For now the condensation plant and liquefaction gear would be based on the central oil platform. But that was only a stopgap design for this proof-of-concept pilot; in the future, working out “in the wild,” as Makaay put it, submersibles would install liquefaction and condensation gear on the seabed, to link up with the moles’ tunnels beneath. And so the network would grow, spreading across the ocean floor, until the pole was encircled.
Now we were shown live images of the old oil rig a couple of kilometers offshore where our nitrogen liquefaction plant had been installed. Big liquid-nitrogen tanks glistened in the sun, frost sparkling on their surfaces. A countdown clock appeared in the corner of our image and started to tick away the seconds before the insertion of the first moles. A hush fell over the room, as the show took on the feel of a space launch, a fond memory of my childhood. Makaay was never one to miss a trick, I thought respectfully.
There were about five minutes to go on the clock when Morag appeared to me again.
I could see her through the translucent wall of the marquee, out on the cold, dead ground: that slim, tall figure, the unmistakable shock of strawberry blond hair.
I left the vice president for dead and ran for the exit. Behind me, ignored, Ruud Makaay was still talking. Heads turned as I passed, concerned.
Tom caught up with me before the doorway. “Dad. What the hell are you doing?”
I pointed. “Can’t you see her?”
“I see — something. A woman out there. So what?”
“You know who it is.Come on, Tom. I just have to deal with this.”
“You mean I have to.”
I felt cold, determined. “Yes. You have to. Because if you see her, she’s haunting you, too.”
At the exit I found myself facing an EI security guard, a slab of muscle. The guard looked confused, but her job was to keep people out, not shut them in. She stood aside. I pushed out through the airlock, and into the fresh air outside, dressed in nothing but my flimsy suit. It was bloody cold. There were drops of rain in the air, or maybe it was salt spray off the sea.
I glanced around, getting my bearings. To get to where Morag had been standing I would have to cut around the base of the dome-shaped marquee, to my right. I ran that way, not bothering to check if Tom was following. I had to jump over guy ropes and skirt around blocks of equipment, generators, and heaters. More security guards watched me go by, and I saw them speak into the air. But I wasn’t impeded.
Around the limb of the marquee I stumbled to a halt. Tom came up beside me, breathing hard.
There she was: Morag, standing in an open area beside the wall of the marquee, looking back at me. She was dressed in a plain blue smock, her favorite color, the color that brought out her eyes, she always said. She didn’t seem cold, despite the Arctic breeze. She was no more than fifty meters from me, just fifty paces. She had never been so close. And she wasn’t running away, not drifting mysteriously down corridors, or disappearing into dust or mist. She just stood there. She was smiling at me. Her hands were open, as if to show me she meant me no harm.
For a heartbeat I drank in every detail of her, the hair that flopped over her brow in the breeze, the way the dress clung to her slim figure like a flag draped around a pole.
“It’s her,” said Tom. “It really is.”
“You do see her,” I breathed.
“Yes. Dad — what do we do?”
“I don’t know. It’s never been like this before.”
I spread my hands, mirroring her gesture. I took a step toward her, then another, cautiously. I was like a police officer approaching a suicide bomber, I thought. Still she didn’t recede from me, as in all those nightmare pursuits of the past. She just watched me approach, smiling.
A part of me was aware of glowing motes that danced before my eyes. We were saturated by surveillance by EI’s security systems. There could be no doubt that there would be a record of this encounter, full and clear. And there was no doubt in my mind that Morag was allowing this to happen, that this was her choice, to break through whatever barriers there were between us. She was just as I had remembered her before her pregnancy, the labor that had killed her. It had been seventeen years since her death, but she hadn’t aged a day. Oddly it might have seemed stranger to me, at that moment, if she had aged.
Now I was so close I could see the details, the tiny flaws in her skin, the beauty spot on her cheek, the small scar on her forehead. She seemed full of mass, somehow, dense with matter and light; she stood out of the background, as if patched into a faded photograph. And still she didn’t go away.
Ten paces from her I stopped. I feared what might happen if I pushed this too far. If I got too close, if I tried to touch her, would she pop like a bubble? And I wondered why she was doing this now, here. Was she here because of the hydrate project? Was Rosa right, that she was somehow an angel from the future, drawn to significance?
“Morag. Can’t you speak to me? What do you want?…”
She smiled, encouraging. Then she spoke. It was her voice, undoubtedly, light, airy, salted with a trace of her Irish background. But her words were a rapid gabble, just as they had been on the Reef, in the hotel corridor. Her tone was wistful, her eyes bright, her gaze fixed on me. I couldn’t bear to look away. But as the moment stretched, and as her only words were that strange compressed pseudo-speech, a kind of anxious sadness filled me.
A siren clamored, echoing across the flat sea. It was coming from the oil rig, out on the ocean. Distracted, I looked that way, and saw vapor venting into the air. I knew that the siren had been the signal for the start of the trial — and cheering from inside the dome, slightly muffled, told me it had been a success, that the moles had been launched and were doing their job. At that moment I couldn’t have cared less.
I turned back to Morag. And she was gone, gone, in that instant. Perhaps there was a trace of her, a profile of her figure in dancing dust, hanging in the air, sparkling; but even that dispersed on the wind. I was oppressed by guilt, for it felt as if it had been my fault that she had gone, as if I had broken the rules by looking away.
There was a soft whirring at my feet, a crackle of friction sparks. I looked down. The little Gea-robot rolled back and forth on the concrete at my feet.
“Gea, did you see all that? Did you see her?”
“I recorded everything, Michael,” the robot said. “But for now I think you should consider your son.”
Tom. I had forgotten him. I whirled around. Tom was hunched over on the ground. His whole body heaved as he wept. I ran toward him, but Sonia Dameyer got there first, and wrapped him in her arms.
And in that vignette you have the whole story of our two lives.
Alia was immersed in some deep, dark, viscous ocean. She tried to struggle — but she could not, there was nothing to fight with. She tried to concentrate on her fingers, to move her toes, but there was no sensation. She felt no pain, nothing but a cushioning, cradling warmth.
She had no idea what had happened to her, where she was — if she was anywhere in any meaningful sense. Of course it was all something to do with Leropa, and her strange projects. Was this another hideous Skimming — or something stranger still? And what could it have to do with Redemption?
She couldn’t even feel herself breathe, she realized suddenly. She panicked. She looked deep inside herself, but she had no sense of her own pulse, the deepest rhythms of her body. Even her sense of her body, her arms and legs, her torso and head, was dissipating. She cowered, even more terrified. She was like a prisoner, she thought, unexpectedly released after years of captivity, longing to remain confined.