Wormholes (30 page)

They rested for a moment, then their extreme thirst re-exerting itself, staggered to their feet and continued down the trail. The scalding wind brought the sounds of animals all about them, but the lights came back on, so they felt safe. Soon they heard rushing water and came upon a stream. Without thought of what else might be at the water hole, they waded in. It was like a warm bath, but it cooled their overheated bodies. They gulped the water, tasting the tang of iron and other minerals. They sat down in the rushing stream, allowing it to bring them back to life.

It was darker here, so once he had recovered, Cameron switched on his light, playing it around. They were in a wide spot in the stream, which came gushing out of a canyon in the mountain above. It was swollen, no doubt by the nightly downpours.

“Y’know, I just figured it out,” he shouted back over the low whistling sound the wind made through the canyon. “This whole thing isn’t much more dangerous than walkin’ through Watts on Saturday night. I grew up there, and some of the low-lifes there are worse than these low-slung motherfuckers with the eyeballs.”

Dacey lay back in the warm water, taking another drink. She could feel stinging all over her body from the cuts.

Cameron waded upstream and shone his light around. His white shorts and undershirt seemed to float in mid air, because his dark body was invisible in the blackness.

A high-pitched shriek rose above them, and he shone his light upward. His beam was immediately answered by another larger one that lit his entire glistening body and a circle of rushing brown water around him. For an instant, Dacey thought it might be a helicopter; the light was the same. But she saw a huge dark animate form descend toward Cameron.

Cameron shouted in alarm and struck out with his flashlight as the shape hovered over him, spreading leviathan wings. Dacey leaped up and waded toward him, but a large leathery wing knocked her over, and she was underwater being carried downstream. She struggled back to her feet, her head breaking the surface to hear Cameron screaming.

“
NO!
” she bellowed. “
NO!
” She struggled forward to the flailing dark forms and found a hold on the creature’s back and swung the flashlight with all her might, finding bone. She swung again and again. The huge flying creature was rising, its massive wings beating, its lungs making deep whooshing sounds, and she knew it was powerful enough to carry Cameron away. The animal’s broad wings caught the wind and she felt it lifting him.

A blinding light struck them all, more brilliant than she could imagine. She shut her eyes against it, her hand losing its grip on the creature, which kicked her with a powerful hind limb. She sprawled back onto the shore. There was a roar of animal pain from directly above and she felt a hot sticky liquid covering her. She was aware of the hole hovering overhead. Its lethal edge had worked in their favor!

A chunk of what felt like internal organ struck her shoulder and slithered off. She heard a splash nearby and a moan, but still she could not open her eyes to the blinding light.

“Dacey!” The voice from above was Gerald’s. She felt a gloved hand on her bare arm.

“Jimmy,” she panted. “Where’s Jimmy?”

“We’re getting him. Just come on.” She felt the rung of a ladder and drew from the last reserves of her strength to pull herself up. She felt the framework around her, and hands pulling her into a stillness she had forgotten was possible. She was in the chamber, her ears still roaring from the wind. She opened her eyes and saw two space suited figures taking her arms and helping her toward the airlock. She resisted, turning to make sure Cameron had made it, too. Sure enough, a third suited figure was helping him climb down the ladder and through the hole. The suited figure clasped his glove tightly on Cameron’s shoulder, blood dripping from it. Dacey wriggled free and directed the two with her to take Cameron into the airlock first. They did, and one returned for her.

“We’ve got you, Dacey. You’re back.”

She saw Gerald’s smiling face through the faceplate. She allowed herself to sink into the enfolding arms.

I
n the void beyond the Earth’s moon, there was at first absolute stillness. Then a swirl of faint luminescence signaled a change in the fabric of space-time. Starlight shimmered and warped as it passed through the small region. The magnetic field of Earth encouraged the weakness to blossom into a tiny passage. The passage opened, became a spherical hole. But a profound strangeness existed on the other side.

No stars showed through, but anti-stars. No planets, but anti-planets. No galaxies, but anti-galaxies. A tiny mote of the anti-matter found its way through the hole and touched a minute speck of its counterpart matter. A massive explosion launched waves of intense radiation streaming into space, heralding the arrival of the new, deadly visitor.

• • •

Although the isolation mask covered Gerald’s mouth, Dacey could tell his expression from the eyes. She’d become used to reading his eyes when he’d had his beard. He was grinning like an idiot, which told her that she was going to be fine. She had just opened her eyes from a deep sleep, thanks to the tranquilizer. The intravenous tube was still in her arm, dripping in a saline solution to hydrate her and antibiotics for any possible infections. The bandages were still on her arms where the animals had torn her skin. She could feel the tug of the tape elsewhere on her body when she shifted, but the painkillers had done their work well.

George, also masked and gowned in isolation garb, held her left hand gently, checking the status of the
IV
needle. She knew it was just an excuse to hold her hand. The old dear had been fussing over her since she was brought in. He’d called in some old favors, and she and Cameron had been examined by some of the best infectious disease specialists in the country.

“You look like a happy camper,” she said woozily to Gerald, smiling up at him from the bed. She brushed a stray hair from her forehead. “Too bad you can’t take that mask off and give us a kiss.”

He took her other hand in his, and without looking, she could tell it was rubber-gloved, as was George’s.

George finished his check, patted her hand and laid it on the sheet. “The people from the Centers for Disease Control said thirty days’ isolation. No arguments or they shut us down. There’s a gentleman here now checking us out.”

“Yeah, but is he listening to the exobiologists?” She turned to Gerald. “They’ve said the chances of some alien bug infecting a human are essentially zero. Different evolution; different biochemistry.”

“I’m working on them to get you time off for good behavior,” said George. He patted her hand one more time and then ambled out of the room.

“Hey, I just got good news,” she pressed the button to bring the motorized bed up more to a sitting position. “My chairman at the university called. I’ve been made a full professor.”

“So, the trip was worth it?” asked Gerald

Her face grew sober with the memory. “How’s Jimmy?”

“He’s awake. Lost a lot of blood, but George says he’s okay. Want to see him?”

She nodded and swung her legs over the side of the bed, revealing more bandages. She stood, feeling slightly dizzy from the effort, and Gerald held her arm. He helped her with her robe and she rolled her
IV
stand into the connecting room of the base infirmary. The two rooms had been sealed from the outside world by an army biowarfare team and certified by the
CDC
. But since Dacey and Cameron shared whatever germs they’d picked up on the planet, they were allowed to see each other without isolation garb.

Cameron lay on the bed, his thin dark arms resting limply on the white sheet that covered him. A large bandage enwrapped his shoulder and another obscured half his face. George and another doctor, a tall balding man with an easy manner, had just finished an examination of him and were stepping into a plastic chamber outside the room to be disinfected.

Beside Cameron’s bed sat a slim black woman wearing the same blue isolation cap, gown and gloves as Gerald. She had dark almond eyes that were puffy from weeping. She looked up, but didn’t leave his side.

“Phyllis, how’s he doing?”

Cameron opened his eyes and answered. “I figured out my revenge,” he mumbled. “I’m going to eat chicken every day for the rest of my life.” Dacey laughed, which only spurred him on. “I guess we showed that bird, or whatever the hell it was, not to try dark meat.”

Phyllis tossed her head and rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “God, Jimmy, you just never give up, do you?”

“No, he doesn’t, thank God,” Dacey moved her
IV
stand up near him and sat down tiredly in the chair on the other side of the bed.

“Only thing I wish is that we brought back those samples,” said Cameron.

“I was waiting for you to wake up and tell you,” Dacey straightened up, color returning to her cheeks. “We got bunches of samples.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, remember when the hole scooped up that dirt? Then we got some good soil and vegetation samples.”

“Outstanding!”

“And remember when the hole sliced the bird … or whatever it was? They found body parts in the chamber. Tissue samples, parts of organs, stomach contents. It’s all a little mixed up, but it’ll keep zoologists busy for a long damned time.”

“Excellent! We’ll go back. We can go back. How’s the hole?” The news was having the desired effect. Cameron was returning to his old self.

“Stable,” said Gerald. “I just came from the control room. The fields are holding it open. When they’re steady, it’s fine. It almost …” he stopped. No use bringing up the fact that the hole had almost closed. They could see Cameron’s eyelids beginning to grow heavy, so Dacey kissed him and hugged Phyllis, and they prepared to leave.

“Say …” Cameron opened one eye. “If you see Calvin, give him the bad news. Tell him I’m gonna be okay. That’ll make his day.”

Dacey gave him a brow-knitted, scolding smile and shook her head. Back in her room, Gerald helped her into bed, but stood there for a moment without saying anything. Again, she could read his eyes, the awkward stance of his body.

“What’s up? What’s happened?”

“I guess I should tell you. Yesterday, just after we got you back, we got a report from
NASA
. They’ve detected another gamma ray burst. Intense and close.”

“What from?”

“An antimatter hole.”

“In the solar system?”

“Worse. Near earth. They also got an optical flash that gave them a location. It appears to have been spawned by earth’s magnetic tail. It’s being drawn toward earth, coming up along the field lines.”

“Jesus. Oh God.” She lay back in the bed, feeling a shudder run through her. “You were right. They wouldn’t listen.”

“I shouldn’t have told you now.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We don’t know. We know magnetic fields open these holes up. We know energy or magnetic fluctuations somehow close them. But we don’t know enough. We’re inviting everybody here to talk.” He sat down on her bed, his body slumping with fatigue. “We just don’t know enough.”

• • •

Dacey spent the next few days watching television, frustrated at not being able to help with the massive mobilization of scientific talent the news reported. All the networks had preempted programming to cover the approach of the “anti-hole.” They followed every detail of the events. She saw aerial shots of dozens of planes with markings from as many countries lining the sprawling runway of the Deus base. She watched the live coverage of the hastily-called symposium in one of the hangars. After a greeting by satellite from a somber president, the world’s leading physicists spoke of the immense danger from the anti-hole and their attempts to devise some way to stop it. On large video screens in the hangar, Chinese scientists also conferred via satellite, in halting English revealing the data on their captured hole, hoping that the combined information would yield some insight.

And in the middle of it all was Gerald, whose warnings were now seen as tragically accurate. In the news conferences, his grim, drawn face revealed that he had conceived of no possible way to avert the approaching hole.

The words that the scientists used horrified the world. They warned of cataclysm, Armageddon, the end of life, the end of Earth.

The cameras roamed the globe capturing the effects of the news. They panned across vast crowds of Muslims gathered in Mecca, of Catholics at the Vatican, of Jews in Jerusalem, of congregations gathered in football stadiums across America. All raised their voices in prayer for deliverance from the approaching celestial monster. Still others claimed the anti-hole was divine retribution for mankind’s sins, or the final triumph of Satan.

The cameras showed the riots, bloody desperate acts by people who had no outlet for their fear other than violence against those around them. They showed people sprawled in the street, dead of bullet wounds, rifles clutched in their hands.

Others took action against the hole, however irrational. In India, troops killed dozens of people storming a missile base, trying against all logic to commandeer a missile to launch at the anti-hole. In Russia, mobs ransacked the archives of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, when a rumor spread that secret data stored there revealed the hole to be an old Soviet weapon.

At the Deus base, cameras showed the arrival of army troops and tanks to guard against the possibility of riots by the crowds in the sprawling encampment that had grown outside the base perimeter. The television reporters interviewed the desperate people, who lined the fence in hopes that somehow being near the scientists would save them. Some demanded that they be allowed to enter the other universe to safety. Others charged that one hole had attracted the other, and that the whole thing was some sinister plot among the scientists.

And most frightening of all, the cameras showed telescope images of the brilliant flashes in the night sky that marked anti-matter emerging from the hole to meet matter in an explosive embrace. The blasts emitted a vicious cascade of gamma rays, fortunately stopped by the earth’s upper atmosphere.

The flashes were growing brighter as the hole approached. Now they were as bright as Venus. Soon they would be as bright as the moon, then blinding. Then deadly.

Throughout, the cameras showed the scientists debating, sometimes angrily, over how to stop the anti-hole. But they were in bleak agreement about its future. Unless by some miracle the anti-hole closed, they grimly concluded, it would catch up to Earth. And almost inevitably, the hole would encounter the anti-world or anti-star that had opened it on the other side. The lethal anti-matter would spew through into this universe, meeting matter; and the titanic explosion would at the very least devastate Earth, but most likely would vaporize it.

As the data grew to a mountainous confirmation of the menace, Gerald tortured himself with the belief that there existed an answer somewhere in the mass of information. If only he were smart enough; if only he worked hard enough, he would find it. He visited Dacey in the hospital as often as he could. She needed the visits, but he needed them more, as if merely holding her hand gave him a resolve to continue.

Then on the fourth night, he appeared at her bedside in the darkness. She was immersed in a deep sleep, but since she had begun refusing her sleeping pills, she came instantly awake at the touch of his hand on her shoulder. He wore no mask when he leaned down and whispered into her ear.

“I need you.”

She knew immediately it was not the whisper of a man needing a woman. It was the urgent whisper of a man in the grip of an idea.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I’ve had an idea! Andy thinks it’ll work. We’ll need everybody to convince Calvin, though. You seem to have some pull with him. Are you okay?”

“Hell, I’ve been okay! I want to get out of here.” She rolled out of bed, found the clothes that had been brought for her, slipped off her hospital gown and began putting them on. “There’s a problem, though. There’s a guard outside, just in case Jimmy or I get antsy.”

Gerald stopped, pondering about what to do next. The guard had readily allowed him in as a visitor, but in his excitement, he hadn’t even considered the problem of getting Dacey out. But she needed only the time it required to finish buttoning her shirt and fastening her jeans to come up with a solution. She slipped on her sneakers and quickly tied them, then gestured for Gerald to remain in her room. She slipped through the connecting door to Cameron’s room. Within a minute she was back. She quickly rolled up spare blankets and stuffed them under the bedsheet to give a semblance of a sleeping form. She motioned for him to follow her to the door leading to the hall. She stood there in silence, bobbing her head in a rhythmic counting of seconds, her long hair swaying with each count. Then she stopped.

A blood-curdling scream erupted from the next room shattering the nighttime quiet. Dacey listened at the hall door for a response. She smiled at the sound of the guard and the nurses rushing into Cameron’s room.

“Jimmy’s a great actor,” she whispered.

They slipped into the hallway of the old infirmary and hurried away to the rusty metal staircase down to the wooden door and out into the desert night. Dacey felt the remaining bandages on her legs pull as she ran, but otherwise, she felt fine.