Overture (Earth Song) (36 page)

Mindy
went back to her office and spent the rest of the day working with Harold. He’d been quiet and kept to himself since the incident with Hipstitch at the beginning of their lock down, but he seemed even worse today. He shuffled papers, head down and quiet. They had the normal lunch time meeting with their fellow conspirators, bur he said little. Finally she had to say something.

“
Harold, are you okay?”

“
Fine,” he said and flashed her a smile so big it was frightening. She looked at him suspiciously for long enough that he finally said something more. “I’ve got something going.”

“
Harold, don’t do anything stupid.”

“
Would I do something like that?”

“
If you thought you would get away with it, you bet your ass you would!” He just shrugged and went back to work.

The
next morning she was met at the front door by a pair of plain clothes NSA agents. “Mindy Patoy, we have orders for you to come with us,” they said and handed a piece of paper to her military guards. They looked them over and handed them back without comment. Shortly she was riding in their big black car. Traffic in the city had begun to decrease as those who were going to leave had done so. The drive to Central Park was a quick one. The only real delays were caused by the now common military checkpoints. When they turned into the park she was stunned.

Vast
areas formerly covered by trees were now clear-cut and in their place were buildings of all kinds: warehouses, modular offices, truck parks and military tents were everywhere. The warehouses were of the metal frame and corrugated aluminum type that took little time to assemble. Still, the fact that they had been constructed in less than a week was amazing. The whole place was lousy with tractor trailers, forklifts, and hundreds of workers. She wondered if much of the materials being delivered were the items that she and Harold had helped to approve. What really bothered her was realizing that most of those items were probably ones they had tried to exclude and were added anyway.

The
NSA men dropped her at the entrance to the Portal Dome and drove away. For the first time in days she was alone and unescorted. “I’m almost scared,” she thought as she stood there.

“
Looking for someone?” asked a soldier coming out of the dome.

“
Doctors Skinner and Osgood?”

“
In there. Are you cleared?”

“
Would I be here if I wasn’t?”

“
Good point,” he said and walked away without another word. The encounter left her wondering if security was once again becoming lax in the aftermath of the Followers’ demise. They were treating anyone inside the perimeter as having permission to be there, and that seemed to be asking for trouble. She took a calming breath and went into the dome. Leo spotted her and waved her over.

“
Glad you made it, any problems with security?” he asked.

“
No, the goons you sent got me in easy.”

“
I figured they would. We’re ready to go in about ten minutes.” She nodded and pulled out the ex-FBI computer from her backpack, using the spare time to go over her notes. Later, a hand on her shoulder made her look up. It was Dr. Osgood.

“
We’re going through at about an hour before dawn on the other side. We don’t have any images from that time so it should be a unique view for you.”

“
I don’t know if that will help much,” she said with a frown. “I’ve been studying the later night shots, around midnight.”

“
Best we can do, I’m afraid. Timing is everything at this point. Our xenobiologist landed at JKF a few minutes ago and we go as soon as he’s here.” Osgood went to check on his instruments and left her alone to worry. She’d felt pretty confident of making a match today, but this was a bad turn. Just like any other planet, the one on the other end of the Portal rotated. As it turned during the night the view of the sky would change. The Portal acted as a narrow window into the night sky and depending on how far it had orbited since her earlier observations she might well find herself with a completely different sky. That would be a worst case scenario for Mindy and her plans. 

The
biologist arrived as promised and on schedule. He was in his forties and reminded her of Billy. Despite herself she realized she was smiling and looking shyly at the handsome man. “Mindy Patoy, astronomer,” she introduced herself.

“
Barry Gibson, biologist and lunatic,” he said and shook her hand.

“
You don’t look crazy to me,” she said as her cheeks got hot.
God, I can hardly wait to see Billy again!

“
I’m going through that thing, what would you say I am?”

“
Brave,” she said, then added “and damned lucky.” He smiled at her with obvious intention and she wished Billy were there even more. Then silently chastising herself for being a hussy, she climbed the dais to get ready while Barry went to meet with Osgood and Skinner.

The
moment of truth arrived and Mindy watched as Barry climbed the Portal steps to stand next to her. “Be careful,” she said as she knelt next to the portal and adjusted her computer for a better view. This time she had added a pair of digital cameras as well. He gave her gear a quick look over as he waited for the go ahead.

“
I’ll try. I understand you’re on the list to be one of the people to come over later.”

“
I am, but the actual process is complicated.”

“
I’ll put in a good word for you,” he said with a wink. “I’d like to get to know you better.” The meaning was obvious and she looked away. Mindy wasn’t sure what to say to the handsome man. At the same time she was grasping at straws.

“
I’d appreciate a good word,” she said finally. He nodded and winked at her and she shook her head in mock chagrin.

“We’re ready when you are, Mr. Gibson.” Mindy turned and looked at Skinner, who crossed his fingers for her to see. She also noted Mark Volant was parked in his wheelchair near the door. A half dozen of his agents lounged nearby, disinterestedly watching the goings on about them.

Barry
was made of the same mettle as the soldiers who had preceded him; when called he didn’t hesitate. The man just turned and stepped through. Mindy was now used to the purple pulse of light and ignored it to concentrate on the night sky. Men mounted the dais and began tossing crates through as the laser began communications.

The
view was quite a bit different and for a moment she was filled with despair. Off to one side was the barest hint of the more familiar star field. The tip of the Arrow constellation and a small cluster she called the Hook. The Hook was one of those groups of stars that had been giving her headaches for weeks and seeing it against an entirely new vista was enough to make her head spin. She triggered the cameras with a touch of a key again and again, then grabbed the camera to push it at a different angle and get even more pictures. At that moment a pair of men tossed a crate and caught her camera sending it flying through the portal.

“
Crap!” she said and reached for it, jerking her hand back an instant before it passed through the invisible event horizon. On the other side the camera and its light metal tripod bumped up against the back of Barry’s leg as he was talking to a soldier from Ft. Eden. The xenobiologist turned around and picked up the camera which was still hooked by its cable and tossed it back. There was a collective gasp from all the technicians and scientists assembled as the camera sailed through the Portal and landed in Mindy’s hands. One of the scientists screamed in surprise.

Mindy
was unaware of any significance to the event and went right on working until the Portal shimmered and the view on the other end disappeared. She stood up and turned around to find everyone staring at her standing there with the slightly dinged camera dangling from its cord. “Did I miss something?” she asked.

Osgood was up late that night staring at screen after screen of data from that day. The plasma displays showed every conceivable piece of data from the seconds leading up to and following the little trick Mindy had pulled off. One such screen was looping the best recording he had. Again and again the men tossed the crate, catching the camera on its framework and tossing it through. There was a tiny power spike, almost so small it couldn’t be noticed. Barry picked up the camera and tossed it back, but this time no power spike. Osgood had cranked up the resolution on the data recordings as high as possible. At this level you could detect the electrical charge in a human neuron firing, and still it showed nothing on the return of the camera. “This does not make sense,” he said to the displays. “Maybe Rodriguez is right and the Portal on the other side is a power source as well.”

With
a couple key stokes he brought up some older footage that showed an early experiment. It was Lt. Colonel Wilson himself who stood on the other side of the Portal and held a rock. He carefully lobbed the rock at a man standing on the Earth side of the portal and it rebounded away from the invisible barrier without leaving a mark. The simultaneous instrument data showed no measurable energy phenomenon either. Cases and other objects rebounded off the Portal once the weight limit was reached. At that point the only thing that could pass through was another living person which would reinitialize both the twenty second window and the weight limit. How the hell had something passed back through? According to the men, the case that had knocked Mindy’s camera through was the last one, thereby completing the weight limit within a pound (Barry Gibson and all his equipment were weighed moments before going across to balance against the extra equipment).

Osgood
finally leaned back and took a deep breath. He was getting tired and frustrated. This event didn’t fit into what they knew about the Portal. Was it something to do with Mindy, or was it that the object passing back through was not from that other world? The latter was much more reasonable. He wanted to do some more experiments, but the time for that was past. Fourteen of the one hundred forty-four transitions were used; there was no more room to play around. He’d gotten an order from Volant only a few days ago that no more than twenty would go before the colonists would depart. The plan called for four more people to cross over, just to maintain contact with those already there. He could waste two more at his discretion. The possibilities were as frustrating as they were tantalizing.

The
replay continued to loop over and over as he brooded. That was when he caught something he’d missed. The camera as it went through the Portal was still attached to the computer by its cable. The cable passed through the Portal and to the camera with no ill effect. When it was thrown back to Mindy the cable trailed behind it and back through the Portal. “Son of a bitch!”

He
jumped up and trotted from his trailer out into the evening air. It was still cool, usually a good sign for New York this time of year. The frenzied activity around Portal City continued nonstop. He was suddenly reminded that a huge asteroid was coming to kill the Earth. It felt like a cold splash of water after his hours of pure scientific daydreaming.

Osgood
made the short walk to the Portal dome and let himself in. The pair of NSA agents nodded without bothering to check his ID. The dome was almost dark; the need for round the clock research was past. With only eight days left, their research and others were being stored on high-density discs and packed away to go across with the colonists. There were boxes of other discs containing vast amounts of knowledge. They only weighed a fraction of an ounce each yet contained two terabytes of data and were packed a hundred per box. He hadn’t seen much about the other materials gathered in the warehouse nearby but he did know that those twenty-five boxes with their five thousand terabytes of data came close to representing the sum total of mankind’s knowledge.

Osgood
made his way to the main video monitoring system, a huge data bank for ultra-high resolution recording. Because of the camera’s limitations, it had never been able to capture good images through the active Portal. But when it came to taking pictures of the Portal device itself and what went on inside the dome, the images were superb. He intended to analyze the incident as closely as possible, and that was when he noticed he wasn’t alone.

“
Good evening, Dr. Osgood.” It was a woman, easily in her seventies but still good-looking. Her complexion was light with the sort of spots one gets from spending untold hours out under the sun. He guessed her hair was once red, now a dignified silver, nearly waist length and pulled back into an intricately knotted pony tail. Her arms were crossed under her breasts and she wore a faded lab coat that'd seen better days. He knew he hadn't seen her on the team before and wished he had. She was quite attractive. And still, somehow also familiar, in an odd way.

“
Good evening yourself, working the late shift?”

“
No, my work is long done; I'm just here to fix something. And get another look at the Portal.”