Joey came back shortly, bowing his head in apology. “No bomb after all, tohunga. It’s a liquid-suspension catalyst — a simple nanotech corrosion promoter — probably tailored to wreck the thumper’s piezogravitic characteristics. The stuff was supposed to spray when she pulled the lever, but the holes had been squished shut, so nothing came out. A lucky break. Lucky our reporter friend’s so strong.” Joey gestured toward Manella, who blinked in apparent surprise.
“His hand print covers the holes,” Joey explained. “Broke the hinge, too. Don’t nobody challenge that guy to a wrestling match.”
June shrugged when they all looked at her. “I got the idea from those scrubber enzymes Teresa keeps asking for, to clean her old shuttle. Your guards grew used to me bringing chemicals in little packages. Anyway, just a few drops would put you out of business. It takes days to grow a new resonator — all the time my employers needed.”
“You’re not trying to hold back much, are you?” Teresa asked.
“Why should I? If they don’t get my success code soon, they’ll assume I failed and shut you down by other means… a lot more violent than I tried to use! That’s why I volunteered to do this. You’re my friends. I don’t want you hurt.”
The murmuring techs obviously thought her statement bitterly ironic. And yet, at one level Alex believed her. Maybe I have to believe someone I’ve made love to cares about me… even if she turns betrayer for other reasons.
“They agreed to let me say this much if I failed,” June went on intensely. “To convince you to give up. Please, Alex, everybody, take my word for it. You’ve no idea who you’re up against!”
Someone brought a chair for Alex. He knew he must look drawn and unsteady, but going passive would be a mistake right now. He remained standing.
“What’s your success code? How would you tell them you’d succeeded?”
“You were planning to phone Spivey after hearing his pitch, no? I was to slip in a few words, to be overheard by my contact there—”
“What? You mean Spivey’s not your real boss?”
June’s eyes flicked away before returning to meet his. “What do you mean?” she asked a little too quickly. “Of course he’s…”
“Wait,” Pedro Manella interrupted. “You’re right, Alex. Something’s fishy.” He moved closer to glower over June. “What did you mean when you said, ‘You have no idea who you’re up against’? You weren’t just speaking figuratively, were you? I think you meant it quite literally.”
June attempted nonchalance. “Did I?”
Pedro rubbed his hands. “I spent two months interviewing that kidnapper-torturer in London. You know, the one who called himself the ‘father confessor of Knightsbridge’? I learned a lot about persuasion techniques, writing that book. Does anyone have any bamboo shoots? Or we’ll make do with what’s in the kitchen.”
June laughed contemptuously. “You wouldn’t dare.” But her uncertainty grew apparent when” she met Manella’s eyes.
“What do you mean, Pedro?” Teresa asked. “You think Spivey was telling the truth? That he’s as much a dupe as — as we’ve been?”
Alex appreciated her use of the plural. Of course, he deserved singling out as paramount dupe.
“You’re the astronaut, Captain,” Manella answered. “Did the colonel’s purported passion for new launch systems make sense? Given what you know about him?”
Teresa nodded grudgingly. “Y-e-e-s. Of course, maybe I want to believe. It makes Jason’s last work more noble. It means our leaders aren’t just TwenCen-style, nationalist assholes, but were trying a plan, however misguided—” She shook her head. “Glenn sounded sincere. But I just can’t say.”
“Well, there’s something else a lot less subjective, and that’s the question of why? What motive could Spivey and his bosses have to put this site out of business, if everything comes under international jurisdiction tonight anyway?”
“There’s only one reason possible,” Alex answered. “If taking us out was part of a scheme to stop those controls. Spivey admitted he didn’t want them.”
Teresa shook her head again. “No! He said he wanted them delayed, till gazer space launching was proven. But remember, he accepted the principle of long-term supervision.” Her brow furrowed. “Alex, none of this makes sense!”
He agreed. “What could anyone gain by causing turmoil now? If the president’s speech doesn’t disclose all, the Net will explode.”
“Not just the Net,” Manella added. “There will be chaos, strikes… and a gravity laser arms race. Poor nations and major corporations will blow city blocks out of their rivals’ capitals, or set off earthquakes or—” He shook his head. “Who on Earth could profit from such a situation?”
“Not Glenn Spivey,” Teresa affirmed, now with complete certainty.
“Nor any of the space powers,” Alex put in.
One of the techs asked, “Who does that leave, then?” They regarded June Morgan, who scanned the circle of nervous faces and sighed. “You’re all so smart, so modern. You’ve got your info-plaques and percomps and loyal little ferret programs to go fetch data for you. But what information? Only what’s in the Net, my dears.”
Alex frowned. “What are you talking about?”
She glanced at her watch, nervously. “Look, I was supposed to report in well before this. At any moment, my — masters — will know I’ve failed, and move to settle things more dramatically. Please, Alex. Let me finish my job and call them—”
She was interrupted by a sudden, blaring alarm from one of the consoles. A technician rushed over to read its display. “I’m getting hunt resonance from two — no, three — large thumpers… in the Sahara, Canada, and somewhere in Siberia!”
June stood up, pulling when a guard grabbed her arm. “Too late. They must be getting nervous. Alex please, get everybody out of here!”
Teresa pushed close to the blond woman. “Who do you mean, they? I say we let Pedro do it his way…” She glanced to one side, but Alex was no longer there.
“Give me a projected resonance series for that combination!” he demanded, throwing himself into his work seat, slipping the subvocal device over his head. “Zoom onto the mantle-core boundary under Beta. Show me any likely power threads.”
“Putting it on now, tohunga.”
The recorded message had frozen on its last frame — depicting a hopeful-looking Glenn Spivey smiling into the camera. That image now vanished, replaced by the familiar cutaway Earth, resplendent in fiery complexity. From three northern points at its surface, pulsing columns of light thrust inward toward a rendezvous far below. The dot where they converged wavered as the beams kept sliding off each other.
“I’ve never seen those sites before,” one Tangoparu scientist said. But another commented, “I… think I might’ve. A couple of quick pulses yesterday, just after we hit the glacier. But the traces looked like those strange surface echoes we’ve been getting, so I assumed…”
To a trained eye, the intruder beams could be seen hunting for alignment in the energized, field-rich lower mantle. The Beta singularity, still orbiting through the enigmatic electricity of those zones, obliged by serving as their mirror, focusing the combined effort. The purple dot shimmered.
“They’re less experienced,” somebody near Alex muttered. “But they know what they’re doing.”
“Extrapolating now… Gaia!” The first tech cried out. “The amplified beam’s going to come this way!”
Alex was too busy to turn his head, which would throw off the subvocal anyway. Using the delicate input device was a lot like running full tilt along a tightrope. Ironically, it was easier to order up a simulated image of his face than to use his own voice to shout a warning.
“Rip!” the imitation self cried out as he worked. “Get everyone but the controllers out of here. Take them west, you hear? West!”