The Alejandra Variations (8 page)

He was rather taken with the girl's strength. She was short—he guessed her to be about five foot two—yet, she was magnificently built. Her uniform was a sparkling white and was as clean as the surface of a crystal. She could've been the child of a snow-country queen stepped out of a Norwegian myth.

"Lexie!"
grumbled a voice behind them in the darkness. "I told you not to fiddle with the equipment! Dammit, it's for the Historians!"

Still holding Nicholas upright, the girl turned. "Oh, Daddy! I
am
an Historian!" She turned back to him, saying as much for Nicholas's benefit as her father's, "And this one's mine."

Nicholas coughed and looked around, pushing away the cobwebs of the almost interminable sleep that had gripped him.

He was sitting on something like a morgue tray. It had been pulled from a tall, flat wall where he could see other trays still locked in their cubbyholes.

A cone of light radiated up from the floor at the girl's feet. He was stark naked, and the beautiful girl was staring rather delightfully at him.

Embarrassed, he turned away, using a slight thigh motion to casually cover himself. She seemed unabashed. There was a large purple hourglass embroidered above one breast on her uniform. An Historian? He blushed as she smiled wonderfully at him.

He couldn't recall seeing a uniform quite like hers before in Foresee.

"Where am I?" he asked, staring through the darkness at the wall of trays. These weren't at all like the Mnemos couches.

"Omaha," the girl said happily. "We think. We just got here."

"Omaha?" The incredulousness in his voice made the word come out like a religious chant. It echoed through the room flatly.

"Lexie!" The call reverberated as if it had been sounded in the corridors of a cave. Omaha?

Lexie bent over and kicked at something with her foot. "Move!" she said, and the light rolled away several feet. Nicholas glanced down at it. It was a strange globe of white luminescence on silent wheels that hastened to do her bidding.

When the little machine reached the center of the room, Nicholas discovered that he was in a largely empty chamber of immense proportions. Three walls contained somber trays. On the fourth, opposite them, there was a long console and the screen-system of a computer. By the looks of it, it was cold and long dead.

"What is this place?" Nick asked.

Nothing had moved here for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. The movable lantern's treads stood almost half an inch deep in dust. The pattern of the girl's footprints, made as she had entered the room and explored the trays, was visible as well. It was quite cold and deathly still.

He found that he was suddenly shivering. He drew in his arms as goose pimples rippled across his skin. His body was only now beginning to come alive. The girl ran a warm hand up and down his back. It was palpably electric and stirred him in unexpected ways.

"Are you OK?" she breathed softly.

Her appraisal of him was a little peculiar. It was almost as if he were some kind of newly acquired treasure. But she had said, hadn't she, that he was hers.

"It's cold in here," he managed to get out.

"Daddy!" she yelled into the darkness of the corridor beyond the immense chamber. "He says it's cold!"

Nicholas heard a noise in the corridor, and he turned around, trying to see what was going on. More bones popped.

The gruff voice outside sounded angry at his daughter's badgering. "If it's cold in here, it's because the heat hasn't been on in a thousand years! What's the matter with you?"

Nicholas heard ponderous footsteps crunching the dust of the outer corridor. Beyond the large door was a shimmering of light in the darkness.

"OK," Nick said. "What is this? What's this all about?" he asked the girl. "Where's Melissa?" How could a thousand years have passed? He was beginning to feel nauseous, and not a little scared. "And who in the world are you?"

He noticed how cracked and aged his voice felt, as if his vocal chords had not been in use for many, many years. His skin felt like lifeless leather. He began rubbing himself vigorously.

"Hurry up, Daddy!" Lexie yelled. Her impatience was like that of a little girl wanting to show her father a prize. She rummaged through a compact bag at her belt and held up a cube-shaped instrument. "This should help," she said, pressing it against his cold flesh. He tried to draw back from her, but his reactions were too slow. Something hissed painlessly into his arm.

Suddenly an overhead light flashed on. Nicholas jerked up a hand to shield his eyes from the brightness.

A number of men entered the quiet room from the outer corridor. They all seemed to be of a military order. The man leading them was a large, husky individual, and before him rolled another of those mobile globes of light. The soldiers behind the heavy man were all dressed in metallic uniforms similar to Lexie's, but of an iridescent green. They all halted when they saw Nicholas. Some of the soldiers gasped.

"Eridani!"
one soldier, hardly more than a boy, breathed, falling back to the safety of the door.

The big man looked over at Nicholas, naked on the table, and pointed at Lexie. "I told you to let me and the boys handle it. This is goddamn serious business!"

The soldiers clustered like frightened sheep against the wall opposite the trays. Lexie's father stepped up to Nicholas with considerably less fear.

Nicholas noticed that on the breast of the man's shiny green uniform was a patch of a warrior's ax. On the man's head rested a pair of thick-lensed black goggles, and at his side was a peculiar-looking gun. He also wore jodhpurs and tall boots of the same metallic green.

Nicholas's mind raced. Whoever they were, they weren't like any Americans he had known. But they didn't seem to be Russians, either.

The man chewed on a small cigar that glowed at its tip. The smell of the cigar seemed pleasant and familiar to Nicholas as his olfactory sense began coming alive.

"He's mine, Daddy," the girl pouted, seeing her father's stern expression. "It's part of the Creed. I found him."

She held onto Nicholas's right arm, nuzzling a warm breast tightly to him with a sense of divine right by conquest. Nicholas found her warmth highly desirable, and did not want to pull away.

"You want to tell me what this is all about?" he demanded of the imposing leader. "Are you in charge?"

"I am," he began, then turned back to his men and barked out, "Sye, make sure Jarre doesn't lose us. I don't want to have to go back for him like the last time. Tell him we found what we're looking for."

The soldier at the door to whom he had directed this order was a young man of moderate build whose frightened pale blue eyes seemed drawn to Nicholas. His black-lensed goggles were down around his throat. Sye turned quickly, obviously glad to leave the room.

The leader addressed the other men. "Well? We didn't come here to pick our noses!"

The soldiers stared and did not move.

The big man took out his cigar and yelled at them once again. "This guy's
not
an Eridani, so snap out of it!" He leaped at a waspish soldier and collared him. "I count to three and your goddamn head comes off! Check out the upper levels to this room! I want to find out where the ground-leads are. I want to know where the hell the energy in this place's coming from!"

He rattled the timid soldier like a balsa-wood puppet and threw him into two others.

"But, Captain Lazlo…" one of them whined, never once taking his eyes off Nicholas.

"I said
move!
"

A few of them began searching the room, but others lingered beside the faithful glow-globe.

Captain Lazlo walked up to Nicholas.

"The first thing we gotta do is get some clothes for you, before your dingus falls off," he said.

The Captain's goggles glittered in the overhead lights. Nicholas was surprised at the difference between Lazlo's reaction to his presence on the morgue tray and that of the soldiers.

Lazlo turned to the soldier by the door. "Titus," he ordered. A lanky, pasty-faced redheaded boy of nineteen stepped forward reluctantly.

Lazlo said, "Titus, get on over to the Bore and find this man a uniform. Boots, too. And do it fast, before he freezes up like the rest of these puppies." He made an all-encompassing gesture to indicate the vast wall of trays.

"But, Captain," Titus said, "he's an Eridani."

Captain Lazlo's voice thundered in the bare chamber. "Goddamn it, Titus! Do you believe everything you read? You do as I say, or you'll stay home next time!"

"Yes, sir," Titus said, quickly vanishing into the outer hall.

Lazlo turned to Nick and his smiling daughter. He scrutinized the nameplate fastened to the front of the tray. Lexie watched with an air of utter satisfaction.

"Struck gold," Lazlo said victoriously. "I knew we'd do it eventually." The leader straightened up proudly and held out a beefy hand. "So, you're Tejada," he said, correctly softening the j in Nick's name. Few people ever got it right. "Lazlo's the name. DefCon Warrior, Class One. You've already met Lexie, my offspring. Apprentice Historian."

"I'm not an apprentice," she snapped.

Lazlo jerked out his cigar and glared at her. "The hell you aren't! You aren't even supposed to be on this trip!"

"Well," she said, suddenly sure of herself, "after
this
, I will be an Historian."

Whatever Lexie had given Nicholas was beginning to work. He felt a little more alive.

"Look, people," he said firmly. "I think it's about time someone gave me some answers."

Lazlo was interested in answers only to his own questions. He presently looked up at the wall of trays. To Nicholas he said, "Just how long've you been in here, anyway?"

Nicholas remembered the "thousand-years" remark. "What do you mean, how long have I been in here?"

The remaining soldiers stared at him, glued to their stations beside the door. But for the cigar, the place smelled like a tomb. Nicholas knew that Foresee was never like this. Was it really Omaha? Had he somehow gotten locked into Mnemos and never woken up?

Titus, the nervous red-head, hustled back into the chamber with an armload of clothing. He stopped short of the tray and placed the clothing on the floor, never once taking his eyes off of Nick.

"Dammit!" Lazlo growled, scooping up the metallic clothes. Titus backed off quickly.

Lazlo offered the clothes to Nick. "They'll shrink to fit you."

He pulled on the uniform as quickly as he could. He discovered that it was like some fluid, self-adjusting membrane which easily found all the curves and odd angles of his body and molded itself to his form. No wonder Lexie looked so incredible. He had noticed just how the barely discernible circles of her nipples had shown through the material.

He drew on his boots and stood upright beside the tray. More bones creaked. "Now," he said. "Some answers."

Lazlo gave him a serious, if doubtful, look. "I thought you'd be able to tell
us
. We think this is one of the old SAC bases outside Omaha, but we're not exactly sure yet. That's what Jarre is looking into upstairs." He pointed with his thumb. "We got an energy-flow reading inside the Bore and followed it here. Surprised us all."

Captain Lazlo puffed aggressively on his cigar, gazing around him. "Boy, you know, I thought a place like this was for the history tapes. We thought most of the SAC bases had gotten blasted during the war. I guess not."

Nicholas noticed the soldiers by the door whispering among themselves. He could hear the word "Eridani" being bantered around.

"So, all this isn't part of Foresee," Nick said. "We're in Nebraska."

Lexie cuddled up to him. "Foresee's long gone. And so's most of everything else. But it doesn't matter. We found you, and you're
all
mine."

Captain Lazlo had other ideas. "Damn it!" he said, pulling Nicholas away from her soft embrace. "When are you going to grow up? If he's all that's left of Foresee and the Old World, then he belongs to everyone. He's DefCon's property, you got that? Keep away from him!"

"You know what the Creed says," Lexie countered.

"We'll let Riordan make the decisions about the Creed when we get back," Lazlo boomed.

"The hell with Riordan! He's mine and I found him!" Lexie put an end to the matter then and there.

Nicholas got the impression that this sort of verbal pyrotechnics occurred frequently between father and daughter. A soldier Nicholas had not seen before walked into the room—and stopped abruptly upon seeing Nicholas. Captain Lazlo faced him, pulling out his cigar.

"What did you find, Jarre?" he asked his underling.

Jarre was mouselike, with rascally brown hair and quick furtive brown eyes. He was a little older than the rest. Nicholas guessed that he was Lazlo's right-hand man.

Jarre looked once more at Nicholas, then faced the Captain. "The only leads we found come from a small reactor, and they all flow to here. The computer says those are stasis couches, Captain."

Lazlo and Jarre walked up to one of the couches. Jarre put the Captain between himself and Nick as they carefully stepped up to the trays still in place in the huge wall.

Nicholas looked about the room. Although it did not resemble the in-system sleep center for Mnemos Nine at Foresee's headquarters, it obviously served the same purposes. The names on the other trays told Nicholas more than he wanted to know.

Reitinger. Bolyard. Mallory. Childs. Flinn. Feterling. McKibben. And several dozen others he'd never heard of before. The whole Project was here. Things were starting to add up, and Nicholas didn't like it. His knees were beginning to wobble. He closed his eyes briefly and leaned back on the tray as Jarre and Lazlo tried to draw out the couches one by one.

Lazlo turned to Nicholas. "That one electrical lead we picked up must've been plugged into your couch. All these others are out."

"And
I
found him," Lexie sang proudly beside him.

"The computer must have kept him alive all this time," Jarre said. Jarre didn't say it, but Nicholas could almost hear the word "Eridani" on his lips—certainly it had been in his eyes.