The Alejandra Variations (16 page)

"Captain," the Counselor pulled Lazlo aside. "Are your men always like this?"

Lazlo snarled around his cigar, "They haven't had an audience before."

Jarre went to work on a wall of computer equipment.

Lexie, meanwhile, had edged closer to Nicholas. In her pearl-white uniform she seemed to glow. She smiled at him. "We have all the time in the world, sweetie. No need to rush."

Riordan walked up to them. "Nick, this place is absolutely unlike any we've ever known in our history." While Nicholas could sense the man's excitement, he could also hear the political gears working. "We're sure to change the minds of the citizens of DefCon!"

Above them there was a sudden hiss. A face appeared on a large TV screen hanging from the ceiling. An age-old video recording, it had been called up by Jarre's electronic fiddling.

"DefCon One!" the face on the screen shouted. "All stations! DefCon One! This is not a test! We are at DefCon One!"

The cry rebounded throughout the magnificent hanger, and everyone spun around, surprised by its hysteria. Titus whipped out his pistol and fired a single shot into the screen.

"Christ!" Lazlo shouted, dashing away from the falling glass.

Lexie screamed and grabbed Nicholas.

Lazlo pulled out his gun and aimed it at Titus, who was quaking with fright. "Watch it, boy! I'm warning you!"

The Boremen were crouching with their guns out and ready. The Captain strode into the center of the hanger underneath the wings of the surreal bomber.

"Now, get this," he began slowly. "We are on a military expedition, and I expect you clowns to behave accordingly. The next one who shoots his gun off is going to get shot in return."

"Captain," young Titus began. "This place is full of…
those
!" he said, pointing to Nick.

Lazlo turned to Riordan. "You want to help me out with this, Professor?"

Riordan was only too glad to assist. "Young man, be assured that you are in no danger. In fact, DefCon is counting on you and your compatriots. The Eridani are a myth, and while it is true that we suspect some of the First World's original inhabitants to be sleeping here—like Nicholas—we know them to be harmless. Trust us."

Titus's pale blue eyes moved nervously over the undercarriages of the aircraft. It was clear he had yet to be convinced. Riordan did cut an impressive figure, though, with the mini-cam over his shoulder. Titus glanced at his superiors, not knowing what to think.

Lights flared on overhead and everyone started. Sergeant Jaffe pulled his head out of a maintenance port he'd found in the wall. "There's a temporary hydroelectric generator beneath the base," he said. "I got it started. It'll hold as long as we want."

"Finally, something's been done right." Lazlo turned to Nicholas. "I guess we can try to track down those couches."

They moved out into the corridors, the Boremen trailing behind. Several had brought cameras with them. Others scanned the walls with peculiar devices.

The wide hallway was designed for both vehicular and foot traffic. Boxes of food and medicine were stacked neatly along the sides of the corridor, but their contents had long since collapsed into dust.

In this silent place, Nicholas more than anything wanted to be alone. Though a week without
genna
had not been enough to completely clear the drug out of Nick's system, his heart raced. The thought that there might be others of his kind frozen in suspended animation invigorated him. He needed contact with home.

The long corridor led to an intersection. There, three other hallways went off into the rock. The overhead lights revealed a cavernous infinity.

The Captain sent five men down the corridor to the left, and the main party proceeded to the right. The computer had suggested that the stasis room—if that was what it was—might be at the end of that particular hallway.

Riordan turned to Nick and, with the mini-cam aimed at him, asked, "Nicholas, are there any other places like this left in the country?"

Lexie beamed proudly by his side, caught in the camera's eye.

Nicholas was uneasy. "It all depends on how many bases had storage facilities far enough underground. Do you have to point that thing at me?"

Sergeant Jarre had gone to the far end of the corridor. "Captain!" he cried out. He'd found a huge metal door set deep in solid rock.

They ran to the wall. Nicholas turned to Lazio. "Is this it?" His nerves tingled with anticipation.

Lazlo pulled out his cigar. "There's a chamber just beyond. Could be it."

The Boremen shifted nervously behind them. Riordan stood back, taking everything in with his mini-cam. Lexie was both impatient and a little bored with the whole thing.

"How do we open it?" Nick asked the Captain. There was a computer lock on it, and Nicholas knew that explosive triggers were often set into such things. It depended on what kind of world the sleepers inside thought would greet them.

"Jarre," the Captain said. "Can you make anything of this?"

Riordan focused the camera on the Sergeant. Nick stood far to one side, letting the small man do his job unimpeded.

Lexie whispered to him as Jarre worked on the lock. "I hope you know this isn't going to help. Nothing will come of it."

"What are you talking about?" Nick responded.

"I think you know," she returned, smiling coquettishly.

At Jarre's touch, the computer lock sprang open and the huge seal around the giant door cracked with a loud pop. Lazlo grabbed the handle and pulled. Air that had been entombed for centuries gushed out. Opening the lock had turned on the lights inside. Riordan quickly moved his camera into range.

"Great day," the Counselor breathed.

They stepped into the chamber. The room was long and narrow, quite like the Omaha chamber—only this time every couch bore an active green light.

"They're alive!" Nicholas said excitedly. "My God, they made it!" He rushed inside and looked around.

The soldiers stayed far away. Lexie pouted, her arms crossed. Lazlo's cigar glowed feverishly.

"This is almost too good to be true," Nicholas said. There were nameplates, identification numbers, and medical information on each couch drawer. Nicholas didn't recognize any of them. It didn't matter, though. He'd found friends.

Just then, Titus's voice rang out over Captain Lazlo's radio epaulet. "Captain?"

"Yes, what is it?"

"What was that explosion?"

"What explosion?"

"Just now. That noise."

"We found the stasis chamber. It was the vault door."

"No," Titus stated. "After that. It sounded like a small detonation."

Riordan lowered his mini-cam slowly. Lazlo pinched the disk at his shoulder. "We didn't hear any explosion."

"Well,
we
did, Captain. We thought it was you."

The Boremen began looking around, backing off into the outer corridor. Lazlo stared at Nicholas. "I didn't hear anything," he said. "Did you?"

Nicholas shook his head. Lexie became suddenly angry. "It's nothing," she snapped. "Why are you men so stupid?" She moved in front of Nicholas. Captain Lazio touched his radio. "Check on it fast, boy," he ordered Titus.

The Boremen in the outside hall broke and ran like quail in a tornado. "Hey!" Lazio shouted, running up to the portal of the vault. "Just where do you think you're going?"

Titus's voice grated once again at Lazlo's shoulder. "Captain!"

"What, damn it!" he yelled.

"It's another shark, Captain. Five or six levels overhead," Titus told them.

"I thought you said there were no sharks, Titus!"

"Nothing showed for four levels, sir. I told you."

"No!"
shouted Lexie.

They heard the rumbling, somewhat diminished by distance and five levels. But definitely there.

Lazlo looked up at the ceiling as if he could see it. "It's a shark all right. Its engines are starting up."

Standing beside Lexie, Nicholas could almost feel her contempt.

"No, it's not a shark! It can't be a shark!" She directed all of her spite at her father. "You're a liar! You're an incompetent—"

"What?" Lazlo grabbed her. "A liar? Incompetent? What the hell's wrong with you?
Listen!
"

The rumbling increased, and they could clearly hear a faint grinding sound.

"Oh, Lost Messiah!" Counselor Riordan breathed in his fright.

The Counselor suddenly seemed like a reprobate seeking heavenly redemption. He began to kneel, and Nicholas thought that the man wanted to pray in his final moments.

But Riordan was only laying the mini-cam down carefully, removing the precious tape cassette. He then rose and stared at the three of them. "We'd better leave, Captain." He put on his mask of stern authority—but he couldn't really disguise the panic he felt. The curse of the Eridani was about them everywhere now.

Lexie suddenly screamed above the low rumbling of the shark's passage. "Go away!" she shouted. "It's not fair!"

Lazlo grabbed his daughter and pushed her and Riordan into the corridor. "God damn it! Shut up and get going! The thing can hear us!

Nicholas followed them to the vault opening. The corridor was empty of Boremen. Lexie cast a desperate look at Nick—a look she'd never given him before. It seemed wistfully compassionate—almost lonesome.

"Take off your boots," Lazlo commanded.

"What?" Lexie looked down. Her father was already on the floor, struggling out of his boots.

"I said take off your boots and keep quiet. It might stop if it doesn't hear any more sounds." The Captain tossed his boots aside.

"It can still hear us talking, Daddy!" she said.

Lazlo reached an arm around her legs and threw her to the floor. "I said take off your boots! You, too," he added to Nicholas.

Riordan had already doffed his boots.

Lazlo rose. "We can always come back. In a few years we can sneak up on the shark—figure out a way to disarm it. It'll be warm for a while, though."

"A few
years
?" Nicholas felt his heart break. "We just got here. Isn't there anything we can do now to stop it?"

"Not if we want to save the complex. We've got too much to lose at the moment. We can wait."

"Well, I can't wait," he said.

There was a sickening crash above them as if cement and steel had been torn.

Captain Lazlo tossed his cigar away. "Come, children." He began running in his stocking feet down the hall, followed by the Counselor, who carried his valuable tape.

"No!" cried Lexie as her father pulled her along.

"Be quiet," he said. He looked back at Nicholas. "What the hell are you doing? Come on!"

Nick looked into the vault and hesitated. He had come so close to being with people of his own era.

In one gesture he threw the outer door control switch and jumped back inside the stasis vault as the ponderous door grated shut.

"Nickie!"
came Lexie's frantic shout.

Inside, with the door now firmly sealed, he turned to the stasis couches. There seemed to be more than a hundred couches in the wall, and each one harbored a vital human being. The computer still functioned, though at the lowest level of efficiency.

If the Captain could make it back to the Bore without setting off the shark, then his plan would work. But if Lazlo couldn't, at least Nick would perish with his own kind.

He found an empty couch, pulled it out, arranged the wires in the stasis head-cap, and climbed in. He eased himself into the wall and darkness. He plugged in.

He became the complex. The others slept around him, but he was awake and felt the tendrils of connection to the underground storage facility.

"He's mine! He's mine!" Lexie was screaming, tears reddening her soft cheeks. Captain Lazlo was carrying her over his shoulder. Her tiny fists pounded on his backside.

"What about Nicholas?" the Professor shouted above the throaty roar of the impending shark.

"Forget him!" Captain Lazlo huffed. "He's shark bait now."

There were Eyes and Ears everywhere in the complex, and Nicholas saw and heard through every one of them.

He wondered how the shark had found them. Why hadn't it come alive when the Bore lunged into the hanger facility? Why did breaching the door-seal awaken it?

Then Nicholas found Titus.

The redheaded, trigger-happy youth was sitting with a crawler in his lap one level above the stasis chamber. The crawler was emitting its seductive beep—calling for the shark. But the crawler's wheels spun in Titus's lap. It wasn't going anywhere—it wasn't
meant
to go anywhere. Titus was summoning the shark!

The expression on the Boreman's face was quite peculiar. Distorted. As if the boy was going through a battle with himself. His eyes rolled, his lips quivered.

Titus spoke in a cracked voice to the empty hall.

"We're doing what we can," he whispered above the
beep!
beep! beep!
of the crawler. "Forgive us. Forgive Lexie."

Nicholas couldn't understand it. Why wasn't he fleeing with the rest of them? He tried to speak, but the system only had Eyes and Ears. There was no Mouth.

Then he saw the shark. One of his Eyes pierced the Stygian darkness and found it as it crashed through the ceiling of a vacant workroom and crept down onto the floor, scattering plaster, slabs of sheetrock, and metal tubing behind it. It was a miniature version of the Bore, with a head full of explosive plutonium. It moved slowly. It sunk its malevolent face—a round fusion plate—into the floor of the empty workroom and burned down through the tile, sucking up the cement underneath. A long tail of molten rock gushed from its rear, setting fire to everything around it.

Lying in the ancient stasis couch, Nicholas knew what its warhead could do.

"We'll be back, Nick!" a distant voice promised in the long, dark halls. But his mind wasn't fast enough to reach all the Eyes and Ears to find out who said it. "Stay tight! We're going to get you out!"

There came another, more ominous rumbling. Nicholas quickly shifted his vision around, looking for the cause. As he did, he smelled gas rising about him. Not
genna
, but something different. The system was reacting to his presence in the couch. Its defenses were taking over. He began to fade.