'Sign of age. I never bought this virtual reality thing.'
'Up on the mountain we've got a twentieth-scale model of Sundog. Perfect in every detail. You think that might help?'
'It might.' He got the point and it was nice of Bevan to make it. 'Maybe I ought to take a look at this elusive dome anyway.'
Schulz scribbled some notes on his pad and passed them over the table. 'Some ideas of my own, Michael. I wondered whether we couldn't hang a power cable down onto the solar cell system. Short it or something.'
He stared at the doodles on the page. He'd run through the same idea himself and rejected it as unworkable. 'I really need to get into those control circuits, Irwin.'
'Not possible.'
'How long do I have on this?'
'The latest we can schedule the Shuttle launch is for 1500 UTC. I need you to come up with something over the next three hours. We're arranging a video briefing with the crew anyway. If you have any ideas, we need them. Either way, the launch happens, but if there's any special equipment you want along, we need to know then.'
'The crew? Volunteers, huh?'
Schulz nodded. 'Apparently they're queuing up at Canaveral for the privilege.'
Lieberman stared at his hands.
'You'll have something to give them, Michael,' Schulz added. 'I just know that.'
CHAPTER 28
The Red Mountain
The pilot wasn't part of the military operation. He was, now that Lieberman thought about it, the same English guy who picked him up at the airport on the way in. Until you got close up and saw the wrinkles, he looked about twenty-five. No, correction, Lieberman thought, nineteen. He wore a T-shirt, faded jeans, and filthy trainers.
'You're all coming?' The pilot grinned. He had one of those odd estuarial accents that seemed, to Lieberman, to have become the Queen's English these last few years.
'You really know how to fly this thing?'
'No,' the pilot said. 'But I'm learning fast.'
Annie was crouched down by the machine, playing with something. It was a magnifying glass and she had it aimed right at something on the ground. A thin wisp of smoke was curling up toward her face.
'Hell, Annie,' Lieberman muttered. 'Burning bugs is wrong. Don't you know that?' He stuck the folder of papers he was carrying between the glass and the sun, watched the smoke disperse, and got an angry stare from down below.
"Wasn't a bug. Just some grass.'
'All the same, this place is like a tinderbox. The last thing we need is a fire.'
She glowered at him and mouthed the word B-O-R-I-N-G.
'Sorry. In spite of appearances, I am a grown-up.'
Annie looked at the pilot's right arm. It was thin but muscular, and a big blue tattoo sat on the skin. 'What's the tattoo?'
'Army helicopter corps. I used to ferry men in masks around Northern Ireland in the middle of the night, looking for other men in masks. Before I became a civilian, that is. You should hear my war stories sometime. They're good.'
'You look too young. What's your name?'
'Why, thank you. Bob Davis. What's yours?'
'Annie.'
Davis looked at Lieberman and Mo. 'Why don't you just stay here while we pop up the mountain, Annie? I mean, this isn't really a pleasure trip.'
'I've never been in a helicopter before.'
'Plenty of time for that later.'
'I've plenty of time for that now,' she said firmly.
'Right.'
'We stay together,' Mo said quietly.
Davis shrugged. 'Well, don't say I didn't try. Ladies in the back. Strap yourself in tightly. You, sir, are next to me. We'll have you up there in fifteen minutes flat, no problem. And today there is no sightseeing. I have my orders. We stay in the air for as short a time as possible. Okay?'
Lieberman hooked the videophone over his shoulder and wished Schulz hadn't been so insistent they carry it. The thing was like a small video camera on a leather sling and it was heavy. Then he climbed in, his heart sinking, and listened to the blades beginning to spin. Some rusty mechanism in his head was trying to shift gears.
'No need to be afraid of flying.' Davis grinned, looking at him. Lieberman tried to smile back. 'Now, crashing… that's a different matter,' the pilot continued. 'Crashing scares me shitless, to be frank.'
'Thank you, Bob,' Lieberman said, then turned round, blew a big kiss to Annie.
'What was that for?' she asked.
'Inspiration,' he said, and hit the mike. 'Irwin?' His stomach began to churn as the craft lifted off, seeming to struggle in the meagre, steaming air.
'You've got an idea,' said the voice in the headset. 'I can just tell.'
'Maybe. Now tell me. What if I don't cut off all the power. Only, say, eighty per cent or so. Would that be any good?'
'Fine by me. Once the thing is getting less than fifty per cent from the panels it goes to sleep for fifteen minutes. Then, if the power doesn't come back, it goes into suspend. When it's sleeping, it's still lethal — there's enough power there to bite you. When you reach suspend, the thing truly is harmless. We can climb all over, do whatever we like.'
'Sounds good.'
'So…?'
'So let me call you when I've looked at this model and given it some more thought.'
Lieberman turned to the pair in the back and shone a big grin on them. They looked mystified. The big broad sweep of the Mediterranean appeared to their right. The golden stone of La Finca and the dry, brown fields around it disappeared beneath them. The machine clawed its way into the meagre, hot air and even he had to be impressed by the majestic isolation that surrounded them. The mountains ran sheer to the sea on both sides of them, the tumbling rock too steep and arid for anything to live there except some gaunt scrub vegetation, the occasional wild goat, and, wheeling around close to the cliff edge, eyeing this distant mechanical bird, the odd soaring eagle. It was the same as they got higher. He kept expecting to see some corner revealed, some sign of human habitation brought into view by their fast-increasing altitude. None came. This line of primal rock was uninhabitable. Nothing but the wilder creatures of the earth could flourish on these bare sierra escarpments, and just to satisfy himself of the fact he wriggled until the phone was in front of him, pushed the on button, and looked at a blank screen.
The pilot laughed. 'Won't work here, mate. Blocked by the mountains. Unless you've got some line-of-sight chain — like they set up for the microwave back at the mansion — you're lucky to get a squeak out of anyone. Even air-traffic control until you get out of the top.'
'But I thought they said there were other aircraft around here,' Lieberman yelled. 'How the hell do you keep out of their way?'
' "F-16s active above and below you,"' Davis chanted in a bad American accent. 'Jesus, some of these people they've shipped in are dorks. Listen to me. They have short, stubby wings. And we've got rotors. We are different. Watch.' Without warning, the helicopter lurched upward and to the left, climbing at a dizzying pace toward the sheer rock face, now gleaming orange in the midday sun.
'No tricks,' yelled Lieberman. 'We got a kid on board.'
'Oh yeah,' Davis said, shot a glance at Annie, and saw how she was loving this. 'They said to come the fast way. And this is it.'
The craft skirted the flat, beetling face of the mountain, cut in close to the rock no more than ten feet away, then veered directly into the sierra, Lieberman thinking this really was the end, until the face opened out into a narrow, craggy col leading inland.
'Keep cool,' Davis said. 'I know this run like the back of my hand. If you look down, on the scar there, you can see some ruined shepherds' huts, maybe even a ruined house. Got to be a hundred years old at least. Some life they had then, eh?'