The Year of the Quiet Sun

THIRTEEN

Saltus was prepared to celebrate.

The red light blinked out. He reached up to unlock the hatch and throw it open. The green light went dark. Saltus grasped the two handrails and pulled himself to a sitting position with his head and shoulders protruding through the hatchway. He was alone in the room as he expected to be, but he noted with mild surprise that some of the ceiling lights had burned out. Sloppy housekeeping. The air was chill and smelled of ozone. He struggled out of the hatch and climbed over the side; the step stool was missing and he slid down the hull to the floor. Saltus reached up to slam shut the hatch, then turned to the locker for his clothing.

Another suit belonging to Chaney hung there in its paper sheath waiting to be claimed. He noted the locker had collected a heavy amount of dust and a fine film of it had even crept inside. Wretched housekeeping. When Saltus was dressed in the civvies he had elected to wear, he took out a pint of good bourbon from its place of concealment in the locker and surreptitiously slipped the bottle into a jacket pocket.

He thought he was adequately prepared for the future.

Arthur Saltus checked his watch: 11:02. He sought out the electric calendar and clock on the wall to verify the date and time: 23 Nov 00. The clock read 10:55. Temperature was a cold 13 degrees. Saltus guessed his watch was wrong; it had been wrong before. He left the room without a glance at the cameras, secretively holding his hand against the bottle to mask the pocket bulge. He didn’t think the engineers would approve of his intentions.

Saltus walked down the corridor in eerie silence to the shelter; dust on the floor muffled his footfalls and he wondered if William had found that same dust sixteen months earlier. The old boy would have been annoyed. The shelter door was pushed open and the overhead lights went on in automatic response — but again, some of them were burned out. Somebody rated a gig for poor maintenance. Saltus stopped just inside the door, pulled the bottle from his pocket and ripped away the seal from the cap.

A shout rattled the empty room.

“Happy birthday!”

For a little while, he was fifty years old.

Saltus swallowed the bourbon, liking its taste, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand; he stared around the shelter with growing curiosity. Somebody had been at the ship’s stores — somebody had helped himself to the provisions set by for him and then had carelessly left the debris behind for him to find. The place was overrun with privateers and sloppy housekeepers.

He discovered a gasoline lantern on the floor near his feet and reached down quickly to determine if it was warm. It was not, but a jostling shake told him there was fuel remaining in the tank. Many boxes of rations had been cut open — emptied of their contents — and the cartons stacked in a disorderly pile along the wall near the door. A few water containers rested beside the cartons and Saltus grabbed up the nearest to shake it, test it for use. The can was empty. He took another long pull from his birthday bottle and roamed around the room, making a more detailed inspection of the stores. They weren’t in the ship-shape order he remembered from his last inspection.

A sealed bag of clothing had been torn open, a bag holding several heavy coats and parkas for winter wear. He could not guess how many had been taken from the container.

A pair of boots — no, two or three pair — were missing from a rack holding several similar pairs. Another bundle of warm lined mittens appeared to have been disturbed, but it was impossible to determine how many were gone. Somebody had visited the stores in winter. That somebody should not have been the Major — he was scheduled for the Fourth of July, unless that gyroscope went crazy and threw him off by half a year. Saltus turned again to count the used ration boxes and the water cans: not enough of them had been emptied to support a big man like William for the past sixteen months — not unless he was living outside most of the time and supporting himself from the land. The used-up stores might have carried him through a single winter, supplementing game from outside. It seemed an unlikely possibility.

Saltus worked his way around the room to the bench. It was littered with trash.

Three yellow cartons rested on the bench top, cartons he’d not seen there on previous visits. The first one was empty, but he tore away the lid flaps of the next to discover a bullet-proof vest made of an unfamiliar nylon weave. He did not hesitate. The garment looked flimsy and unreliable buf because Katrina always knew what she was doing, he put on the protective vest beneath his civilian jacket. Saltus sipped at his bourbon and eyed the mess on the bench. It wasn’t like William to leave things untidy — well, not this untidy. Some of it was his work.

A tape recorder and another gasoline lantern were on the bench. A moment later he discovered empty boxes which had contained rifle cartridges, another box for the tape now in the recorder, an opened map, and the insignia removed from the Major’s dress uniform. Saltus thought he knew what that meant. He touched the lantern first but found it cold although the fuel tank was full, and then leaned over the bench to examine the recorder. Only a few minutes of tape had been spun off.

Saltus depressed the voice button, said: “Mark,” and rewound the tape to its starting point.

Another push and the tape rolled forward.

Voice: “Moresby here. Four July 1999. Time of arrival 10:05 on my watch, 4:10 by the clock. Six hours and five minutes discrepancy. Dust everywhere, stool missing from operations room; shelter unoccupied and stores intact, but the water is stale. Am preparing for the target.”

Brief period of miscellaneous sounds.

Arthur Saltus had another drink while he waited. He stared again at William’s discarded military insignia.

Voice: ”… moving around the northwest corner in a southerly direction — moving toward you. Estimated strength, twelve to fifteen men. Watch them, Corporal, they’re packing mortars. Over.” The sound of gunfire was loud behind the voice.

Voice: “Roger. We’ve got a hole in the fence at the northwest — some bastard tried to put a truck through. It’s still burning; maybe that’ll stop them. Over.”

Voice: “You must hold them, Corporal. I can’t send you any men — we have a double red here. Out.”

The channel fell silent, closing off the firefight.

Arthur Saltus stared at the machine in consternation, knowing the first suspicions of what might have happened. He listened to the small sounds of Moresby working about the bench, guessing what he was doing; the sound of cartridges being emptied from boxes was quickly recognizable; a rattle of paper was the map being unfolded.

Voice: “Eagle one! The bandits have hit us — hit us at the northwest corner. I count twelve of them, spread out over the slope below the fence. They’ve got two — damn it! — two mortars and they’re lobbing them in. Over.” The harsh, half-shrieking voice was punctuated by the dull thump of mortar fire.

Voice: “Have they penetrated the fence? Over.”

Voice: “Negative — negative. That burning truck is holding them. I think they’ll try some other way — blow a hole in the fence if they can. Over.”

Voice: “Hold them, Corporal. They are a diversion; we have the main attack here. Out.”

Voice: “Damn it, Lieutenant—” Silence.

The pause was of short duration.

Voice: “Moresby, Air Force Intelligence, calling Chicago or the Chicago area. Come in, Chicago.”

Arthur Saltus listened to Moresby’s efforts to make radio contact with the world outside, and listened to the ensuing dialogue between Moresby and Sergeant Nash holding somewhere west of Chicago. He sucked breath in a great startled gasp when he heard the Chicago statement — it hit him hard in the belly — and listened in near-disbelief at the exchange which followed. Baja California clearly indicated the shortwave signals were being bounced to the Orient: that was where the Harrys were and that was where they had been called in from. The Chinese at last were retaliating for the loss of their two railroad towns. It was likely that now — sixteen months after the strike — Lake Michigan and the lands ad joining it were as radioactive as the farming area around Yungning. They had retaliated.

But who called it in? Who were the bandits? What in hell were ramjets? That was a kind of aircraft.

Voice: ”… Fifth Army HQ has been re-established west of the Naval Training Station, but you’ll pass through our lines long before that point. Look for the sentries. Use care, sir. Be alert for ramjets between your position and ours. They are heavily armed. Over.”

Moresby thanked the man and went out.

The tape repeated a snapping sound that was Moresby shutting off his radio, and a moment later the tape itself went silent as he stopped the recorder. Arthur Saltus waited — listening for a postscript of some kind when William returned from his target and checked in. The tape went on and on repeating nothing, until at last his own voice jumped out at him: “Mark.”

He was dissatisfied. He let the machine run through the end of the reel but there was nothing more. Moresby had not returned to the shelter — but Saltus knew he would not attempt to reach Fifth Army headquarters near Chicago, not in the bare fifty hours permitted him on target with a firefight underway somewhere outside. He might try for Joliet if the route was secure but he certainly wouldn’t penetrate far into hostile territory with a deadline over his head. He had gone out; he hadn’t come back inside.

But yet Saltus was dissatisfied. Something nagged at his attention, something that wasn’t quite right, and he stared at the tape recorder for a long time in an effort to place the wrongness. Some insignificant little thing didn’t fit smoothly into place. Saltus rewound the tape to the beginning and played it forward a second time. He put down the birthday bottle to listen attentively.

When it was finished he was certain of a wrongness; something on the tape plucked at his worried attention.

And yet a third time. He hunched over the machine.

In order:

William making his preliminary report; two voices, worried over the bandits and the mortars at the northwest corner, plus the fighting at the main gate; William again, calling Chicago; Sergeant Nash responding, with a dialogue on the Chicago situation and an invitation to join them at the relocated headquarters. A farewell word of thanks from William, and a snap of the radio being shut off; a moment later the tape itself went silent when William turned off the recorder and left the shelter -

There — that was it.

The tape went dead when the recorder was turned off. There were no after-sounds of activity about the bench, no final message — there was nothing to indicate William had ever touched the recorder again. He had shut off the radio and the recorder in one-two order and quit the room. The tape should have ended there, stopped there. It did not. Saltus looked at his watch, squinting at the sweep hand. He ran the tape forward yet another time, from the point when William had shut it off to the point when he turned it on again and said: “Mark.”

The elapsed time was one minute, forty-four seconds. Someone after William had done that. Someone else had opened the shelter, pilfered the stores, donned winter clothing, and listened to the taped report. Someone else had let the machine run on another minute and forty-four seconds before shutting it off and taking his leave. The visitor may have returned, but William never did.

Arthur Saltus felt that fair warning. He closed the corridor door and thumbed a manual switch to keep the shelter lights on. An Army-issue automatic was taken from the stores and strapped around his waist.

Another mouth-filling pull from the bottle, and he rolled the tape back to his “Mark.”

“Saltus checking in. That was my mark and this is my birthday, 23 November, in the nice round number year of 2000. I am fifty years old but I don’t look a day over twenty-five — chalk it up to clean living. Hello, Katrina. Hello, Chaney. And hello to you, Mr. Gilbert Seabrooke. Is that nosey little man from Washington still knocking around back there?

“I arrived at 10:55 or 11:02 something, depending on which timepiece you read. I say something because I don’t yet know if it’s a dilemma or the other — I haven’t put my nose outside to test the wind. I have lost all faith in engineers and mercury protons, but they’d better not cheat me out of my full birthday. When I walk out that door I want to see bright sunshine on the greensward — morning sunshine. I want birds singing and rabbits rabbiting and all that jazz.

“Katrina, the housekeeping is awfully sloppy around here: it’s poor ship. Dust on the furniture, the floors, lights burned out, empty boxes littering the place — it’s a mess. Strangers have been wandering in and out, helping themselves to the drygoods and pinching the groceries. I guess somebody found a key to the place.

“Everything you heard before my mark was William’s report. He didn’t come back to finish it, and he didn’t go up to Chicago or anywhere near there — you can rely on that.” The bantering tone was dropped. “He’s outside.”

Arthur Saltus began a straightforward recital of all that he’d found. He ticked off the missing items from the stores, the number of empty boxes stacked haphazardly along the wall, the used water cans, the two lanterns which had seen but little service — William may have tested the one found on the bench — the debris on the floor, the insignia, and the peculiarity of the tape being rolled forward. He invited his listeners to make the same timedelay test he’d made and then offer a better explanation if they didn’t care for his.

He said: “And when you come up here, civilian, just double-check the stores; count the empties again to see if our visitor has been back. And hey — arm yourself, mister. You’d damned well better shoot straight if you have to shoot at all. Remember something we taught you.”

Saltus flicked off the machine to prevent the tape from listening to him take a drink — as difficult as that might be — and then flicked it on again.

“I’m going topside to search for William — I’m going to try tailing him. Lord only knows what I’ll find after sixteen months but I’m going to try. It’s likely he did one of two things: either he’d go for Joliet to find out what he could about that Chicago thing, or he’d jump into the squabble if it was alongside.

“If the squabble was here — on the station — I think he’d run for the northwest corner to help the Corporal; he’d have to get into the fight.” Short pause. “I’m going up to take a look at that corner, but if I don’t find anything I’ll run into Joliet. I’m in the same boat now with old William — I’ve got to know what happened to Chicago.” He stared solemnly at the. empty space in his bottle and added: “Katrina, this sure knocks hell out of your survey. All that studying for nothing.”

Saltus stopped talking but let the machine run on.

He plugged in a radio and connected the leads to the outside antenna. After a period of band searching, he reported back to the tape recorder.

“Radio negative. Nothing at all on the GI channels.” Another slow sweep of the bands. “That’s damned funny, isn’t it? Nobody’s playing the top ten platters.”

Saltus switched over to the civilian wavelengths and monitored them carefully. “The forty- and eighty-meter bands are likewise negative. Everybody is keeping their mouths shut. What do you suppose they’re scared of?” He went back to a military channel and turned up the gain to peak, hearing nothing but an airy whisper. The lack of communications nettled him.

The send button was depressed.

“Navy boot, come in. Come in, boot, you know me — I caddied for the Admiral at Shoreacres. Saltus calling Navy boot. Over.”

He reported himself two or three times on several channels.

The radio crackled a sudden command. “Get off the air, you idiot! They’ll get a fix on you!” It went silent.

Saltus was so startled he turned off the radio.

To the tape recorder: “Chaney, did you hear that? There is somebody out there! They don’t have much going for them — the power was weak, or they were a long ways off — but there is somebody out there. Scared spitless, too. The ramjets must have them on the run.” He stopped to consider that. “Katrina, try to find out what a ramjet is. Our Chinese friends can’t be here; they don’t have the transport, and they couldn’t get through the Pacific minefields if they did. And keep that under your hat, civilian — it’s top secret stuff.”

Arthur Saltus equipped himself for the target, always remembering to keep an eye on the door.

He helped himself to a parka and pulled the hood over his head; he removed the light shoes he’d been wearing the summer he left and found a pair of hiking boots the proper size. Mittens were tucked into a pocket. Saltus slung a canteen of water over one shoulder and a pack of rations on his back. He picked out a rifle, loaded it, and emptied two boxes of cartridges into his pockets. The map was of little interest — he knew the road to Joliet, he’d been there only last Thursday to look into a little matter for the President. The President had thanked him. He loaded a camera and found room to pack away a fresh supply of nylon film.

Saltus decided against taking a radio or recorder, not wanting to be further encumbered; it would be awkward enough as it was and all signs clearly indicated the survey was sunk without a trace. Chicago was lost, forbidden, and Joliet might be a problem. But there was something he could do with the recorder and William’s brief message — something to insure its return to home base. A last searching examination of the room gave him no other thing he thought he would need. The lights were turned off.

Saltus took a long pull on his dwindling supply of bourbon and quit the shelter. The corridor was dusty and vacant, and he fancied he could see his own footprints.

He carried the tape recorder with its dangling cord back to the operations room where the vehicle waited in its polywater tank. A thorough search of the room failed to reveal an electric outlet; even the service for the clock and the calendar came through the wall behind the encased instruments, wholly concealed.

“Damn it!” Saltus spun around to stare up at the two glass eyes. “Why can’t you guys do something right? Even your lousy proton gyroscope is — is sheeg!”

He strode out of the room, marched along the dusty corridor to the adjoining laboratory door, and gave it a resounding kick to advertise his annoyance. That ought to shake up the engineers.

His jaw dropped when the door swung open under the blow. Nobody slammed it shut again. Saltus edged closer and peered inside. Nobody shoved him back. The lab was empty. He walked in and stared around: it was his first sight of the working side of the project and the impression was a poor one.

Here too some of the ceiling lights had burned out, without being replaced. A bank of three monitoring sets occupied a wall bench at his left hand; one of them was blanked out but the remaining two gave him a blurred and unsatisfactory image of the room he had just quit. The vehicle was recognizable only because of its shape and its supporting tank. The two images lacked quality, as though the tubes were aged beyond caring. He turned slowly on the ball of his foot and scanned the room but found nothing to suggest recent occupancy. The tools and equipment were there — and still functioning — but the lab personnel had vanished, leaving nothing but dust and marks in the dust. A yellow bull’s eye on a computer panel stared at him for an intruder.

Saltus put down the recorder and plugged it in.

He said without preamble: “Chaney, the treasure house is empty, deserted — the engineers are gone. Don’t ask me why or where — there’s no sign, no clue, and they didn’t leave notes. I’m in the lab now but there’s nobody here except the mice and me. The door was open, sort of, and I wandered in.” He sipped whiskey, but this time didn’t bother to conceal it from the tape.

“I’m going topside to look for William. Wait for me, Katrina, you lovely wench! Happy birthday, people.”

Saltus pulled the plug from the receptacle, wrapped the cord around the recorder and walked back to the other room to drop the machine into the TDV. To compensate for the added weight, he pulled loose the heavy camera in the nose bubble and threw it overboard after first salvaging the film magazine. He hoped the liaison agent from Washington would cry over the loss. Saltus slammed shut the hatch and left the room.

The corridor ended and a flight of stairs led upward to the operations exit. The painted sign prohibiting the carrying of arms beyond the door had been defaced: a large slash of black paint was smeared from the first sentence to the last, half obliterating the words and voiding the warning.

Saltus noted the time on his watch and fitted the keys into the locks. A bell rang behind him as he pushed open the door. The day was bright with sunshine and snow.

It was five minutes before twelve in the morning. His birthday was only just begun.

An automobile waited for him in the parking lot.

FOURTEEN

Arthur Saltus stepped out warily into the snow. The station appeared to be deserted: nothing moved on any street as far as the eye could see.

His gaze came back to the parked automobile.

It was a small one resembling the German beetle and olive drab in color, but he tardily recognized it as an American make by the name stamped on each hubcap. The car had been there since before the snow: there were no tracks of movement, of betrayal. A thinner coating of snow lay over the hood and roof of the vehicle and one window was open a crack, allowing moisture to seep inside.

Saltus scanned the parking lot, the adjoining flower garden and the frigid empty spaces before him but discovered no moving thing. He held himself rigid, alert, intently watching, listening, and sniffing the wind for signs of life. No one and nothing had left tell-tale prints in the snow, nor sounds nor smells on the wind. When he was satisfied of that, he stepped away from the operations door and eased it shut behind him, making sure it was locked. Rifle up, he inched toward a corner of the lab building and peered around. The company street was trackless and deserted, as were the walks and lawns of the structures across the street. Shrubbery was bent under the weight of snow. His foot struck a covered object when he took a single step away from the protective corner.

He looked down, bent, and picked a radio out of the snow. It had been taken from the stores below.

Saltus turned it over looking for damage but saw none; the instrument bore no marks to suggest it had been struck by gunfire, and after a hesitation he concluded that Moresby had simply dropped it there to be rid of the extra weight. Saltus resumed his patrol, intent on circling the building to make certain he was alone. The sun-bright snow was unmarred all the way around. He was relieved, and paused again to sample the bourbon.

The automobile claimed his attention.

The dash puzzled him: it had an off-on switch instead of the usual key, and but one idiot light; there were no gauges to give useful information on fuel, oil, water temperature, or tire pressures, nor was there a speedometer. Propelled by a sudden exciting idea, Saltus climbed out of the little car and raised the hood. Three large silver-colored storage batteries were lined up against a motor so compact and simple it didn’t appear capable of moving anything, much less an automobile. He dropped the hood and got back into the seat. The switch was flipped to the on position. There was no sound but the idiot light briefly winked at him. Saltus very gently pulled the selector lever to drive position and the car obediently crept forward through the snow toward the empty street. He pushed down on the accelerator with growing exhilaration and deliberately threw the car into a skid on the snow-packed street. It lurched and swung in a giddy manner, then came back under control when Saltus touched the steering wheel. The little automobile was fun.

He followed a familiar route to the barracks where he’d lived with William and the civilian, swinging and dancing from side to side on the slippery surface because the car seemed to obey his every whim. It would spin in a complete circle and come to rest with the nose pointing in the proper direction, it would slide sideways without threatening to topple, it would bite into the snow and leap forward with a minimum of slippage if just one wheel had a decent purchase. He thought that four-wheel-drive electric cars should have been invented a century ago.

Saltus stopped in dismay at the barracks — at the place where the barracks had been. He very nearly missed the site. All the antiquated buildings had burned to their concrete foundations, nearly hiding them from sight. He got out of the car to stare at the remains and at the lonely shadows cast by the winter sun.

Feeling depressed, Saltus drove over to E Street and turned north toward the recreation area.

He parked the car outside the fence surrounding the patio and prowled cautiously through the entranceway to scan the interior. The unmarked snow was reassuring but it did not lull him into a false sense of security. Rifle ready, pausing every few steps to look and listen and smell the wind, Saltus advanced to the tiled rim of the pool and looked down. It was nearly empty, drained of water, and the diving board taken away.

Nearly empty: a half dozen long lumps huddled under the blanket of snow at the bottom, lumps the shape of men. Two GI helmet liners lay nearby, recognizable by their shapes despite the covering snow. A naked, frozen foot protruded through the blanket into the cold sunshine.

Saltus turned away, expelling a breath of bitter disappointment; he wasn’t sure what he had expected after so long a time, but certainly not that — not the bodies of station personnel dumped into an uncovered grave. The GI liners suggested their identities and suggested they had been dumped there by outsiders — by ramjets. Survivors on station would have buried the bodies.

He remembered the beautiful image of Katrina in that pool — Katrina, nearly naked, scantily clad in that lovely, sexy swim suit — and himself chasing after her, wanting the feel of that wet and splendid body under his hands again and again. She had teased him, run away from him, knowing what he was doing but pretending not to be aware: that added to the excitement. And Chaney! The poor out-gunned civilian sat up on the deck and burned with a green, sulphurous envy, wanting to but not daring to. Damn, but that was a day to be remembered!

Arthur Saltus scanned the street and then climbed back into the car.

There were two large holes in the fence surrounding the station at the northwest corner. Action from outside had caused both penetrations. The shell of a burnedout truck had caused one of them, and that rusted shell still occupied the hole. A mortar had torn through the other. There was a shallow cavity in the earth directly beneath the second hole, a cavity scooped out by another exploding mortar round. Snow-covered objects that might be the remains of men dotted the slope on both sides of the fence. There was the recognizable hulk of a thoroughly demolished automobile.

Saltus probed the wreckage of the car, turning over wheels with shredded tires, poking among the jumble of machined parts, picking up to examine with mild wonder a windshield fashioned of transparent plastic so sturdy it had popped out of place and fallen undamaged several feet away from the hulk. He compared it to the windshield of his own car, and found it to be identical. The batteries had been carried away — or were entirely demolished; the little motor was a mass of fused metal.

As best he could, Saltus scraped snow from the ground in search of something to indicate that William Moresby had died here. He thought it likely that William had found his car in the parking lot — a twin to his own vehicle — and drove it north to the scene of the skirmish. To here. It would be a hell of a note if the man had died before he got out of the car. Old William deserved a better break than that.

He found nothing — not even a scrap of uniform in the debris, and for the moment that was encouraging.

Down the slope a cluster of tree stumps and a sagging billboard were visible. Saltus went down to see them. A snow-blanketed body lay smashed against a stump but that was all; there was no weapon with it. The blown remains of one mortar lay around in front of the billboard and from the appearance of the piece, he would guess that a faulty shell had exploded within the tube, destroying the usefulness of the weapon and probably killing the operator. There was no corpse here to back up that guess, unless it was the one hurled against the tree stump. The second of the two mortars mentioned on the tape was missing — taken away. The winners of this skirmish had to be the ramjets; they had picked up their remaining mortar and retired — or had penetrated the hole to invade the station.

Saltus picked his way back up the slope and walked through the hole in the fence. The snow pattern dipped gracefully, following the rounded rough-bottomed contour of the cavity. His foot turned on something unseen at the bottom of the hole and he struggled to save his balance. A cold wind blew across the face of the slope, numbing his fingers and stinging his face.

He began the distasteful task of scraping snow off each of the fallen man-objects, brushing away just enough to catch a glimpse of the rotting cloth of the uniform. The defenders had worn Army tans, and one of them still carried a GI dogtag around his neck; in another place he turned up a Corporal’s stripes attached to a bit of sleeve, and not far away was an empty pair of shoes. William Moresby’s dress blues were not found.

An oversight nagged at him.

Saltus retraced his steps down the slope, annoyed at the oversight and annoyed again by the futility of it: he uncovered the remains of civilians wearing nondescript civilian clothing, and one yellow armband. A faded black cross on a rotting patch of yellow goods meant nothing to him but he folded it away for later examination. Katrina would want to see it. The ramjets themselves were beyond identification; sixteen months of exposure had made them as unrecognizable as those other bodies above the fence line. The only thing new he’d learned was that civilians were the bandits on the tape, civilians equipped with mortars and some kind of central organization — maybe the same group that had called in the Harry on Chicago. Ramjets allied with the Chinese — or at least inviting their cooperation.

To Saltus the scene read civil war.

He stopped at the next thought, staring with hard surprise at the covered bodies. Ramjets blowing Chicago — in retaliation? Ramjets losing in Chicago twenty years ago, trapped behind their own wall, but striking back in harsh retaliation now? Ramjets working with the Chinese, welded together by a mutual hatred of the white establishment?

He picked again at the body against the stump, but the color of the man’s skin was lost.

Arthur Saltus climbed the slope.

The world was strangely silent and empty — deserted. He’d seen no traffic on the distant highway nor on the nearer railroad; the sky was uncommonly bare of aircraft. He stayed continually on the alert for danger, but sighted no one, nothing — even animal tracks were missing from the snow. Deserted world — or more likely, a concealed world. That angry voice on the radio had ordered him to silence lest he betray his cover.

Saltus stayed only a few minutes longer on the cold upper slope, standing amid the debris of the smashed car. He hoped to God that William had jumped clear before the mortar smashed in. The old boy deserved at least a couple of whacks at the bandits before his doom prophets caught up to him.

He was finally convinced the Major had died there.

Saltus drove by the mess hail with little more than a passing glance. Like the barracks, the wooden parts of the structure were burned to the concrete block foundation. He thought it likely the ramjets had swept the station after the fence was breached, burning what was flammable and stealing or destroying the remainder. It was a blessing that the lab had been built to withstand war and earthquake, or he would have emerged into a room open to the sky and climbed down from the vehicle into snow. He hoped the bandits had long since starved to death — but at the same time remembered the pilfered stores in the shelter.

That bandit hadn’t starved, but neither had he fed his fellows. How had he gotten through the locked door? He would need both keys and he would have to take them from William — but a direct hit on the car would have scattered the keys as thoroughly as the parts of the auto itself. Assuming possession of the keys, why hadn’t the bandit, thrown open the doors to his companions? Why hadn’t the stores been looted, cleaned out, the lab ransacked? Was the man so selfish that he had fed only himself and let the rest go hang? Perhaps. But more than one pair of boots was missing.

Saltus turned a corner at a fast clip, skidding in the snow and then straightening his course toward the front gate. It was a small comfort to find the gatehouse still standing: concrete blocks were difficult to burn or destroy. The gate itself was torn open and twisted back Out of the way. He drove through it and concentrated on the barely visible pattern of the road ahead; the smooth unbroken expanse of snow flanked by shallow ditches to either side guided him. Only last Thursday he and William had raced over the road hell-bent for a day in Joliet.

A bearded man leaped out of the gatehouse and put a shot through the rear window of the car.

Arthur Saltus didn’t take the time to decide if he was astonished or outraged — the shot did frighten him, and he reacted automatically to danger. Slamming the accelerator to the floor, he spun hard on the wheel and threw the car into a sickening skid. It lurched and swung around in a dizzy arc, coming to rest with its blunt nose aimed at the gatehouse. Saltus floored the accelerator. The rear wheels spun uselessly on the slick snow, found a purchase only when they had burned down to the pavement, then thrust the car forward in a burst of speed that caught him unprepared. It careened wildly through the gate. He rammed the nose hard against the gatehouse door and leaped clear, hugging the side of the vehicle.

Saltus pumped two quick shots through the sagging door, and was answered by a scream of pain; he fired again and then scrambled over the hood to crouch in the doorway. The screaming man lay on the floor tearing at his bloodied chest. A tall, gaunt black man was backed against the far wall taking aim at him. Saltus fired without raising the rifle, and then deliberately turned and put a finishing shot through the head of the man writhing on the floor. The screaming stopped.

For a moment the world was wrapped in silence.

Saltus said: “Now, what the hell—”

An incredibly violent blow struck him in the small of his back, robbing him of breath and speech, and he heard the sound of a shot from an unimaginable distance away. He stumbled and went to his knees while a raging fire burned up his spine into his skull. Another distant shot shattered the peace of the world, but this once he felt nothing. Saltus turned on his knees to meet the threat.

The ramjet was climbing over the hood of the little fun car to get at him.

Caught up like a man swimming in mud, Saltus raised the rifle and tried to take aim. The weapon was almost too heavy to lift; he moved in a slow, agonizing motion. The ramjet slid down the hood and jumped through the doorway, reaching for him or his rifle. Saltus squinted at the face but it refused to come into clear focus. Somebody behind the face loomed over him as large as a mountain; somebody’s hands grasped the barrel of the rifle and pulled it away. Saltus squeezed the trigger.

The looming face changed: it disintegrated in a confusing jumble of bone, blood, and tissue, coming apart like William’s electric car under a mortar barrage. The face out of focus disappeared while a booming thunder filled the gatehouse and rattled the broken door. A large piece of the mountain teetered over him, threatening to bury him when it came down. Saltus tried to crawl away.

The toppling body knocked him off his knees and knocked away his weapon. He went down beneath it, still fighting for breath and praying not to be crushed.

Arthur Saltus opened his eyes to find the daylight gone. An intolerable burden pinned him to the gatehouse floor and an overpowering hurt wracked his body.

Moving painfully but gaining only an inch or two at a time, he crawled from under the burden and tried to roll it aside. After minutes or hours of strenuous effort he climbed as far as his knees and threw off the knapsack hammering at his back; he spilled as much water as he drank before the canteen followed. His rifle lay on the floor at his knee, but he was astonished to discover that his hand and arm lacked the strength to pick it up. It may have taken another hour to draw the service automatic from under his coat and place it on the hood of the car.

An unbelievable time was spent in crawling over the same hood to get outside. The gun was knocked to the ground. Saltus bent over, touched it, fingered it, grew dizzy and had to abandon the weapon to save himself. He grabbed at the door handle and hauled himself upright. After a while he tried it again, and only managed to seize the gun and stand upright before the recurring wave of nausea struck him. His stomach doubled up and ejected.

Saltus climbed into the car and backed it off from the gatehouse door. Opening the near window to get the cold bracing air, he tugged at the drive selector and steered a tortuous course from gate to parking lot. The car glanced off one curb and skidded across the snow to jump the other curb; it would have thrown its occupant if it had been traveling at greater speed. Saltus had lost the strength to push down on the brake, and the little car stopped only when it slammed into the concrete wall of the laboratory. He was thrown against the wheel and then out into the snow. A spotted trail of blood marked his erratic path from the car to the door with the twin locks.

The door opened easily — so easily that a dim corner of his fogged consciousness nagged at him: had he inserted both keys into the locks before the door swung? Had he inserted any key?

Arthur Saltus fell down the flight of stairs because he could not help himself.

The gun was gone from his hand but he couldn’t remember losing it; his bottle of birthday bourbon was gone from his pocket but he couldn’t remember emptying it or throwing away the bottle; the keys to the door were lost. Saltus lay on his back on the dusty concrete, looking at the bright lights and looking up the stairs at the closed door. He didn’t remember closing that door.

A voice said: “Fifty hours.”

He knew he was losing touch with reality, knew he was drifting back and forth between cold, painful awareness and dark periods of feverish fantasy. He wanted to sleep on the floor, wanted to stretch out with his face on the cold concrete and let the raging fire in his spine burn itself out. Katrina’s vest had saved his life — barely. The slug — more than one? — was lodged in his back, but without the vest it would have torn all the way through his chest and blown away the rib cage. Thanks, Katrina.

A voice said: “Fifty hours.”

He tried to stand up, but fell on his face. He tried to climb to his knees, but pitched forward on his face. There was not much strength left to him. In time with the measured passing of an eternity, he crawled to the TDV on his belly.

Arthur Saltus struggled for an hour to climb the side of the vehicle. His awareness was slipping away in a sea of nauseous fantasy: he had the hallucinatory notion that someone pulled off his heavy boots — that someone removed the heavy winter garments and tried to take off his clothing. When at last he fell head first through the vehicle’s open hatch, he had the fever-fantasy that someone out there had helped him over the side.

A voice said: “Push the kickbar.”

He lay on his stomach on the webbing facing in the wrong direction, and remembered that the engineers wouldn’t recover the vehicle until the end of fifty hours. They had done that when William failed to return. Something was under him, hurting him, putting a hard new pressure on a rib cage already painfully sore. Saltus pulled the lump from beneath him and found a tape recorder. He pushed it toward the kickbar but it fell inches short of the goal. The hallucination slammed shut the hatch cover.

He said thickly: “Chaney… the bandits have burned the treasure house…”

The tape recorder was thrown at the kickbar.

The time was forty minutes after two in the morning, 24 November 2000. His fiftieth birthday was long past.