The War of Immensities (40 page)

“You should
have seen it, Felicity. The whole top of the mountain rose like a
Saturn rocket and then—wham-o.”

“Take care of
yourself, Jami.”

“I will. Bye
Fee.”

Felicity broke
the connection. For a moment, she thought of the serenity of
whisking about the polished sterile floors of the hospital, of the
warmth of nights on the couch in front of the television, of the
gorgeous aroma when Wendell had just mowed the lawn. That was who
she really was. Not this unfortunate thing in a hellish dark tin
can, all atangle with wiring. She fitted her helmet again,
returning to her android self, and spoke to Captain Taylor.

“How many men
on a ship like that?”

“About two
hundred. Men and women in the US Navy these days.”

“Instruct them
to follow full quarantine procedures. Ask for permission for me to
board the ship at the earliest possible opportunity.”

“They said not
without the appropriate security clearance.”

“Tell them
those sailors aren’t in the US Navy anymore. They now belong to
Project Earthshaker.”

“I think you
better tell them that yourself, Dr Campbell,” Taylor said with a
chuckle.

On this radiant
Athens evening, Andromeda watched the pilgrims flood into the city.
Away to her left were the orange remnants of a glorious sunset,
over the right shoulder a tumid full moon was rising, at her back
they had turned on the lights that floodlit the Acropolis
especially for the occasion. From her high vantage point, she
watched for some sign of the convoy advancing through the streets
but it was Lorna Simmons, sitting beside her and watching the
procession on a video monitor, who would give the signal to
begin.

Athens had
taken them to her bosom as only Athens could. Originally they had
booked the amphitheatre at the foot of the Acropolis for the
concert that would follow, expecting only the pilgrims to be there.
But soon it became apparent that the whole city was determined to
get into the act. As the convoy advanced along the road from
Corinth, the people came out of their farmhouses and villages to
line the way and watch the procession pass, after which they fell
in behind, swelling the numbers to an uncountable host.

Lorna and the
governors of the city went into a panic and hastily expanded
arrangements. There was a huge scaffold built by the men renovating
the Acropolis with a high platform that clung to the cliffs just
below the walls on the crest. The giant speakers, as big as
shipping containers, had been positioned there and the lights moved
and now the crowd could gather on the broad slope below, and back
into the excavations of the Agora, and down through the throats of
the streets that led to those places from the body of the city
beyond.

It was expected
by the general public that the procession would pass straight
through the city and carry on, presumably to Jerusalem. But it
would not. It would end here. Early that morning—twelve hours ago
now, Andromeda had felt the tremor through her body and, with a
glance sideways at Lorna, acknowledged that the time of the
pilgrimage had passed.

“Do you think
they’ll still come?” Lorna wondered.

Out on the
road, Brian Carrick had reported that while a great cry had arisen
from the travellers and there was some brief panic, they were too
much caught up in the momentum of the event to deviate from their
course.

Lorna and
Andromeda sat in the communications tent, awaiting news of
friends.

“Sure is a
strange sensation, Babe. When it ends,” Andromeda said.

“Something like
it must have been to have our umbilical cords cut,” Lorna
supposed.

“I don’t
remember that, Sugar. I’m thinkin’ it’s more like when a love
affair ends.”

“I never felt
that good when someone walked out on me,” Lorna said grimly.

“Uh-uh. It’s
like the way you feel when you walk out on them. You got that
moment of doubt when you’re sayin’ to yourself—maybe I oughta go
back and make it up—but then you say, hell no! And you walk on
Baby. You got a stab of pain, a moment of sadness, and then comes
the flood of relief that all that shit is over.”

Through the
speech, she saw Lorna watching her quizzically. “I wouldn’t know,
Andy. I always went back.”

Soon, word was
relayed that Felicity and Jami were both okay and the moment of
relief and jubilation was followed by sadness as information about
the devastation in the Society Islands came through.

“Now that was
the same sort of feeling going backwards,” Lorna remarked.

“No. Those are
real emotions. The Shastri thing is different,” Andromeda was
sure.

But things were
happening and it was time to get on the move.

“Are you going
to be alright to go on straight after all this emotional trauma?”
Lorna asked with serious concern—it was a technical question.

“You bet,
sweetheart,” Andromeda grinned. “I never felt so exhilarated in all
my life.”

And it was
true. In her time she had been possessed of every sort of
self-doubt and stage-fright and for a long time she needed to be
stoned just to get out on the stage. But all that was behind her
now. She walked to her spot on the stage, in the darkness with the
lights of the entire city before her, and she knew she was going to
be fantastic, that this would be her greatest performance ever. In
a moment they would hit the flood lights and the music and her
voice would carry out over the city, and everyone who was in the
streets would hear her. And in Athens on such a warm clear evening,
the streets were invariably crowded. She had a full orchestra and a
rock band—the Tum-thumpers—hottest in the business right now. But
mostly, she had herself. This would be Andromeda Starlight’s
greatest performance—what do you think of that, Edna Krebbs of
Trinidad?

Down there she
could see right along an arterial road, and away in the distance,
she saw Chrissie. Saint Christine. A pristine white figure on the
back of a truck with her arms raised to the heavens. Behind her,
all manner of moving lights and pandemonium seemed to be going on.
Anxiously, she turned toward Lorna, hidden away behind and at the
same moment, Lorna said. “Hit it!”

The lights came
on blindingly and Andromeda threw her arms wide and went into The
Age of Aquarius from Hair and she could feel the earth stand still
and every face turn toward her in her dazzling brilliance. She sang
with her mightiest voice and behind her the thirteen ladies of the
backing group seemed insignificant by comparison. She went straight
on with several other popular songs designed to draw people toward
her and although she could see little with the dazzling lights in
her eyes, she sensed them gathering below her.

Now she went
into her full repertoire of gospel songs, bouncing back and forth
between herself and the backing group, and while that happened, she
saw Chrissie climbing the hill, moving through the gathering crowd
with a big Italian chap clearing her way. Chrissie, the lights
making her white robes glow mystically, ascended the steps—it was
almost surprising that she didn’t simply levitate herself onto the
stage, such was her aura of spirituality. She took her place beside
Andromeda on the stage, thumping on a tambourine of all things, and
completely off the beat. By then, an enormous crowd had gathered
all around and police and soldiers were struggling to control them
and Andromeda sang Amazing Grace to quiet them and bring Amazing
Chrissie to centre stage.

Andromeda,
exhausted, soaked in sweat, utterly triumphant, flopped in the seat
beside Lorna, away in a dark part of the stage. Lorna handed her a
flask of athletic juice.

“I hope there’s
some scotch in this,” Andromeda said with a gasp.

“Aren’t you
going to ask me how it went?” Lorna asked with a grin.

“I know how it
went.”

“Then consider
the unfortunate lot of the humble PR girl. You’ve upstaged my
wildest promotional exaggerations.”

Out there
before her now silent audience, Chrissie led them in prayer and
then spoke to them of the Hand of God and how it had brought them
here and how to prepare themselves for the Apocalypse.

“Only nine
months to go,” Andromeda remarked ruefully.

“Harley says
most of us will be dead some time before then,” Lorna said
quietly.

Soon she would
go into her second bracket—her Earthshaker performance complete
with the dazzling light show, hot from Vas Vegas. But for the
moment, there was the tranquility of Saint Chrissie, guiding the
devoted along the path to paradise.

“I wonder where
Harley is. He ought to be here,” Andromeda realised.

“Oh. He rang.
While you were on stage. He’s in Washington and—get this—watching
you live on television.”

“Really?”

“Yes. The
networks dumped their regular programs and took you live. You’re
the biggest hit in history.”

“Well, that’s
how it feels,” Andromeda admitted and then jerked her head toward
Chrissie. “Only is it me or is it her.”

“For all our
sakes,” Lorna said grimly. “It better be you.”

Glen would have
been a pushover, for anyone except poor Jami Shastri, Lorna was
thinking. She sat opposite him in the cafe, watching his eye roam
as he talked about himself and his importance to the project. Lorna
listened to none of it. He was a good looking bloke and far too
aware of it, athletic and proud of his successes, intelligent but
unable to allow that to shine through his conversation.

A weird sort of
loyalty to Jami had caused Lorna to decide to hate him and she was
pleased to discover that it was no difficult task. It would have
been akin to white-anting one of Chrissie’s rare boyfriends, to
which she had never succumbed despite many temptations. It was a
joy, to sit and listen to Glen trying to ‘hit on her’ as the yanks
put it. This was going to be the biggest fresh-air shot in history
and the thought pleased her deeply.

But Glen would
not give in. He was so sure of himself. By then you would have got
the impression that he was Project Earthshaker and Thyssen merely a
figurehead. And Jami non-existent. Her name had not even been
mentioned. But the truth, if it needed revealing, was made plain
just an hour before when Thyssen brought her for the first time to
the dungeon that was the headquarters of Project Earthshaker.

This really was
a basement. Air ducts and water pipes snaked about beneath the
ceiling everywhere and you could hear the pumps humming through the
thin partitions. The stairs descended from ground level and ended
at the car park, where a door marked Strictly No Entry admitted
them to a steel stairway and they plunged down to the janitor’s
quarters. Long corridors carried them away from the elevator (she
was enjoying her knowledge of American idiom) and through dark
places with exposed fluorescent lighting to the door of the office
they inhabited.

There were five
computer screens, each with their own seating spaces, but the
chairs were a hotchpotch obviously scavenged. The file cabinets
showed streaks of rust. Every bit of vertical space had printouts
and notes and maps and photographs stuck on it, often tiers of over
sticking. Each of the computers and all of the electrical equipment
had been deprived of cabinets and from them disembowelled
components clung to their function by bunches of wires. Heaped
boxes of additional components littered the floor.

“What did you
say our budget was?” Lorna asked when she saw it.

Thyssen smiled.
“It all functions, and it’s away from prying eyes.”

“Unless you
include the rats,” Lorna said with a shudder.

“Any rat that
came in here would be electrocuted in thirty seconds,” Glen
grinned. “So watch where you step.”

That idea stuck
in Lorna’s mind and kept her rooted to the spot.

Thyssen
introduced them—until then she had assumed Glen to be a
technician’s apprentice.

“How we
doing?”

“Sixty-nine
percent on the Japan trench region.”

Thyssen grabbed
handfuls of print-outs and shuffled through them and the two men
spoke ten minutes of solid jargon, not one word of which Lorna
understood. It made her realise just how much they simplified their
thoughts for her benefit on other occasions.

“I hope you
don’t expect me to remember any of this,” she interrupted at one
stage.

Both looked at
her in annoyance.

“You’re not
supposed to remember any of it,” Thyssen said grimly.

“Then what am I
doing here?”

Thyssen ran his
eye around his domain. “I just thought you might like to see the
throbbing heart of our operation.”

“Yes, I thought
I might have too.”

“We’ll be
finished in a few minutes,” Thyssen gruffed at her. “Why don’t you
make us all coffee?”

The last
hundred times some male had said that to her, they had been met
with the most vehement refusal—this time it sounded like an
excellent option. She looked around with a frown.

“You mean one
of these contraptions makes coffee?”

“Over behind
the door.”

She found a
sink and a bench, stained beyond reason, and three jugs all with
their electrical innards hanging out. One of them was plugged into
a power point that was hanging from a hole in the wall, but the red
light was on and she bravely made assumptions. There was a coffee
plunger stained the colour of beer bottles and some mugs all
suspiciously coffee coloured that she suspected might have
originally been white. Into this lot, she was required to add the
most expensive Brazilian coffee on the market. No one could accuse
them of lacking class.

They sat on
chairs amid the jumble of wiring and gadgets and Thyssen studied
the monitor screen, Glen occasionally pointing things out, Lorna
still looking for electromagnetic rodent ghosts.