I went over to where the bags of debris had been. She'd been looking at those bags. I could see it clearly now. I'd called to her, she'd looked at me, and she'd run.
The bags were gone. In their place was a series of folding tables with twisted metal piled on them. I walked along the endless rows, sometimes recognizing something, mostly having no idea what I was looking at. There's a lot of metal in a plane.
Farther along were tables holding the remains of luggage. Suitcases in pieces no bigger than your hand. Mounds of shredded and burned clothing. Squashed cameras, splintered skis, lumps of plastic that had been calculators. Even an unbroken bottle of perfume.
A red light caught my eye. It was very faint, buried under a lot of other stuff. I reached for it, and unidentifiable flotsam clattered on the floor.
First impression: a child's toy. A ray-gun. It had a plastic case that was half-melted, blackened on the outside, cracked open. The red light seeped through the crack.
Like so many things on this case, this toy didn't add up. I peered into the crack. It looked like coherent light to me: laser light. I'd never heard of a child's toy that used a laser.
There was a Swiss Army knife in my pocket. I pried out the longest blade, and stuck it in the crack. I twisted, and the plastic case popped open. I took a long look at the insides of the thing. I didn't know what the hell it was, but it wasn't a goddam toy.
Okay. Finally I had something concrete. It made me sadder than I can say to have found it, but there it was. This was some sort of weapon. It had come from the place Louise had been so interested in yesterday morning. All I could do was assume she'd known it was there, that she'd been looking for it. It was time to call Special Agent Powers. Weapons were out of my jurisdiction.
There was a phone on the wall about twenty feet away from me. I was going to call, I really intended to, but the red light was still hidden from me. It came from beneath what might have been a circuit board. I started to pry it up with my knife. I wanted to know what was making that light.
I was flat on my back on the floor. I couldn't move. I was very cold, and the back of my head hurt.
There had been a flash of light, an odd sound, starting low and going beyond the limits of my hearing, shaking the building. And suddenly I had lost all muscle control.
I had passed out, but I wasn't sure if it was from the weapon. I think I whacked my head on the corner of the table as I went down, and again on the floor.
My eyes hurt, too. I couldn't move them. I couldn't even blink. They were drying out.
For a second I thought I was dead, that this was what death was like. Then I discovered I was still breathing. I could feel the cold concrete floor under me, the cold air over me, and my chest rising and falling. I could see the lattice of steel roof girders and a couple dim lights.
That was my universe.
Broken neck, I thought. Quadraplegic. Catheters and iron lungs and feces bags and no sex life ...
But it didn't add up to a broken neck. I could feel my legs. One was bent slightly under me, and it was going to sleep. I knew when I moved -- if I ever moved again -- it would be pins and needles.
I don't remember a lot of the next few minutes. I was scared, I don't mind admitting it.
Something had happened I didn't understand. All I could do was lie there. I couldn't even look away from the ceiling.
"Then I found there was something else I could do. I could hear.
It was nothing loud, but it was the only sound in the hangar, so I heard it. I decided it was two people walking, trying to do it quietly. I never would have heard them if I wasn't listening so hard.
After a long time of that, I decided it was three people. Later, I was sure it was four. It was amazing how much I could hear if it was all I had to do.
I waited. One of them would come close soon enough, and they'd decide what to do with me.
One of them did. I saw him looming into my field of vision. He was looking down at me.
He turned, and whistled softly. I heard the others converging. They gathered around me. They made a circle and looked down at me. They were wearing what looked like scuba suits: all black rubber, covering everything but their faces.
"Who is it?" one of them asked.
"Who do you think?"
I knew that voice.
Well, she had said she'd see me tonight.
They debated whether or not I was alive. Then they moved out of my hearing; at least, though I could tell they were whispering about me, I couldn't hear the words. I had the impression some of them were not in English.
They came a little closer and took another look. This time I heard a few words here and there.
" ... shorted something out."
" ... stun beam ... focused ... "
"Damn lucky ... dead man ... "
"What the hell is he doing here now?" That was Louise .
" ... take the stunner?"
" ... Gate's due in twenty minutes ... hell out of here."
"He's sure sweating a lot."
That didn't surprise me. I didn't expect to sweat much longer, though. I knew I was a dead man. I'd stumbled into something I wasn't supposed to see, some kind of stun weapon. Since I couldn't move my eyes I hadn't gotten a good look at them, but I remembered vague shapes dangling from their belts, and everything about them shrieked commando. They weren't here to play games.
So I'd surely be killed.
About all I didn't understand -- at least in the tactical sense was why Louise had revealed herself to me so many times before now. Had she been trying to enlist my help in some way? I remembered how badly she'd wanted me to stay away from work today. Okay, so she was trying to keep me from being here when they made their search ... except that I hadn't even known I was going to be here until an hour ago. Normally, I wouldn't have been in this hangar at this hour.
Something had screwed up badly for them and I had no idea what it was, but l was sure the easiest solution for their present problem was for me to die.
I couldn't believe it when I heard them going away.
Then Louise was back. She loomed over me so suddenly that if I could have moved, I'd have jumped a foot. I could feel my heart hammering, and the drops of sweat flowing down the side of my face.
"Smith," she said. "You don't know me. I can't tell you who am. But you're going to be all right."
17 "When We Went to See the End of the World"
Testimony of Louise Baltimore
I had never seen Gate Operations as quiet as it was when I stepped through from Bill's hotel room.
These things are relative, of course. I wasn't there ten seconds before the Gate Congruency Duty Officer warned me to get out of the way, and I stood aside to watch about a hundred soldiers of the Roman Second Century fall down the chutes and into the sorting apparatus.
But when they were gone, the place was utterly quiet. On a slow day Operations is about as quiet as Chinese New Year.
I went up to Gate Control. Lawrence was there at his console, which was not surprising since he couldn't leave it. What was surprising was that out of hundreds of other duty stations, there were only five or six gnomes left. It was a little bit as if, on a trip to Nepal, one discovered most of the individual peaks of the Himalayas had taken a trip to Japan.
One station still occupied was Lawrence's second-in-command, David Shanghai. He was flipping switches one at a time, and each time he hit one a light went off on his console. He had a faint smile on his face.