The War of Immensities (43 page)

“Do I have to
ask the obvious question?”

“Well, that
whole Tahiti business reminded me that there was a client of mine
who died some years back but he included me as silent partner in a
little off-shore deal. Quite honest. The deal ended but the array
of little companies with their head office in the Christmas Islands
remained. I was supposed to wipe it all out but, as I say, the guy
died and I forgot.”

“So you just
dropped the fifteen million in there.”

“That’s
right.”

“Is there a
project connected to this arrangement?”

“As fate would
have it, yes. I bought a chunk of Italy for development.”

“I’ve been to
Tuscany. Went there with Margo and the kids in 1984. Beautiful
place.”

“This is in the
south. But it apparently has a village and a convent.”

“Will you be
Mother Superior?”

“Kevin Wagner
is running it. He needs a base to operate and look after the
sleepers and train his guards. It has an airstrip.”

“Sounds
fabulous. When do we leave?”

“When I get out
of prison, I suspect.”

“Is it
illegal?”

“Of course.
It’s embezzlement.”

“Are you
sure?”

“The money does
legally belong to the US Government.”

“Okay.”

They both sat
for a time now, thinking about it. Clarissa poked her head in and
they ordered more desperately needed tea. Neither wanted to speak
as they thought through the story so far. In the end, Barney found
the right question. “So why did you do this?”

“I don’t know,”
Joe said with a sorrowful shrug. “I can’t believe I’ve done it. I
don’t see the point of it nor the sense. But it somehow seemed like
the right move. It still does, in fact.”

“So we can
claim deprivation of the balance of your mind.”

“I knew exactly
what I was doing.”

“We can claim
that Thyssen had some demonic power over you.”

“I retain all
of my doubts about that man. I distrust him and his motives. I’m
sure he has his own agenda. But nevertheless it seems I felt I owed
him this gigantic favour.”

Barney raised
his eyebrows and offered a sly smile. “So that’s what it is. A
favour.”

“I don’t know.
I can’t say that my actions will be of any benefit to Thyssen nor
anybody else. Maybe I’ve dumped him in the shit. It’s impossible to
say.”

“But you can’t
withdraw.”

“There is no
proof that I ever had any such money. How can I claim it back?”

“That was silly
of you.”

“Except
this?’

From his
drawer, Joe lifted a compact disk and dangled it before Barney’s
eyes. It was marked ‘Fire and Security Maintenance Contracts’.

“A copy.”

“Yes. A
complete copy of the accounts. Put it somewhere safe, will
you?”

“Won’t that
implicate me?”

“Not if you
think it has our security contracts on it.”

“But you don’t
want to know where.”

“Nope.”

“I’ll visit you
every Sunday.”

“I’ll
appreciate that.”

Deep within
him, Joe was feeling sad, but he was also feeling good. He was
feeling clever. Only he wasn’t sure what he felt so clever about.
Barney eyed him dubiously.

“So, what’s the
wash-up?”

“They’ll never
be able to take Project Earthshaker out of existence.”

“Is that
good?”

“I thought
about all those pilgrims, Barney, and how there is likely to be so
many more of them. They seemed like the lost tribes to me. So I
gave them somewhere to go.”

“Mr. Carrick, I
wonder if you would be good enough to step in here?” the customs
official said with a warm friendly Tahitian smile. Two large
gentlemen in military uniforms and machine-pistols slung implied
the consequences of non-acceptance of this kind offer. He went
quietly, exhausted from his long journey, exasperated mostly by the
possibility that it was all in vain.

With the
Italian pilgrims safely returned to their homes, he had flown to
Tahiti to try and assist Felicity in her dealings with the US Navy,
but he got no further than this. He was directed into this
featureless room with no windows and one door that the man locked
as he left. His meagre luggage was placed neatly in the corner.
There was a washbasin and mirror and behind the only other door was
a toilet. The colours were soft, and lighting subtle, it was hard
to recognise the room as what it was—a prison cell. The only real
clue was the TV camera, watching him from high up in the corner of
the room.

There was a
couch on which he could recline and, on the assumption that he
would be here for some time, he lay on it and fell sleep
immediately. When he awoke three hours later, he was still alone.
He used the facilities, shaved and washed and was just about to
begin to think of what to do next when there was a knock on the
door. A pleasant woman brought coffee and breakfast—bacon and
eggs—and she smiled as asked if there was anything else he wanted.
The large soldier standing in the doorway suggested that any remark
concerning freedom could at best be regarded as a joke.

He ate his
breakfast, changed his clothes, dug a paperback out of his pack and
lay on the couch to read. It was, after all, a random universe
where the laws of mathematics and physics had no meaning, except as
good descriptions of the way our minds worked. In such
circumstances, was it reasonable for him to expect his own
miserable life to make any sense?

So he mulled
his way along until there was again the polite knock on the door.
They entered, all smiles and deference, and collected him and his
luggage and took him out to a transit lounge where he found
Felicity Campbell waiting. She sat serenely in the lounge wearing
her nice travelling clothes, her suitcases at her feet.

“What’s
happening?” he asked with a warm smile.

To his
astonishment, Felicity gave him a hug. Then she handed him a
letter.

“I got one of
these too,” she said.

Brian tore the
envelope open and read. It was signed by the General Secretary of
the United Nations, and informed him that Project Earthshaker had
been discontinued, and that he was to place himself under house
arrest and make himself continuously available to the Special
Investigative Committee formed to look into the project and its
activities. He was banned from speaking to the media or anyone
concerning the project, every part of which was now classified as
Top Secret—failure to comply would result in charges being laid
under the Official Secrets Act and, more immediately, confinement
to a state institution.

It was a very
polite letter, on fine paper and with the UN crest at the top but
no address for reply. Brian folded it and stuffed it into his
pocket. “Tricky to put myself under house arrest when I don’t have
a home to go to.”

“You’re welcome
at the humble Campbell home in Wellington if you wish, Brian,”
Felicity said.

Somehow, Brian
suspected his rough domestic standards would not quite measure up
there, but still he could smile with appreciation at her
gesture.

“Nar. I gotta
get back to Melbourne and do some sorting out. Custody of the kids
and all that. Ain’t seen ‘em for months.”

“If you need
any help, just call.”

“Sure. How’d
you go with the Navy?”

Felicity
snorted and threw her hands in the air. “I never got near them. The
sailors all awoke from the coma on schedule, completed medical
checks successfully of course, and the USS Barton sailed for Pearl
Harbour yesterday.”

“It must be
nice to be able to believe your problems will just go away,” Brian
said.

“Ours have,”
Felicity smiled. “I must say, it’ll be nice to have a rest. I’m
looking forward to this.”

“Where’s
Jami?”

“Oh, she
skipped out of here days ago. Didn’t discuss her plans.”

“And the
others?”

“Thyssen is
apparently under guard in a suite at the Washington Hilton and
Lorna, always the opportunist, got herself confined to a room in a
different part of the same hotel. You can imagine what house arrest
means to her.”

“Andromeda is
in London, I know,” Brian said. “She’s got a big concert there next
week.”

“I wonder if
the muzzle will extend to her songs.”

“She’s a big
sell-out everywhere. A lot of disappointed people if they try and
cancel her.”

“And
Wagner?”

“Well, I think
I know where he is but I’d better not say.”

“I heard
something about the convent in Italy,” Felicity said, leaning and
whispering in his ear.

“Joe bought it
for him.”

“Good old Joe.
Can he get me one?”

“I don’t know
how it happened. But it did. Just shows how little I know.”

“We are all
learning how little we know, Brian.”

“You can say
that again,” Brian laughed.

You could lose
anything in New York, especially if it wanted to stay lost. People,
their whole lives, even complete cultures, had vanished there
without a trace. Along with vast sums of money and vast quantities
of drugs, and millions of careers and disconnected fragments of
creative talent. Such a talent was Val Dennis, who was rich enough
to do whatever he liked and chose Astrophysics, of all things, and
related disciplines. He had been abducted, so he said, by aliens
when young and therefore believed every known conspiracy theory,
and since there wasn’t a lot of work in his trade outside
government projects, he had set up his own private laboratory in a
tenement in The Bronx where he gathered other brilliant outcasts
and any black market equipment available and was available to do
any scientific projects that the government banned or refused to
take seriously.

Jami had
suffered through the freakiest night of her life when she met him
at a UFO conference and they indulged in a one night stand that got
lost sniffing coke. It was unclear whether they had actually had
sex. But, importantly, Val was a friend that no one knew she had,
because it would not have offered the slightest benefit to anyone’s
career in sciences to have Val Dennis appear on their credentials.
She only realised the value of that as a secondary line of
thought—she had intended to consult him over Earthshaker anyway and
events simply added an imperative of immediacy.

Fate, plainly,
was on her side, delaying her arrival at the Earth Sciences
Building by means of a flat tyre. When she arrived, a removals van
was parked outside the building and men in black suits were loading
equipment. She halted in the car park, watching, sure the scene did
not fit somehow. Glen saved her by putting up a fight and she saw
him brought out, handcuffed, still shouting abuse and struggling
and they put him in a black Lincoln with tinted windows and drove
him away.

She got back in
her car, a ball of nerves, and drove off the campus, stopping at
the first telephone box she came to. She rang Harley and got no
response. She rang the dungeon and a strange voice answered. She
drove back to her apartment building and saw two men standing by
another black Lincoln in the street outside. Instinct, and maybe
too may conspiracy thrillers, warned her to keep driving. She went
to an Internet Cafe and made use of the web. There was email from
Wagner. ‘You will be arrested,’ his message, plainly directed to
all project members went, ‘effective immediately. Thyssen directs
you to surrender without a fight and tell them anything they want
to know.’

Not fucking
likely.

Not without a
trill of excitement, she immediately formulated a plan. They would
be able to trace her car—she drove downtown and parked it deep in
an underground car park and walked around to the station. She
waited until the buses deposited a large crowd in the station, put
on her overcoat and sun glasses and a woollen beanie, and went in,
mingling with the travellers, and bought a ticket to New York. She
travelled all the way to The Bronx on public transport—cab
destinations could be traced and she didn’t want to risk that—and
walked the last distance constantly stopping to check if she was
being followed. By then it was after midnight, and these streets
were not safe, but she slunk along in the shadows and arrived.

Val, straggly
and undernourished as ever, was delighted to see her.

“Hey, Jami,
Hey. Yo, baby. Who let you loose in the Big Apple?” and such like
went down. He offered every known drug of abuse before he thought
of coffee.

“You know the
one about government agents hunting down the innocent lab assistant
because she is the only one left alive that knows the secret
formula?” she asked him.

“Does that make
me Cary Grant?”

“As near as
you’ll ever get, Val.”

“Hey, whoa
there. I sure hope Hitch’s directin’.”

“Alfred
Hitchcock is dead. And so is Cary Grant. And so will I be if it
gets known I’m here.”

“Babe, welcome
to the other side of the event horizon.”

It wasn’t at
all clear whether they had sex that night either, but in the
morning she made him the sort of breakfast that only sexually
contented women can, and then put him to work.

“Consider a
black hole. How would you detect it?”

“Ain’t none
been detected, so who knows?”

“How do they
try?”

“There’s a
scream, they say. Registers small on the spectro. X-rays from the
stuff fallin’ in. Get it?”

“Perfectly.”

“Like the water
goin’ down the gurgler. Matter being eaten spins, faster than light
before it pops in and goes out of existence. Synchrotronic
radiation they call it.”

“Suppose there
was a black hole inside the earth’s core. What then?”

“Direct me to
the next shuttle to Mars. One way ticket, Babe.”

“But how would
we detect it?”