The Alejandra Variations (10 page)

Nicholas plunged through the doors. Lazlo spun around and pulled them both shut. There was a lock of some kind—a long bolt—and Lazlo threw it.

"For all the good it'll do," he said sardonically. The shark sounded quite distant.

The globes of light ran on ahead of them, casting out their pearl luminescence. The room, Nicholas thought, must have been a storage area, because the ceiling was easily thirty feet high. At the far end were tables, some leather-upholstered chairs, and other kinds of stacked-up equipment. But the room's most important feature was a machine which stood at a slight tilt in the very center of the facility. Clearly it had entered the room from the level below.

While Nicholas knew that he'd been in a building of some kind all along, it wasn't until this moment that he realized that the building was entirely underground. The Bore was an incredible earth-penetrating machine, so large that neither the nose nor the tail end could be seen. It was a shaft of silver alloy of a kind Nicholas could not recognize. The room was slightly warmer than the other halls and rooms of the complex, heated by the Bore's passage through the earth's crust. The floor around the Bore was cracked upward, and scattered around it were tiny globules of melted plastic or steel.

The other soldiers had already climbed inside the Bore. Jarre was at the portal, waiting for them. The glow-globes, perhaps sensing they were finally home, made an end run around Sergeant Jarre and whipped inside, leaving them all in a darkness broken only by the light from the inside of the Bore itself. Apparently, the soldiers had shut down the facility's electrical system to further delay the shark's progress.

Lexie helped Nicholas climb inside the craft, and Captain Lazlo brought up the rear. He paused at the lip of the portal and took one last mournful look before he pulled the hatch shut and sealed it. At the pressurized hiss of the lock, Nicholas felt something pierce his heart. Back in the stasis room was his past and, though containing nothing but bones, the only identification he had with his own era.

Captain Lazlo's voice brought him back to the present. "The Class Ones will skin me for losing a place like this," he muttered as he made sure the door was tight. He stepped past Nicholas. "Grab a seat, son. Anywhere. We're pulling out."

Because the Bore was in a more or less vertical position, the men were climbing up a series of notches or steps which had cantilevered out from the long "floor". To either side were luxurious cubicles which could be sealed off from the main corridor. The soldiers were throwing their gear into these and diving in. Plastic seals were being pulled behind them, closing the cubicles off.

Nicholas stared upward as the last few of the Boremen climbed inside their cubicles. A couple of them cast puzzling glances down at Nicholas. "Eridani" echoed in his mind. They turned away, strapping themselves in, pulling down the plastic compartment doors.

Nicholas felt as welcome as a mortician at a child's birthday party.

Captain Lazlo headed for the front—or top—of the craft. Sergeant Jarre's cubicle was directly behind the pilot's compartment, and Nicholas saw Jarre's head come out as Lazlo heaved himself upward.

"Where's the Eridani going to bunk, Captain?" Jarre asked, grabbing at his leader.

Lazlo slapped away his underling's arm. "Anywhere he goddamn pleases!" Lazlo turned around and faced downward in the long well of the Bore. "You guys are pushing it! These aren't the Dark Times, you know! You pull anymore of this crap about 'Eridani' on me or him"—he pointed down at Nicholas—"and this is the last mission I'm taking you on! You got that?"

Silence.

"Well?"

There came several mumbles of "Yes, sir," and, "Right, Lazlo," from the sealed-off cubicles. Jarre's plastic compartment door slammed shut violently.

Lazlo whirled and climbed into the pilot's cubicle.

Lexie was smiling. "Follow me," she said. "Let's go into my compartment."

Nicholas looked up the leaning floor at Lazlo in the cockpit. He saw the man's arm flash out, throwing switches, punching dials into illumination and activity.

Lexie climbed down the protruding steps in the corridor's floor. Nick followed. There were other cubicles, some of them empty, but Lexie led him to hers.

The main corridor's light went out, replaced by a series of winking soft blue lights along the floor. A pleasant internal humming started up around them as Lazlo threw the main engines into gear.

On the door of Lexie's private compartment was stenciled the insignia of an hourglass. The cubicle seemed a bit more spacious and Lexie eagerly led him inside.

Nicholas felt torn between what the men above him were facing and the fascination he felt for this young woman. The threat of the impending attack of the shark seemed much more important than being in close proximity to Lexie. But Lexie had her way.

"Shouldn't I take one of these other compartments?" Nick asked, pointing across the corridor.

"Nonsense." She smiled, and shut the door.

There was an intercom in the compartment, and the channel was open. Nicholas heard Jarre conversing with the Captain.

"Lazlo," Jarre said, "the shark's picked up our engines. It's abandoned the crawler and headed our way. Moving downside at thirty degrees. Right through the floor. It's trying for a straight line, but the complex's shielding is slowing it up."

"Got it," came Lazlo's voice.

Lexie said, "Don't listen to them. They're just grown-ups."

Nicholas found himself leaning against the door. He looked into her ocean-green eyes. "What do you think I am?"

The interior of Lexie's cubicle was at an angle, since the Bore was mostly meant for horizontal travel. Nicholas sat down on what appeared to be something of a couch. As he tried to size up the dimensions of the cubicle, he realized that when Captain Lazlo leveled out the craft Lexie's couch would transform itself into a bed that would just about fill up the entire compartment.

The Bore suddenly moved—but it began moving backward, or down, throwing everything into reverse order. With a grating of sliding rock against superalloy, they began their descent.

Lexie, though, merely cuddled up next to him. She said, "Don't worry about the shark. It's too slow. It'll sense the heat of our iron, but we'll get away in time."

He could understand her lack of interest in the drama. She was safe here in her compartment with him. As she had said upon pulling out the stasis couch: He was hers.

There were many things stirring inside Nicholas. He could not forget the remains of Staci Bolyard on the stasis couch; nor could he abandon the memories of the world he'd been forced out of. He once read a book written during the Great Depression about an Egyptian ruler who had lived long before the reign of the first Ramses. His name was Peh-de-eh-ghan, and a group of scientists managed to bring him back to life. Peh-de-eh-ghan's reactions to his sudden culture-change were quite similar to Nick's own. Much of it was panic.

Lexie was waving her metallic white derriere in his face. As she did, there was a sound of something being unzipped, and he discovered that Lexie was in the midst of making herself quite comfortable.

A waft of perfumed air drifted up from underneath the couch, and he suddenly began feeling—different. The ice of centuries of sleep began to break and melt inside him. He couldn't decide if the air was doing something to him, or if it was Lexie's proximity. The girl leaned toward him.

Captain Lazlo's voice broke in over the intercom, startling him.

"Nicholas Tejada, are you there?"

Nick held Lexie off at a slight distance, trying desperately to ignore the fact that the zipper of her tunic was now somewhere down around her navel.

"I'm right here, Captain," he said with trepidation. He didn't like the aroma of the air in the compartment—nor the sleepy-time look in Lexie's wonderful eyes.

"How are you feeling?" the Captain asked as the Bore rumbled downward.

Nicholas was surprised by the question. How was he feeling? Back where he came from, if a father came out of the bedroom late on Saturday night and found his daughter on the living-room couch with her breasts in the hands of her boyfriend, how the boyfriend felt would have been the furthest thing from the father's mind.

But he wasn't "back there" anymore, and Captain Lazlo was definitely not of the normal order of fathers.

"I'm fine, I think," Nicholas said. Was the atmosphere in the compartment actually getting hazy? The Bore made a slight pitch, and Lexie fell onto the couch. Her tunic fell somewhere else.

"Lexia?" the Captain's voice feigned at sternness.

"Yes, Daddy," she said, and turned off the intercom.

Nicholas had a vision of Peh-de-eh-ghan being chased by the scientists who had resurrected him and the villains who wanted to exploit him—everyone running across the dunes of the Sudan. Pursuing a living fossil.

He didn't know what to think. The lights dimmed further, and what lights remained aglow upon the console took on a polar radiance. Everything told him that this was wrong—that he shouldn't be here.

Like Peh-de-eh-ghan, he belonged with his own dead.

Lexie began taking off his boots. The haze in the cubicle was thickening.

Suddenly there was a thunderous explosion that shook the Bore terribly. Taken by surprise, Lexie screamed and fell upon Nicholas as the craft rode out the crushing shock waves.

The shark—whatever its dim origins—was an ingenious, burrowing nuclear device. He knew it was nuclear by the force of the explosion it had caused.

He closed his eyes. Too much was happening all at once. The wars, it seemed, were still being fought. They never ended. They never
would
end.

This place would be so thoroughly demolished and radioactive that they'd never be able to return in his lifetime. Any message Foresee might have left—any journal or recording that might have explained why he'd slept so long—was now irretrievably lost.

The Bore leveled out. Captain Lazlo stopped its descent and started it sliding forward. They were on their way home.

But where was that?

Lexie was very warm in his arms. "What's that smell?" he asked. His senses were acting in weirdly unpredictable ways. They seemed hyperattenuated, dazzled.

"
Genna
," Lexie breathed close to his mouth. "Medicine."

"No, wait," he pleaded. What had happened to his boots? Was that another zipper being unzipped?

There was a cool hand on his chest. It moved in slow circles, and within a few minutes it became the only thing in the world which seemed real.

Chapter Two

THE BORE HAD stopped moving.

How long ago it had ceased to move beneath the earth's surface, Nicholas didn't know. He had been drifting in and out of a wonderful prismatic sleep that had promised no end to the pleasures of dreaming. Eventually he had noticed that everything around him was quiet and still.

Lexie lay beside him, cocooned and naked in the folds of a blanket. She looked rapturously sated and slept like the dead.

The air in the compartment seemed cleansed, but Nicholas still felt the soporific effects of the
genna
. He coughed. Whatever
genna
was, it was easily the most powerful mood-altering drug he'd ever known.

Even through his haze, the Bore's lack of motion bothered him. It took several long seconds for the world to arrange itself. While it did, Nicholas looked for his metallic uniform and boots. He wanted to find out what was happening up front.

The Bore rested at only a slight angle from the horizontal, so the rungs in the floor were flattened into invisibility. After softly shutting the door to Lexie's compartment, Nicholas walked slowly up the corridor.

Through the plastic seals of the individual cubicles, he noticed that the Boremen all wore their goggles—and earphones. He assumed they were plugged into a universal computer system of some kind. They were dazed, hypnotized, or unconscious. The smell of
genna
was quite strong here.

He passed Sergeant Jarre's couch and saw that the Boreman's goggles were pushed up onto his forehead. Jarre's
genna
-glazed eyes watched Nicholas move toward the cockpit. The sergeant didn't move; didn't even blink. Nick knew from experience now just how strong
genna
was.

He was startled by Captain Lazlo's voice. "You know why we call it the Bore?" He was watching Nick from his seat on the left-hand side of the cockpit.

Nicholas started. "No, why do you call it the Bore?" He was whispering, but realized it was probably unnecessary.

The Captain, goggles resting on his forehead, laughed. "Because it's so goddamn
boring
, is why." He waved Nicholas forward.

The Captain's eyes were bloodshot, and there were huge rings around them where his goggles had been clamped. The Bore's cockpit had no windows to speak of and featured a complicated control board. Nicholas took the copilot's seat.

Lazlo pointed to the console's chronometer. "You have any idea how long we've been traveling?"

Nicholas couldn't make sense of the peculiar dials and indicators. "No," he said. "Maybe seven hours." He felt suddenly awkward because of the knowledge of where and how those hours had been spent. He felt a powerful desire to apologize.

The Captain laughed. He lit a fresh cigar. "Four days," he said. "And we've still got a ways to go yet."

"Four days?" Nicholas was stunned.

"Yup," the Captain told him. "That's why we use the
genna
on board. It makes life underground much more endurable. Otherwise, it'd be boring—really boring."

The only things on the Bore that seemed to function were the lights on the console.

"Why don't you travel aboveground? You don't spend all your time underground, do you?" Nicholas asked him.

The Captain's eyes were sad. "I can see you've got a lot to learn."

"I guess." Nicholas sat back in his seat. "Is DefCon where we're headed? Is that your home, or what?"

Lazlo nodded. "Home it is, if we can shake the floater the Bore picked up an hour ago. It sensed our iron. The alarm woke me up."