Planet America (27 page)

"It must be," Hunter whispered back. "They could have created the first holographs to look and feel and talk and walk like a real human being, in an effort to make them blend in. What better spy could there be?"

Tomm was nodding, but with disgust. "And then for man to design one model that could be used for more carnal activities; well it's a concept that really doesn't involve that much of a leap in imagination, does it?"

The projection went down a long list of her abilities: above-normal strength, X-ray vision, instant recall. Of course, everything she saw and heard was recorded on the primitive version of a viz disk. And judging by the size of her muscles, though not designed primarily for combat, she would have had little trouble defending herself.

"Why are you here?" Tomm asked her finally. "Do you know?"

"I was sent here in advance of a combat mission on this planet," she said, eyes again darting back and forth. "I was programmed by a civilization that was allied with your ancestors around the year 3778. Our goal was to help free you, the people of this planet—"

"Free us?" several asked at once.

The holo-girl could see the confusion on the assembled faces. They didn't know what she was talking about.

"Yes, free you? Help you? To break you out of here?"

More confused looks.

"You
do
know you're incarcerated here?" she asked with some uncertainty.

Everyone in the vault shook their heads no.

"We think our ancestors may have been brought here from someplace else," Gordon managed to say, "But—"

"So you
don't know
that you're in a prison camp here?"

"
Prison camp
?" several of the CIA men gasped at once.

"This planet. This whole system," she said. "It's a prison ... and you are still here. Even after all this time. You are still inmates."

The CIA men all tried to say something but couldn't. Even the space travelers were at a loss. How could an entire star system be a prison camp?

The holo-spy read their faces and just shook her head.

"I suggest you take me someplace where you can all sit down," she said. "This might take awhile."

14

Twenty-four Hours Later

The black panel van flew through the gates of the
White House, waved on by the small army of uniformed secret service agents assembled there.

It was three in the morning. The streets of Washington, D.C., were deserted as usual. Nevertheless, acting under the orders of the CIA, the D.C. police had blocked off all streets within a ten-block radius of the Executive Mansion. Several highways had been sealed as well. In all, the van's ride in from Weather Mountain had taken less than a half hour.

The van pulled around the back of the White House and stopped at the servants' entrance. It was here that the Secret Service's video surveillance cameras could be shut down without anyone noticing. The three passengers were hustled out of the van, each wearing a long, hooded cape. They were followed by Gordon and two of the seven elderly CIA agents.

The spacemen were brought into the White House kitchen and halted there. They were surrounded by yet another breed of well-dressed government agent, the Secret Service's presidential protection team. These guys all wore gray suits. They ran metal detectors over the three travelers and frisked them as well, but they could not find anything. That was another good thing about the Twenty 'n Six boxes. They could be set for intradimensional recovery.

This meant they just weren't there, until the owner reached for them.

The president was awakened and told that some unexpected visitors had arrived and that the CIA was insisting that he meet them—right now.

With some complaint, the Chief Executive rose and got dressed: just slacks, sneakers, and a sweatshirt bearing the presidential seal. He made his way down from the living quarters to the Oval Office with a minimum of fuss. The mention of CIA director Gordon's name gave the President the only clue as to what this might be about.

He'd been briefed in the past week on what the CIA had dubbed "the Betaville Three." Unknown persons having arrived by unknown means from somewhere unknown. The President hadn't taken that much notice. He'd been told this kind of stuff—top-secret paranormal crap—usually came up about twice in a four-year term. It was something he had to deal with, but his predecessors had told him it always turned out to be just that: crap.

In other words, the President had been briefed on the Betaville Three, but that didn't mean he believed.

His plan was to bound into the Oval Office, quietly agitated, his way of showing displeasure about the ungodly hour.

But when he came through the door and caught his first look at the three visitors, now without their hoods, standing in the middle of the office, he stopped in his tracks.

Hunter was back to his full X-Forces regalia: cape, boots, helmet, the works. Zarex had recalled his star duds from the twenty-sixth; they were cleaned and pressed and, if anything, seemed even smaller on him. Tomm had also managed to scare up a new cassock. This one was jet black, with a built-in shiny white collar, smartly pleated cuffs, and slightly flared shoulders. It was a hard concept to grasp, but for once the diminutive padre actually looked, well...
religious
. In an interstellar kind of way.

The President just stared at them for a moment, then shut his mouth and continued on to the safety of his desk. He sat down, at the same time silently counting the number of armed Secret Service men crowded into the room. There were thirteen in all.

Not a good number
, he thought.

He took his glasses out, put them on the end of his nose, and then looked up at Gordon.

"OK, Steve, this better be good."

Gordon was a man who rarely looked flustered or nervous, but he was a bit shaky at the moment.

"Mr. President, something very grave has come up," he said. "I believe you must be briefed on it immediately."

The President looked at the three visitors.

"Does the CIA want Halloween moved up a couple weeks?"

No one laughed.

Gordon started again. "In the past twenty-four hours, we have made a series of rather startling discoveries. The first one is that these three gentlemen here are not from this planet."

Gordon stopped there for a moment. The President rarely showed emotion; it was his best political trait. He barely blinked when Gordon dropped the ET bombshell. Gordon plowed on.

"These gentlemen have been able to work a piece of unknown technology that had stymied us for years. And what I'm afraid I must report to you, sir, as a result of this, we have some information that is rather frightening to contemplate."

The President finally blinked. He knew Gordon fairly well. The CIA man was not one to speak foolishly.

"Mr. President, if what we have learned today proves to be true by any stretch of the imagination, then the people of this planet, as well as people who might be living on other planets in this solar system, have been the victims of a great injustice. An injustice of enormous,
monumental
proportions."

The President didn't move. "I wasn't aware that there were any
other
worlds out there," he said dryly. "I learned in grade school that our planet was the only one—"

"Sir, that is the prevalent opinion only because no one has ever bothered to invent something that could actually look for other things up there," Gordon said sharply. Then, curiously, he added, "Much beyond the moon, that is."

The remark went right over the President's head, so Gordon just kept on talking.

"Mr. President, as crazy as it sounds, there is a chance that we are prisoners in our own solar system. We are living in a concentration camp of sorts. We were sent here, thousands of years ago, by persons unknown. We have been kept here, and intentionally delayed in our cultural development, by these same jail keepers."

The President cleared his throat.
Gordon is looking a little pale these days
, he thought.
He is one of our oldest civil servants. Maybe old Gordo has finally flipped his wig
.

"Well, this is all very interesting stuff, Steve," the President finally replied, "but do you have any ... ah,
proof
!"

Gordon saw the disbelief in the President's eyes, disbelief tinged with pity. Time for his secret weapon.

He looked over at Zarex, who simply snapped his fingers. Before any of the Secret Service men could react, the large holo-capsule was sitting on the President's desk. Zarex leaned over and punched the capsule's ancient controls. Two seconds later, the female holo-spy was standing in the center of the room.

A couple of the Secret Service men dropped their guns, stunned at the apparition. The President looked very startled, to say the least.

"Gordon, is this some kind of—"

But the President never finished his sentence. The holo-girl interrupted him.

"This is no joke," she told the President sternly, as Gordon had asked her to do. "What is happening here is real. Hard to believe, maybe, but real. You must come to grips with it."

The President's face went from pale to beet red.

"Is this
our
technology?" he demanded of Gordon.

The CIA man shook his head no. "This technology is actually from the very distant past. And a complicated one at that. We've spent the entire day trying to understand each other. Her extent of this knowledge is somewhat limited. But please, sir, listen to what she has to say."

The President shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was not quite the sort of paranormal crap he'd been expecting.

"All right," he finally croaked. "By all means, go ahead."

The holo-girl snapped her fingers, and a three-dimensional map of outer space appeared in the air in front of her—another startling moment for the President and his security men. The map showed a star system with a yellow sun and many planets orbiting it, virtually along the same orbital plane.

"Your planet, all the planets in this system, even the star itself, are all part of an enormous prison," the holo-spy began. "This system was engineered thousands of years ago and towed way out here in what was, and still is, considered unknown space. Your decedents were transported here against their will, and space guards were hired to keep them from escaping. They did this by intentionally slowing down the rate by which your society would develop. The people who programmed me believed that every planet in this system was encompassed in a time bubble. Time bubbles do not stop time completely, but they do slow it down drastically. This would explain why you are less advanced than just about every other place in the Galaxy. However ..."

She paused for a moment, eyes darting back and forth, obviously accessing other memory circuits.

".... even though you are probably being held back by this constraint, there have been times in your history when you have reached a certain pinnacle of advancement. When that happens, the people who imprisoned you here send their hired guards to wipe you out. They turn your civilization over as if it never happened, leaving very few survivors. Then you start life all over again."

The President's face was ashen by this time. His security team looked the same way.

"Why are you in prison?" she went on. "I don't know. I was not programmed with that information. Why didn't this oppressive civilization just kill you off eons ago? Again, I am not programmed to know. I do know they never wanted you to know why you are here or even that you were in a prison at all."

She paused. The President began fumbling for words.

"Do they come without warning?" he finally asked her. "These periodic apocalypses?"

The holo-spy's eyes began darting back and forth again. Accessing ...

"One event triggers it," she said. "I am not programmed to know beyond that. It is a milestone, a technology advance of some kind. If anyone in this system manages to pass it, your doomsday is cued to strike. Automatically."

"But who is behind this?" the President demanded to know. "Who imposed such things on us?"

It was the most important question of all.

But the holo-spy just shook her head.

"I'm sorry I'm not programmed with more information on the subject. My memory circuits can't even tell me how / got here. My last activation was at a classified briefing regarding a combat-imminent situation within this system. I was told I'd be going into action on this planet. This could indicate that a battle
was
fought here several thousand years ago. An attempt to break you out. A futile one, for sure, though. Had it been successful, your civilization would have progressed to the point where you would have left this place a long time ago."

Silence descended on the Oval Office. If what the holograph was saying proved accurate, then the planet's culture, already a bit weird, would be turned completely on its head. But could this really be? Had the people of this planet been prisoners for more than three thousand years? Kept here by some unknown power, all without ever realizing it? Even worse, had someone not had the foresight, three millennia before, to carefully hide the artifacts that the CIA and others before them had uncovered, would all of this have been unknown to them forever?

It was a bit hard to swallow.

Finally, the President addressed the holo-spy directly.

"Are you asking me to believe that all this time someone has been watching us from ...
out there
! Keeping us penned within an invisible jail? Anchored to this planet? For thousands of years? How would that be possible?"

The holo-girl began accessing again. Then she put her finger across the 3-D map and drew a series of circles above the planets that stretched to infinity. The meaning was clear. These were the mysterious heavenly bodies.

"That's what these things are for," she said simply.

Everyone shifted uncomfortably. The President looked up at Gordon.