Solstice

'We're missing something here, sir,' Lieberman said quietly. 'If we can just see it, I think we can get back in the game.'

Helen kept her peace.

'I'm not hearing the famed science people from the CIA,' the President grumbled. 'You care to enlighten me on your position right now, Miss Wagner?'

She tried to think straight through the pain in her arm. It wasn't broken, as Barnside had feared, but it damn well hurt. 'We have less than an hour before the cycle starts, sir. We also have clear evidence that our operation was compromised. They're worried, for sure. I guess that's why Wolfit attacked me. But I can't offer any hope that we can get back in the game.'

Jim Sellers was punching furiously away at a portable terminal a few yards away.

'We're running the scanning checks as thoroughly as we can,' she continued. 'But now we're told it could be a long way east of here. I can't get anything out of that. It's too big. We already know there's precious little chance of finding it through digital tracking alone. I can't — '

'Jesus,' Lieberman found himself yelling, 'do we all just give in that easily?'

'No,' Clarke replied. 'We've worked damn hard on this one, Mr Lieberman. People have got hurt. People have got killed, for chrissake. We don't give in at all. But sometimes we just have to cut our losses. If we really have no option except to wait and see what they can throw at us, then I ought to be signing these papers now. God knows, there's parts of the US that could use martial law at this very moment.'

'So what's new?'

'I don't have time for the smart-ass remarks, Lieberman.'

'I wasn't aware I made one. Sir.'

'Hell, get off the line, will you?' Clarke bellowed. 'We need people here solving problems, not making them.'

'No. You can hear me out. We've all fouled up on this one, me included. And you know why that was? We just didn't think. We treated these people like they were some crazy cult, not equals.'

Helen closed her eyes and listened, trying to still the pain in her head. 'I don't see where that gets us, Michael.'

'It gets us back to where we should have been all along. They've been putting up targets, we've been popping at them. Instead of asking questions, trying to think straight. I mean, what is the proposition Charley's put before us now?'

No one spoke.

'Okay, let me bury myself a little deeper,' he continued. 'First we tracked these people from San Francisco to San Diego. Then, after a lot of work, we tracked them through Vegas to this place we thought was Yasgur's Farm. Except we got it wrong. This whole thing was just a put-up job to lead us off the track if, by some chance, we got smart enough to detect a track in the first place. It looks like they were doing some Gaia work there, maybe erecting the Web site or something. But the real people, Charley in particular, they were elsewhere, just running some nice little virtual conspiracy across the Net.'

'You're not taking us anywhere,' Clarke said.

'No? So I ask again: What is the proposition we're being asked to believe now? What is it that Charley hopes we're thinking?'

Helen hugged her bad arm and tried to jog her brain into action. 'That somewhere else they have an identical set-up to this one, except that it has a working dome. And if we could find that, we'd be back on track.'

'Right. And the big question has to be: Is that true? Can that be true? Is it really possible?'

Clarke watched them, waiting for someone to break the silence. 'Well?'

'It's a hell of a job,' Schulz admitted. 'I mean, to be honest, putting together one control room and a single dome, even one with nothing inside it, that must have been tough in the time they had. Putting two together… it's possible, of course. But it wouldn't be easy.'

'Right,' Lieberman continued. 'So let's ask some practical questions. Did she buy enough material to build two domes?'

Helen shook her head. 'Not that we know of. The company we traced had just the one order. No other company dealing in dome material had anything that could count as a second one.'

Lieberman almost smiled. She could see something there. He detected a spark. 'Fine. So did she have the equipment to put inside it?'

Schulz made a pained face. 'We went through that one before, Michael. This is fairly standard telecommunications, satellite broadcasting kit. If you had the money and the know-how, you could put it together without having to breach any government guidelines or anything.'

'Yeah, I know. But this isn't stuff you buy off the shelf of Radio Shack. It's big and expensive. Someone must have kept a record somewhere. So. Did they?'

Helen shook her head. 'We have no trace of any equipment purchases in the US or Europe which could match that order. That doesn't mean she didn't get it somewhere else, maybe piecemeal to deceive us-'

'No,' he interrupted. 'But it does mean she probably never bothered.'

'Michael,' Schulz said, his voice rising to a whine, 'she had to buy it. What alternative is there?'

'You're looking at it the way she wants you to. "What's the alternative?" That's where she kills us. We know the alternative; we're just not considering it. She doesn't need a second dome. She doesn't need the equipment.'

'Not possible,' Schulz said flatly.

'It has to be. I don't know how. But that's what we have to figure out.'

'If I follow you,' Clarke said, a flicker of curiosity in his face, 'what you're proposing is that she has some way of tapping into an existing system and running Sundog through that?'

'Yeah. I guess that is what I'm saying.'

'Well, can someone tell me how?'

'Not possible,' Schulz said emphatically. 'No one can talk to Sundog except through the networks we created. Charley could copy that herself; she couldn't just impose it on someone else, not without them knowing, not without us knowing either. It's just not possible.'

Lieberman didn't let go. 'So, what is the answer?'

'Michael,' Schulz said, close to screaming, 'there isn't one. There were, as far as we know, only three domes in the world capable of controlling Sundog. No one else has that complete mix of technology, not even Charley herself, if we follow you. And those three domes are down. She did it herself. They're useless. End of conversation. End of story. Roll on the apocalypse, because I'm damned if I know how we can stop it.'

Clarke watched the two teams on the monitor. He knew despair when he saw it. They really had run out of options, out of ideas. 'I think you made my mind up, folks. You've tried your damnedest but I can't let this go on any longer.'

'They're wrong. You're all wrong.' Mo Sinclair blushed when she spoke, as if this weren't her place.

'Excuse me?' Clarke asked impatiently.

'She didn't take out all three domes,' Mo said. 'She took out the one in Kyoto and the one in California. But what she blew up here was the control centre, and that's a long way from the dome itself. We were there, Michael. Don't you remember? I don't recall seeing any explosions at the dome at all.'

Flames and noise, the helicopter bucking beneath them. He did remember. There was one image that stood out in his memory: the low, flat concrete control centre disintegrating in front of his eyes, and a sea of smoke and dust rising up toward the summit of Puig Roig. And somewhere inside that shroud, still golden, still intact, the dome, a good five hundred feet above the destruction.

'Shit,' Schulz said, eyes wide open. 'We assumed that bringing down the command centre took out the dome too. And it does for us. But if she could get a line in there… Are you sure?'

Lieberman wanted to hug her. 'Yeah. We're sure. We were there.'