Solstice

Bennett sat down and took a sip of water. 'Well, it isn't. Six days ago we lost the satellite again. And nothing we can do seems to bring it back.'

'Maybe it's a fuse,' Lieberman suggested.

Schulz said very firmly, 'No, sir! I know that security system inside out, I designed most of it. It's got more failsafes in it than you've got in most nuclear warheads. Nothing could put it out completely. And besides, we've monitored traffic on some of the discrete frequencies we set up for the project. We can't decipher it. Someone must have double-programmed the satellite to accept two different kinds of encoding systems. Sundog is working. It is in place. God knows where this thing's being run from — you need a pretty powerful space antenna to cover that distance — but it's active, of that I can assure you.'

Lieberman felt giddy. He didn't want to be here, with these people, who were probably a damn sight more desperate than they were letting on.

'Let me get this clear. You mean you think someone's got control of this thing?'

Schulz looked at Bennett, who stared, in turn, at Bevan.

'We think so,' Bevan said.

'Don't you goddamn people take precautions? You're playing with monster toys here, folks. They make nuclear energy look like a box of matches. How the hell can this happen?'

'We don't know, Michael,' Schulz said quietly. 'But we have some ideas. And we think you can help there too.'

Lieberman laughed, and the sound nearly choked him. 'Help? You want to sucker me twice? Aren't you people making some assumptions here?'

'No,' Bevan said, looking at his watch, then at Schulz.

'At least let Mo and the kid go,' Lieberman said. 'If this thing can burn a hole in Air Force One, God knows what it could do to us here.'

'I can't do that,' Schulz replied, shaking his head. 'You are one good Unix jockey, Mo, and you're here. This came up out of the blue, and like I said, the project was pretty much on ice when it did. I need you. We can't afford to lose anything on the network we do have working. This thing is coming to a climax one way or another over the next couple of days. I can't ship someone else in. I'm sorry. I really don't think we are in any danger here, but we have to keep what we've got up and running.'

'Hey, Mo,' Lieberman objected. 'Don't rush into this. How do you know you can believe a word these guys are telling you?'

'I don't,' she said quietly. 'But to be honest, Michael, just now we really don't have anywhere else to go.'

Some people bring their own pain with them, carry it around in a little pack on their back, he thought. He wondered what had happened to this woman to make her think that life was just like that: You walked around waiting for the next bombshell to drop on your head, shrugging your shoulders when it came, smiling wanly and muttering, 'Okay.'

'Well, that's your choice, but as far as I'm concerned you guys can take a hike. I'm out of here in the morning. If you'd had the decency to tell me some of this before I arrived, maybe I would have given it a second thought. But since you spared me that, I am out of this.'

In the corner, Bevan smiled and simply said, 'No.'

'We need you,' Schulz pleaded. 'We need you more than you can even begin to guess.'

'Tough,' Lieberman said. He heaved himself upright, feeling old and stiff and cross. He felt a touch faint, and the room was shifting a little.

In the corner Bevan was still smiling. And checking his watch.

'One other reason, Lieberman. It's about time. Someone made an appointment and we ought to keep it.'

'What appointment?'

'Two more minutes,' Schulz said, his face pleading. 'That's all, Michael.'

The computers blinked and whirred constantly.

'No more.'

Schulz beckoned him to the biggest workstation. A video camera sat on the top. It was just like the rig in the bedroom, except larger, large enough to take in all of them if they wanted to have a video-conferencing party.

Lieberman sat down, nursed a glass of water, then turned to Bevan and said, 'Gimme a clue.'

'Someone you know,' Bevan said. 'We think there's someone in this you know pretty damn well.'

'We have packets,' Schulz said, staring at the screen. 'We have packet activity and I think that means something's coming through and… oh boy.'

They looked at the screen. Something had gone wrong. The picture was too big, too much of it was occupied by this leering, dominating face, and there was nothing Schulz could do about it, however hard he slapped the keyboard.

'Oh boy,' Lieberman echoed, and thought to himself: Sometimes your past does catch up with you in the most unexpected of ways.

Charley Pascal had cut her long dark hair savagely, so that it hung off her head in a ragged urchin crop, and it was hard to decide whether it was the kind of thing that cost you a fortune from some fashionable new salon off the Champs-Elysees or the sort of mess you ran up at home with a cutthroat razor, a cheap mirror, and a bad mood. Her eyes were the same, big and open and perfect, looking right into you, laughing all the time. There were creases at the edge of her mouth. She looked like some fashion model running a little past her time, and straight to seed with it.

'Why, gentlemen,' Charley said. 'Mr Bennett, Irwin, a couple of you I don't recognize. And Michael Lieberman. Dear Michael. They have you too? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.'

'No one more surprised than me,' Lieberman said, trying to think this one through.

'Fooled again, huh? They just keep doing that to you, don't they? Never mind. It's all going to change. Everything is going to change, in ways you can't even dream of.'

'Oh,' he said. And thought how odd it was to feel your life jumping between two discrete, distinctive periods in time, each with its own particular reality.

'This some kind of a payback thing? Aren't we a little old for that stuff? You stole the toy you gave them, Charley. Haven't you proved your point?'

'Oh Michael. You know so little,' she said, laughing, and the French accent was still there. 'Have you people been following what's happening in the world? Do you think I'm talking about payback?'

Simon Bennett said, 'So what are we talking about, Miss Pascal? If what you say is true, you have caused us some concern these last few weeks and no small amount of expense. I'd very much like to know why.'

She was grinning so close to the camera it couldn't quite focus. Maybe that was deliberate, Lieberman thought. Maybe she was trying to block out the background, hide any clue as to where she might be broadcasting from in that wonderfully indistinct place they called cyberspace.

'Are you happy, Mr Bennett?'

'My happiness is irrelevant, Miss Pascal. Could we kindly come to the point?'

'Happiness is the point, Mr Bennett. You don't understand that now but you will. Very soon too.'

'Hey, Charley,' Lieberman said, 'what's the problem here? Because this sounds crazy to me. We got all this shit stuff coming from the sky, we got bright people here. We can think this thing through. We can learn things, for chrissake.'

Charley Pascal's face loomed down at him from the wall, a good five feet high, and Lieberman really thought he'd cracked it then. She didn't look crazy at that moment. Her face relaxed, almost as if she were relieved about something, and he could remember what she was like when she first walked through the doors of the research lab in Berkeley almost twenty years before.

'Poor Michael,' she said in the end. 'Still as lost as ever.'

Lieberman looked at her and felt this moment hanging in the balance.

'Please, Charley. I don't give a damn what's gone under the bridge here. We can work this out. You give me a chance. You trust me. What do you want us to do?'