CHRYSALIS Page 6

  “Where are they taking us, sir?” Shallcross gasped.

  “To meet the monster, Sergeant,” Simon said slowly. “To meet the monster.”

  17

  Marianna was afraid, afraid for her team, afraid for Simon, for she knew the enemy was waiting for them somewhere, and she didn’t trust Gaeton Thon at all, no matter his supposed falling out with the evil Kosh. She could only hope the rescue effort came with such speed and surprise that they would be in and out before Dr. Kosh's forces could react. She was soldier enough to hope for the best while expecting the worst.

  She flew low over the hellish yellow and orange landscape, hardly breathing until she was safe in the vast darkness of the bay, near the Delaware shore, south of the ruined and abandoned city of Wilmington. She sat down smoothly in a mudflat, black against black, to wait for the call to dash in and re-embark her team. She didn’t see, nor did her instruments detect, the small aircar that picked her up well inland and followed her across the water. One of Kosh’s special reconnaissance aircars, whose shape and materials made it invisible to sensors, it now circled lazily above her, radioing instructions.

  18

  The discovery of an Out-Time couldn’t be kept secret for long. Within hours the camera crews were in place. Star reporters preened, hair glistening and all acombed, totally absorbed in their own importance. Flacks hurried here and there, seeing to every detail that makes for a perfect telecast. Professor Thorstenssen beamed upon them all, delighted to be the center of attention. He stood before the huge wall monitors, presenting his best profile, smiling the smile of the ephemerally famous, guiding the stunningly beautiful reporter through the story again, the third time he’d done so this afternoon, all with great good humor and not a little panache.

  The screens hadn’t changed since this morning. The man still lay unmoving on the floor of a small, modestly furnished bedroom, the superimposed Out-Time still showing flickering scenes of human figures and recognizable backgrounds.

  “Could you tell our viewers, Professor,” the stunningly beautiful reporter said flawlessly, looking momentarily at the Professor before turning smoothly to smile into the camera, “how the Out-Time came to appear on your screens?”

  “We appear to be witnessing a convergence, Allison,” the Professor said happily. “As you well know, there are an infinite number of universes, parallel universes, called alternate universes by some, which occupy the same physical universe we occupy. Alternate Universe 14LQ638, which is what we believe to be now on the screen, in the person of the man and the bedroom, is identical physically to our own universe, and the room you see is physically present on planet Earth, the same planet Earth the room you’re standing in is present on, though I fear I’ve lost the thread of my syntax.”

  “How very interesting,” Allison smiled, “but just what exactly is going on, if you could explain it in the thirty seconds we have left.”

  “Something quite remarkable is happening,” Thorstenssen said, “something which has not, to my knowledge, ever happened before in the history of mankind. We seem to have found a new type of universe.”

  “Thank you, Professor,” Allison said sincerely, touching him on the sleeve with the tips of her exquisite fingers. “I’m sure you’ll keep us all informed.” She turned from Thorstenssen, smiled radiantly into the camera and said, “This is Allison McKenzie, reporting to you live from Professor Jorgim Thorstenssen's laboratories at the University of Sao Paulo. Back to you, Jim.”

  The lights went out and Thorstenssen blinked in the sudden darkness. Allison McKenzie flashed a quick, professional half-smile, said a cool “Thank you,” and was gone, trailed by her camera crew and makeup people.

  “Are there any more, Amanda?” Thorstenssen asked his fiancée and principal assistant.

  “That's the lot, Jorgim,” Amanda said, “and good riddance!”

  Thorstenssen grunted and turned to the monitors. “She wanted me to explain it in thirty seconds,” he said.

  “More than enough time, dear,” Amanda said sweetly, “since nobody, including you, has the slightest idea what’s going on.”

  “That's true,” he smiled, “or very nearly true. Still, as soon as we solve the technical problems we should be able to see what’s going on in the Out-Time.”

  “Terry and Melissa are working on it now,” Amanda said, striding for the door. “If anyone can solve it, it's those two. In the meantime, I'm going to see if anything besides those superimpositions is on those weekend tapes.”

  He watched her leave and sighed. His fifteen minutes of fame were about up. Time to get back to work. Appearing on the six o'clock newscasts would sit very well with the university regents, but sitting here pining for another fifteen minutes worth of fame was counterproductive. Fame was not the motivating force for such as Professor Thorstenssen, work was, hard work, satisfying work, work that led to knowledge, the slow accretion of which was what some called civilization.

  He was born in North America, in the United States, forty-six years ago. He grew up dreaming of traveling into the past, of being a Time Historian, though he understood early on that the past of the Time Historian was not the past of one's own world, but the present time of someone else's. He cut his teeth on biographies and histories of the pioneers, the great Frenchmen Becquerre, Descharpentier, and LeFleur, especially Descharpentier, who explained it all. He read about Farley and TACH, whose attempt to straighten out what they thought was a twisted time track to their own past led straight to the discovery of alternate universes. He read them all, and dreamed one day of joining in the great adventure.

  And now he was here, at the University of Sao Paulo, in the Commonwealth of Brazil, the richest, most important state in the United States of the Americas, Spanish California notwithstanding. Brazil, with its wealth, its intellectual life, its vigor, its art, was the engine that pulled the rest of the country after it. Brazil was the place to be, the place to work, the place to find accomplishment.

  A very soft, very apologetic clearing of the throat, a sound so muted and so distant he almost didn’t hear it, interrupted his reverie. He turned away from the wall monitors, blinking his eyes, and looked to the back of the room, where sat a familiar figure, grinning broadly. Juan Marie Albergest, Amanda's older brother, Thorstenssen's long time friend, weekend guest and sometime chess opponent, and, not incidentally, senior science writer for Brasil, the popular newsweekly.

  “Hello, Juan Marie,” Thorstenssen smiled. “Good to see you again.”

  Juan Marie disentangled himself from his chair. “Gorgeous, wasn't she?” he said. “And willing to give you thirty seconds. I'd have jumped at it!”

  They shook hands warmly, though they’d last seen each other only Sunday, at Thorstenssen's mountain cabin. Then the occasion had been relaxation and holiday pleasure, while today, Thorstenssen knew, was a working day. Thorstenssen smiled and said, “What can I do for you, amigo?”

  Amigo was an old joke, going back to the time Thorstenssen first called him that. Juan Marie had good-naturedly pointed out that he was Portuguese and French, and amigo was not.

  “You can spare me some time, my friend,” Juan Marie said. “Tell me what’s happening on your screens. And of course how is Amanda, and how proceed the wedding plans?”

  “Bumpy,” Thorstenssen said ruefully. “Amanda is fine, but the wedding plans are definitely bumpy.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, especially since I left you Sunday in what I took to be a state of happy anticipation. As you well know, I’m looking forward to acquiring a brother-in-law, especially since I’m the better chess player. I’ll be happy to beat her for you, as is my duty as an older brother, if you think it will help.”

  Thorstenssen knew he was kidding about the beating, but also knew his concern was genuine, for it was clear Juan Marie liked Thorstenssen and loved his sister.

  “I’m having doubts, Juan,” Thorstenssen sighed, “brain devils, sweats and palpitations. She’s a young woman, a very young woman
. I’m forty-six, she twenty-two. Have the years too great a spread? Am I not too old for her? Will she not, one day, begin to notice younger men?”

  “Evasions, my friend,” Juan Marie said confidently. “Evasions, and transparent evasions at that. Years mean nothing, particularly in this day and age. You have a useful working life expectancy of a further forty years, and beyond that another forty happy years of retirement, if you wish, or another career, if you don't like fishing mountain streams on golden mornings. Surely eighty years together places a different perspective on things? What difference that when she’s one hundred and two you’re one hundred and twenty-six?”

  “You’re correct, amigo, as usual,” Thorstenssen sighed. “Perhaps it’s merely pre-bridegroom jitters. Or maybe I’m uncertain how marriage will affect our work.”

  “I shall leave the two of you to work it out, but you should know I’ve already bought a tuxedo. Now then, speaking of work, and speaking also of evasions, can you tell me what’s happening on your screens? I gather you’ve discovered an Out-Time.”

  “Do I have more than thirty seconds?”

  “You have all the time you need,” Juan Marie laughed. “I have all the time in the world, or at least I have until tomorrow deadline, one of the advantages of working for a weekly newsmagazine.”

  “My office then,” Thorstenssen said. “I'll have someone bring us tea.”

  “Now then,” Juan Marie said, when they’d seated themselves in the comfortable office, Thorstenssen behind his cluttered desk, Juan Marie in the visitor's chair, “why don't we begin at the beginning?”

  “A good place to start, amigo. How much do your readers know of the history of time viewing? How much do you know?”

  “Not a great deal,” Juan Marie said, unoffended. “I have casual knowledge, man in the street knowledge, the same as my readers. As I recall, 14LQ638 was discovered over two years ago. Why is it now just making news?”

  “Discovered by TACH, at the University of Chicago,” Thorstenssen admitted, “and not by us. As to why it’s only now making news, I can only reply that 14LQ638 has been the subject of intense study for the past two years, and much valuable data has been accumulated. I presume it’s now making news because something unusual is happening.”

  “Ah,” said Juan Marie, “the crux of the matter has arrived. What is that unusual something?”

  “We don't know yet. We know only that it’s unusual, perhaps catastrophically so. Ah, here’s the tea!”

  19

  They came in low, heading down river, skimming the surface of the placid Delaware, rising only once to clear the collapsed spans of the double suspension bridge between Wilmington and New Jersey. Marianna's alarm beeped, and she softly voiced an unladylike “Oh shit!”

  Directed by the hovering reconnaissance craft, the silver fighters bore Federation markings, a huge, black, double headed eagle. They disappeared from Marianna's passive sensors as they cleared the bridges and came back down to feet wet altitude, but the one alarm was enough.

  She was completely shut down, all active systems off, engines off, generators off, and had been since landing in the mudflat. Her low power passive systems were the only things working, and as near as she could tell she was optically and electronically invisible.

  A glance at the sensors showed three aircars approaching. What she didn’t know was whether they were after her or not, something she wouldn’t know until the last moment. They might very well be on routine patrol, and would continue on downriver without seeing her.

  She took a quick look at the position screen, and saw the rapidly blinking green dot still fixed in grid K-14, which meant the team was still in the lava field where she left them. The numbers on the bottom of the grid square read 75W03/39N25, identifying the square's longitude and latitude. The team carried a transponder, and as long as those numbers didn’t change, all was well.

  The three aircars were now very close. She was faced with the still unanswered question, a question she thought she might have no more than another few moments to consider, and that was, were those three tiny blips after her? She sat on the river's edge, on the mudflat left by the retreating tide, looking, she thought, like a giant horseshoe crab come ashore to lay eggs. She was facing outward, the yellow glow of the sulfur mist across the river lighting the horizon. She focused her vision upriver, trying to pick up in her visual sensors what she knew, from the size of the blips, to be single seat fighters.

  She saw them, finally, flying single file, outlined against the horizon, over near the Jersey shore, coming fast. The lead fighter flashed past, seemingly unaware of her presence, and she began to relax. The second fighter seemed to be following, when all three made a sudden sharp right angle turn and headed straight for her, line abreast. They were less than a mile away, growing larger by the millisecond. She said, “Oh shit!” again and pulled the emergency power ring.

  She shot up at a steep angle, bursting out of the mud, thrusters straining, but they were on top of her. They surrounded her, a silver aircar off each beam, the third directly overhead, forcing her to level off to avoid a collision. With one quick motion she reversed thrusters and the fighters flashed ahead. In the blink of an eye she was clear, heading for the shore, thinking that if she sat down they’d have to call in ground forces. Unless, of course, they had orders to shoot her down or shoot her on the ground if she didn’t obey.

  The question was answered immediately, as the fighters spun around and fired tracer across her bow. She leveled off and waited for them to resume station. Surrounded once more, the port side fighter blinked his running lights to get her attention. A grinning young pilot motioned her with his hands, in that universal gesture that means follow me.

  “Damn!” she said fiercely, banking gently into a northward climb, following her captors. She cast a quick glance at the position screen and saw the pulsing green dot was still in grid K-14. She knew Simon's transponder gave her position as well as his, and she knew Simon would follow her to the ends of the earth. She had no way of knowing the transponder was no longer being carried by Tal Avenger, but lay in a foul and putrid grave, next to the rotting body of the grinning Gaeton Thon.

  20

  Lake Champlain shimmered in the early morning light, hazy and indistinct, no hint of land to the horizon in any direction. The surface of the water was broken by chop, the tossed water reflecting the newly risen sun, throwing sparks of golden light into the air. The silver aircar flew low over the surface toward a forest of structures sticking up above the water. The structures were windowless, and of varying heights and varying shapes, some round, some rectangular, some square. They seemed too small to be buildings, at least buildings for human habitation, and Simon wondered what they were.

  “Shafts,” his captor, a youngish, blond haired Major named Conlin said. “Amazing, aren’t they? Access to the surface, sun and air for the city beneath the lake. Quite an engineering feat.”

  “Linngard,” the pilot called cheerfully, “last stop.” He guided the aircar to a large concrete landing pad and hovered above the red bullseye, thrusters roaring, lining up for the descent.

  “We're here,” Conlin grinned. He had sat next to Simon on the flight from the lava field, and had seemed friendly enough, talking endlessly of the virtues of Sariot Kosh through most of the flight. “You’ll be meeting the Director soon,” Conlin said earnestly. “Think about what I’ve said. There’s no reason for you people to fight the Federation. We're your kind of people. We talk the same language, we think the same thoughts, we dream the same dreams. Why waste all these resources fighting each other, when there’s a whole planet full of black people and yellow people and brown people, billions of them, not our kind of people and never will be, but people who nevertheless deserve the opportunity to be brought into civilization.” He grinned engagingly. “Sometimes they have to be dragged in kicking and screaming, but it’s for their own ultimate good, and the ultimate good of all of us.”

  “The white man's
burden,” Simon said gravely.

  “Exactly!” Conlin agreed eagerly. “And a burden the Director has undertaken willingly, and brilliantly! A burden we must all be willing to share!”

  The thrusters screamed as the aircar lowered itself gently to the landing pad. Shallcross and Pearlman were across the aisle, handcuffed, like Simon, to the seat stanchions. Pearlman gestured to the young Major, who leaned close, to hear above the thrusters.

  “Why don't you join us?” Pearlman shouted. “Marines have better looking uniforms! And we get better looking women, too!”

  Shallcross grinned and with a bump and sudden silence the aircar was on the platform.

  “Fools,” Conlin said testily, and turned to Simon. “Let me know if you want to talk some more.” He left them shackled to the seats and disappeared into the forward section of the ship.

  “Where are we, sir?” Pearlman said.

  “Kosh's place, Corporal,” Simon said. “Linngard. City beneath the sea. Lake Champlain. We only have a few seconds alone, so listen carefully. They'll probably separate us once they get us inside, so we've got to try and maintain contact. Marianna will figure something's wrong and get help. She might've even shadowed these guys, and is hanging around somewhere close, ready to spring us when she figures how to get in. Keep your eyes open and stay ready.”

  Major Conlin came back. “Your word, sir,” he said, “or I shall have to summon some bullyboys.”

  “We’ll behave,” Simon said.

  Conlin nodded and unlocked the cuffs from the seats. “Follow me,” he said, and led them out the aircar and onto the platform.

  The sun was fully above the horizon, lighting a golden day. A metal stair led them down to a small, concrete floored area below the surface of the landing pad. A cold wind whipped through the maze of steel pilings and girders rising out of the water.