in his lap. There was nothing they could do but wait for the end.

In the Pyramid Mine, Richter and sixteen soldiers stood on a platform and looked down. Richter shone a powerful light around the edges of the hole bored by Quaid’s mole. He shone the light around the area and saw the truss leading from the stone wall to the next lower platform.

He concentrated, spying something. Like two ants, Quaid and Melina could be seen walking along a truss.

Richter smiled. This time the quarry wouldn’t get away. As for the woman—he knew what he would do with her. Quaid was responsible for Lori’s death, so Richter would repay him in kind. An eye for an eye. But the rebel slut wouldn’t die as cleanly, as quickly, as Lori had. Oh, no. And Richter would make sure that Quaid watched every minute of what happened
before
he killed her. Before he was done, Richter would make Quaid beg for her death.

He piled into the elevator with the soldiers.

Quaid and Melina climbed with difficulty from the truss onto the platform. There was an elevator built into the center, with its cables stretching up into the gloom. This struck him as odd, because the No’ui normally didn’t use such devices. But of course they had made this for human beings. The two of them wandered through the forest of columns, still awed. These were virtual metal sequoias with corroding bark.

“The whole thing is a gigantic nuclear reactor,” Quaid repeated. “Turbinium rods slide out of these sheaths and drop into holes in the glacier below. That starts a chain reaction. Radiation splits the ice into oxygen and hydrogen. The gas goes up, gets trapped by gravity . . .”

“And Mars has an atmosphere,” Melina finished.

“Not yet. That’s just water vapor: hydrogen and oxygen. We couldn’t breathe that. The hydrogen is used for nuclear fusion, merging to form helium, like the old-time hydrogen bomb. That provides the energy for the larger process. The hydrazoic acid stashed below the glacier is broken into its components, and its nitrogen joined with the oxygen from the water to make the air we can breathe. The mixture will be a bit oxygen-rich, but that’s to compensate for the reduced pressure at the outset. It will be adjusted when the atmosphere is complete. The whole thing will happen fast—much faster than any process we understand could do it.” He was amazed at how much he knew, as the rest of the No’ui information in his mind surfaced. “But that’s still only one stage. Mars is cold, so it needs to be heated so that plants can grow and people can live on the surface without space suits, just as they do on Earth. There are heat conductors spreading out all through the—”

He broke off, hearing something. The elevator was stopping. There were sounds of doors opening and boots walking on metal grating. They saw flashlight beams in the distance.

Quaid pulled Melina behind a column, but as they brushed against it, a scab of corroded metal crashed to the platform floor. Suddenly all the flashlight beams were pointed in their direction. “Time for Plan B,” Quaid murmured.

“Plan what?”

“You’ll see.”

As the soldiers advanced, they saw Quaid running and hiding behind a column, Richter and the guards rushed over, surrounded the column, and opened fire as they moved around it.

Amazingly, Quaid was not there. But four soldiers were shot and killed!

Richter scowled, uncertain how this fluke had occurred. “Spread out.”

They searched the area. A soldier closed in on Quaid, not yet seeing him.

Quaid fiddled with his watch, and a hologram became visible nearby. Melina’s eyes widened appreciatively. So that was how he had done it! She hadn’t caught it the first time. He had a holo projector, oriented on the user. Clever ruse!

The soldier spied the hologram. The soldier shot at it, charging in to be sure of his man.

The real Quaid stepped behind the soldier and broke his neck. Hauser might not have been a great person, most of his life, but he had certainly known how to fight; his reflexes made easy what Quaid might have balked at.

Richter’s search continued. Quaid popped out from behind another column.

Several soldiers spied the figure, this time. They surrounded it. They shot through it. Their bullets scored on each other. Four more bit the dust.

“Cease fire!” Richter cried. “It’s a hologram! Don’t be fooled!”

But he was too late for the nine soldiers already dead.

Quaid threw the holo-watch to Melina.

Two soldiers in different places saw Melina wander near them. They both opened fire on her hologram—and shot each other.

Three soldiers sneaked up on Quaid. They had him dead to rights. He smiled. “You think you found me, don’t you?”

But he wasn’t looking at them, but to the side. That was weird. They realized that it must be a hologram. They glanced around for the
real
Quaid.

But this
was
the real Quaid. He turned straight at them and gunned them down. “You did,” he said.

Two soldiers advanced, game to the end. Melina stepped in front of them. They shot through her. Jagged craters appeared in their chests from bullets the real Melina put in their backs.

The real Quaid met the real Melina, touching hands just to make sure. They ran cautiously from column to column toward the elevator. It was open and empty. They dashed inside.

Quaid swung the doors closed. The elevator rose at an amazing speed. They held each other, relieved.

“I didn’t know they’d gotten any of this alien system working,” he remarked. “Must be some residual power, or maybe they ran a line in. Cohaagen must have been really curious about this artifact.”

“Shut up and kiss me,” she said, lifting her face.

Suddenly her eyes widened, and she went stiff. What was the matter?

Then he heard a faint noise above them, and looked up himself. One of the ceiling panels was sliding open a few inches. Richter was on the roof! The barrel of his gun was poking through the slot. It fired. The bullet spanged around the interior, missing them.

Quaid shoved Melina out of the way somewhat less romantically than he might have wished and whipped up his gun. He and Melina returned fire, but their bullets ricocheted back at them. They would take themselves out if they continued!

Richter had not depended on his soldiers. He had let them be a diversionary force while he set up his clever little ambush, knowing that Quaid would survive and come here. Richter was protected, while the two of them were not. Richter was getting smarter.

Quaid and Melina moved erratically around the cabin, trying not to be sitting ducks. But it wasn’t enough. They remained fish in a barrel. Richter kept shooting, and winged Quaid in the shoulder.

This was no good! Quaid swung the door open. He and Melina climbed out and scaled opposite sides of the elevator. Richter shot down at them, and they shot back. Now they were outside, and Richter was no longer protected by the invulnerable metal of the elevator. He had to keep his body out of the line of fire.

Melina dodged a bullet, lost her balance, dropped her gun, and saved herself only by holding on with both hands, her feet swinging over the void.

Richter aimed at Quaid. Quaid grabbed his arm.

In that moment, Quaid looked up. Behind Richter he saw the next platform. The elevator was speeding toward it. Anything extending outside the elevator car would be guillotined! Quaid was like dough watching the cookie-cutter come at his extremities. Richter saw it too. He grinned crookedly.

Quaid tried to climb up on top with Richter, but Richter pushed him away. Quaid grabbed Richter’s other arm—and hung there. All four arms would be severed any second.

Now Richter heaved back, pulling his arms out of danger and effectively giving Quaid a helping pull onto the top of the elevator. The last thing he wanted to do was save Quaid, but he valued his own flesh. Quaid curled his feet out of danger barely ahead of the seemingly falling edge.

Melina trapezed herself into the elevator an inch ahead of the blade that sliced down her side of the car.

Cohaagen stood near the alien control room as the demolitions experts unloaded their equipment. He had hoped to get something useful from this alien contraption, but he couldn’t afford to have it start to produce air for Mars. He didn’t know who Quaid might have told his suspicion about that air, and couldn’t be sure that every last Rebel agent had been exterminated. Obviously the Rebel woman had corrupted Quaid, and she could have blabbed the secret far and wide. So he had to destroy it now, before any more pseudo-patriots got smart ideas. Monopoly was a funny thing: once it was lost, it could almost never be put back together. The specter of free air would generate an endless number of would-be revolutionaries. So it was time to put a stop to the whole thing, by eliminating the possibility. He had been foolish to delay it this long, but there had been a nuisance about preserving alien artifacts, and Earth-government officials had been pestering him. Well, after this he would give them free access to the Pyramid Mine, and they could admire the alien wreckage to their hearts’ content. One thing was certain: there would be no free air, and his power would be secure.

He peered down the elevator shaft. He saw two tiny figures fighting on top of the rising elevator. That meant that Quaid had survived Richter’s cleanup mission and was still making trouble. He had to admire Quaid’s persistence; he was drawing on the skills of Hauser, who had been matchless as an agent. Too bad the man had gone wrong. He had been much better than Richter would ever be.

But it was time for a real pro to take a hand. Cohaagen brought out a grenade and carefully placed it in the gears of the elevator. Then he jogged off to the control room.

Boom! The grenade, crushed by the gears, exploded, destroying the elevator mechanism and blasting the elevator gantry from its moorings.

Cohaagen gazed at it with satisfaction. That should take care of Quaid
and
Richter, who had about outlived his usefulness.

Quaid and Richter, fighting viciously, heard the explosion and felt the elevator shake. The cables whipped around dangerously. The elevator ground to a stop.

The elevator gantry swung out from its moorings, slowly, its measured pace like that of the second hand of a watch.

Richter looked up, fathoming what had happened. “Shit! He cut me off too!” he exclaimed.

“It’s so hard to find good friends in the snake pit,” Quaid said with mock sympathy.

Then the two of them hung on for dear life as the gantry levered out over the abyss like falling timber.

Quaid, despite his mockery of his enemy, was not at all sure of continued life. It looked like a long way down!

Then the gantry caught on one of the enormous trusses, forming a bridge across a small arc of the pit. They wouldn’t fall—yet.

But as the gantry caught, the shock traveled back, and the two of them were jolted off the elevator car. Both reached out desperately, grabbing hold of anything.

Quaid caught a loose elevator cable. Richter did the same. But it was no good; the cables were unattached. They were faaaaaaaalllllllling . . .

Quaid’s whole life did not flash before his eyes, not even all of his recent life. His only thought was of Melina, who would look out of the elevator car to see him gone, and he suffered brief regret that their relationship had to end here. Theirs—and humanity’s, when the No’ui’s nova was triggered.

Hwang!
Their plunge unexpectedly snapped to a halt. The cable had snagged on something.

No—Quaid and Richter were hanging on to opposite ends of a long piece of cable, which was draped over the gantry. They were swinging wildly back and forth, serving as counterweights to each other, about twenty-five feet down. They had saved each other: another irony.