Three days of darkness, p.16
Three Days of Darkness, page 16
part #3 of Ross 128 First Contact Series
“Agreed. We should also shore up defensive systems.” He paused and surveyed the hangar. “Listen Clayton, I’ve gotta get back to work and call in that extra shift, so if there’s nothing more, I’ll keep you apprised of our progress.” Powell reached out to end the call when Carter stopped him.
“I have one more question for you, John.”
“Sure.”
“You understand what that alien ship did. The damn thing disappeared in a flicker of light. Any thoughts about how they developed FTL tech?”
Powell kicked the floor. “It’s too early to speculate on that. I saw the same as you.” He looked straight into the camera. “But what’s even more intriguing is what the young lady did on the way home, you know, with the space-time dimensional shift. I didn’t buy Tyrone’s explanation and the logs back me up. Any chance the girl might join us on this next Moon run?”
“That’s highly improbable. She’s struggling with after-effects from the alien encounter.” He grinned. “But I hope to have her knowledge extracted once I track her down. If it’s only the Echo against the Prussians, Chinese, and everyone else, we’ll need all the help we can find.” He added, “Thanks again, John. We’ll talk soon.”
Janet
Rain bowed away to sporadic showers and a sluggish, early afternoon sun broke through a bank of low-lying clouds to the west as Castillo’s heli-jet touched down on his property north of Oakland. No additional interceptors or CCR forces had appeared as they meandered through the California hills, and Janet exhaled when the machine’s rotors eased to a stop, releasing her anxiety over the attack. All she ached for was to hide and drink for a few days, alone with the spider.
She shook Castillo’s hand and thanked him, then punched her indie-comm. “I’ve transferred double our agreement.”
He raised his eyebrows, but didn’t protest.
“Go see a doctor, okay?”
“Count on it. And you three stay safe.”
A black hovercar appeared in the dirt laneway. “There’s our ride, Jim.”
Atteberry and Mary leaned on each other as Janet led them to the vehicle and shepherded them inside. She punched coordinates in through her indie-comm, nodded at Castillo in the surrounding gloom, and pushed back into her seat.
“How’s your leg?”
Jim’s head lolled forward. “Still numb. From time to time, I get these sharp daggers of pain shooting through it right to my hip, but the wound itself seems to be healing.” He looked out the window at the passing green-grey of the hills and held Mary close. “Where are we headed?”
“There’s a safehouse in the woods near here.”
“Shouldn’t we get to a hospital? See if there’s anything we can do for Mares?”
Janet faced him. She’d lost the spark that filled her during the escape and attack, as if to say now that the immediate danger had passed, life had become dull again. She felt emotionally isolated, unable to process what happened, and unwilling to take any more chances. I should have killed Winter.
“We can’t show our faces here, especially not me. The safehouse offers protection and I need time to hack into Elliot’s other files.” She glanced at Mary and the tension in her face dissipated. “You know, even now, she’s beautiful. You’ve done a brilliant job raising her, Jim.”
He immediately brushed off the comment.
“Let’s find this other surgeon and get her well.”
The nondescript cabin grew out of the California hills like a natural extension of the earth and rock surrounding it, not exactly camouflaged, but enough to miss if you didn’t pay attention. As the hovercar approached with lights out, stealth mode, Janet studied her indie-comm and the car’s own sensor screen for heat signatures or other signs of life. All was quiet.
She turned on a thin light as they entered. The house reminded her of an old fishing cabin her grandfather used to take her to when she was a kid, dusty with stale air and the smell of smoke embedded in the upholstery. Sparsely furnished, roughly hewn floorboards, a minimalist design. Off to the right was an oversized bedroom where everyone could sleep, and a corner of the great room spilled into a kitchen. Two practical sofas, a couple of chairs and a small work table completed the functional look.
Mary lay down on one of the sofas and Janet drew a medical kit from a cupboard beside the stove. She injected her with more painkiller, and brushed her forehead. Jim pulled a quilt he found in the bedroom over her.
“Get that leg elevated, mister.”
He flopped into a recliner near the fireplace and raised his leg up to rest it on the hearth. Janet stooped over him and took out a small flashlight from her pocket and studied his injury.
“The skin graft is holding. Lots of bruising, but no sign of infection yet.” She peered up at him. “Do you need any more painkiller?”
“No, I’m good. Just tired as hell and having trouble concentrating.”
“Try to rest.”
She grabbed some kindling and logs from the wood box and built a fire. When the flames took, a warm glow filled the room and cut the chill from the late afternoon air. Janet searched the kitchen cupboards and returned with a bottle of bourbon and a couple of glasses. She set them on the hearth and pulled a chair beside him and poured out drinks. The spider came to life.
It’s about time. Now we can put the world straight.
She slugged back three fingers, splashed herself another, and downed that as well. Then she set her mind on hacking the rest of Elliot’s files.
Jim looked lost, bathing in the fire's warmth. He whispered to no one, “She’s not going to make it.”
Janet put her device down and sighed. “Time is our enemy now. What she did on the heli-jet, the dimensional phase shift or whatever it was, wiped her out. She’s not eating and is barely lucid.”
“A cruel joke.”
“What do you mean?”
He pulled himself up in the chair and shifted his leg. “When we all returned from space, Esther and I took her to a hospital in New York City to get her checked out. We had this discussion about the inevitability of death, and no matter what happens, what we do, whether we find someone to love, we all die alone, abandoned.”
“That’s a little dark for you, isn’t it, Mr. Optimism?”
“Perhaps the blinders of youth have disappeared. Anyway, life seems so random and unjust. We get shunted around from one tragic struggle to another, win a few, lose a few, and then we’re done. We rescue Mary from Luna, but Kate disappears. We bring her home only to discover that her strength—her photographic memory—can’t handle whatever the alien dumped on her and, in fact, is literally torturing her to death.
“And also saved us,” Janet interjected.
He ignored her and continued. “So we find a guy in New Houston who might help, and he’s killed by a stray bullet from some assassin out for your hide.” He turned to her. Reflections of the firelight danced in his tired eyes. He looked handsome in the warm glow. “And we save her, so she can die again a few days later. That’s the cruel joke.”
Janet returned to her indie-comm. “Exactly what I’m feeling too, Jim. If there’s a point to any of this, I don’t see it.”
“At least you have your philosophical beliefs driving what you do. That’s something to hold on to.”
She grimaced.
For the next several minutes, the only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire, Janet tapping on her device, and Mary’s rhythmic, labored breathing from the sofa. Jim closed his eyes and his head lolled to the side.
Then Janet bolted upright. “Got in.”
Startled, he rubbed his beard while her fingers flew across the indie-comm’s screen, swiping through mail and messages and other documents, speed-reading like the researcher she was a long time ago.
“Anything there, Jan?”
“Hang on.” She continued tinkering with the device, nodding occasionally, then looked up. “Dr. Lewis Palmer is our man. He and Elliot collaborated on several projects, all related to the safe application of mindscraping techniques to address various brain disorders. That’s consistent with what Elliot told us about his research, so at least it doesn’t appear like he’s working for any nasty agency. I also have his personal cell number.” She punched it in and put the indie-comm on speaker phone. After a couple rings, a man answered.
“This is Palmer.”
“Doctor, it’s Janet Chamberlain. My daughter, Mary Atteberry, was scheduled for surgery with you this morning and—”
“How did you get my number?”
“Believe me, it wasn’t easy, but never mind that. What we need to know is—”
“You shouldn’t be calling. It’s not safe.”
“The channel’s encrypted, Doctor. We’re good”
A silent pause.
“Dr. Palmer, are you still there?”
“Yes. What, er, can I do for you, Ms. Chamberlain?”
“Mary’s father Jim and I were hoping the surgery could proceed. Perhaps there’s another hospital?”
“How is the patient?”
Jim chimed in. “She’s dying, doc. She needs help right away.”
Another pause.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do now, folks. Dr. Elliot was the physician with the knowledge and skills for this sort of thing. My forte’s more on the support and design side.” The doctor sighed, then added, “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. We lost a superb man today.”
Janet glimpsed at Atteberry and leaned forward with the indie-comm in front of her. “Please, this is a tough time for all of us.”
“I can only imagine, ma’am, and I truly wish there was more I could do. Perhaps a hospital at your location can give her something for the pain. I assure you, it will get a lot worse before she . . . before it’s over.”
Jim spoke, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Mary. “Could you at least try? I can’t watch my daughter fade away like this. Please, doc. She’s not eating, and her energy’s gone. Just try.”
Encryption tones beeped over the channel, accompanying the doctor’s calm breathing. They uttered no words for what seemed like minutes. Janet shifted on her chair again and again. She broke the silence. “Doctor, are you there?”
“I’m thinking . . .”
The fire logs popped and Mary whimpered from the sofa.
“Mr. Atteberry . . . Ms. Chamberlain, there may be a solution, but listen carefully. I can’t guarantee that what I propose will have any effect on your daughter’s condition. As I said, Dr. Elliot—”
“Yes, Doctor,” Jim interrupted, “we understand.”
“Very well. I’ll need access to the quantum computer at the Terran Science Academy labs. Do you know the research institution in San Francisco?”
“I know the TSA intimately,” Jim said, his eyes widening.
“Good. If we have a connection to that device, I could undertake what Bob proposed for the operation. I’d need to rig a temporary operating theatre at the Academy where that computer’s located.”
“I know a director, and—”
Janet reached over and touched his arm, adding, “Once we secure access, what else do you want us to do, Doctor Palmer?”
The physician ran through a list of actions required to prepare Mary for the surgery and be ready to go as soon as the next morning. He suggested they stand by until the quantum computer—the “Q”, he called it—and the operating team could be secured.
As they said their goodbyes, Palmer added one more thing. “I’ve already booked a flight home that leaves in a few hours. That should give me enough time to prepare my material here and arrange for a medical team in San Fran to assist.”
“Thank you so much, Doc,” Atteberry said, his voice cracking.
“We’ll try our best to save her,” the doctor said, “but it’s a long shot. Let’s pray it comes together without any more incidents.”
EIGHTEEN
Esther
Despite many attempts, Esther couldn’t reach Jim Atteberry on her indie-comm. She’d lost track of him after they’d returned from the east coast, and she blamed herself for not staying close, regardless of Janet’s ethereal presence. Odd, this aftertaste of jealousy rising in her.
Esther sighed and leaned back in the office sofa. The building took on a magical, spectral feeling at this late hour and for the second night in a row, she remained the only person on the floor. Fog had rolled in across the city, so stargazing was out of the question, but she didn’t want to return to her apartment. Not yet.
Where are you, Jim?
She had to find Mary and acquire her knowledge of the alien technology before sickness overtook the girl. Gleaning that information would propel her and the TSA into a brand new world, not to mention the future of humankind, but that wasn’t her motivation. Fixing the relationship with Dr. Kapoor, for some deep-seated people-pleasing reason, became the priority. Reacquiring the Space Ops lab and squishing Mark Jefferson underfoot, too. But manipulating Jim to scrape Mary’s mind—even if the present was all that existed—didn’t sit well now that she’d had time to live it. How does Clayton do it, she wondered? Perhaps he is soul-less after all.
Sleep grew heavy and the moment she drifted off, her indie-comm pinged. Esther shook herself upright and grabbed the device. An encrypted call.
“Esther, it’s me.”
“Jim, where the hell are you? I’ve been trying to reach—”
The connection crackled and encryption codes beeped. “It’ll take too long to explain, but I need a huge favor from you.”
“What is it?”
“Mary’s not well and a surgeon’s flying in to operate on her brain tomorrow, but he needs access to your quantum computer.”
Esther stood and gazed out her office window into the dark. “The Q-comp? What for?”
“You know the guy in New York who scanned her and said she didn’t have enough physical capacity for all the knowledge the alien dumped in her? Well, this other surgeon believes he can transfer that into a secondary computer and the only one he knows that’s capable of the speeds and memory required is yours.” He paused. “He specifically mentioned it by name.”
Esther pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jim, you know I’d do anything to help Mary, and you,” she let slip, “but you’ve got to understand something.” She swallowed hard. “I’m no longer in charge of Space Ops.”
“What?”
“Kapoor took it away from me and gave it to Mark Jefferson, so I’d have to get his permission.”
Static discharged on the line and the encryption codes beeped again.
“How big a problem is that?”
“First, the Q-comp’s hours are all booked in advance, and currently, there’s a joint deep space exploration project going on with the Japanese. It’s running twenty-four seven through the next week. If we shut it down now, all that data and hundreds of millions of dollars will be lost, and I can’t see him allowing that.”
Esther paced around the office. The last thing she wanted was for Mary to suffer, so from that perspective alone, she could justify terminating the deep space project. But that would mean telling Mark and Kapoor about Mary’s condition, and what her knowledge could bring to the world, and that raised even more problems since neither had any clue what power she held in her brain.
“Jim, where are you now? Can we discuss this in person?”
“I can’t tell you. Mary and Janet are with me in hiding. Listen, Es, there’s people after us and my girl won’t last much longer.”
“If I go to my boss with this, he’ll want to know what’s so special about her that I’m asking him to shut down a major project.”
Another pause. “What other option do I have? Are there other computers like yours around?”
She remembered the British military had been developing their own, but they remained at least two years from bringing it online. “No, ours is the sole operational one in the world.”
“Maybe if I talked with your boss and explained . . .”
She lowered her voice, an automatic response to sharing secrets. “Listen Jim, we can’t do that. Your lives are already in danger, and telling more people about what Mary did and, worse, that she has this knowledge and power within to manipulate space-time, well, that’s inviting more trouble than anyone could handle.”
Jim protested, but Janet’s voice rose in the background and he settled down again.
“Please, Esther.”
She hesitated, then shook her head in resignation. “I’ll ask Mark about the status of the deep space project and get a firm understanding of the timeframe. Perhaps I could persuade him to squeeze in this operation once it’s finished in a week.”
“Mary will be dead by then.”
Dammit. “Okay, well, I’ll speak with him, anyway. He might have a solution I haven’t considered.”
Jim sighed, relief in his voice. “Thanks, Es.”
“Don’t thank me yet. It’s a hell of a longshot, and right now Mark isn’t my favourite person in the land.”
“We’re meeting with the surgeon in the morning. Can you call me as soon as you can?”
“Yes. I’ll talk to Mark tonight and see what he says.”
She ended the call and tossed the indie-comm on her desk, then stared out the window into the foggy gloom. He’ll want to know why, and all the details, and then remind me of the cost of the deep space project and the fallout from stopping it even for a few hours.
From her computer, Esther prepared an urgent note.
Mark, any chance I can use the q-comp tomorrow. It’s a life/death thing.
She paused, wondering if she needed to say any more. After reflecting a moment, she signed her name and sent the missive. A few moments later, her device pinged with an incoming message.
Sorry, Esther, the Q’s running Deep Space for the next 6 days. I could let you use it then, if that helps.
She tried again.
Please, Mark. I can’t explain, but it’s Ross 128 related. Half a day?
