It didn’t help that the note penned under the sign, in Gretta’s hand, said, NOT THAT ALL OF US WILL BE AROUND FOR IT.
After his last visit to the conflagration of the world, Rye had said, “Let me go back home for my end. I can’t help you anymore down here.”
Dr. Martin nodded sympathetically but said, “No. As long as the loop is closed, we have to keep it that way.”
Gretta stared at him through the conversation in the unnerving way of hers, but she didn’t add a word.
Rye worked his way through the security screens methodically. He tapped one access code after another into the programs, passing each level of clearance, getting closer each time to an outside line. The notebook with security procedures lay open on the table beside the terminal. Dr. Martin’s head wasn’t geared to secrecy. He didn’t lock the book up. He hadn’t kept private what was in it. But until now, Rye had never thought he would need it. Everyone on the outside believed him to be dead. For all practical purposes, to them, he was.
Still, the chance for discovery was high. Rye listened to the hiss of air coming through the vent. The keys pattered softly. He’d have almost no time to clear the screen if either Gretta or Martin woke up. Their rooms were only a few steps away down the hall, and in the converted missile silo, they’d long since lost sense of day and night. They slept in two and three hour snatches whenever they needed.
So he kept his head cocked to one side, waiting for sounds. Gretta was with Martin again in one of the three sleeping cubicles at one end of the short hallway that constituted the length of their living space. Across the hall, computer equipment and two small desks filled another room. At the other end of the hall stood the blast door with its steering-wheel handle. No missile in the silo, of course. It had long ago been removed.
Today, even his skin hurt. The gentle tap of the keys burned against his fingers, and his wrists ached.
The metal floors, walls and ceiling amplified every sound. Clicking keys pounded like hammers on stone. They’d know he was up. They’d know he was in the communications room, a place he had no need to be. They’d discover and stop him.
But if he could e-mail his sister, Annie, he could save her, and he’d live with the repercussions.
A black spot drifted across his vision in his left eye. He blinked hard. Sometimes that helped. Flicking his focus from left to right helped sometimes too, but this spot seemed unaffected and drifted inexorably upwards, never quite out of sight, always at the top of his vision. His M.D. called them floaters, one of the symptoms of CMV retinitis, a herpes infection of the eyes.
His throat throbbed. The glands in his neck were swollen again, and so were the ones in his groin. He shifted uncomfortably in the office chair, trying to relieve the pressure.
If he could see Annie again, explain why he’d left, he could tolerate the discomfort. He thought, I made a bad decision, coming here.
Rye hadn’t really believed that a secret, government project existed that needed his expertise in virtual reality, until at the end of the long plane trip and even longer car ride the soldier in the prefab opened the elevator door without comment. Sunburn marked his cheeks, and after a while Rye wondered if it hurt him to speak. The soldier hadn’t said a word since Rye and the unnamed NSA agent had entered. Silently, he checked their I.D.’s, then handed Rye a clipboard with a clearance form already filled out. Rye signed it.
“Do you bring a lot of people out here?” Rye asked.
“That’s on a needs to know basis,” said the agent.
“Oh.”
The agent said, “God-awful hot. You’d think they’d pop for some air conditioning.” He loosened his tie. Sweat darkened his collar. “Lucky dog, it’s cooler down there I’ll bet.”
The soldier took the clipboard and gave it to the agent to sign.
“Did they get all my bags?” asked Rye. “There are a couple of blue cases for my medications.”
The agent shrugged. He was younger than the one who’d accompanied him on the plane and more bored. “Everything’s there that went in the car.”
“I really need those cases.”
Handing the clipboard back to the soldier, the agent said, “I’m sure they’re around. If not, we’ll find them and send them to you right away.”
“I won’t be coming back up, you know,” said Rye. He remembered the briefing at the hospital. They’d found him just as he was checking out, and he was so tired and discouraged that a job offer from the National Security Agency that involved, among other things, a guarantee for paid medical treatments, sounded too good to believe. The catch was, they said, that he’d have to disappear, at least for a while. He’d get more explanations later, but once he took the job, he would vanish. His family would be told that he’d died.
Rye wondered if NSA hung out at hospitals recruiting people with death sentences, or if it were just a lucky coincidence for them.
“No one comes up,” said the agent. He smiled, not unkindly. “I hear it’s pretty cushy down there.”
“I’ll need my medicine.” A black spot drifted across the room, across the agent’s face, distracting Rye. He worried that he looked twitchy, always trying to see things no one else noticed.
“Let’s get you in the elevator,” the agent said, picking up two duffel bags.
Rye bent to pick up another, but suddenly grew dizzy, and he stood until the room quit spinning. He rubbed the spot on his chest where the catheter had been for ten days in the hospital. They’d infused him with medication to combat the CMV, but now he felt weaker than ever.
“You’re not well?” said the agent, grabbing another bag. The blue medical cases were behind it.
“They didn’t tell you?” said Rye. He felt steady enough now, but the black spot seemed to have paused in the upper right corner of his vision, and he couldn’t ignore it.
“Sorry to hear it. But it is cooler in the silo. What are you doing down there? Special hospital?”
Rye crouched carefully and picked up the blue cases. “That’s on a needs to know basis.”
“The rules. First,” said Dr. Martin, “we must remain in a closed loop. It’s the butterfly effect: You know, how the flap of a butterfly wing in China might result in a hurricane in Florida. Our smallest information leak could change everything.”
“Okay,” said Rye. His stomach hurt. Fourteen pills each morning. Different meds through the day. Random specks drifting through his vision. Between disease and side effects from the medicine, it was all he could do to keep from grimacing. He concentrated on ignoring his symptoms.
“Second, no fraternizing with each other.”
“I’m not gay,” said Rye.
“Neither am I,” replied Dr. Martin without blinking. “I meant Gretta.”
“Gretta?”
“She’s the other member of our team. Top-notch programmer. A graduate student from a class I taught last year. By the way, she might be a bit hostile. She’s not convinced a man whose computer background is all in 3D gaming is the right person for the job.”
“No problem.”
“Third, we have to work fast. Time is ticking on this.”
“I know about limited time.”
“Lastly, we can change the future. You must believe that or there’s no reason to be here. I can send you topside right now if you think you won’t have the attitude for the work.”
Rye glanced around the room. His bags were piled by the elevator door; the blue cases sat prominently in front. “Sure.”