Finally, managing to snag the object between two trembling fingers, she yanks back and pulls out her prize; a red and white striped mint.
“Thank you, God,” she whispers, twisting the wrapper off and shoving the hard candy into her mouth. The glucose in the candy hits her system almost immediately, calming the tremors, easing her headache slightly, and lending her a much needed strength. This high won’t last long, and she knows it, but for now, as it’s all she has, it will have to do.
Reaching down, she presses several buttons on her still downloading laptop. Two small chips exit into her hands. After a moment of thought, she reaches down the neck of her shirt and deposits the backup chips into the cups of her bra, shifting slightly to settle them comfortably beneath her breasts.
Then, taking steady, deliberate steps across the office, she stands before the door sensor and continues through the portal as it opens.
It’s as if nothing has changed during her ten hours of isolation, and indeed, nothing has. The same droids stand before the same stations doing the same work in the same manner. While she feels as if shattered glass has replaced her bones and joints, the androids all look newly-minted.
Seeing this and, perhaps, fully realizing its implications for the first time, a depression far blacker than any she’s experienced before hovers over her like a blanket. For the smallest of instants, she struggles with the mighty temptation to just let it fall; to wallow in the solace it seems to offer her.
How can I hope to defeat this? Alone. I’m alone with all this surrounding me. Dear God.
A remnant of a recent dream slides before her eyes and she gazes, from a distance, at the old woman (Goddess? Earth? Who?) she has promised to help. Another memory of childhood hours spent in catechism melds with the vision.
Mother, please take this cup from my lips.
The non-answer is all the answer she needs. She must drink the brew, no matter the bitterness. For one crystal second, she feels a sense of profound empathy with the plight of a man she’s not sure ever existed.
This Savior stuff really sucks.
Cheered by her mind’s wicked turn—sacrilege has always done that for her—she tosses off the threatening depression and continues onward, a new strength to her step and her emotions.
4
“You sure you know where this thing is?”
“Sure, I’m sure.,” Reese answers, consulting his global positioning readout for the hundredth time. “Start poking”—he takes a last look at the sky, turning to take in the whole circle of the horizon—“right about—over—there.” He points to a patch of snow in no way distinguishable from the flat expanse of white that stretches out all about them, unbroken except for the low, dark silhouette of buildings to the north. Minot Air Force Base, probably the most secure military facility in the Western hemisphere, is about to be burglarized by a couple of ragtag platoons strung together from at least three different branches of the armed services, a veterinarian and a dog.
Not for the first time, Koda feels as though she has dropped down the rabbit hole on Alice’s heels. Her universe has become an unstable place where not even an Oxbridge jackrabbit in a Saville Row suit would surprise her. She watches as her soldiers—and there it is again, her soldiers—set to work prodding at the drifts, using tent poles, shovels, their own feet. Koda herself scans the distant buildings through high-powered binoculars, searching for signs of movement, sweeping the sky for the inevitable gunship that should by rights be strafing them to ribbons at this instant.
Nothing.
Nothing on the long ,rippled avenues of unbroken white that her map tells her are Bomber Boulevard and the miles-long runways. Nothing among the hundred and fifty Minuteman III ICBM silos arrayed along their looping tracks, folded and refolded like the guts of some huge animal. Her men are the only moving things against the dead white of the landscape, the only color, the only sound. High above, a solitary hawk etches a spiral against the hard blue sky, riding the thermal created by the base’s presence. Now and again the sun catches the rust-red of her tail feathers as she banks in her turnings, and a high-pitched kreeee-eeeerr spills through the air. The morning holds a strange stillness, as if time has wound down to a crawl.
Absently Koda reaches down to pat the big dog who ha become the troop’s mascot overnight. MRE—so christened because he is the only being they have ever met who seems to enjoy the pre-packaged rations—thumps his tail, sweeping out a one-winged snow angel behind him. He, too, is remarkably quiet, all the rambunctiousness run off him the night before. And he, too, seems to be waiting.
A sudden scrape of metal against concrete brings a shout from Andrews. “Got, it, Ma’am!”
MRE at her heels, Koda moves away from the parked snowmobiles to watch as the troops brush the snow from a cement platform perhaps a meter high and ten across, looking for the much smaller personnel hatch that should be somewhere near the perimeter. As expected, the entrance is sealed; a winking green telltale light signals its connection to the rest of the Base’s security system. There is almost certainly a manual lock, too.
“Ma’am?” It is Andrews again.
Without warning, in a single word, the ambush her grandfather had warned her about is upon her. Koda can turn responsibility back to the Lieutenant and walk away from the instinct for command that she now knows to be grappled to her bones. She can deny the power that lures her with the easy excuse of familiarity. Leave the job to professionals.
Or she can give the order that will commit the lives of these men and women to mortal hazard. Once the hatchway is breached, an alarm will flash across monitor screens in the Base’s control rooms, tripping klaxons, giving them away as surely as if they had marched up to the front gate and asked politely to come in. Once into the silo, they will be trapped, easy prey for defenders human or android.
“Reese,” she says. “You’re absolutely sure this is the way your father showed you into the command shelter? Absolutely?”
“Yes’m.” He nods toward the electronic device in his hand. “My dad was a flight commander, and he told us to get in through here if missiles ever came over the Pole. We wouldn’t be allowed in, normally.”
“All right. Hanson.”
“Ma’am?”
“Set the charge.”
“Ma’am!”
Hanson opens a small case he has carried with him ever since Rapid City, extracting a small packet with vari-colored protruding wires. It looks not unlike a spider, and Hanson sets about attaching it to the outside locking mechanism. “One Black Widow Special, coming up!”
The effect is remarkably modest. The plastic explosive emits a muffled thump, a bit of smoke. But when Koda comes up from her crouch, a foot-wide hole gapes in the entry cover, clearly exposing the lever beneath. Hanson reaches into the opening and turns the bar. Reaching for her flashlight, Koda plays the beam down the steeply descending spiral staircase. “Stay,” she says to MRE, and steps carefully into the darkness of the rabbit hole.
5
Were it not for the light of the moon on the mostly virgin snow, the darkness would be complete. No overhead lights, no flickering headlights, not even a flashlight carried loosely by a careless night watchman to bisect the encompassing black.
With a deep, though silent, breath, Kirsten steps forward, tripping the infrared beam and causing the outer door to slide open. The cold hits her immediately and she fights her weakened body’s urge to step back into the warmth of building. Her bladder pangs, its summons unimpeachable, and her course is decided.