Prisoners of Tomorrow (42 page)

So at last it looked as if McCain and his group were about to become fully mobile. Now, perhaps, they’d begin shedding light on some of the perplexing questions that had been accumulating.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Deep in the Pentagon’s labyrinth of corridors and offices, Bernard Foleda and Gerald Kehrn came out of an elevator and turned in the direction of Foleda’s office. Foleda pounded along irascibly, setting the pace. Kehrn was looking worried.

“Dirt!” Foleda snorted. “Who ever heard of shipping thousands of tons of dirt up into orbit? Not even their cloud-cuckoo-land economics could justify it. What do they take us for? It smells to high heaven, Gerry.”

A lot of other people thought so, too. That was why the United States, representing a number of concerned Western nations, had demanded the USSF vessels be permitted to monitor the operations, going on in low-Earth orbit, of transferring cargo from Soviet surface shuttles into longer-range transporter ships. To everyone’s surprise, the Soviets had agreed.

“Well, don’t forget that their ideas on what’s efficient don’t exactly tally with ours,” Kehrn said. “To them, efficiency is directing all the resources you’ve got onto whatever objective the Party says is top priority. That was how Mermaid got to be built in the first place. It isn’t simply the sum total of a lot of individually profitable businesses. They wouldn’t be able to see how running a pet-food factory profitably can be efficient when pet food isn’t important. So maybe to them it makes sense.”

“Yes, and what caused Mermaid to be their top priority?” Foleda growled. “They’re up to something.”

Barbara got up from a chair opposite Rose in Foleda’s outer office as they appeared. Rose began leafing through a wad of papers and message slips. “It’s been all hell let loose . . . Borden has called three times in the last half hour. The President’s chief of staff called. The CIA director. . . . Whaley over in Defense . . .”

“Hold the trench just a little longer, Rose,” Foleda said without slackening his pace. “We’ve got something really urgent.”

“Okay, but I’m telling you, the ammunition’s running low here.” As she spoke, a call-tone sounded from the screen-panel beside her desk. The others went on through.

Barbara closed the door of the inner office. “What have we got?” Foleda asked her. She had beeped him via his pocket handpad a few minutes earlier and told him only that she had news from Mermaid concerning Pedestal.

Barbara opened the folder she was carrying and handed him a sheet of printout. He sat down at his desk, and Kehrn moved around to read it with him over his shoulder. “In from NSA eight minutes ago,” Barbara said. “They show the time of receipt as ten-thirty-nine hours today. The validation completion is correct for Pangolin.”

“My God, we did it!” Foleda breathed as his eyes read rapidly down the paper. “It’s from Bryce. Our signal got through. She
is
still up there. . . . No news of Lew, though, eh?”

Kehrn nodded. “She’s the communications whiz. It figures.”

“Your hunch must have been right,” Barbara said to Foleda. “It must be Oshkadov that Dyashkin has been talking to.”

“He did what we wanted,” Kehrn said. “The guy’s busting his ass over there to please. It’s starting to look as if he’s clean.” He looked down questioningly, but Foleda was leaning back in his chair and staring at the far wall without seeming to have heard.

Kehrn was about to say something more when Foleda’s desk screen began emitting its priority tone. Barbara answered it. “Yes, Rose?”

“Fix bayonets. I’m out of bullets. Borden’s on his way.”

Moments later the door burst open and Philip Borden strode in, looking strained. “What the hell, Bern? I’ve been calling you. I was told you were out.”

“Sorry, Phil, I was. We only got back this second.” Foleda showed him the transcript of the message from
Tereshkova.
“Take a look at this. It just came in. We’ve got a line to Bryce. Sounds as if Lew might be there someplace, too.”

Borden took the sheet and scanned down it. “Holy cow, I don’t believe this . . . a private channel to our own people inside a Soviet space station. Honestly, Bern, when you first sprung this on me I thought you’d flipped. . . . What’s this bit about key inmate names?”

“I don’t know. Like I said, I only saw it for the first time myself a few seconds ago.”

The diversion had calmed Borden down a little from the agitated state he’d been in when he entered. He set the folder down on Foleda’s desk and sighed wearily. “Well, let’s hope that now you’ve got it, it can do some good. They sure made us look a bunch of assholes this time.”

“Who did?”

“Moscow, of course. What else do you think the flap’s all about out there? Don’t tell me you haven’t heard yet.”

“I just this second got back,” Foleda said again. “I’ve been giving a talk to that conference of Stan’s all morning.”

Borden waved a hand vaguely overhead. “We’ve sent three USSF interceptors in to monitor those Soviet transfer operations in orbit. They used X-ray detectors, magnetometer detectors, visual observation, and Christ knows what. The reports are in. They’re all the same.”

“What did they find?” Kehrn asked.

Borden threw up his hands. “What do you think they found? Dirt. Just lots of dirt. Nothing else. The President’s mad as hell about it, we’re a laughingstock, and some of the Asian states are wondering if maybe we have been crazy all along. This isn’t my best day, Bern.”

For once Foleda looked dumbstruck. It was he who had predicted that the Russians would never permit the payloads of the Soviet shuttles to be inspected. There was no risk that they might be decoys: the transporter ships loaded from them could be tracked clearly all the way to
Tereshkova.
Nothing could be substituted with any chance of escaping detection.

“Does that mean we’ve got a decision for November?” Barbara asked.

Borden nodded. “We’re accepting. It hasn’t been announced publicly yet, but I got it from the White House an hour or so ago. We’ll be sending the Vice President and Secretary of State. The President’s view is that we don’t have any choice now if we want to avoid being written off by half the world as paranoids. He didn’t want to force this inspection issue, and he feels that we pushed him into it. This is his way of telling us, ‘screw you.’”

Foleda stared gloomily at his desk. This was what he had been fearing. In the tide of euphoria and hopes for a sudden easing of tensions that had swept the world, most of the leading European and Asian nations had already announced that they would be sending representatives. The party would travel from Earth orbit to
Valentina Tereshkova
in a neutral ship carrying a mixed United Nations crew. The President, he knew, had expressed displeasure at what he saw as the US’s failure to seize an important initiative, and he held excessive caution and unwarranted suspicion on the part of the UDIA as largely to blame. “So the rest of it didn’t make any difference, eh?” Foleda concluded.

Borden shook his head. “Not after this. They think we’re seeing shapes in tea leaves. And to be frank, I’m half inclined to think they might be right.”

“We walked right into it,” Foleda said. “I was a chump. Of course there’s nothing but dirt in those shuttles. Whatever they needed up there went up months ago. This dirt thing was a deliberate provocation for us to call them, and we did. Now our credibility’s shot.”

“You still think it’s a blind for something, then,” Borden said.

“No, I don’t think. I’m sure of it. They wanted to make sure we’d be embarrassed enough to make amends by sending our people there, along with everyone else’s.”

“What for?”

Foleda looked up. “Hostages. What else? And they don’t even have to hijack them—we’re sending them voluntarily. Mermaid is a battle platform. Those VIPs are its protection. They guarantee we won’t fire at it preemptively, and they constitute insurance against
us
having possible weapons up
our
sleeve. Hesitation and disagreement in our camp at a crucial moment could prove decisive.”

Borden nodded. He had heard this before. “But aren’t you overlooking one thing, Bern?” Kehrn said. “All the
Soviet
VIPs will be there too—and I mean practically
all
of them. Their tops, too: bigger than the ones everybody else will be sending. That has to count for something.”

“And suppose they don’t,” Foleda countered. “Suppose it’s all phony, and they don’t send any of them up there—just empty ships for us to watch through telescopes. Do you think our people would insist on checking them out after this latest fiasco? No way. See—they’ve covered that base too.”

Kehrn looked uneasy. “Well . . . they’d have to be there.” He frowned, as if, having stated it, he wasn’t sure why. “I mean, they couldn’t not be there when all the rest arrive, could they? And the place will be declared open after that . . .”

Foleda looked hard at him for a few seconds, then leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “No. They don’t have to do any of that. By that time, none of it will matter. Whatever it is they’re planning will have happened by November seventh. A month. That’s all we’ve got to find out.”

He sounded more certain than ever before. This time the others remained quiet and didn’t argue.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Agniya left Hut 19 early in October. She had accepted an offer of a teaching position in Turgenev on condition of good behavior, and was released for a three-month probationary period to take up normal accommodations in the town.

“That’s how they get you,” Svetlana said to Paula as they stood watching with some other friends as Agniya sent back a final wave before disappearing into the Administration Building. The second of the two guards who had helped her carry her belongings from the hut closed the door behind. “They gave her a work assignment at the elementary school. She’s always loved children. Now she’ll cooperate and do what they want—and not only that, but be grateful for it, too. With you it will be computers.”

“I doubt if it’ll come to that,” Paula said.

“We’ll see.”

“That’s what this whole place is for,” Elena said as they began retracing their steps down toward the huts. “At one time they used to punish dissenters, but it was so wasteful. Then they tried brainwashing, but it destroyed the creativity that they wanted to use. Now they rehabilitate people without losing them.”

Agniya’s replacement arrived that evening. A guard showed her to the hut and deposited her bags inside the door, while a second waited outside. She stepped in and looked around, nodding a greeting to Svetlana and Elena. Then she shifted her eyes to Paula, who had risen to her feet and was staring wide-eyed. They gazed at each other in amazement for several seconds, and then hugged warmly. It was Tanya, the schoolteacher whom Paula had last seen in the infirmary, before her transfer to the surface level.

“So it was true, they did move you up here!” Tanya exclaimed. “Anastasia and I often wondered about you. You remember Anastasia?”

“Of course. How is she?”

“Up and about again. And you! You’re looking so well compared to how you were. Things must really be a lot different up here.”

“Yes, you’ll find it quite a change. Oh, but I’m being rude—these are the other two ladies who live here.” Paula introduced Svetlana and Elena. They showed Tanya the bunk that Agniya had vacated. Svetlana offered her a cigarette. She declined and began unpacking her things. Paula helped her put them away while Elena made tea.

“Is it true you have a beach up here?” Tanya asked.

“Yes—kind of,” Paula said. “And more. I’ll show you around before dark. But how did you get here?”

Tanya sighed. “The usual kind of deal, I suppose. There are a lot of new arrivals at
Tereshkova
these days—moving into quarters that have recently been completed at Turgenev and Landausk. They include many families with children. Apparently the place is short of teachers. I was offered a transfer up here in return for helping out at one of the schools . . . And here I am.”

“You’re a teacher, then?” Svetlana said.

“Yes.”

“Isn’t that interesting. Agniya—the woman you’re replacing here—she went to teach at Turgenev, too. She was released, in fact.”

“Subsurface Zamork is filling up, too,” Tanya said. “New faces appearing every day.”

“I wonder what’s going on,” Svetlana mused.

“They want the place full and bustling with people for November seventh,” Tanya said. “And this year it’s going to be sun-bronzed youth and gymnastics displays. Troops and tanks are out.” Potemkin villages, Paula thought. Yet at the same time the news made her stop and think. It was hardly the kind of population that anyone would want on a battle platform.

They finished getting Tanya settled in, and talked while finishing their tea, after which Paula and Tanya got up to leave for a tour of the surface level. But just as they came out of the hut, Olga appeared.

“Olga, I’d like you to meet Tanya, a friend of mine from when I was Sub. She’s just moved in as Agniya’s replacement. Isn’t that wonderful? Tanya, this is Olga. If you really want to find out how to get anything done up here, she’s the woman to know.”

“A pleasure,” Tanya said, extending a hand.

Olga shook it lightly and smiled, but she seemed distracted. “Paula, look, there’s someone I want you to talk to. He has some news you’ll be interested in.”

“Now? I was just about to show Tanya around.”

“It is urgent.” Olga’s voice was serious.

“Of course you must go,” Tanya told Paula. “I’m sure everything will still be here in the morning. And to tell you the truth, I am rather tired. I’m sorry we had to meet in such a rush, Olga. We’ll see each other again soon, I’m sure. Good night.” And with that, Tanya turned and went back into the hut.

Olga took Paula to Hut 8, which was close to Hut 19, in the next row downhill toward the Administration Building. She tapped on the door, which was opened almost immediately by a big, heavyset man with a fleshy, smooth-skinned, olive complexion, wide eyes, and reddish curls framing a high brow. His face was familiar, but Paula had never had reason to talk to him. He had evidently been expecting them, and stepped outside. The three of them began walking slowly in the direction of the reservoir.