The two natives managed, although they were transfixed by the vast scene in front of them. Neither had ever even been inside a building before, and certainly neither had seen the ancient places when they were still whole.
“How are you getting power?” N’Gana asked the century-old machine. “Surely nothing is still running.”
“No, the Titans absorb all our power like a sponge. It is only in the security areas with the low-level trickle charges just a few amps, really—that any of the original stored power is still used or even exists. It is too low-level for their mechanisms to pick up. In truth, I was as surprised as anyone to get even this power. It is Titan power.”
“Titan power!”
“When their installation was fully constructed and turned on, the grounded base intersected one of my old power plates. So long as I do not vary the flow and simply use what seeps in, I have been able to maintain this level and my own existence. Of course, I am mostly shut down unless someone is here, and you are only the second in almost ninety years.”
“Nobody was left trapped here when they took over?” Harker asked.
“Yes, some were, but as I lost all power for a period of almost two years except trickle from batteries, this place was uninhabitable. No power, no food, and even the water turned off—well, they had to evacuate, those who could. I went dormant due to lack of power then and did not revive until Jastrow showed up a few years ago. Since then I have remained awake, in a standby setting. Unfortunately, I have been unable to do very much, since I cannot draw more power than seeps through and I dare not use it for any mechanical purposes lest they detect it and eliminate this place and me. They are capable of doing so, but do not bother unless there is some threat. I have detected several security stations and some places that were almost certainly old refuges for survivors that appear to have been subjected to sufficient energy to turn them and everything inside into molten rock. It is a delicate balancing act. I have, however, managed to recharge virtually all the security and backup power supplies over the period.”
“Where to from here?” N’Gana asked.
“Down the catwalk, then use the ladders to go down to the floor. From that point, I will direct you to where the problem lay for Jastrow. I see that you have brought a Quadulan per my recommendations.”
“That was your message? I thought it was that poor fellow’s,” Kat commented as they made their way along the very cold metallic catwalk.
“Oh, Jastrow sent it. It was the only way. He was quite a brave man. He had the morals of a thief and the qualities of a devil, but I provided him with the only thing he could do that he found satisfying—revenge. He wasn’t afraid to die, I can tell you that, if in so doing he felt he could get the Titans. I was quite afraid that he wouldn’t make it to one of the only three remaining monitoring stations with sufficient reserve power to send a message. He couldn’t send it from here, obviously. The moment he did, there would have been a rather rapid and interested investigation and that would have given up the game.”
They reached the old factory floor now, covered in fine dust. Harker noted that there were other prints there, those of a single barefoot individual coming and going. Although they were almost certainly those of the unfortunate Jastrow and years old, they looked as if they had been made yesterday.
“Follow the footprints,” the mentat instructed. “You will come to it.”
They walked across the ghostly floor, the huge machinery all around making it an eerie place. Every voice, every cough, was magnified and echoed back and forth in the place. Only the mentat’s voice was devoid of any acoustical naturalness; it seemed to come from a closed and baffled chamber.
“What are these things in here?” Kat asked the computer. “What was it that was made here?”
“Caps and plates for genholes,” the mentat responded. “The device works by capturing the stringlike pulses from the temporal discontinuity in the lens. It cannot, however, be truly capped or controlled. The only way to handle it is to capture a string and put it through a genhole and out somewhere else. Right now the junction caps direct it into an area of space where it can do no real harm. It is the junction that is the key to the operation. In relays, you can redirect it so that it emerges out of any genhole you determine. After that you have no control. You can, however, see the possibilities. If you can switch genholes at various junctions, then you can direct it to specific targets. There are countless genholes out there now, each a potential exit point. After that, though, it is wild. That is why they could not test it against anything planetary. Nobody knows what will happen. Nobody knows what the strings are, or if they are strings or energy spikes or temporal discontinuities or something else. Once you have an object generating these energy spikes by virtue of a temporal loop in which it is always trying to fall out of our universe, well, you can see we are in uncharted waters. That was why The Confederacy abandoned the idea even though it had no alternatives. Early tests were inconclusive. The trick was getting a burst short enough to keep from tearing apart everything.”
“I don’t see why it wouldn’t destroy the genhole and the gates as well,” Kat commented.
“It doesn’t. It is drawn to a charged plate as if it was magnetized and goes through the center,” the mentat explained.
“In a sense, the twisted space-time inside a genhole appears to be a natural, or compatible, environment for it.”
“So what is in the security modules below?” Harker asked. “What is it that they need up there?”
“The control codes for the fourteen thousand six hundred and thirty-seven junctions established in this sector before Helena’s fall,” the mentat told them. “With these codes, anyone in the control center can route the string or pulse or whatever it is to any exit point under junction control. I made them all, you know, right here, and I am certain that they will work as designed. You can see why the codes and locations were kept separate, though. It is quite possible that the use of it on, say, Helena, would destroy the planet. Anything is possible. Nobody was sure what happened to the asteroids and small moons used in the early Confederacy tests, but it scared them. There was a sense that this was a weapon that would not only destroy the enemy but would also destroy what you wished to protect. The debate raged even as the Titans closed in. It was agreed that there would be a master code that no one person or family would have. Karas had part of it, Melcouri a second, and the supervising engineer, Doctor Sotoropolis, had the third. All three parts were needed before the station would even accept the coded commands. When the time came, sooner than they thought it would, Melcouri and Karas had no qualms about giving the code, but Sotoropolis balked. His wife pleaded with him to withhold his consent since all that they had in the world, their families, their lives, were here. He vacillated long enough that it was almost too late. He was trying to set up a close-in gate that would intersect Titan ships instead of hitting them after they were down, but when they came, it was too swift. He wasn’t ready, and he died for it.”
N’Gana stopped suddenly, causing an almost comic backup of the others. “Then what in hell’s the use of getting these target codes? We don’t have all three parts of the master code, right? Or is that down there, too?”
For the first time, Harker realized just exactly what had led to all this, and even what had led the Dutchman to the family survivors offworld rather than attempting it with his own crew.