The car screeched to a sudden halt, then accelerated once more. Jeff pulled himself slowly upright, to see they were back on the highway.
‘I think we’re out of range now,’ announced Future-Mitchell, with a look of grim determination. ‘How is he?’
A total of three windows had been blown out, and there were also several large holes in the sedan’s roof. Jeff squeezed the upper half of his body between the two front seats, the sedan reconfiguring itself, and becoming slightly wider, in order to allow him more room. He glanced back at Present-Mitchell, who still lay sprawled on the rear seat. His eyes were closed, but his lips moved, and Jeff could hear him mumbling incoherently.
‘Well?’ asked Future-Mitchell, sounding tense. ‘Is he okay?’
‘Why? Don’t you remember?’
Future-Mitchell grunted. ‘Point taken.’
Jeff glanced through the shattered rear window to see that Arcorex had already vanished into the distance. ‘Can they catch us, do you reckon?’
‘I don’t know,’ Future-Mitchell replied, as he swung the sedan on to a turn-off leading back towards Omaha. ‘They’ll know who we are as soon as they check the surveillance recordings. What happens after that depends on whether they choose to tell the police or not. Personally, I’m guessing not.’ He glanced over his shoulder at his doppelgänger. ‘Is he still unconscious?’
‘Completely.’ Jeff nodded. ‘He’ll probably sleep for a day before he even begins to wake up again.’
It wasn’t long before they arrived back at the motel, where Future-Mitchell helped Jeff haul their unconscious charge up to the room. They dumped him on the bed, and Jeff glanced back and forth between his two companions.
‘No matter what you tell me, or how much you try to explain,’ said Jeff, gazing down at the prone figure sprawled on the bed, ‘this does not get any less weird.’
Future-Mitchell nodded. ‘Imagine how I feel.’
The man on the bed snorted and his eyes briefly flickered open. He mumbled something, and made motions as if he was about to sit up, but his eyes slowly slid shut again and soon he resumed snoring.
‘Okay,’ said Jeff, nodding towards the door. ‘I guess that’s it. Now we go get Olivia, then head for Florida and the Array.’
Something in the look on the other man’s face brought him to a halt.
Future-Mitchell shook his head slowly. ‘We’re not going to the Florida Array. It’s like hat aid yourself, they’ll be expecting us to try and make our way there.’
Jeff’s expression turned incredulous. ‘What, you mean you were lying to me?’
‘No.’ Mitchell shook his head again, ‘I wasn’t lying. We’ll go get Olivia, like I said, and then we’ll head for the Moon. But I don’t want to try and get there via the Array. I already learned the hard way it’s too risky.’
‘Mitchell,’ said Jeff, his voice cold and flat, ‘you’d better tell me right now what the fuck it is you’ve got in mind.’
‘Do you remember when me and Saul did that space-dive? All the way down from near-Earth orbit just in glider-suits? You were the one who put me in touch with the company that runs the flights, I seem to recall.’
‘Yeah,’ Jeff nodded, ‘what about it?’
Mitchell studied him for a moment. ‘Something bothering you?’
‘Apart from the fact that I have no idea why you’re bringing this up, no.’
‘Bullshit.’ The other man gave him a knowing look. ‘It’s because I mentioned Saul, right?’
Jeff made a sound of irritation. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mitchell. The guy had an affair with my wife, is all.’
‘Your ex-wife,’ Mitchell reminded him. ‘And it’s still bothering you?’
‘Maybe not so much recently,’ said Jeff, knowing that it was a lie. ‘It was a long time ago but, ever since me and Olivia got back together . . .’
Future-Mitchell nodded like he understood. ‘Sure.’
Jeff sucked in air, then expelled it in a rush. ‘Anyway, what about the space-dive?’
‘Your friends at the company, they also run flights to the Moon for rich idiots, am I right?’
‘Sure, on replicas of the original Apollo rockets, that kind of thing, along with the standard VASIMRs.’
‘“VASIMRs”?’
‘Variable impulse plasma ships,’ Jeff explained. ‘They can get to the Moon an awful lot faster than . . .’ Jeff paused, his eyes widening. ‘Fuck me, are you suggesting what I think you are?’
Mitchell nodded. ‘You need to get in touch with them right away, find out if they’re willing to take us up to Copernicus on board one of their ships.’ He stepped over to the door and pulled it open. ‘We might not get ourselves to the Moon the same wa as most people, but we sure as hell can fly there if we want to.’
EIGHTEEN
En Route to Florida Array, 4 February 2235
By the time Saul’s car made its way out of the hopper’s belly and joined a networked convoy heading for Florida, the news feeds were running rumours that what people were starting to call ‘the Pacific growths’ had been imported to Earth through the Array. There were also fresh satellite images of thermal activity on the deep ocean floor, while the hastily recruited oceanographers from Woods Hole, brought in to try and explain it all, soon sounded like they were way out of their depth.
The ‘Pacific’ prefix became less and less apt as more growths were discovered at further and further removes from the first one. The booming sound produced by that first growth had now been linked to seed-like projectiles fired from its apex, rising on long, curving trajectories that carried them close to the very edge of space before dropping back down at least several hundreds of kilometres distant.
The second growth had been discovered near Vladivostok, quickly followed by two more off the coasts of New Guinea and Malaysia, respectively. Saul happened to see some wobbly footage of the Vladivostok growth pushing out of an austere-looking landscape at what was clearly a phenomenal rate. A camera crew panned up the growth’s already considerable height, showing its upper parts rising out of a haze of debris that permanently clouded its base. He watched with a kind of numb dread that he felt deep inside his chest.
The route to the Array, dense with traffic at the best of times, soon became more crowded than Saul remembered ever seeing it. The cars moved along in tight columns, almost bumper-to-bumper, with tailbacks that stretched for several kilometres.
Saul figured, if it was going to take as long as he suspected to get to the Array, he might as well eat something first. He pulled in at a roadside steakhouse, and left his car to graze on compacted biomass. Being part of a popular chain that made a point of using live staff, the steakhouse was packed to the gills.
He managed to find himself a window seat and soon placed his order with a florid-faced waitress with a decidedly harried expression.
‘I’m guessing it isn’t usually this busy?’ he remarked.
‘Hell, no,’ she laughed. ‘This is the busiest it’s been since we opened the place, and that was fifteen years ago.’
Saul glanced around, noticing that many of the other customer’s faces were tight with worry.
‘Looks like they’re all headed for the Array,’ he observed.
The waitress shrugged. ‘Looks like,’ she agreed. ‘Bunch of idiots all running scared from something they saw on those damn news fds.’
‘You don’t think it’s anything to worry about?’
She gave him a scornful glance. ‘Hell, no, I don’t believe a word of it. Some damn fools made it all up, and now they’re rolling about on their asses, laughing at us. I stopped believing anything I saw on the news a long time ago.’