'The messages overlap. Emigrant Junction talks to three, four, or more simultaneously. Goes on nonstop without a break. Damn windbags.'
Islands in different parts of the world? Was that where people had run to? Or were these military bases reporting to and receiving orders from HQ? It was bloody infuriating not to know what was happening elsewhere. Communication with the outside world had dwindled as everyone withdrew into secrecy and suspicion, as remote and isolated from one another as tribes of headhunters in the depths of the Borneo jungle. The global village was no more. The Tomb itself never transmitted for fear of hostile outsiders locating their position.
Ron Maxwell came in carrying a stack of magnetic tapes. Tall and thin and buzzing with nervous energy, he was Stan to Hegler's Ollie. He wore a brown one-piece coverall with an oxygen counter on the left breast pocket: Below a certain percentage it turned blue, then purple, then black. Some had audio circuits attached that trilled like songbirds.
'When are they due back?' asked Maxwell, dropping the tapes with a clatter onto his half of the console. He peered amiably at Chase through tinted spectacles.
'The deadline is nine o'clock tonight,' Chase replied. Maxwell's daughter Fran was with the reconnaissance party that Dan was leading. 'I should think they'll be back before then. Art's been telling me about your daily soap opera; pity we can't follow the plot.'
'Maybe we can't,' Maxwell said, brandishing one of the tape reels, 'for the simple reason that it's in another language.'
'What?' Chase stiffened. Surely they weren't back to the nonsense about aliens again? And why hadn't Hegler mentioned this? He got the feeling that private lines of research were going on all around him that he knew nothing about.
'Computer-speak.' Ron Maxwell flipped the reel and caught it in his bony fingers. 'We dusted off the weather-modeling computer--it hasn't been used for three years--and ran some of the tapes. Had to teach it Morse code first, and we're dealing with an unknown program, yet the computer recognized a distant cousin when it heard one. Overjoyed to hear a friendly voice. You could almost see its diodes glowing with pleasure.'
'It was able to interpret the tapes?'
'Ah--no,' Maxwell admitted, perching himself on the corner of the desk and swinging a lanky leg.
Hegler said tartly, 'It didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.'
'If it didn't break the code, what did it do?' Chase demanded.
'That's not so,' Maxwell objected, carrying on the conversation over Chase's head. 'We know--' He broke off, sighed, and spoke instead to Chase. 'The messages from Emigrant Junction to the islands appear to be coded binary data: a master computer instructing other computers what to do. The answering messages are the computers feeding data back to the master computer.'
'Data about what?'
'We don't know. Highly technical information for sure, but until we understand the program we can't say.'
'As I said, we're no nearer interpreting the messages than we were before,' Hegler put in, sounding pained and weary. 'They could be military, scientific, or a new recipe for hamburger.'
'Do you think you'll crack it eventually?'
'Bound to,' Maxwell asserted, full of confidence. 'All we need is time and that's one thing we've plenty of. Come back in three months and we'll have the answer.'
'Might have,' Hegler rejoined, twiddling the dial.
Chase stood up and eyed them both keenly. 'You do realize this is absolutely vital. You've
Hegler looked over his shoulder and Maxwell stopped his leg in midswing.
'Why's that?' Hegler said.
'So we can start up in competition to McDonalds,' Chase said.
When he told Ruth about it later, her reaction was, 'I don't see the point, Gavin. What are they hoping to prove?'
'They don't want to prove anything. They're investigating a problem, or more accurately a mystery, that's all.'
They were sitting in the recreation room that they shared with ten others, Nick Power and his family among them. There was no shortage of living space in the complex--in fact there was too much of it-- though communal sharing of facilities was necessary in order to save energy. There had been a suggestion to depressurize the corridors and stairways, but Chase thought it might be too dangerous. Most of the available energy went toward maintaining a breathable sealed environment; it was their most worrying problem.
'We know things are getting worse,' Ruth said drably. 'We don't need instruments to tell us that--just step outside.'
'You don't think we ought to continue our investigations?'
'What for? To leave as a legacy for those unborn who never will be?' Ruth's complexion had always been fair, but now it was very pale, emphasized by the crooked pink scar on her forehead that intersected with her right eyebrow, giving her a perpetually quizzical expression. The strain of living underground had told on them all. Everyone was pale because the sunlight was too fierce on the unprotected skin; everyone was subdued because of the inevitability of what was to be--had to be. Hence Ruth's skepticism about the work that still went on regardless.
'Art Hegler's doing the job he was trained for; it occupies his mind,' Chase said mildly. 'Would you rather he took up embroidery?'
'Art's harmless enough, I guess.' Ruth sighed. 'I just don't see the purpose, the reason behind it all-- Maxwell and Hegler and all the others beavering away on their own crackpot schemes like a pack of mad scientists.'
'Does that include me?'
'It includes all of us. We must be crazy.'
'We could always leave, if you want to. The question is--'
'I know what the question is, Gavin. Why leave when there's nowhere else to go. At least we're safe here.' She laughed shortly. 'Safe to rot. Safe to die. Safe from everything but . . .' Her voice sank to a rasping whisper and she closed her eyes.
Chase looked at her for a moment and then took her hand. It felt limp and lifeless. 'What about you,' he said, 'writing up medical research notes from ten years ago? Some might find that rather strange and pointless.'
'It's for my own amusement.'
'What Art and the others are doing is probably for theirs--and who knows, they might come up with something.'
Ruth opened her eyes. 'If they do,' she said, pressing his palm to her breast, 'I hope they won't expect the Nobel Prize.'
Night enveloped them with the dramatic abruptness of the desert. Above them the stars wavered and blinked with the rising heat, like a purple sequined cloth shimmering in the breeze. Except there was no breeze: The desert was inert, silent, pulsating heat in waves so that it was like walking through hot sticky syrup.
They had abandoned everything but their weapons. Hours spent scrambling over rocks and fighting their way through thorny brush in the searing sunlight had taken all their strength and there was none left for anything that didn't contribute directly to their survival.
Dan pretended to drink, merely moistening his lips, and gave Jo the last few drops from the canteen. He estimated that they had crossed the border and were back in Utah. The nearest access point to the tunnels could be only two or three miles away, but that still left an underground walk of perhaps ten miles before they reached the Tomb. Was it better to go underground or continue on the surface where they could make good time? Three hours steady march would see them back at the Tomb, whereas it could take at least twice as long in the tunnels.
There was, however, a bigger dilemma than that. Were they being followed, and if so, by whom? At Echo Canyon, a few miles back, he thought he'd glimpsed movement behind them. Had the mutes picked up their trail? If so, they were leading them back to the others, revealing the Tomb's location. And what had happened in the tent? Those white grubs . . . where had they come from? He shuddered at the memory.
