Last Gasp (78 page)

Dr. Pazan made a brief notation on the chart and clipped it to the bed rail. He was a small brown man with elliptical close-set eyes and a runway of bare skin through black glossy hair. “Uncles are what we call the homunculi, a species of mutant that breed and disseminate by spores. Very odd. A hybrid of animal and plant life; unique I should say.”

“Where on earth did they come from?”

“ ‘Where on earth.’ Most apt. First reported about five years ago in a group of islands somewhere in the Pacific. Nobody seems to know how they got there. Rumor has it they’re the outcome of a genetic experiment that went wrong.” Dr. Pazan shrugged, his eyebrows mimicking the movement. “Could be, I guess. Some lunatic attempting to create a new life-form and things got out of control.”

“Don’t they always?”

“Is that your innate cynicism coming out, Dr. Chase?” Dr. Pazan smiled. “You must be improving.”

“I hope so, otherwise what’s the point in drinking gallons of this weird and dreadful concoction?” Chase set the empty beaker aside with a sour expression. “You know, a dash of vodka wouldn’t go amiss. A dash of diesel oil, come to think of it.”

Dr. Pazan chuckled and went on to the next patient in the six-bed ward.

It was the blue crystalline light filtering dimly through the narrow smoked windows that Chase couldn’t get used to—fluorescent-bright inside, nothing could be seen outside except an amorphous blue glimmer of spheres and tall steel spires giving off flaring highlights. Chase had pondered them for hours and remained perplexed. Exactly where the hell was he?

The explanation Dr. Pazan had given him about the “uncles” was the first and only time he’d answered a question directly. All other questions had been politely evaded, including the question about why the doctor refused to answer questions. Where was he? It was frustrating not to know.

Having finished his round, Dr. Pazan paused at the door and said, “How do you feel? Strong enough?”

“Strong enough for what?”

“Some answers.”

“Great.” Chase settled back against the pillows and folded his arms expectantly. “At long last.”

Dr. Pazan wagged a slim brown finger. “Not now, later. I’ll send your visitor up in an hour’s time.”

“Visitor? Who?”

“We’ll let my concoction settle first,” said Dr. Pazan and left with his enigmatic smile.

Men in silver suits. Ruth’s face. Bleached desert divided by a grid. Art Hegler crucified on TV antennae. Jen with red-raw eyes. Daventry’s bloated head. Jungle. Swamp. Dr.
Chase
,
I
presume? Vegetation growing out of Nick’s mouth. Himself immersed in a bath of glucose. Boris saying, The
beard suits
you. Most
distinguished with the streak of gray
...

His mind scurried over the fitful images, in his dozing state not sure whether they were actual memories or subconscious fantasies.

“How are you feeling, my friend?”

“Is it really you?”

“I think it must be.” Boris Stanovnik touched the side of his lean face. “Yes, it’s me all right.”

Smiling broadly he clasped Chase’s hand and eased himself down into a chair. He was still big, but more shrunken than Chase remembered him, his features honed finer so that they were sharper, more angular. The deep rumbling voice was the same. “Your son is well— Ruth also. Dr. Pazan has told you?”

“That and little else.”

Boris nodded. “He was very concerned about you. The poison had infected your lymphatic system. Some of the others with you were not so fortunate and did not respond to treatment. But now you are over the worst and the good doctor has allowed me to see you.”

“How long have I been here?”

“This is the seventeenth day. For two weeks you were in a toxic coma.” Boris smiled. “It must seem to you that you arrived here only a couple of days ago.”

“It doesn’t seem like anything. I’ve lost all orientation, both in time and geography. Boris, tell me, please—what is this place? It’s driving me mad not knowing.”

“This place is called Emigrant Junction,” Boris said. “It was once a small town—no, hardly that—in Death Valley on the Californian border. Now it has become one of seven bases, three in the United States, two in Russia, one in Canada, and one in Sweden. Emigrant Junction now covers the length and breadth of Death Valley, one hundred twenty miles by sixty, and is isolated from the outside world by a gamma-ray protection system. The only way in and out is by air. For that purpose we have a fleet of almost three hundred transporters and tactical airborne craft.”

“You mean gunships.”

Boris gave a ghost of a smile. “You know how the military like their euphemisms.”

Chase frowned and gnawed his lip. “So the rumors are true—about this being a concentration camp with a death-ray fence. I thought it was a scare story.”

“True in part, and also a scare story,” Boris said. “The story was deliberately devised and fostered to keep the prims and mutes away and anyone else who might want to come in uninvited. Yes, there is a ‘death-ray fence,’ but its purpose is defensive, not for containment. And Emigrant Junction is not a concentration camp but a colonization base.”

“Oh, yes?” said Chase. “Colonizing what?”

“Space. The advance engineering teams are already at work. Six islands are in the course of construction as we speak and three more about to be started. Then we are to plan—”

Chase grabbed his sleeve. “Islands? You mean space colonies?” His heart was hammering wildly. “Do you mean they’re actually building space colonies here? At Emigrant Junction?”

“No, no, no.” Boris patted Chase’s hand and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Not here—in space. The program has been going on for over three years. America and Russia are the principal partners with participation by other nations. The colonies are being built in space.”

“My God,” Chase said weakly, falling back on the pillows. “We saw lights in the sky and thought they were UFOs, and all the time they were—rockets? Shuttles?”

“Shuttles. Three lift off from here every twenty-five days with supplies and technical personnel, and a similar program goes on at the six other bases. Most of the ‘groundwork’—not a suitable phrase in the circumstances—has been completed. It has taken nearly three years to transport and establish large-scale storage facilities for the life-support materials, namely oxygen and water. These are now in place and work is proceeding on the construction of the islands themselves.”

The “islands” that Maxwell and Hegler were continually picking up references to in the flow of radio traffic—not on earth at all, as everyone had assumed.

“And there really is genuine cooperation between the Americans and the Russians?” Chase asked. “Or is it a race to see who can get the first colony ready as a missile platform?”

“No, not this time,” Boris told him, shaking his head soberly. “This is their last chance and everyone knows it. There is total cooperation and complete interchange of information and resources.” He noted Chase’s look of skepticism and said, “It is true, Gavin. At Emigrant Junction there are Americans, Russians, Europeans, Asians, Africans all working together for the common good. They know they have to work together or perish together.”

“And how long have you been here, my Russian friend?” Chase demanded.

“Less than a year. After my wife died I stayed on in the cabin in Oregon. More and more refugees came up from the south and life became very difficult. I was too old, I couldn’t defend myself, I was forced to move farther north. You know, they would have pushed me right up to the Arctic Circle if a patrol hadn’t come along—” He broke off, seeing the gleam of suspicion in Chase’s narrow stare. “Ah! I understand the reason for your question: How did they find you.”

“That’s right. I’m still pretty hazy about what happened back there in the hotel, but I distinctly remember one of those people in the silver suits called me by my name. Now how do you suppose that could be, Boris?” Chase said, folding his arms.

“I asked them—in point of fact, I insisted—that they send a patrol to check out Desert Range. They eventually did so and found it to be crawling with uncles. Some of the survivors—your people, that is— were picked up in the desert and brought in. They told us you had headed south, so we sent out patrols to find you and you were spotted very quickly, within a few days, but the adverse weather conditions prevented us making contact. When we were able to send in a search-and-rescue party they were caught in yet another storm and we lost one of the airborne craft and all its crew. The others managed to reach you, so you were most fortunate.”

“Where did you first spot us, in the jungle?”

“No, in the Stardust. There were sheets draped on the balconies, and neither the prims or the mutes, much less the uncles, have the sense to do that, for whatever reason. By the way, what was the reason, Gavin?” Boris asked curiously.

“We were collecting rainwater.” Chase shook his head and sighed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Boris turned and gestured toward the misty blue shapes, the domes and towers sparkling in the distance. “The first colonists will be leaving soon. They will set up home on Canton Island and start planting crops.”

“That’s the name of the island where Theo Detrick carried out his research.”

“Yes, in his honor,” Boris said smiling. “I suggested it so that we should always remember him. Each colony will be named after an island.”

“How many people are going there?”

“Sixty thousand.”

“In just the one colony?”

Boris caught Chase’s reaction and went on matter-of-factly. “Canton Island is thirty-seven point six kilometers in total diameter. The first six to be completed will be the same size, the rest larger, up to seventy or eighty kilometers in diameter.”

“With what kind of population?”

“You mean in numbers? One hundred to one hundred and twenty thousand to each island. Something like that. And we’re planning to build at least a hundred such islands, more if time allows.”

Chase sank back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He took in a long deep breath and slowly, luxuriously, let it whisper through his nostrils.

Ten million people.

Body smooth and brown, with straight blond hair that shone like a silvery cap in the sunshine, the five-year-old performed a twisting triple somersault from thirty feet and dived cleanly into the sparkling green waters of the lake. Spray lifted and hung and settled slowly like glittering gossamer in the low gravity.

Watching from the shade of a jacaranda tree and sipping cool drinks, Chase and the boy’s parents applauded. On the other side of the placid water and beyond the terraced tiers of residential gardens they could see the cylindrical core, a polished shaft of fretted aluminum three hundred meters in diameter rising several thousand meters in the air.

Insects zoomed and ticked in the undergrowth; a butterfly wafted erratically by; somewhere a bird sang, claiming territory or looking for a mate.

“Did you teach him that?” Chase asked, watching the boy’s bright head break the surface. His grandson leaped and twirled like a lithe brown seal.

“All the kids can dive like that,” Dan said. “They don’t need teaching. There’s a kid in Nick’s tutor group who can stay in the air so long you’d swear he was actually flying. I tried it once and went arse-over-tip and landed flat on my back. You need natural low-g coordination, which youngsters have and we don’t. I’ll stick to hang-gliding; at least there your earthbound conceptions and reflexes aren’t violated.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jo said archly, prodding him with her bare foot under the table. “Your other earthbound reflexes adapted quite well.”

“Pure instinct,” Dan grinned. “And of course the trampolinists’ revised edition of the
Kamasutra
was a great help.”

Jo kicked him again, harder.

It was late afternoon and the mirrors were angled by computers to throw slanting rays that mimicked the setting sun. Three light planar mirrors, each ten kilometers by three, beamed the sunlight into the revolving island colony through huge transparent panels tinted blue to give the impression of a blue sky. As the day wore on the mirrors were tilted fractionally to give an approximation of the sun’s path through a 180-degree arc and were then turned away for the eight-hour night. It seemed that human beings needed darkness.