She sipped at the drink. “How’s the leg?”
“Better, Judy. Thanks for the invitation, by the way. I’m impressed.” He waved his hand to encompass the Sonoran desert, the cacti, the dark, snow-tipped mountains and the huge celestial dome which dwarfed it all. Out here in the desert, the stars were a lot brighter. Here and there the lights of houses were scattered, like candles in a dark cathedral.
“Well, you were told to rest. This is a good place to do it. I call it Oljato, which is Navajo for the Place of Moonlight Water.”
“Although the company is boring.”
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. “Be careful, Oliver. There are rattlesnakes out there.”
Webb sipped at the drink. It was chilled, and had a distinctive flavour which he associated with Mexico but couldn’t otherwise place. “So what does your Fort Meade mole say?”
“The investigation’s still under way. It seems the operation was planned by a small group of clever people in the NSA. It was a sort of Cyberwars in reverse.”
“Cyberwars?”
“Information warfare. Look at the damage single hackers have done when they penetrated a system’s computers. Now think of a planned attack by hundreds of them, based in some hostile country, penetrating thousands of computers. They could build up undetectable back doors over a long period of time and then strike all at once. They could crash planes, erase files from businesses and laboratories, penetrate rail networks, cause financial chaos, destroy the command and control of weapons systems, all from the safety of their own country and using nothing more than computer terminals.”
“But surely that’s a recognized problem,” said Webb.
Judy nodded. “But what people had in mind was an external enemy. Nobody thought there might be an enemy within.”
“And because they protect the systems, they know about them,” Webb suggested. “And they know all there is to know about information warfare.”
“Which knowledge was used by a small group within the National Security Agency against the American leadership. The Chiefs of Staff, the President, the Secretary of Defense, they fooled everybody.”
“The old problem,” Webb said. “Who protects us from our protectors?”
“These people weren’t traitors, Ollie. They were patriots. They had a clear-headed view that the country had to protect itself against a perceived future attack by taking pre-emptive action. That action could not be taken by an administration proclaiming peaceful co-existence.”
“And the CIA was in on it too?”
“Again, my mole thinks only a small clique within the organization. They only needed a few guys. The upper echelons were taken in just like everybody else.”
Webb leaned back and sank up to his neck in the warm water. “I like the way they’re trying to handle the aftermath. Actually selling the conspirators’ story to the public. A straightforward near-miss asteroid, the Naval Observatory observations a mistake etcetera. They’ll never get away with that.”
“Don’t be so sure, Ollie. Nemesis has supposedly rushed back into the blind zone, deflected by Earth’s gravity.”
“Forget it.”
Judy drew the shawl closer around her shoulders. “The Enquirer said it was a CIA plot to make the President zap the Russians, did you see?”
Webb grinned. “And not a soul believes them. What’s the line on the palace revolution?”
“In the Kremlin? The analysts don’t know. My guess is the Russian Army decided Zhirinovsky was just too dangerous to have around.”
“It was close. I’m glad the driver’s ignition worked.”
“But now they’ve pulled out of Slovakia, and they’re getting back to some semblance of democracy. We’ll see what the elections bring.”
Webb’s eyes were now fully dark-adapted. A little lemon tree, almost next to the whirlpool tub, glowed gently. At this latitude his old winter friend Orion the Hunter was high in the sky; Sirius, a white-hot A star, lit up the desert from nine light years away; the Milky Way soared overhead, bisecting the sky. And Mars beckoned from the zodiac, unwinking and red. A strange feeling came over him, the same one he had experienced in a little church in a cobbled lane in Rome a million years ago. It was unsettling, a one-ness with something; he didn’t understand it. The desert at night, Webb felt, was a spiritual experience.
“The world’s getting dangerous, Judy. Some day we’ll build a Noah’s Ark and move out. A little seedling, the first of many, to scatter our civilization and our genes around the stars. Once we’re spread around a bit nothing can extinguish us.”
She was smiling. “I guess I overdid the tequila. But I can’t make up my mind about you, Oliver. Are you a visionary or a screwball?”
“I’m just a quiet academic who wants to get on with his research.”
She put her drink on the ground, stretched and yawned like a cat. “What about your people?”
Webb said, “I heard the Minister on the World Service, speaking to the House. Our diligent watchers of the skies etcetera. What a blatant old hypocrite! He’s been freeloading on the American asteroid search effort for years.” He finished the tequila sunrise. His head was spinning a little, but the sensation was pleasant. “So how did you get involved in this business, Judy?”
“One merry evening with Clive — that’s my boss, now under suspension — I got the feeling I was being probed for my politics. I thought at first he was just curious. Then I thought maybe there’s some question over my loyalty. It carried on over a few days. Nothing obvious, you understand, just the odd remark. I could easily have missed it. I began to think there’s something strange going on here and so the more he probed the more outrageous the opinions I expressed. At the end I looked so right wing they must have reckoned I thought J. Edgar Hoover was a communist. Then one warm evening in La Fuente, with soft lights, sweet mariachi music and Bar-B-Que ribs, Clive introduces me to Mark Noordhof. The whole plot was spelled out on a what-if basis. I must have made the right noises, because at that point Mark tells me the Eagle Peak team has to include someone who knows their way around nukes, and would I like to join them to make sure you all stayed on track. I agreed.”
“But you kept all this to yourself.”
“I was trying to find out how high it went,” Judy said. “Like you, I didn’t know whom I could trust. But enough about me, Ollie. You’ve resigned from your Institute.”
“Broken free, is the way I’d put it. I never did fit in with the groupthink.”
“It’s getting cold.” She stood up, dropped her shawl and climbed into the tub, making waves. “What will you do?” she asked, slipping off her bikini under the water.
Webb thought, Is this really happening to me? He said, “They’ve fixed me up with a scholarship at Arizona University.”
“It’s the least they could do.”
“This is a wonderful place. How often do you come here?”
“To Oljato? Whenever I can. Most weekends. In New Mexico I have a small downtown apartment.”
Webb screwed up his courage, and said it. “I was wondering if I might rent this place from you. It’s only half an hour from the University.”
Judy laughed delightedly.
“Ollie!”
“A strictly platonic arrangement, Judy. You’re basically uninteresting.”