The Great Symmetry (19 page)

It was then that they heard the sound.

There was no mistaking the whirr of tiny impellers. First just one, then joined by others. Coming closer to them, from below
. Flying up toward the ledge on which they stood.

“Be ready,” he told Mira and Kate, pointing up at the alcove.

“What did you say?” Lobeck called from twenty-three meters below. “It is time to come down.”

“Coming down,” Evan announced.
He picked up his pack with both hands, and softly tossed it down with a careful, underhand throw. The pack hit the far wall, bounced back, and came to rest in the center of the slot. “Bulls-eye!”

Then Mira was flying up toward the ceiling. She called as she leapt, “T
his way! Come on!”

At that moment the shots started.

Evan flipped on his light and looked down. The pack was jerking in its place from the shots, but stayed jammed in the hole as the percussion continued. This was madness.

Kate was jumping up, to Mira’s outstretched hand. Mira gathered Kate in, and then appeared to vanish, leaving only Kate visible.

Evan gathered himself and sprang for it.

He felt rather than heard the deep thud. The pack had been shot out of the slot and was flying up out of the hole, straight at him. He twisted in midair, somehow dodging most of the oncoming mass. The pack clipped one foot, starting him spinning.

Evan crashed against the wall of the cave.

He felt an arm reach around his shoulder and neck, and pull him upward. “In here,” Kate told him. “It’s narrow.” He reached up to feel a ledge, and was able to pull himself up. The slot ahead was outlined by Kate’s light. He wriggled in.

A second thud came from below, and then the world shattered behind him.
Evan heard the whir of rock fragments flying through the air, then a noise akin to broken glass falling. He pulled himself farther forward.

Another round of the heavy stuff arrived. The boulders in the ceiling of the chamber, held up only by faith, groaned. Then faith gave out. He heard them start to fall.

Evan turned to look back at the place where he had been moments before. H
e saw a maelstrom of rocks large and small, churning in the world’s biggest marble machine. A wave of dust overtook him.

A few more creaks, then the rocks were done falling.

“Are you two okay?” Mira, from above.

“We’re here,” he called. “Coming through
.”

As the dust started to settle, Evan took a last look behind him. The formerly open space through which they had all jumped was absolutely jammed with broken rocks of every shape and size.

Evan followed Kate’s light through the slithering way up into a small chamber where they joined Mira.

Evan was about to exclaim profusely about their narrow escape, when he heard a sound behind him. A scrape of metal on rock, then a buzz, and another scrape. It was close, just a few meters away. He whirled to see a dull grey metallic cylinder rise out of the slot in the floor from which they had just climbed.

If a drone could appear to have a broken wing, it was this one. The flier tilted at an angle and appeared to be struggling to gain altitude. Nevertheless, it was rotating to bring a short snout of some kind to bear in the direction of Mira.

Without stopping to think, Evan launched himself at the flying object, grabbing it with both hands and flinging it to the rock floor. He landed next to it, again taking hold of the cylinder and bringing it down on the ground with all of his strength.
That was unsatisfying, because the force of his weight didn’t amount to much in Kelter’s low gravity. The equal and opposite reaction sent him back across the room.

The drone twitched and buzzed, then started to rise once again. And it started to speak.

“Evan, hold on,” Arn Lobeck’s voice came from the machine. “It’s not too late for us to work together. We can talk while my crew clears away the obstacle. It shouldn’t take long.”

Evan cast around, seeing a perfect rock just a meter away. Rounded and just right for two full hands. He took hold of the rock, stepped forward,
and smashed at the drone, knocking it to the ground once again. The impact sent him floating back away from his target.

“Do not squander your last chance,” the drone told him.

To do the job, he needed better leverage. Evan pulled himself back toward the flier and braced his legs between two ledges. Once anchored, he picked up the rock and pounded the drone, with one word per impact. “Not. On. Your. Life.”

Evan continued his assault on the device. Pieces splintered off.
Soon it was a flattened pile of metal and plastic on the floor of the cave. He looked up to see Mira and Kate, both totally still, watching with fascination.

“What?” Evan demanded.

“That’s just,” Kate appeared to be pondering her choice of words, “a side of you that I’ve never seen before.”

Mira ducked back down into the small slot, then emerged just a few moments later. “That is an impressive amount of rock,” she commented. “They must have fired some pretty heavy stuff. The room we were standing in, it’s completely filled up.”

She urged the
m farther into the cave, until they reached a larger room. “Ok, we can take a minute,” she said. “That boulder fall should hold them a while.”

“So we’re trapped,” Kate stated flatly.

“Not exactly,” Mira replied. “We’ve got some options.”

“Well if we’re not actually being shot at just now,” Kate told her, “Evan’s got some explaining to do.”

Evan briefly wished for some further sign
of pursuit. Perhaps another drone. This discussion was not something he was looking forward to. He had needlessly endangered her by coming to the cave, and she was going to let him have it.

But Kate had something else in mind. “Arn Lobeck! I warned you. The day we met with him. And his creature Skylar. ” She gave a shudder.

Evan remembered it well. Kate and Skylar had faced off like two tigers over a hunk of meat. Lobeck and Skylar
had offered funding, unlimited, for all practical purposes. Not so incidentally, replacing the money that had been coming from Kate’s family.

Evan spread his hands open. “You kept telling me that he was off the path, or something like that. And that I should turn away millions of credits of funding.”

“That’s not what I said. Lobeck didn’t care about the path. Not for a second. Any fool could smell the stink, of results at any cost.
He didn’t care about the science, about discovery. Anything he said about that was just a lie, as plain as the nose on your face. The path, each step – it was everything to you, and nothing to him. And you left me, so you could throw in with them.”

“Kate – I didn’t leave you. I begged you to come. But you wouldn’t. Don’t you remember?”

“You made it clear that you had already decided. And all that time
I thought we were partners. The moment you didn’t need me, suddenly I was an afterthought.” Kate turned away, as if she couldn’t stand to look at him for a moment longer.

Evan knew where he couldn’t go. It had been about the money, but not in the way she thought. Yes, he had decided not to let her fund any more of his expeditions.

It was so easy, in one sense, to have a wealthy girlfriend, who bought you whatever you wanted. Outfitted your expeditions, year after year. Left her artist friends from time to time, to join you on site, and ponder the latest promising fragment
with you.

To be a pet scientist.

That label, affixed by Mira, was only cruel because it had been so true.

Would he ever be able to scratch for his own worms? Create results that the outside world would recognize and value? Would he ever be able to ask her to marry him, without everyone in the world thinking, or perhaps knowing, that he was doing it for the easy life that would come along with it?

What could he say now? “It wasn’t that way. It just wasn’t.”

“Hmph,” was all Kate said.

“Break’s over!” Mira announced.

They continued for another hour or more
, in a stunning succession of twists and turns. In one place the way on was completely invisible until he laid flat on the ground and looked under the wall. Then, in another spot, a wormhole deep in a hidden corner was the path.

Finally, Evan had to ask. “Where are we going?”

“Farther in.” Mira was implacable. “Keep moving.”

“How does that help? They will track us down, or wait us out.”

Mira snorted. “Track us down, I don’t think so. That maze we just crawled through, it’s not on the map. I left it off. It will take them weeks to find a way through, if they even get through the rock pile they made.”

“All this, not on the map?”

“Yep.”

“But why?”

“Never got around to it.” That was a strange answer. Mira loved the map. She showed it to anyone who expressed even the slightest interest. It was her pride and joy. “Let’s just say that I think we’re safe, for now. Let’s inventory what we’ve got.”

They had grabbed Kate’s overnight gear, and had some of their own from Mira’s survival pack. There was some version of a helmet for each of them, thin caps that each had worn in their respective chopper rides, and the hat from Evan’s visitor kit, which actually was the most robust. Headlamps. Gloves. A few liters of water each. A stove. A little food. It would do for a day. Two if they were careful. They continued.

“Here we rest,” Mira
told them. “And listen and watch. Turn off your lights.”

There was nothing to see in the complete blackness, and nothing to hear, except their own breathing. A faint breeze, coming from farther in the cave, became uncomfortably cool after a time.

A dark time later, Mira turned her light on. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “There is only one way to go. It’s a long journey, but we can make it.”

Evan startled. “Another entrance? Beyond the three in the Valley of Dreams?”

“No picnic getting there, and maybe worse once we’re on the surface. It’s across the plateau on the East Edge. But it’s better than the action around
here.”

“And you had to think about it?”

“It’s just,” Mira hesitated, and then simply said, “a long way.”

Kate spoke up. “Will somebody please explain a thing or two? I was just camping, you know.”

“Oh, I think this is Evan’s tale,” Mira said. Both women turned and looked at him expectantly.

Evan was more than ready. “You won’t believe this,”
he began. “At the research station on Aurora−“

At that moment a wall of sound knocked them all down.

Strike One

Lobeck was calling from the surface.

“On the main screen, the Valley of Dreams,” he ordered. “Show the geology and all of the entrances to the cave.”

Sonia couldn’t help but admire the quality of the image. Over the aerial view, the extent of the limestone was outlined, running about five hundred meters laterally and two hundred meters vertically. Three cave entrances were shown, well within the outlined exposure of the cave rock. Surrounding the limestone exposure on all sides were thick layers of sandstone, which might have crevices but were unlikely to have substantial cave development.

“Superpose areas of full effect for a tactical strike, as many as needed.”

Oh, no. This again.

Six overlapping shapes, roughly circular, appeared on the display. They covered the entire area of limestone, and more.

“Prepare for launch, on that pattern,” Lobeck ordered.

“Preparing,” Roe told him.
“Five minutes.”

“Let’s do some tactical evaluation. First, coverage.”

“Appears sufficient, although a cave is inherently a hard target,” Skylar said. “We could place a charge inside the large entrance. That would cost about sixty minutes, for a soft landing and to stage it in there.”

“We just need to seal them in,” Lobeck declared. “How about adding a charge, directly at the entrance?”

“We can probably fly one in there,” she replied.

Another shape was added to the display, smaller but darker.

“Commander, make that seven tacticals.”

“Seven it is,” Roe told them. “Four minutes until ready.”

Lobeck addressed Sonia. “Dr. West. No dire warnings this time? How we may upset the balance of your models?”

If she was going to make a difference, s
he had to choose her moment. There would be some way that she could steer events to cause less harm, while still serving her employer and protecting her domestic family.

This was not the right time. “It’s not great, but it’s not bad,” she told Lobeck. “The strike will be destabilizing for Kelter, bad for our reputation and market share. The use of nuclear weapons−”

“Tactical nuclear,” Lobeck corrected.

“The use of any size of nuclear weapon is taboo,”
Sonia continued. “But Kelter is a small market. As long as you are sure that you have the information contained, it’s no worse than lots of other outcomes.”

His image regarded her from a secondary view screen. “Thank you.”

“There’s just one outcome that would be better,” she said. “If you retrieved them in person. From the cave, wherever they are. They would likely have all of the materials with them, and it would be lower profile than a nuclear strike.
Much lower.”

“We tried. The cave, it is not a good environment for the people we have on hand. Adastra knows the cave, and even with her map, we cannot track them down. They appear to have gone beyond what was mapped, and our efforts triggered a rock collapse that would take considerable time to clear.”

“Fire away, then.” Sonia did her best to look indifferent.

“One minute,” Roe called.

“Just launch when ready, Mister Roe,” Lobeck’s image on the screen told them.