Deep Sky

“Tell us what it is supposed to be like,” Paige said.

For a moment Dyer just stood there. He looked troubled by the idea he needed to express. Then he said, “The whole point is not to tell you. That’s what it’s supposed to be like. No current member of Tangent is supposed to know anything. Not for a few years yet.”

Travis found himself getting tired of the confusion. “You’re right,” he said. “It is all happening wrong—the people you expected aren’t here. But we are. I assume your purpose is the same as ours.” He nodded over the rail behind him. “To do whatever can be done about the Stargazer.”

Dyer looked more thrown by that than anything so far. “That must be an old nickname for it. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t think much can be done. Just management, like Allen Raines was doing.”

“You’re not here to stop it?” Paige said.

Dyer shook his head.

“What about the deadline?” Bethany said. “A little over six hours from now.”

“That’s the deadline,” Dyer said, “but it has nothing to do with what’s in this mine.”

Paige looked frustrated. “Just tell us everything. We already know the basics. We know Ruben Ward got instructions from the Breach in 1978. We know he spent that summer carrying them out. We know my father picked up on it later, and the Scalar investigation spent six years following Ward’s trail. Which led here, to whatever Ward created in this mine. So tell us the rest. Tell us what needs to be done, and we’ll help you do it.”

Dyer stared at her. His expression went almost blank, as if his thoughts had turned inward to process what he’d just heard.

“You’ve got the first few points right,” he said. “The rest is way off. Ward didn’t create anything in this place, and the Scalar investigation never picked up his trail. For all practical purposes, he didn’t leave one.”

Travis remembered their conversation on the Coast Highway. Their uncertainty as to how the investigation could’ve accomplished anything at all.

“But they spent hundreds of millions doing something,” Bethany said.

“Probably more like billions,” Dyer said. “Most of the cost was likely hidden one way or another.”

“The cost of what?” Bethany said. “What the hell did they do?”

Suddenly Travis knew. He realized he might’ve known hours ago, if he’d given it more thought. Might’ve guessed, anyway; he couldn’t have known for sure until they reached this place.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

Dyer nodded, seeing his understanding.

“They did the only thing they could do,” Dyer said. “They knew from the beginning that Ward’s trail was long gone, and so was the notebook with the instructions written in it. Trashed or burned before he killed himself. They were never going to see it again.”

“They needed a do-over,” Travis said.

Dyer nodded again. “They needed another Ruben Ward. And this is the place where they tried to get one. At the bottom of this mineshaft they created the second Breach.”

Part III The Tumbler

Chapter Thirty-One

Paige started to speak, then stopped. Her mouth opened and closed a second and third time, but nothing came out. At last she just stepped to the rail beside Travis and stared down into the pit. Bethany did the same. They watched the light playing—slowly flaring and receding.

When Paige’s voice finally came, it was softened almost to a breath. “The colors are different.”

“Almost everything about it’s different,” Dyer said, “hard as they tried to duplicate the original.”

“Do entities emerge?” Travis said.

“No. But other things do.”

Every head turned to Dyer. Every eye widened a little.

“Understand,” Dyer said, “everything I know comes from Garner. I’ve obviously never been in Border Town. I’ve never seen the first Breach—or this one. Garner said the one you oversee is an opening to something like a wormhole, however loosely that term is defined.”

Paige nodded.

“He also said it’s a wormhole being used for a specific purpose,” Dyer said. “Someone out there, or something out there, either designed it or harnessed it for transporting the objects you call entities.”

“Something like that,” Travis said.

“Well the second Breach tapped into a very different kind of wormhole,” Dyer said. “Maybe a more common kind, according to some of the scientists who worked on it. The term they used for it was primordial. A natural wormhole that could’ve formed out of the energy of the big bang itself. They say the universe might be riddled with them. And this one, at least, has no physical objects moving through it.”

“So what comes out?” Bethany said.

“Transmissions,” Dyer said. “Garner called them parasite signals.”

Travis’s eyes snapped to Paige’s, then Bethany’s.

Dyer saw the looks. “You felt them too.”

All three nodded.

“No one knows exactly what they are,” Dyer said. “They figure the other end of this wormhole is bonded to someplace where there’s life. Some equivalent to bugs, maybe. The way I heard it, things like that would evolve to make use of the tunnel, if they could. Like things here evolved eyes to exploit sunlight, and ears to take advantage of soundwaves in the air. These things, even if they couldn’t physically pass through the channel, could transmit natural signals into it. There are any number of ways they’d benefit by doing that, and—”

He stopped. Frowned. “Look, this Breach is dangerous as hell, and it gets more dangerous if it’s not managed, but I can take care of that later. None of this is the reason Garner brought me into the loop. It’s not why I’m here. For now, it’s enough to know that this second one didn’t do what everybody hoped it would. There were no Breach Voices, and there was no effect up front like the one that hit Ruben Ward. That stuff just didn’t happen the second time around. Different tunnel. But in a way—I guess indirectly—opening this thing got them the answers they were looking for. They learned what was really going on.”

He went quiet again, shut his eyes hard and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to tell you everything I know. I don’t see any choice at this point. If I’d gotten here and found any of the others alive, they would’ve been in charge, and my orders would’ve been to help them. But Garner gave me different orders to follow if none of them made it. The only real priority now—”

A sound cut him off: a violent, concussive bass wave, like a shotgun blast amplified many times over. It came from the chamber four hundred feet above, and echoed down the shaft in strange harmonics that set the metal stairs vibrating. Everyone looked up. They listened as the reverberations faded.

Only silence followed.

Travis thought of the men with the tape measure and the hammer, getting a sense of the steel’s bulk.

“They’re trying to blow the door,” he said.

“Who are they?” Dyer said. “Private sector guys?”

Travis nodded. It occurred to him that, until now, Dyer had been entirely unaware of any hostile presence outside the mine. Having come in the back entrance, he’d encountered none of them.