"Stopping the second bomb is just one of several actions that are taking place to change the course of our history. Even as we speak, there are unprecedented conversations going on between world leaders, focused on what they think-and we want them to think-they have found in Ayers Rock and at Tunguska. That cooperation is essential if the future is to turn out differently and mankind is to survive as a race. And that if there is some form of Coalition out there-and our computers indicate there most likely is-we will be accepted as a fit race for a civilized culture."
Pencak stopped suddenly and looked surprised for a second, and even in the dim light Fran could tell that the other woman was fading and then she was back again, as solid as ever.
"What's happening to you?" Fran asked.
"History is already slightly different than in my past," Pencak said. "Not so much yet that things might not turn out the same, but different nonetheless. We cannot control time-we can only travel in it. We have interfered with what happened in our past, and once our actions cause an irreversible change, we will no longer exist."
She smiled grimly. "Or at least that is what the computer says. No one knows for sure because no one has ever done this before. In my future we invented time travel only months prior to implementing our plan. I have lived an entire adult life here in the past, yet for my comrades in the future, only a few weeks have passed since I left. My fading is the effect of the ripples from the changes already made. The fact that I am still here, though, says none of the changes that have occurred so far are significant enough to have truly altered my past and your future.
"You spoke of history as a river whose course is very hard to change. So far we have only thrown stones in it. But when it does change, it will be a momentous thing for those of us in the future. Our channel of time will dry up and be gone."
"How did you destroy Voyager?" Batson asked suddenly.
"I planted a time-delay bomb in it while it was still being assembled in 1972. We knew the exact moment we wanted it destroyed, so it flew for all those years out of the solar system with that bomb waiting to go off."
"What about the messages for Levy?"
"My comrades sent those. I was surprised how quickly she determined how they were being sent. You were only supposed to pick up the part aimed for you-the two messages with Levy's name. The part that disappeared was my communication with my comrades." Pencak held up her strange cane. "The receiver is in the handle. I had to keep in contact."
"And this crater?" he asked. "It really was formed by meteors?"
Pencak gave her lopsided shrug. "I don't know. I have studied the crater and I do believe it was most likely formed by a nuclear explosion, but I have no idea how that could have happened. We took as many possible existing geological features that we could use and linked them together in a plausible story along with other factors we could manipulate to try and convince your world leaders that there was an alien threat. It remains to be seen how well we have succeeded. You do have to admit we presented a very realistic and believable scenario."
"Why us?" Fran went back to her original question. "Why Don and me?"
"Because of your son."
"Our son?" Batson said. "We hardly even know each other. Why would we have had a son in your past?"
"Because you are part of the Hermes Project. When the Chaos came, the government evacuated those in the Hermes Project. At first to West Virginia. Then, after a nuclear exchange between China and the United States left most of North America uninhabitable, the survivors were moved to Australia. You lived in a sealed underground complex under Ayers Rock for years, working on ways to try to reclaim a planet that was un-reclaimable. Your son was the leader who kept us going for all those years when our projections showed nothing but slow and horrible death. He kept us going until we achieved time travel and then he led the staff that planned this entire mission."
There was a long silence, and the howl of a coyote sounded out over the rim of the crater.
"Do you really think things will change for the better if Hawkins and Tuskin stop the other bomb from going off?"
"Things have already changed," Pencak said. "It cannot be much worse than the present I knew. The human race was dying as a species, with the entire planet not far behind. Our best-case projection gave us only another twelve point three years before humanity was extinct. We in the future have nothing to lose except a few more miserable years of life."
"What about Debra?" Fran suddenly asked. "How come she didn't come back with us?"
Pencak sighed and leaned on her cane. "The bomb going off in Russia was only the beginning of the end. Even then mankind didn't learn. The Russians suspected the Americans of causing the explosion. The Americans suspected the Russians of trying to destroy Europe. The Europeans were too busy dying to suspect anyone. The southern hemisphere spiraled into economic and ecological disaster with the loss of the industrialized nations in Europe and the collapse of the South African gold standard. China tried flexing its military muscle and invaded Japan. The nuclear exchange between the United States and China was a result of the Americans trying to halt the takeover. Of course, the fact that the Japanese islands were left uninhabitable as a result of the war didn't stop anyone.
"But even then, staring extinction as a species in the face, the governments still worked against each other. Levy was picked up by the Hermes Project. She joined you all in the underground bunker, but her job was far different from yours. Hers was to work on weapons of destruction-the American government's last gasp at the ultimate weapon. And she did that very well." Pencak swiveled her gaze to Fran. "You recognized Ayers Rock when you saw it, but it was different, wasn't it?"
"It looked torn up," Fran said.
"It had been. The war was still going on even as we were running this mission," Pencak said. "Australia was the last habitable continent and you could see that it was barely livable-we had to heavily filter the air we pumped in from the surface. The remains of the U.S. government and the Hermes Project moved to Australia in year twenty-three of the Chaos. We built and occupied that vast underground complex underneath the Rock.
"Levy was the key to the team that developed the theories that allowed construction of the plasma projectors. A splinter group of survivalists used those weapons on our support facilities outside Ayers Rock when they discovered our plan to change the past and destroy our present. We stopped them temporarily, but only to gain time to complete this project. You could see what their weapons did to the Rock.
"The Russians-what remained of them-also worked on their own weapons. The other three men whose names we sent to the Russians were part of that team. Their deaths portend a change of our future even if the bomb does go off, because they will not be there to complete their particle-beam weapon, perfected twenty-five years after the start of the Chaos. Whether others may step into the breach and complete it we don't know. All we do know is that in twenty-seven minutes, the first true major change may or may not occur. All the other actions are a backup to that."
Fran looked up-there was a hint of light gray on the eastern lip of the crater. She shivered in the cold and wondered where Hawkins was right now and how close he was to succeeding in his mission.
The Russian drove sitting in his own feces, no longer able to control his bodily functions. He didn't even notice the discomfort of it as the pain that racked his dying body overrode such trivial feelings. Only the intensity of his single-mindedness allowed him to continue to control the truck along the deserted logging road. He knew he was close because he'd passed the first warning signs that he was entering a restricted area fifteen minutes before. If he kept going along this road, in three or four miles he would reach the outer security fence. He didn't plan on having to go that far. Just another mile or so would be close enough for the yield of this bomb to vaporize the greater part of the main post of the facility-particularly the mobile rocket launchers holding the SS-27's.