Final Days

EIGHTEEN

En Route to Florida Array, 4 February 2235

By the time Saul’s car made its way out of the hopper’s belly and joined a networked convoy heading for Florida, the news feeds were running rumours that what people were starting to call ‘the Pacific growths’ had been imported to Earth through the Array. There were also fresh satellite images of thermal activity on the deep ocean floor, while the hastily recruited oceanographers from Woods Hole, brought in to try and explain it all, soon sounded like they were way out of their depth.

The ‘Pacific’ prefix became less and less apt as more growths were discovered at further and further removes from the first one. The booming sound produced by that first growth had now been linked to seed-like projectiles fired from its apex, rising on long, curving trajectories that carried them close to the very edge of space before dropping back down at least several hundreds of kilometres distant.

The second growth had been discovered near Vladivostok, quickly followed by two more off the coasts of New Guinea and Malaysia, respectively. Saul happened to see some wobbly footage of the Vladivostok growth pushing out of an austere-looking landscape at what was clearly a phenomenal rate. A camera crew panned up the growth’s already considerable height, showing its upper parts rising out of a haze of debris that permanently clouded its base. He watched with a kind of numb dread that he felt deep inside his chest.

The route to the Array, dense with traffic at the best of times, soon became more crowded than Saul remembered ever seeing it. The cars moved along in tight columns, almost bumper-to-bumper, with tailbacks that stretched for several kilometres.

Saul figured, if it was going to take as long as he suspected to get to the Array, he might as well eat something first. He pulled in at a roadside steakhouse, and left his car to graze on compacted biomass. Being part of a popular chain that made a point of using live staff, the steakhouse was packed to the gills.

He managed to find himself a window seat and soon placed his order with a florid-faced waitress with a decidedly harried expression.

‘I’m guessing it isn’t usually this busy?’ he remarked.

‘Hell, no,’ she laughed. ‘This is the busiest it’s been since we opened the place, and that was fifteen years ago.’

Saul glanced around, noticing that many of the other customer’s faces were tight with worry.

‘Looks like they’re all headed for the Array,’ he observed.

The waitress shrugged. ‘Looks like,’ she agreed. ‘Bunch of idiots all running scared from something they saw on those damn news fds.’

‘You don’t think it’s anything to worry about?’

She gave him a scornful glance. ‘Hell, no, I don’t believe a word of it. Some damn fools made it all up, and now they’re rolling about on their asses, laughing at us. I stopped believing anything I saw on the news a long time ago.’

Saul forced a smile as the waitress left him, and he looked around the diner a second time. Instead of the usual tourists or migrants, on their way to new lives under new suns, everyone he saw here looked like a refugee – like the family of seven huddled together around one small table, their heavy suitcases piled all around them. It wasn’t hard to guess what everybody was running away from, and he imagined what would happen once they all showed up, demanding passage, at the Array at the same time. The sense of despair was palpable.

By the time his food arrived, his appetite had vanished. He left most of it untouched and returned to his car, soon rejoining the thousands of other vehicles on the highway.

He found he couldn’t stop brooding on Taiwan and the missing shipment. That the growths were alien rather than man-made seemed obvious yet, in all the years since the first interstellar colonies had been founded, no one had found any evidence of intelligent life beyond Earth. Now the more he learned, the more it seemed evident that the ASI had discovered something out there amongst the stars – and brought it back. And even though he had no evidence to link them together, he felt increasingly sure there was some connection between the growths and his search for the missing shipment.

It was purest supposition, of course, and entirely baseless, yet the idea stubbornly refused to go away. He felt an urge to find a bar somewhere – anywhere he might get a quick shot of rum on the rocks – but something about the density of traffic and the borderline panic he’d sensed in the steakhouse filled him with a sense of urgency, as if time was running out.

The convoy of traffic his car had joined slowed to a near-crawl. He glanced out of a window and saw to his shock that there were hundreds, quite possibly thousands, of people walking along on foot on either side of the highway. Old women, young women, children, men carrying backpacks; they were all trudging south.

Winding down the window, he thrust his head and shoulders out of the car to see more clearly. Way up ahead, the lines of pedestrians spilled on to the highway, crowds of them picking their way between lines of vehicles that were barely inching forward.

It took another full hour before Saul finally caught sight of the main dome of the Florida Array, glistening under the early afternoon sun. The crowds had by now swelled from a river into a torrent. He was intrigued to see what looked like a real fire-and-brimstone religious service taking place in a lay-by, with dozens of people gathered reverentially outside a marquee tent. Most of them carried handmade signs proclaiming things like: ‘JESUS IS COMING TO GETCHA.’

Saul swore in irritation and checked the feeds for the thousandth time that day. Another growthad n sighted, pushing up from the seabed a couple of hundred kilometres west of Hawaii. There were unconfirmed reports of dozens more in locations scattered all around the globe. A giant tsunami had struck Sapporo, Sri Lanka and Karachi, with death tolls estimated in the thousands. Minor quakes had struck Sicily, Bangladesh and the Dominican Republic, amongst other places – all far too diverse to be blamed any more on natural causes.

He looked around in surprise as his car suddenly rolled to a halt.

A message had appeared on the dashboard: We are dealing with extremely heavy traffic conditions on all approaches to the Florida Array Facility. Please note that, due to prevailing circumstances, all those without a previously booked passage to a major extrasolar destination should now return home. Please . . .

Something thumped against the side of the car. Saul jerked around, startled, and saw a uniformed ASI cop pushing a middle-aged woman with a hand-painted sign up against a window. Some of the participants in the religious service came running down the shallow embankment towards them, till Saul found himself surrounded by angrily shouting people. Sensing things might turn genuinely ugly, he pushed open the door and clambered out. Someone grabbed hold of him immediately, and Saul stumbled and nearly fell.

He twisted out of his assailant’s grasp and simultaneously lashed out with his fist, making contact with something soft amid the press of bodies all around. He ducked away from his car and ran off down the highway, between the rows of stalled vehicles, as he tried to put some distance between himself and what was starting to look like a full-scale riot. Several people stepped out of their cars, pointing beyond him, and he turned to see a phalanx of uniformed cops, wearing face-shields and wielding batons, come pouring down the opposite embankment. Soon he could hear screams, and the sound of batons striking unprotected flesh.

He stopped to catch his breath, and Saul realized that he was almost certainly going to cover the last dozen kilometres to the Array on foot.

He suddenly recalled, with a sense of longing, the tiny wrap of loup-garou still sitting in the coffee jar back home. Except you swore the damn stuff off, he reminded himself, seeing in his mind’s eye the look of contempt on Donohue’s face.

He turned his back on his car and started walking, squeezing between two vehicles and making for the verge. Other people also were abandoning their cars in large numbers. Saul heard a roar, and glanced up just as three jets flashed by overhead. They were flying towards the Array, their silver carapaces glittering in the sunlight.

He started to wonder if Farad Maalouf might be able to tell him a lot more than just where to find Jeff Cairns.

Pulling off his jacket, Saul kept moving through the tens of thousands of others who crowded the stalled highway or made their way along the tops of the neighbouring embankments. After a couple of hours of steady progress, he glanced ahead and saw where the highway divided into filter lanes leading to different sections of the Array. Aerial drones buzzed like mosquitoes overhead in the distance. He moved to higher ground so he could see more clearly which way he should be heading.

Eventually he came to a stop, and gazed down towards the highway in front. From this higher vantage point, he could make out how tangled coils of barbed wire and steel barricades had been placed across the highway a bit closer to the Array. Judging from the sheer number of people marching in that direction, he reckoned they were going to need a lot more than wire and barricades to bring that mob to a halt. The wind carried the sound of voices from the Array itself, sounding loud and abrasive over what appeared to be a tannoy system, but still too distant for the words to be clearly identified.

Just walking straight in clearly wasn’t going to work, not if he had to compete with ten thousand frightened fugitives all seeking entry as well. Fortunately, there were other options open to him, since access to the Array would be available to those with the right authorization. He picked up his pace, overtaking people who looked even more tired, hungry and dehydrated than he himself felt. Another day or two, he felt sure, and they’d be hungry and thirsty enough for the soldiers guarding the Array to be forced into using extreme measures to hold them off.

He summoned up a map of the Array, so it floated over to one side of him. Seen from above, it looked not unlike an octopus pinned to the ground, with its tentacles extended. Built of glass, steel and concrete, the central dome contained the wormhole gate linking Earth to the Moon, along with a few secondary gates that connected to other destinations on Mars. Airport-style terminals radiated outwards from the centre, while a twelve-lane ring road girdled the entire complex.

Saul studied the map closely and soon located the entrance nearest to a network of service tunnels that threaded the ground beneath his feet. He would still need to do a fair bit more walking to reach it, however, so he started moving once again, but this time leaving the highway far behind. He finally saw a low concrete bunker in the distance. A final glance to one side revealed at least a dozen tanks with crowd-control turrets rolling up to the makeshift barricades, supported by nearly twice that number of Black Dogs, four-legged multi-terrain weapons platforms laden with riot countermeasures.

He heard a chainsaw-like buzz overhead, and looked up to see a drone moving rapidly towards him. It looked like a metal doughnut, with blades whirring noisily in the centre. Saul shielded his eyes to make sure his UP was active, even as it dropped lower to intercept him.

‘I’m with Array Security and Immigration,’ he called up to the device. ‘I urgently need to get inside the Array.’

‘I can see your authorization, sir,’ boomed a voice from a hidden microphone. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought maybe you were part of that mob.’

‘They’re frightened people, not a mob,’ Saul shouted back. ‘What the hell is going on here?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ the operator’s voice replied. ‘I just know we’re not supposed to let anybody inside.’

‘Except me, right? I plan to use one of the bunker entrances.’

‘That’s fine, but all active personnel have to report in immediately and help protect the Array.’

‘Protect it from what?’ Saul yelled back. But, before the operator could respond, a crackle of gunfire erupted from the direction he’d just come.

He glanced around and saw a crowd of desperate people converging on the barricades. The drone rose into the air and zoomed in their direction without another word from its operator. Saul stared after it, noticing dozens of other drones also converging there. He forced himself to turn away and keep walking until he finally reached the bunker. A single unmarked steel door in its side swung open as he approached.

Once he was inside, a warning light flashed, and a kind of manhole cover in the floor slid aside, revealing a shaft beneath, and a single ladder extending downwards for about six metres.

Before long, Saul was heading along an echoing, empty corridor, in the direction of the central dome.