Prisoners of Tomorrow (32 page)

“Go on,” Paula said, still not seeing any connection with herself.

Olga’s voice dropped instinctively, even though they were alone. “I managed to establish a way of communicating with somebody down there.”

“To Earth?”

“Yes. I was able to send information about the people who were up here—there were colleagues down there who could make good use of such information, besides friends and relatives who needed to be told. And more than that. With early notification of the new arrivals up here, our people down in Russia knew who else was at risk—the KGB works in predictable patterns. Many were smuggled out of the country in good time. The KGB was going insane trying to discover where the information was coming from.”

“Well, that great, but why are you telling me all this?” Paula said.

“The channel was cut, due to an accident. I need a communications specialist to restore it. Now I’m asking you to help me.”

So
that
was what had caught Olga’s interest in the infirmary. Now it all fitted together. They turned and began retracing their steps slowly along the beach. Lights were coming on around the perimeter and along the wire barrier twenty yards out in the water. “How did it work?” Paula asked.

“Does that mean you will help?”

“I don’t know at this stage if I can. You’ll have to tell me more about it.”

“I once had a lover who was a university professor,” Olga replied. “Let’s call him Ivan. Oh, it wasn’t so terribly serious—he was formerly a Navy man, and quite active with the ladies from Archangel to Vladivostok, I suspect. But whatever, we found that we shared certain values, and we remained good friends even after the passionate stage wore off.”

“What kind of professor is he?”

“Was—communications engineering. But now he’s at a research establishment in Siberia. It also happens to be the groundstation that handles the main communications link from
Valentina Tereshkova.”
Olga turned her head to glance at Paula as they walked. “Now do you see?”

Paula stopped walking, and her eyes narrowed. Olga waited. “The place you’ve got me into at Turgenev . . . that’s no coincidence either, is it?” Paula said slowly. “It’s practically next door to the Communications Center.”

“You catch on fast,” Olga murmured. They resumed walking. Olga continued, “I assume you’re familiar with the random-number streams that are used as fillers between messages on secure channels as routine procedure.”

Paula saw the implication immediately. “You piggy-backed on the beam, using the gaps.”

“Right.”

“How?”

“Ivan smuggled a specially programmed electronic chip up to me via a flight-deck officer on one of the transporters. It was designed to replace the random-number generator in the encoding processor of the primary Earthside commlink, inside the Communications Center. The way it worked was, first I’d plug the chip into a BV-Fifteen and preload it with the message text that I wanted to send—I could do that myself anywhere. Then a certain insider whose name doesn’t matter would switch the chip inside the Communications Center for me, and the message was transmitted automatically.”

“Okay, I get it.” Paula nodded. The BV-15 was a standard Soviet general-purpose computer, used as a net terminal or stand-alone system and found all over
Tereshkova.
There were two of them in the graphics lab where Paula worked. “So what went wrong?”

“There was an equipment fault that caused a power surge and blew up the chip,” Olga replied simply. “I still have my contact inside the Communications Center. The procedure should still work. But we no longer have the hardware.”

“And you want me to program a new chip,” Paula concluded.

“Exactly. I have specifications of the BV-Fifteen program for loading the chip, and I can get documentation for the transmission encoders. You already have access to the equipment you need in the graphics lab. There would be no need for you to physically enter the Communications Center itself, or any other secure area.”

“What about the messages coming in from Earth?” Paula asked. “How do you handle them?”

“I can take care of that myself,” Olga answered.

“If we do it, is there any guarantee Ivan will still be listening after all this time?”

“No. Let’s just hope that he is.”

They stood looking in silence at the lights and the water for a while. “When do you want an answer?” Paula asked at last.

“I was hoping for one now.”

“I have to think about it.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Okay, tomorrow.”

When they met the next day, Paula had been having some ideas of her own about how a private communications link to Earth might prove useful, too—except that the people she had in mind to communicate with had nothing to do with Soviet intellectual dissidents or with spiriting fugitives out of Russia. How she might be able to extend the link from the groundstation in Siberia to the West’s military-communications network, she at present hadn’t the faintest idea. But in the meantime, the opportunity for setting up the first phase was too good to miss. Her fingertips were already itching impatiently at the prospect.

“All right,” she told Olga. “You’ve got yourself a deal. Let’s hope Ivan’s still listening—I’ll give it a try.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

McCain rinsed off the suds and dried his face briskly with his towel in front of the mirror. Gonares was working at the hub again that week, and had been bringing back descriptions and sketches as McCain had asked. From his initial perusals of them, they seemed to McCain to bear out the officially published construction plans. Maybe Foleda had allowed himself to get carried away for once.

The door opened as if a grizzly bear had swiped at it, and Oskar Smovak came in. He threw down a plastic box containing his soap and shaving gear, and began peeling off his shirt. “Sounds as if we’re going to be getting the place spruced up before very much longer, eh, Lew?” he said, leaning forward to examine his beard in the mirror.

“How come?”

“This place is going to be the big attraction.”

“Zamork?”

“No, the whole of
Tereshkova.
Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Big celebrations for the centenary. All the Russian bigwigs will be coming here—First Secretary Petrokhov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Kavansky, the whole Politburo, most of the Central Committee . . .
Tereshkova
will be the showpiece of the Communist world.” November 7 was the day the Soviets traditionally celebrated the Revolution. This year would be extra special, since it was the centenary.

“Well, don’t forget to write down all your complaints and suggestions,” McCain grunted.

When McCain came out of the washroom, he found Luchenko sitting with Nolan at the end table. Andreyov was reading something to Borowski nearby, and Taugin was lying morosely on his bunk. King and Kong, as usual, were hovering not especially inconspicuously in the background. Luchenko caught McCain’s eyes and tilted his head to beckon him over. McCain stopped.

“You have been getting good reports from your work detail,” Luchenko said. “I’m glad to see it.”

“I like to think I earn my keep,” McCain answered.

“You seem to be behaving yourself more these days.”

“People are leaving me alone more these days.”

Luchenko let the remark pass. “Just to show that such things do not go unrecognized, I will be assigning you to more outside duties around the colony,” he said. “I trust you will find that agreeable.”

McCain raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise. It fitted in with his own aims perfectly. “Sure,” he replied. “I like to be out and about.”

“Of course. Well, just so you know what to expect.” Luchenko stared up with an expression that said he had made a concession and would be expecting some reciprocation. McCain returned a look that said maybe, and moved on. He guessed that Luchenko had had no choice, so was making it look like a favor. In other words, Luchenko had been notified that there was going to be need for a lot of outside work around the colony. It fitted with what Smovak had just said.

Charlie Chan was with Irzan and Nunghan, who were dealing cards over a bunk in one of the middle sections. “I know a funny joke,” he said, catching McCain by the sleeve as he passed.

“Oh?”

Charlie Chan shook, barely able to contain himself. “A Russian from Moscow goes into a Yakut’s hut on the tundra and sees a glove hanging from the ceiling. He says, ‘What’s that?’ And the Yakut replies, ‘A cow’s udder.’”

“Go on.”

“That’s it. A cow’s udder!”

Chan collapsed onto his bunk, where he lay shrieking and writhing with mirth. McCain walked on, shaking his head. He still hadn’t managed to fathom Charlie Chan’s weird humor. Maybe it was a glimpse of how it had all begun, he mused—the first dazzling insight to metaphor, back in the winter gloom of some Neanderthal cave, which had evolved down through the ages from those beginnings through the court jester and the music hall, to Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, the banana peel and the custard pie.

“I know another one just as good,” Charlie Chan’s voice offered behind him as he reached the front section.

“Tomorrow,” McCain called back. “I couldn’t stand it.”

Mungabo was sitting on the top bunk, sewing a tear in his pants, and Rashazzi and Haber were debating something abstruse at the center table. Scanlon and Koh were sitting on opposite bunks in the bay on the far side, and seemed to be talking about the evolution of cultures again. McCain wandered around the table behind the two scientists and sat down next to Koh. “Smovak tells me we’re going to be getting some visitors,” McCain said.

Koh nodded. “So it appears. I’ve also heard a rumor of amnesties being granted—part of the public-relations spectaculars. They plan on making this a big event.”

“Does that mean we’re all going home?”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath. If there’s anything to it at all, it probably only applies to the privs.”

The talking and the activity among the occupants of the billet’s front section were to cover their underlying tension in the time left before lights-out. For tonight was when they would make their first attempt at breaking through into the underfloor space.

“Koh was just saying some fascinating things about history,” Scanlon told McCain. “And isn’t that something you’re always talking about yourself?”

“It was one of my majors, sure,” McCain replied.

Koh nodded. “We were discussing the European Renaissance.”

“Except that the man’s saying it wasn’t a Renaissance at all,” Scanlon said.

“The term is a misnomer.” Koh settled himself more comfortably on the bunk. “It was the
birth
of a new culture, not a rebirth of anything.” McCain remembered hearing this before. But on the last occasion, Koh had been smoking his herbal mixture and had become incoherent before he could get any further. Koh went on, “Teachers and professors like to think that their subjects are part of a glorious legacy that spans down through the ages in an unbroken succession from the distant past. It gives them a feeling of noble pedigree. So they present architecture, or art, or mathematics, or whatever as a continuum and divide it into periods that they call Classical, Medieval, Modern, and so on. But the continuity they see is an illusion. Each culture possesses its own unique way of conceptualizing reality—a collective mindset that determines how the world is perceived. And everything which a culture creates—its art, its technology, its political and economic system—is unavoidably part of an expression of its unique worldview. Oh, it’s true that a culture might adopt some things it finds useful from others that went before, but that doesn’t constitute a lineage. The splendor of Rome was the voice of the Roman worldview; the New York skyline spoke of America. They were products of different minds and perceptions. There was no line of descent from one to the other.”

The ceiling lights blinked three times to signal five minutes to lights-out. Haber and Rashazzi got up from the table and came over. McCain moved his legs to make room for Haber to sit down. Rashazzi stepped up to the top bunk and turned to sit with his legs dangling over the side.

Koh continued, “Rome was an expression of Classical Man who never mastered the concept of infinity, but shrank from it at every encounter. Look at his pictures and vase paintings. They show only foregrounds, never any background. You see—they avoid the challenges of distance and limitless extent. His temples were dominated by frontages that denied and suppressed inner space. He shunned the open ocean and seldom sailed out of sight of land. His world was timeless: its past lay hidden in an obscure, unchanging realm of gods, and he made no plans or provision for any future. . . . In other words, everything that Classical Man created expressed the same thing: perception of a world that was finite and bounded. Even his mathematics confined itself to the study of finite, static objects: geometric figures bounded by lines; solids bounded by planes. Time was never recognized as a dynamic variable—that was what confounded Zeno and led to insoluble paradoxes. And Classical Man’s number system contained no negatives and no irrationals—not because he was intellectually incapable of dealing with them, but simply because his worldview encompassed nothing that such entities were needed to describe. In a finite, tangible world, numbers merely enumerate finite, tangible objects. And it was perfectly natural that the form of art that dominated his culture should be sculptures: static, finite objects bounded by surfaces.”

Rashazzi seemed about to say something, then rubbed his chin thoughtfully and nodded, evidently deciding not to interrupt. The sound of Smovak bellowing about something came from farther along the billet.

“But Classical Man died, and Europe stagnated through the centuries of its Dark Ages before Western Man appeared. That’s the way every new culture arises: nothing significant happens for thousands of years, and then, suddenly, a new breed of Man with a new worldview bursts forth in a frenzy of creativity that sweeps the old order away. Western Man appeared out of the wreckage when European feudalism collapsed—not as a reincarnation of Classical Man, who was gone forever, but born in his own right, from his own beginnings.