The War of Immensities (73 page)

“...and they
are all here and they say to me, we must go. We must go.”

“Okay, Fabrini,
listen carefully. What’s out there?”

“Many people.
Everybody...”

“No. I mean,
how is the terrain in the direction they want to go?”

“Ahh... Is
flat. I think... I have not been there very far, but I think flat
and open for as far as I have seen.”

“Okay. Let them
go. Tell them to walk. Tell them to take supplies for three days
walk. Ask them to go as slowly as they can tolerate. Do you
understand?”

“Yes, I think.
As slow as they tolerate. I understand.”

“It may be just
a slight adjustment. But let’s be prepared. I want you to let me
know if anything changes. Okay.”

“Okay, okay. I
understand.”

The silence
continued to hang over the room and the connection was broken, and
Thyssen again considered the board. His eyes fell on a single
location and he nodded imperceptibly.

“Make contact
with Brian, Joe, Andromeda and Wagner. I want to talk to each of
them as soon as you raise them.

There was a
highway under construction running south from Baltimore for about
thirty miles and there Joe Solomon was road testing his new
motorised wheelchair, escorted by two FBI agents on bicycles.

“I do seem to
be wandering off toward the left slightly, Harley,” he laughed. “I
just thought it was the wheel alignment but maybe you’re
right.”

Andromeda
marched amid her flock, and when Harley made contact, she paused to
discuss the direction with Captain Maynard. Maynard was able to use
Omega navigational positioning to pinpoint their line of march
exactly.

“No. We don’t
seem to have any deviation at all, Harley,” Andromeda said. “Why?
What’s the problem?”

Lorna, of
course, was no longer a sleeper, but all those about her were.

“There seems to
be a lot of uncertainty here, Harley. If there is a variation, it
can’t be much.”

“Not at that
distance, maybe.”

In their
respective aircraft, Wagner and Brian were able to consult their
pilots and determine direction precisely. Wagner, in a JAL 747, was
over Turkey by then, and reported there was no variation. But like
Andromeda, they too were heading west.

Brian was a
different story, He was invited to the cockpit of his commercial
flight and directed the pilot onto the exact course. Being over
Mexico and heading south, the effect was far more measurable.

“You’re right,
Harley. We’re off to the left by a few degrees.”

Harley was
already leaning over a woman who could use the computer to plot the
data accurately. The focal point had moved, about four hundred
kilometres toward the Andes.

“How could this
happen, Harley?” Brian wanted to know.

The new
position provided its own answer.

“The Buryats.
They’re gone?”

“How do you
mean, gone?” Glen Palenski asked.

“Don’t ask me.
Ask the Russians.”

“You sure they
ever existed? They never admitted it.”

“We used them
to plot the focal point several times in the past. They had to have
been there then. Now they aren’t.”

“What happened
to them?”

“Maybe the
Ruskies did some quarantine with extreme prejudice.”

Cornelius now
stepped in, as if finally assuming the command that was always
obviously his. “They wouldn’t. They aren’t that barbaric.”

Thyssen paused
for a moment to glare at him. “Oh no. Remember that story you
bastards spread about the contagion of the Shastri Effect.”

“No one here
spread any such story.”

“No. Of course
not. Whatever the reason, 190 Buryats have gone out of existence,
and that screws us up completely.”

“Maybe we can
get Wagner’s plane to turn around and go back, and that will drag
the focal point back with him,” Glen suggested.

Thyssen was
impressed. But when they checked, they discovered that by the time
the plane landed, refuelled and returned far enough to outflank
Andromeda’s pilgrims, there would be too little time left to make a
significant difference.

“Still, tell
them to try,” Thyssen said.

“And there’s a
big storm on their tail that they’ll probably have to go around,”
the operator added, to quell Thyssen’s last hopes.

“Naturally,”
Thyssen breathed.

Cornelius and
Glen Palenski exchanged a questioning glance and plainly neither of
them was able to provide the other with the answer. Certainly,
Thyssen’s annoyance was excessive, given the situation.

Cornelius said
warily. “I know this means that a lot of them will miss the chance
to be cured but I don’t see how...”

“No, you
wouldn’t, would you,” Thyssen bit back at him.

But even he
could see he was being unreasonable about this. He caught himself,
took a breath, and turned back to the board.

“Is the link
important for some other reason, Harley?” Glen asked with equal
care.

“No. No. I’m
just tired, I suppose. And sending all those people all that
way—for nothing...”

“You couldn’t
have known.”

“I probably
should have guessed.”

“And perhaps
your Mr. Fabrini will be able to slow them down enough to keep a
good proportion of them in the Zone,” Glen added.

“Perhaps,”
Harley sighed.

“Which reminds
me,” Cornelius said slowly. “I’ve been wanting to have a word with
you about Mr. Fabrini...”

Thyssen turned
then, his fury fully restored. The glare he directed at Cornelius
was almost enough to strike him a physical blow. “Just who the hell
are you, Cornelius?”

“As it happens,
I am a Special Adviser to the President on matters of national
emergency.”

“NCA.”

“Classified.
However, you can get verification of my credentials from the
President any time you feel you need it.”

“And what is
your capacity here?”

“I am
instructed to protect the US tax-payer’s investment in Project
Earthshaker.”

“So you are in
charge.”

“Technically,
in a bureaucratic sense, perhaps. But my orders are specific. I am
to do what you tell me, and facilitate to the best of my ability
any anything you need. I think that puts you in charge,
Professor.”

“I think that
puts President Grayson in charge, Mr. Cornelius.”

“Please, call
me John.”

“Might as well.
Otherwise I’d have to call you Corny.”

“You better get
some sleep now, Professor. When you wake, we ought to have complete
models of the likely effects in Brazil. I’d like you to be able to
look them over and offer any suggestions.”

Over the
following hours, Thyssen considered the outcomes from the models.
By that time, Brian had flown over the exact focal point, which
proved to be 437 kilometres further away from the Andes from the
original anticipated position. The pilgrims were proceeding that
way, but there was still a reasonable chance that all of them would
be inside the Zone when the event occurred—depending on how close
the model was to the actual location. Brian had continued on to
take charge of the scene, much to the apparent relief of Cornelius,
who undoubtedly was somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of a
fugitive from a murder charge being in control.

Once due
allowance for error had been made, Thyssen pumped the flight plan
into the Orion’s onboard computer, and advised Felicity that he had
done so.

“How are you
bearing up to captivity, Harley?”

“I’m a pretty
tame beast, Fee. You know that. They’ve given me all these nice new
toys to play with. That’ll keep me pacified.”

“Yes. Brian
told me all about it. Is it true we lost the Buryats?”

“Looks that
way. The western boundary of the link was on Wagner’s last
Japanese, in midair over Turkey at the time and using that as a
base, we’ve confirmed the position that Brian gave us.”

“Bastards. How
could they kill all those people?”

“Maybe they all
died of natural causes, Felicity. Maybe there were fewer of them
than we were told. Or maybe they were all moved to some point
further east...”

“Beyond Turkey?
Are you kidding?”

“Yeah. I know.
Listen, Fee. Once its safe, I want you to get in and sort out the
affected pilgrims first, if we have any. If we can use Lorna’s
experience as a guide, they should only be unconscious for a few
minutes. They’ll need to be picked up first.”

“Yes. I
understand. Is the Brazilian Government doing anything about the
Indians and peasants in the region?”

“No. They’re
too remote, and it’s too late to organise a proper evacuation.”

“So I’m going
to have the same sort of mess that I had in Sulawesi to puzzle my
way through.”

“Well, at least
you’ll be experienced this time.”

“Sure Harley.
You take care now.”

“You too
Fee.”

One by one,
Thyssen spoke to each of his team, to ensure they were ready. There
was plenty of time, and they were all under control, but he found
the countdown that was now running was unnerving him. Then the
leaders from the various teams in the control room gathered and
aired their final concerns.

“Explain, if
you will, Professor, the likely effects we can expect in
Brazil.”

“We anticipate
an earthquake at 11.1 on the scale—the greatest magnitude ever
known. We cannot be sure what arbitrary effects will arise from it.
The Zone we expect to be eight hundred kilometres in diameter, with
the epicentre at the base we established in the Mato Grasso. Mato
Grasso City is the only large town affected and it will be
evacuated. Other smaller places like Frutuoso, Diamantino and Pouso
Alegra are all expected to lie just outside the Zone. So, we
believe, will the largest town in the region, Cuiaba. There are
about nine small settlements inside the Zone that we can do nothing
about. Local population figures are not well known but we think
there are about 200,000 natives living in the Zone. It’s mostly
open, sparsely treed country and the damage from the earthquake
itself, despite his intensity, might not be very great.

“There was an
earthquake in 1994 at 8.3 on the scale just west of the location
and only ten people were killed. Mostly, the problem won’t be
there. The population is too sparse. In the Andes, however, there
will be a different problem. The area around La Paz and Lake
Titicaca seems the most vulnerable spot. There are dozens of active
volcanoes in the region, hundreds of dormant, and the whole range
sits on the edge of the Peru-Chile Trench. It’s all hopelessly
unstable and its possible that we could get a coastal catastrophe
twenty or thirty times worse than California. But that’s just
speculation. We have no idea of what will happen there.

“Between the
Andes and the Mato Grasso, in Bolivia, are a series of severe fault
lines, and we may get a lava flood similar to the one that occurred
at Lake Baikal, only on a much larger scale. That would take the
pressure off the Andes and the trench, and its overall effects
might not be so great. But everything for a thousand square miles
will be utterly destroyed. The faults are so numerous and complex
that there is no way of telling which of them is likely to be
affected.”

The countdown
clock ran to zero and started counting backwards. If the migration
of the pilgrims was going as slowly as Thyssen hoped and most of
them were still within the anticipated Zone. The countdown clock
ran to minus 33 minutes, and then the seismographs went off the
scale.

“Give me a
reading,” Thyssen demanded.

“8.9,” came the
reply.

“That can’t be
right.”

“We’re
confirming.”

“Get me a fix
on the Zone as quick as you can.”

“Professor, I’m
having trouble raising the Orion.”

“Get them. We
need their confirmation.”

“They’re on the
air. I just can’t raise anybody...”

Thyssen stopped
what he was doing, regarded the operator involved for a moment and
then looked at the map. The green dot indicated the Orion, flying
north-east of the Zone. Thyssen picked up his microphone and said
calmly.

“Felicity, can
you hear me?”

“They’re
receiving. They just aren’t answering.”

Thyssen walk
briskly and punched some keys. “Come on, come on. I want that
epicentre.”

“We’re getting
it. It’s coming... Shit !”

On the screen
before him, as well as on the board behind, a blue dotted line
indicated the anticipated Zone of Influence. Now more intense blue
lines began to map the actually affected area. It was far to the
north. At least three hundred kilometres. The epicentre was almost
at the edge of the blue circle.

“Oh no,”
Thyssen said, bowing his head in dismay.

“We still can’t
raise the Orion, Professor.”

“I don’t think
you will,” Thyssen said grimly.

Glen was
standing behind him, intently watching the board, and seeing
clearly the problem. The green dot was inside the Zone, almost in
the middle of it in fact.

“They’ve been
caught.”

“What do you
mean?” Cornelius had to ask. His voice carried too loudly in the
hush that had fallen over the room.

“They’re
sleepers.”

“But the
plane’s still flying...”

“Automatic
pilot. The crew is asleep.”

“But isn’t Dr
Campbell a pilgrim...?”

“No. She never
was. No one on the plane was,” Thyssen said grimly, to no one in
particular. “I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I think of that? We needed a
pilot who was a pilgrim to keep them safe.”

Every eye in
the room watched the languid movement of the green dot, as it
tracked almost imperceptibly across the board.

“We must be
able to do something,” Glen insisted in continuing disbelief.