The constant movement stopped as she entered. The family gathered around her. She smiled at each of them, taking care to look into their eyes, seeing there a mix of emotions, fear and uncertainty, without doubt, but loyalty and commitment too. On her signal, they stopped work, came and gathered around her wheelchair, silent, waiting.
'Tina would have betrayed us,' she said. 'She was placed here by those who wish to kill us. We had no choice. And it was finished quickly. Now we have to focus on why we were put here, why we were given this chance.'
No one spoke.
'Gunther?' Charley said. 'I thought someone might wake me. I gather Lone Wolf went according to plan.'
'Sure.' Gunther had shoulder-length hair and a soft, formless face. He spoke with a marked German accent. 'We didn't want to disturb you unnecessarily. The dome's out, Charley. Here, we got running copy from the news wires.' He passed her some paper off the printer. She scanned through the words, smiling, then stopped when they mentioned the casualty.
'Charley?' one of the women asked. 'You okay?'
'Sure. Someone was hurt?'
'Yeah,' Gunther said. 'I read that. Some woman who worked there.'
'I knew her. You see? This thing can take from us all. We all have our price to pay. It's what we must sacrifice for all these centuries of waste. Do any of you doubt that now? Can't you feel this motion inside you?'
She closed her eyes and rocked slowly, backward and forward in her chair, to some unheard rhythm, her stricken body moving with such conviction a couple of them in the room started to copy the motion.
'What do you feel, Charley?' Joe asked, watching them, not her.
'I feel the sun and the moon and the stars. I feel the earth stirring. I feel nature on the rise. Humanity in its proper sphere.' She stopped suddenly, opened her eyes, stared at them, incredulous. 'Don't you feel it too?'
'Sure,' said Joe.
'I feel it,' Gunther said. 'Whenever you're around, I feel it, Charley. So strong. Moving.'
'Me too,' someone else echoed.
'It's only natural,' Charley said, 'you should have doubts. We're fighting a war now. We're fighting for the Mother. It scares us. And soon we'll begin to leave this place, wait for what comes next. This is only the beginning. The fire and the chaos wipe this slate clean. Afterwards we need voices that can be heard, when the TV and the newspapers aren't there to spread their lies. When people discover they can look into their hearts again and find what's there.'
'We've got to go anyway,' Joe said, looking at them. 'They'll find us, one way or another. We have to separate. For good.'
'But…' Billy Jo stood by one of the screens, mouth half-open, looking lost, Charley thought. 'What do we do, Charley? What happens afterwards?'
'We get a second chance. The earth, Gaia, gives us that. Don't expect miracles, Billy Jo. They'll get their TV sets back, probably sooner than you might think. They'll bring in their newspapers and their police. But all that doesn't matter. We're going to open a hole in the sky, one so big that people will be able to see what we see. After that nothing will be the same again.'
She held out her arms. They came to her, touched her flesh, her clothes, covered her in kisses. When they were done, when they stood back to look at her, she was soaked in tears. Joe Katayama nodded across the room at Gunther.
'Make the call,' he said.
CHAPTER 23
The Golden Dome
George Soames looked at the dome in the midday light and felt, as always, a sense of pride. Like the two other Sundog domes, this was a perfect geodesic, a 'Buckyball, named after Buckminster Fuller, who had conceived the idea of the perfect geometrical dome. It sat on the northeast edge of Kyoto, on a low hill of bamboo and scrub, ringed by a ten-foot-high security fence, accessible through a single narrow guarded road.
As local director of Sundog, Soames had supervised its construction down to the last detail. The telecom equipment the project required was expensive and delicate, though not particularly rare — most parts could be bought 'academic retail' for those who had the money and the sources. And Buckminster Fuller's geodesic was ideal to contain the dishes safely and securely, out of sight from prying eyes. Thanks to the advanced lightweight material of the dome, it gave sufficient radiation cover to keep the prefecture happy when it came to safety regulations too.
The unique structure seemed custom-made for the project. Nothing could match its strength and efficiency. The dome was cheaper to cool and heat than a conventional building. And the greatest part of all for Soames, who loved Kyoto dearly, regarded himself as half-Japanese after twenty years in the city, was the colour. The fabric had to be treated to contain the radiation created by the operating equipment inside. This wash of protection left it a mature burnished gold, not quite the same tone as the Golden Pavilion a few miles away, but close enough to let him rename his baby the Golden Dome.
Soames admired the scene in the morning's radiant light. It was hard to remind himself that there was a job to be done here. With a sigh he flipped open the screen on the satellite videophone and looked at Irwin Schulz's tired face.
'Hell, Irwin. There's nothing wrong here. We checked it a dozen times. I've had the embassy spooks go over it, every last inch. We've cut the Net connection, just like you asked. The dome works, and everything inside it.'
'You got the hardware people in too? To check you really are logged off?'
'Yes. How many times do I need to look at this plug to see whether it's wired or not?'
'I'm not doing this for fun, George. How many people have you got there?'
'Me and about ten from the embassy, the five permanent security staff, and a bunch of people from the local police station. And frankly this is starting to make me feel a little embarrassed. Can I go home now? I can see why we need all this activity but it makes me feel uneasy. You know as well as I do we're just a mirror. We don't have all that big stuff you guys have to deal with at La Finca and Lone Wolf.'
Schulz's face disappeared, to be replaced by someone Soames only knew as 'the new guy'.
'In case you forgot, Soames, these people just took out the Lone Wolf dome in a way that just shouldn't have been possible, damn lucky someone didn't get killed too,' Bevan spat down the line. 'You'd be doing us all a favour if you took this a little more seriously.'
'Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on,' Soames answered. 'I'm taking this deadly seriously. It's just that there's nothing more we can do here. And that's not my opinion, it comes from your guys who've done the rounds.
There are no devices here. No signs anything's been tampered with. And the perimeter's secure.'
He watched the shirtsleeved security men walking the length of the wire, checking every inch again. 'What the hell else are we supposed to do? This is Kyoto, not California. We have a lower jerk count, in case you didn't know. And you just keep making this assumption that, because these crazies hit Lone Wolf, they're bound to hit us next.'
Schulz's face reappeared. 'It's not an assumption, George. It's a precaution.'
'You think these people are capable of taking out all three domes? One by one? What they got out there? An army or something?'
It was Bevan again, and he looked mad. 'We don't know.'
'Well, son, I don't think I'm going to be finding out any answers for you here. We got this baby wrapped up tight. No one comes in, no one goes out without one of your nice embassy people looks them up and down.'
'George?'
Soames couldn't help staring at the dome. It looked so beautiful in the bright sunlight. He was around the back of the thing, by the smaller, secondary door. 'I hear you, Irwin. Is that creep done with me now? Those people always give me the heebie-jeebies. Yeah, I know. They're a necessary evil.'