Coyote Frontier Page 7

  “They’re gone,” Shaw said quietly. “You can get up now.”

  Jonas opened his eyes as Shaw pulled back the sheet, blinked hard against the glare of the ceiling lights. The cart had been wheeled into what appeared to be an infirmary; an examination table lay nearby, surrounded by all the customary medical apparatus, with cabinets lining the clean white walls. A short young woman wearing a surgical gown stood next to Shaw, her blond hair pulled back behind a cap; she regarded Jonas with nervous eyes, casting an occasional glance at the closed doors where the Prefect whom Jonas had met earlier now stood guard.

  “We need to get him cleaned up.” The doctor spoke to Shaw as if Jonas wasn’t there, even as she pointed to his blood-drenched shirt. “I know you had to do this, but we can’t risk having him contaminated.” She picked up a large metal bowl filled with a watery pink solution, placed it on the cart next to him. “Strip, then use this to wash yourself,” she said, handing him a sponge and a plastic bag. “Dump your clothes in here. And try not to make a mess.”

  His shirt buttons were slick with blood, yet although he wanted to get out of his clothes as soon as he could, he was uneasy about disrobing in front of strangers. It was almost as unnerving as having a pint of warm blood squirted on his chest as he lay upon the carpeted floor of the conference room, then having the Prefect fire a blank at him from close range. “What’s the rush? I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, you are, but we’ve got to make sure you’re still dead by the time Dr. Kendrick gets through with you.” Shaw smiled at him. “It won’t be long until an ambulance arrives to take you to the mortuary, and by then we have to switch you for one of the cadavers she’s generously agreed to provide.” He looked at Kendrick. “You have the body, don’t you?”

  “In the storeroom.” Turning away from them, she walked across the tile floor, her long cotton robe brushing against her ankles. “With any luck, no one will notice the substitution before they’ve cremated it.”

  “They won’t,” Shaw said. “We’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  Jonas refrained from asking the obvious questions; it seemed that Shaw had some previous experience with disposing of corpses in the middle of the night. Likewise, he also wondered how many times Shaw had faked someone’s death. It was all so perfect; the blood, the gunshot, the story told to the Prefects standing outside the room that Jonas had tried to attack Shaw and that his bodyguard had acted to protect him. This, and the fact that a medical facility lay conveniently close at hand, complete with a doctor who just happened to be working late. And now, another body that would soon be cremated in the interests of national security.

  Shaw worked for a corrupt system, yet he’d learned how to manipulate that same system to his own ends. No one would question his version of what had happened, and even if they did, he had witnesses to back him up. A stone alibi. All this might have been comforting, if Jonas hadn’t known where it was leading.

  Once he’d stripped off his clothes and given himself a sponge bath, Kendrick returned to give him a quick yet thorough physical, all the while asking him questions about his medical history. Apparently satisfied with his answers, she administered a half dozen injections, jabbing his biceps again and again with a syringe gun; she didn’t bother to tell him what she was giving him, so he assumed that they were antibiotics of one sort or another. Then she handed him a bedpan and ordered him to relieve himself, right then and there. And the humiliation didn’t stop there; while Shaw watched from the corner of the room, Kendrick made him lay down on the cold metal surface of the operating table and, using an electric razor, shaved his entire body, from his head down to his chest and pubic area.

  “Clock’s ticking, Maggie.” Shaw glanced at his watch. “We don’t have much time left.”

  “Don’t rush me,” Kendrick muttered, yet she was clearly moving as fast as she could. She handed Jonas a cotton gown, then stood back and waited for him to get off the table. “All right, you’re done. Now come with me—”

  A keycard slipped into an electronic lock opened a sealed door on the other side of the room. A faint whuff of pressurized air as the door slid open, and then Jonas followed the doctor into an adjacent room, as cold and antiseptic as the one they’d just left. “You can’t come in,” Kendrick said, looking over her shoulder at Shaw. “We have to keep this place—”

  “I won’t touch a thing.” All the same, he stopped just inside the door, his hands in his coat pockets. “You probably don’t recognize this place, Dr. Whittaker,” he went on, “but I’m sure you know what it is.”

  Gazing around the room, Jonas nodded, and shivered with a chill that went farther than his flesh. In the center of the room rested three ceramic-alloy containers, faintly resembling coffins save for the tiny windows and the instrument panels at one end. Biostasis cells, used by FSA for testing long-term human hibernation in preparation for Project Starlight. One of the cells was closed, but the other two lay open, their raised lids revealing the gelatin pads within.

  “Your ticket to the twenty-third century,” Shaw said, as Jonas gingerly stepped farther into the room. “Maybe longer, I don’t know. Sorry, but we can’t be sure how long you’ll—”

  “I know. You’ve told me.” Jonas shuddered, took a deep breath. He had a sudden impulse to turn and run for his life, yet there was nothing behind him save for certain death. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, he was already dead; this was merely the anteroom to a dreamless form of limbo. “How will…how will they know me? On the other side, I mean.”

  “They won’t.” Kendrick nodded toward the closed cell. “That’s Test Subject 11. He went in two and a half years ago, and even I don’t know who he is, other than the fact that he was a volunteer. All his records have been scrubbed, in exchange for his cooperation in this experiment. You’ll be known as Test Subject 12, and you’ll be treated the same way. When you’re revived—”

  “I won’t be anyone.” Jonas hugged himself. “I’ll be nameless, a nonperson. No past, no proof of who I was.”

  “No. No, that’s not true.” As Shaw took a tentative step forward, he withdrew from his coat pocket a plastic packet about the size of a manila envelope. He extended it to Kendrick. “Here’s all your records…personal, private, everything my people were able to copy from your files. It’s all on minidisc. I’ve been assured that it’ll last a few hundred years without noticeable degradation.”

  Kendrick took the packet. She quickly examined it, making sure that it was sealed, then brushed away some lint and handed it to Jonas. He studied it for a second. “And from what you’ve told me, it also contains my notes for—”

  “Everything we’ve discussed.” Apparently Shaw wasn’t willing to trust even Dr. Kendrick with some things. “It’s all there. All you have to do is enter your old passwords.”

  Jonas gazed at the packet, then at the open biostasis cell. “You think of everything, don’t you? Except that I’ll be alone when I wake up…”

  “We’re getting down to the wire.” Shaw glanced at his watch again. “Either you go, or…”

  “Next time your man shoots me, he’ll use real bullets.” Jonas sighed, then turned to Kendrick. “All right, let’s get it over.”

  So then he removed his gown and lay down in the nearest cell, carefully placing the packet behind his left shoulder. He watched while Dr. Kendrick inserted plastic tubes in the veins of his arms. She did so with the reverence of an ancient Egyptian priest preparing a pharaoh for his entry to the afterlife, and for the first time her touch became tender, her voice soft. And since he never saw Roland Shaw again, he didn’t get a chance to either thank or curse him. Yet, as she injected him with the drugs that would put him in a coma for the next two and half centuries, Kendrick leaned close to him.

  “Good luck,” she whispered. “I envy you.”

  Before he could ask what she meant by that, he fell asleep.

  “And you were in biostasis for…how long?” Carlos asked.

  “Two h
undred and twelve years.” Whittaker said this as a matter of fact, yet for a moment he closed his eyes, almost as if recalling what it had been like to have slept for almost a quarter of a millennium. “I was revived on August 12, 2282…just about nine years ago.” He stopped himself. “I mean, about nine years before the Columbus left Earth. Sorry, I’m still getting used to this myself.”

  “Happens to us all,” Henry said drily. “Getting old is a bitch.”

  More chuckles, and Jonas went on. “By then, of course, the URA no longer existed. On the other hand, since I wasn’t even on Earth anymore…”

  Wendy raised an eyebrow. “If you weren’t on Earth, then where—?”

  “Shaw apparently didn’t want to take any chances with anyone reviving me, so he had my cell transported to a URS military base on the Moon.” Jonas picked up a glass of water, took a sip. “A small research installation on the lunar farside. Top secret, and completely off the map. After the Republic fell, it was abandoned and forgotten. I’d probably still be there if an expedition from the International Geographic Society hadn’t rediscovered it. And that’s where they found me.” He glanced at Tereshkova and briefly smiled. “Luckily, the expedition was Russian-led. They brought my cell back to St. Petersburg, and that’s where I was revived.”

  “Lucky, indeed,” Tereshkova added. “If Dr. Whittaker had been found by a Union-led expedition, then they would’ve also found the disk containing his notes. And if that had happened, then chances are that we wouldn’t be here.”

  “All right. Now you’ve lost me.” Carlos held up a hand. “You mentioned that disk, but you didn’t say what was on it. And you haven’t told us why Roland Shaw went to the trouble of faking your death and putting you in suspended animation. Why did—?”

  “Starbridges.”

  Until now, Henry had remained silent. Now, upon speaking, all eyes turned toward the elderly physicist. “You finally did it, didn’t you?” he added, ignoring the others as he stared down the table at his former Marshall colleague. “You figured out how to build starbridges.”

  “C’mon now, Henry.” Whittaker slowly shook his head. “We knew how to build them even before the Alabama left. We just lacked the technological capability, that’s all.” Then he smiled. “But now…yes, we have it. It’s all there.”

  Henry’s mouth dropped open. He sat up a little straighter in his chair. “You must be joking. You’ve—?”

  “Will one of you please tell the rest of us what you’re talking about?” Wendy asked impatiently. “What in heaven’s name is a starbridge?”

  Before either Henry or Jonas could respond, Tereshkova gently cleared her throat. “This may be a good time for a visual presentation.” She pointed to the comp at Carlos’s end of the table. “Does that operate, Mr. Montero? And the screen, too?”

  “Umm…more or less.” Like all other electronic equipment left behind by the Union, the comp was an antique, as was the flatscreen behind him. They’d been seldom used, though, so he had doubts that they’d still work. Like so much other Earth-made equipment that had gradually worn out over the years, it was difficult to find even a pad that functioned. He reached forward to switch on the comp, and was relieved to hear a faint beep as its aged hard drive creaked to life once more. “Yes, I think they do.”

  Tereshkova raised a skeptical eyebrow, but said nothing as she drew a small pad from her pocket and plugged it into the comp’s external port. She tapped on the keys, and the wallscreen flickered for an instant before resolving into a grainy image: a three-dimensional wire-model of a ring-shaped structure.

  “This is a starbridge,” she began.

  Henry leaned closer to Carlos. “Watch this,” he whispered. “You’re going to love it.”

  HAMALIEL 70 / 1832

  Twilight was settling upon the town by the time Carlos and Wendy returned home. The meeting had only lasted a few hours, but after it broke up they spent the afternoon showing the visitors around town. Since Captain Tereshkova had accepted their invitation to spend the night in Liberty, Wendy arranged for them to stay at a small inn near the grange, and once the tour was over Chris escorted them over there.

  Yet the day wasn’t done yet. Carlos and Wendy had invited Henry Johnson over for supper, so they met the old man back at the grange. The lights of their house were on, and when they came in through the door, they found that Susan had already fixed dinner. Their daughter had briefly attended the reception, but had returned to the university to teach her afternoon class. Once she’d learned that her parents were showing the visitors around town, though, she’d canceled class. She knew her parents would be hungry and decided that her biology students could use an extra day to prepare for their next exam.

  “Besides,” she said as she laid out another setting at the table, “there’s no sense in trying to teach ’em anything today. All they want to talk about is the Columbus.”

  “Fine with me.” Carlos sat down to remove his boots and exchange them for a pair of catskin slippers. Their two dogs, Zack and Jake, cavorted around him, competing for his attention. “It was my turn to cook anyway.” He looked at Susan askance. “Not leftover stew, I hope.”

  “Fed it to the dogs. Went to the market and bought a chicken…and don’t give me that look, Papa. I sprung for it myself.” Spotting her mother lifting the lid of the pot simmering on top of the stove, she hastened over to snatch it away from her. “And don’t mess with my bird! I didn’t put in too much garlic this time.”

  “Lord, I hope not.” Henry wheezed slightly as he settled into a wicker chair next to the kitchen table. “Last time I ate your chicken, I had gas for three days.”

  “Henry!” Wendy started to scold him, but he and Carlos were already cracking up, so she surrendered to the inevitable and went into the bedroom to change into her robe. Carlos poured some waterfruit wine for himself and their guest, then stoked a fire in the flagstone hearth. It had been a long day for everyone, and it was good to be home at last.

  Little of consequence was discussed over dinner, but once Susan cleared the table and Carlos put the plates in the sink, the four of them retired to the hearth. With drinks in hand and the dogs curled up between them, the topic of conversation turned to what had been discussed at the meeting. As usual, Susan was sworn to secrecy, something she’d understood ever since she was old enough to know that most of the things she heard in her living room weren’t meant for public knowledge.

  “This is beyond me.” Wendy pulled a shagswool comforter around herself as she gazed into the fire. “I mean, I understand the concept of wormholes and all that, but the idea that we can create them…” She shook her head. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Oh, it’s possible, all right.” Henry finished loading his clingberry pipe with cloverweed and lit the bowl with a twig from the fireplace. “We understood the basic principles a long time ago. Only thing we didn’t know was how to do it at will. Now it sounds like they’ve got that part licked.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Carlos stood up to crack open a window. He normally didn’t allow smoking in his house, but for Henry he made an exception. “You’ve got two starbridges…one in Lagrange orbit between Earth and the Moon…”

  “Uh-huh.” Henry puffed on his pipe as he idly scratched Zack behind the ears. “That one’s already been built. Or should be, by now.”

  “And the other one…the one that hasn’t been built yet…would be in trojan orbit between here and Bear.”

  “That’s correct. Two entrances at either end of a tunnel…or a bridge, if you want to think of it that way. Only in this case, one port can’t function without the other, because if you tried to enter the tunnel without having an exit on the other side, you’d just fall into a singularity and be crushed to nothingness.”

  “So that’s what they’ve brought here,” Wendy said. “The materials they need to build a second starbridge. The first gate is already…should already…be in place, and the second one…”

  “The compon
ents are aboard the Columbus, right.” Henry removed the pipe from his mouth, absently studied the embers of the bowl. “A rather elegant feat of engineering, really. Instead of the vanes used by Union ships, Columbus’s diametric drive was built as a torus. So all they have to do is dismantle the ship, then reassemble it in trojan orbit as the starbridge and its gatehouse. Saves on time and material.”

  “That’s what Captain Tereshkova wants to show us,” Carlos said. “She’s invited Wendy and me to ride back on the Isabella tomorrow morning, so she can let us see the Columbus firsthand.”

  “Wish I could come along, but I don’t think I could handle it.” Henry winced and shook his head. “Damn, I hate getting old. Anyway, once they’ve rebuilt the diametric drive as the focusing ring, all they’d have to do is activate the swiftgate. They can do that easily enough by reversing the drive’s polarity to open a quantum singularity in Bear’s gravity well, then thread the aperture with negative energy so that they create a stable wormhole. After that, it’s mainly a matter of expanding it to a usable size. They can do that by—”

  “Sure. Got that part.” In truth, it was over his head, and Carlos was too tired to listen to another lecture in quantum physics. “Let’s assume that it works,” he said, leaning against the mantle. “Starbridges between here and Earth. Instead of forty-nine years, it just takes a few seconds for a ship to get from here to there.”

  “Or from there to here,” Wendy murmured.

  “Right.” Susan nodded in agreement with what her mother had just said. “It’s not so bad when Earth is forty-six light-years away. But when it’s only a few hundred thousand miles…”

  “Not even that far,” Henry said. “Look, let’s say we’ve got a couple of starbridges right here in this house. One here, in front of the fireplace, and the other…oh, say, over by the kitchen.” He pointed to the next room. “That’s about twelve feet, right? But if I walked through the one here, I’d instantly come out through the starbridge over there. You could even look through the wormhole and see me standing in the kitchen. The distance between here and there would simply cease to exist.”