'I warned you, Ben,' the big man muttered eventually. 'Just because she looks like a babe doesn't mean she acts like one.'
'I resent that — '
'Enough!' Levine hammered a tightly clenched fist on the table. 'I will say this once and once only,' he announced. 'You people have to work with each other. We don't have space for this kind of behaviour.'
The noise outside the door was getting oppressive. There were more alarms, the sound of people running down the halls.
'It's your call, Dave,' Levine said softly.
Barnside shrugged. 'Okay, Helen. You're smart. You deserve it. This isn't a question of clearance, by the way. It's simple need to know. You can read about that in the manual. We have an NOC inside Gaia. Nonofficial cover. Someone who doesn't work for us directly but gets paid by someone else and still does the job after all. Been there for over a year and come out with precious little, nothing that links them firmly into this. It's all supposition right now. But we're working on it. And a lot more besides. I'll get the files over to you. And…'
Barnside blinked, maniacally, she thought. Down the corridor the commotion seemed to be getting louder.
'I want you to read the manual on cell operation. I shouldn't have told you that. It breaks all the rules, but maybe they're made for breaking sometimes.'
'I don't need threats,' she said, and heard how shrill she sounded.
'This isn't a threat…'
Barnside's voice was cracking, she thought. This whole conversation was going crazy.
Levine turned on Barnside and his face was, bright red. Something happened in the air, like the sudden sharp prick of an invisible needle. All three of them winced, stared across the table. She saw a greasy line of blood appear at Barnside's nostrils. Then the pain returned, and this time it was so real, like a hammer blow in the head, and they were all screaming and yelling, holding their hands to their scalps, wishing away this hidden weight that pressed down on them from the sky, made it feel as if their brains might explode out of their ears.
There was a sound, something electrical, and in the corner of the room the PCs went quiet, then the lights failed, the air-conditioning began to wind down, everything that was modern in the office seemed to lose its lifeblood, the world became acutely still except for this ringing, agonizing and loud, that ran inside and outside her head.
She didn't know how long this lasted. It could have been minutes. When it was over, the weight lifted in an instant, and left behind a sea of different pains and sensations. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. The sleeve of her cream silk shirt was covered with mucus that had poured from her nose. Her eyes, she could feel, were wet with tears. Across the table Barnside's nose was pouring blood; it ran down his face like the makeup of a tragic clown. Ben Levine had his head in his hands, face down on the desk. Somewhere outside a woman was screaming.
Helen looked at Barnside and thought she'd never in her life seen a man so frightened.
Choose your moment, Belinda taught her. Always pick your time.
'They've got it, Dave,' she said quietly, getting up from the table, trying to keep her equilibrium. 'They took it from you and just delivered the proof. Now you just sit there while I get a doctor. And try not to bleed too much on this nice new carpet.'
CHAPTER 15
Reunion
They were in the control room, looking flustered, sweating, and when Lieberman saw them he just knew. Mo Sinclair was at his back and he was glad of that. He wanted a witness.
He walked over to Irwin Schulz, whose face was bobbing in and out of the glow of a screen, grabbed him by the neck of his T-shirt, and said, very slowly, very deliberately into his face, 'You built it, goddamn you, Irwin. You built that damn thing and that's what's going wrong here, that's killed those people.'
Schulz stopped what he was doing and looked at Lieberman with cold, scared eyes.
'They built it, Michael. I just get to come in and try to sweep up the mess. Ask Simon. We're all in the same boat.'
'Bennett?'
The Englishman looked sick. His skin was pallid and clung to his cheekbones. Behind him, Bevan was barking down the videophone at a sea of faces on the screen.
'Irwin's right,' Bennett said. "We're just the caretakers. They did all that work in the late eighties, Michael. They thought it would be a shame not to see if any of it worked in practice. I'd hoped we wouldn't reach the stage where we'd have to broach this with you. There are security considerations. But obviously that's a little late now.'
'So why doesn't it work?'
Bennett bristled. 'It does work, actually. As far as we know. It's just that we don't seem to have the keys any more.'
'Not yet,' Bevan grunted, his face still stuck in the machine. 'We'll be there, with or without you, Lieberman.'
'Yeah,' Schulz said sourly, and hit the keyboard. 'Sure thing. I wish I felt that confident. Take a look for yourself, Michael.'
Lieberman pulled up a seat and rolled it around so that he was sitting next to Schulz. What he saw on the terminal chilled him: It was the original SPS design, four big hundred-metre-wide wings trailing in its wake, a cluster of antennae and dishes sprouting out of the front.
'What is it?'
Schulz squirmed. 'Imagine the SDI deterrence thing, but with the idea of deterrence sort of put to one side and replaced with some kind of full attack capability. Basically everything you got in the original SDI design — laser, microwave, particle beams — but upped somewhat.'
'Somewhat?' Lieberman asked.
'The SDI units were supposed to be able to take out missiles, planes, that kind of thing. This can do all that and a whole lot more too, right down to ground attack, the sort of impact you might get from a tactical nuke. Versatile little weapon. Shame it's a touch temperamental.'
'It doesn't work?' Mo Sinclair asked hopefully.
'Not reliably,' Schulz replied. 'I guess we just upped your security clearance, Mo. You do know what that means now, don't you?'
'Cross my heart,' she said, not smiling.
'A little more than that,' Bevan added.
'Yeah,' Schulz said. 'And maybe we all hope to die. Just might happen too. Sundog is true to its name, Michael. A real dog, and a rabid one at that. When they came around to trying out the systems, it was as unstable as hell. Not your part of the thing, that worked beautifully, I might say. Just the rest. Like trying to light a cigarette with a flame gun. Except it could come at you any which way it liked, depending which particular gear you selected.'
'This is your business,' Lieberman said. 'Not mine. If you'd wanted my help, you should have come clean to begin with.'
'And you'd have joined us?' Bennett asked.
'Maybe.'
'I don't think so,' Schulz said, smiling. 'We know how you responded when you found this thing wasn't designed to save the world. Besides, we do need that weather report of yours. On an ordinary day, Sundog is just a nasty piece of metal in the sky. With all the crap we have out there right now, and that getting worse by the day, it turns into something else.'
'Something that can down Air Force One?' Mo Sinclair asked.
'And maybe a lot worse too.' Schulz grimaced.
Lieberman shook his head and wished he were somewhere else, where the room wasn't full of the whirring sound of computers and the heavy weight of despair.
'It's your toy that got broken,' he said. 'You fix it.'
'It's not broken,' Schulz said. 'That's the point. Three weeks ago we lost the system for an entire day. Completely without warning. One minute we have everything, everything working so smoothly you wouldn't believe it. The next we lose contact and it's as if it's not even there, as if every damn circuit has blown. A day later, it comes back. We scratch our heads, hope this is just some temporary blip.'