Dante's Equation Part 29

Sixty or so big, round eyes blinked at him.

"I hope you guys are friendly. I come in peace? Does that mean anything to you? No? Didn't think so. Maybe you have a town around here, huh?" Denton smiled hard. Nothing.

He was afraid. It wasn't as though he wasn't. But, he rea.s.sured himself, they didn'tlook dangerous. They weren't carrying weapons or anything. And he could probably take a couple of the guys at a time if he had to, they were so slight. As for that silliness back there about the trees and the blood, well, he already knewthat was just stupid.

Even so, his every bunny instinct wanted to run away. But his fear of being alone won out. True, these things were not human. But they wore clothes and had campfires. They made paths and had females and, hey, if this was the only scene on the planet, Denton was willing to adapt.

"Here," he said, taking off his watch. It had been a gift from his mother, which meant it was expensive. It was platinum, though at the moment he wished it were flas.h.i.+er. Yellow gold, perhaps, with diamonds.

He held it out to no one in particular. "A gift. Take it."

They looked at it. Denton stood there holding it out, feeling scaredand foolish.

Then one of the males reached out and took it. He looked it over, mildly curious, then pa.s.sed it along. It made the rounds.

"Denton," Denton said, pointing to himself. He smiled harder, though his teeth were still chattery.

"Allook saheed," one of the men said.

"Allook saheed!" The words rumbled happily through the group, and then he was being patted and smiled at and offered pieces of fruit that had materialized from nowhere.

Denton Wyle had found a home.

14.2. Denton Wyle

Calder Farris opened his eyes to a nightmare. Somehow, someway, he'd gotten himself into the middle of a battlefield. He wasted only seconds on confusion. His body had been in war before and it took control, shoving away anything irrelevant to survival like, for example, questions about what the f.u.c.k he was doing here.

He began panting, heart pumping fresh blood double-time, nerves responding to the fire alarm, all systems go. Stress kills, but bullets kill quicker. The body makes the expedient choice.

It was daylight, but the light was dim from smoke and heavy cloud cover. There was an icy drizzle that struck his face and hands like tiny chips of ice flung hard. It wasfreezing . All around him were the explosions of heavy artillery and the crack of rifles. He saw no one, had no idea where he was in relation to the line, but the sound of bullets whizzing through the air told him he was not anyplace he wanted to be.

He dropped to the frost-crusted earth, began crawling on his belly, stopped. Which way? Was he crawlingtoward the enemy or away from them?

Who was the enemy?

The fact that he knew none of these things caused a moment of panic. He got it under rigid control and began crawling perpendicular to the shots, hoping to work his way out the side of the line. He elbowed his way past a corpse wearing a thick, heavy uniform in a silver color. He paused to look at it, hoping for information. The jacket was well made and was decorated with elaborate insignia he didn't recognize.At all. He blinked at it for a moment, stupidly, then grabbed the rifle from the dead man's hands. Long barrel, foreign. He didn't stop to examine it, just kept crawling.

Two ma.s.sive explosions battered his eardrums and sent earthen projectiles into the air, hitting his back. It was only dirt, but it was moving fast enough to cut. Blood dripped into an eye.

Voices shouted. He didn't recognize the language. He saw shadowy figures moving to his right. The line was advancing. He crawled faster.

The panic was returning, slowly, but with every intent to stay this time. He knew he wasn't dreaming. The smell and sounds of war were too real; the physical sensations of the ground and of his own body, too real. And he had no idea where he was or why. He had just been . . .

Tracking Dr. Talcott through the woods. Had that happened years ago? Had a head injury erased his memory of more recent events, like this war? He hazarded a glance down at himself. If he belonged in this battle, why was he still dressed in civilian clothes? In his blacktrench coat ?

He heard movement to his left-the advancing line, close now, and he was right in its path. He looked around desperately and saw a mounded darkness a few feet away that he prayed was a bunker. He reached out to grope its perimeters and slipped inside like a snake. It was a tiny hole and thankfully empty. Troops were creeping up on all sides, stealthy, moving low. He shrank down inside the hole, his breath steaming against the frosted dirt near his face.

Oh G.o.d, he was terrified. Absolutely f.u.c.king terrified. He felt a rising urge to scream and had to use all of his training to get it under control. His eyes darted, ears strained. He could figure this out, G.o.dd.a.m.n it. He just needed information.

He picked up two voices nearby, speaking in hushed whispers. Through the smoke, he detected two men crouching together, a flash of silver uniforms, heavy braids on a shoulder. He recognized the scene-it was a commander giving orders for the advance. But he didn't recognize the uniforms or the language. It wasn't the U.S. Army, so he must be behind enemy lines. How the h.e.l.l had he gotten behind enemy lines?

A freezing current of wind cleared the smoke a little and he saw the two figures clearly. Caucasian, very Caucasian, with white-blond hair. They wore heavy black boots, highly polished, with a square-toed design. Their uniforms were similar to the one on the corpse.

Words wafted to him between explosions. He strained to identify them. Not German. Not Russian. Not Serbian. . . . Not Arabic. Not Chinese.

Fear shot through him then, a whole new level of it, deep and churning in his bowels. He had been f.u.c.king trained by the f.u.c.kingPentagon . Anyone dressed in uniforms of this quality, this organized of an army, thiswhite of an army, carrying heavy artillery like this-he should recognize the d.a.m.n language.

He must have made a sound. The officer's head swiveled toward him, eyes searching the gloom.

Calder panicked. He slipped from the hole and began running. He knew he didn't have a prayer, but it still was a shock when the mortar hit, blasting the earth beneath his feet.

And then he was flying through the air like Superman, mind peculiarly free.

14.3. Seventy-Thirty Jill Talcott

"Jump!" Jill screamed.

They were not in Poland, not in the snowy woods, not in the dark, but on some red rock plateau in the middle of a hot and sunny desert. That in itself was strange enough, but they were also surrounded by enormous insects. The insects were as large as medium-sized dogs, heads antennaed like ants, and entirely disgusting. Their iridescent eyes mirrored Jill and Nate like a semicircle of fun-house mirrors as they backed toward the edge of the plateau.

Nate followed Jill's glance behind them. It was a good thirty-foot drop to the desert floor and he was already cradling an injured arm. "Are you nuts? We'll break something. We'll breakeverything."

But the insects were advancing, their flanks swinging in, and Jill had no intention of letting those things get any closer.

She grabbed Nate's hand and launched herself off the cliff.

"Not that arm!" he screamed in pain as they fell through the air.

They landed hard on the sand-but not that hard. "What the . . . ?" Nate had even managed to keep his feet, his right arm protectively cupping his left. "Shouldn't we be lunch meat? And weren't we just in snow? You aren't a figment of my imagination, are you?"

"Why can't you be a figment ofmyimagination?" "Good. It must be you; I'd never say that." Jill, who had three different kinds of Raid under her sink at home, was busy looking up. The insects had been peeking over the edge of the cliff at them, but now they retreated, presumably coming down the easy way. She took Nate's good arm to get him walking.

"How'd you know we could make that jump?" he asked.

"Can't you feel it? Low gravity." There was a catch of excitement in her voice. Nate waved his good arm, jumped up, and settled back down with magical sluggishness. "Jesus! I thought I was just light-headed. Jill, what the heck is going on? You don't suppose we could be . . . You don't think we're . . ."

"Dead?" "That's the word I was looking for, yes." She shook her head firmly. "Not possible. Thereisno life after death." "Right," Nate said ironically. "I forgot." The insects appeared around the bend at the base of the plateau, moving in formation. Jill pulled Nate forward, both of them stumbling over their floating feet.

They found the reason for their reception committee not far away. The plateau was near a colony of the giant insects. The structure was built from the reddish sand, hardened with saliva or water. It was the size of a football field, its walls folding upward in narrowing bands like a wedding cake. Round holes in the walls opened into tunnels. The entire thing had a mathematical precision and, seeing it, Jill thought the creatures must be intelligent. Then she realized that insect nests on Earth had this kind of logic, too-anthills, for example. She'd just never seen one on this scale.

Heads were popping out of the tunnels. Insects dropped down from the structure to approach them, and their vanguard was creeping in. Jill knew she should move instead of standing there staring, but for once in her life she was completely at a loss.

"Uh, I don't think there's a phone in there," Nate said. "Can we go? Not that I want to rush you."

She blinked. The insects were getting close enough that she could see herself in their eyes.

She and Nate backed away. A thousand eyes watched every move. After they'd put some distance between themselves and the colony they turned and began walking away as fast as they could in the resistanceless air. On all sides there was nothing but open desert. The insects, in stealthy movements, followed.

Jill's watch had stopped. Nate didn't have one. They walked for what felt like hours, saying little. There was too much to absorb to try to box it up, make it tidy enough for conversation. Although walking was disturbingly easy, it had to be over a hundred degrees and there was no shade to speak of. Shock kept Jill going. Her neck began to ache from turning to look behind her so often. Their escort fell away, little by little, until the last determined survivor of the regiment stood and watched them go. Long after it had faded from view, Jill couldn't resist turning to look, just to be sure.

It was on one of these insect-checking rounds that she saw it-a sun rising on the far side of the desert. She looked back in front of her, where the sun that had cooked them all day was just starting to set, looked behind her, looked ahead, stopped walking.

A sound escaped her lips then-not so much his name as a sigh.

Nate turned and saw it, too. The second sun looked as though it would be huge. It peeked over the horizon, ripe as a plum, its egg-yolk gold filmed by a s.h.i.+mmering, hazy red.

"For G.o.d's sake, Jill. Whereare we?"

She shook her head mutely.I don't know.

For a long while they stood there, marveling at the sunrise until the sun was high enough, and bright enough, to hurt their eyes. And then, finally, she looked athim , at poor Nate, and saw what she should have seen earlier, had she not been so lost in her own head. He was holding his left arm and trembling with fatigue. His olive face was pale and drawn with pain.

"G.o.d, Nate, I didn't think. Let's take a break."

He didn't argue-a sure sign that he was hurting pretty bad. She pointed the way to a jumble of rocks and hovered, concerned, while he settled himself on a baked dry boulder.

"How is it? We'd better take a look."

He attempted to roll up his sleeve, but it was too tight. He unb.u.t.toned his blue s.h.i.+rt and took some time in removing it. Jill waited, trying not to show her discomfort at the sight and texture of his skin. She squatted at his side and actually missed the sensation of heavy weightedness that normally came with resting. She was hot and sweaty and a deep sense of lethargy was settling into her bones, as if she were coming down with the flu. She noted all of this in a detached way, then noted the detachment. It was dangerous. The shock could undo them even if the terrain didn't. She had to stay alert.

Whatever was wrong with the arm, it wasn't visible from the outside. Blue s.h.i.+rt draped over his knees, Nate held the limb out for examination.

"Can you bend it?"

"Yeah. It's not broken." He touched the muscles tenderly with his fingertips. "It's more like I pulled it. The muscles are really stiff."

She reached out her hand to touch him as well but hesitated. Stupid.She wouldn't be able to tell if his muscles were stiff just by feeling them.

"Look at that." Nate pointed to her hand. On the back of her right hand, aligned in a row, were deep purple bruises. Nate put his injured hand-moving his arm very slowly-into hers. His fingers lined up exactly with the stains. He met her eyes.

"Wild. You don't remember it, do you?"

She shook her head. The feeling of his hand in hers, hot and moist, increased her nauseous sense of heatstroke. "I had your hand and you went after the ma.n.u.script. I tried to pull you back and then-jeez, I thought it was a bomb-I felt this incredible force yanking you away, so I held on as tight as I could. I thought my arm was gonna come out of its socket." "Why didn't you just let go?"

He shrugged, his eyes not meeting hers. "Dunno. Instinct, I guess." She extracted her hand and rubbed his moisture from her palm. "We ought to be able to make a sling from your sweats.h.i.+rt."

He'd removed it miles back and tied it around his waist. She knotted the wrists of the sweats.h.i.+rt together and it made an adequate support. She caused him some pain getting him into it-awkward as ever at touching him-but he looked relieved when it was done.

Then they both sat numbly. "What happened, Jill?" Nate started the inevitable conversation with some reluctance. She looked back the way they'd come, anxiety and excitement roiling in her belly. She'd been thinking about it for hours but wasn't quite ready to share those thoughts.

Nate said, in a half-mocking tone, "Remember that section of Kobinski's ma.n.u.script Aharon read to us on the plane? That whole thing about 'microscopic black holes'? You don't suppose . . ." Jill nodded, completely serious. "What else can we think? What I don't get is this: even if there are subatomic black holes, an idea which we obviously can't completely dismiss since we don't appear to be on Earth anymore, how could something like that transport the two of us and leave us whole and alive?"

Nate thought about it. "Quantum leap?" Jill chewed on a fingernail. She didn't like the answer but didn't have a better one. "Or," Nate added, getting into it, "since matter is essentially energy waves in the fifth dimension, maybe our energy waves were what were transferred and we simply 'reprojected' here. Kind of like

aStar Trek teleporter?" They looked at each other doubtfully. There was no answer to that, nothing that wasn't embarra.s.sing to even speculate. Neither of them said anything for a while.

"I was thinking. . . ." Jill cleared her throat self-consciously. "I wonder if the black hole-if that's what it was-was discovered through Kobinski's work on the one-minus-one?"

Nate didn't comment.

"The ma.n.u.script might be able to tell us. If we had it."

"The ma.n.u.script!" Nate looked around, as if they might find it lying on the ground. "You'resure it's not here? I mean back there, where we, um, came in?"

"No. It was the first thing I looked for." She shook her head impatiently. "Did you hear what I said, Nate? Using one-minus-one technology, Kobinski figured out how to travel through s.p.a.ce-time!"

"He was working on alot of things, from the look of it."

"Yeah, and it's all one-minus-one technology, Nate! Think about it!"

Nate wasn't nearly as excited as she expected him to be. He rubbed a hand through his close-cropped hair, his face unreadable. "What about the others-Rabbi Handalman, Anatoli?"

She shrugged. "Back on Earth probably." She thought of her bruised hand, and it occurred to her:You'd probably be there, too, Nate, if you had let go . She gazed up at him in surprise, but he didn't appear to be thinking anything of the sort. He yawned.

"I hate to be a wet blanket, but theorizing isn't going to get us food, water, or shelter, and this place isn't exactly a 7-Eleven. The only thing I've seen which looks remotely edible is those giant bugs, and frankly . . ."

Jill couldn't imagine it, either, but looking at the desert landscape, she thought they were lucky to have the bugs. Water was an even bigger issue. She was already parched.

"Let's go a little further," she suggested. "Maybe we'll find something. Can you walk?"

"Of course." But he gritted his teeth as he got up.

They'd walked a short distance when Nate spoke again. His voice was deliberately casual, as it always was when something was important to him. "Say, do you think there's any chance we can get back home?"

"I don't know," Jill answered, just as casually. She picked up her pace so she wouldn't have to see the look on his face.

The second sun was almost mid-sky when they saw the City. At first it looked like a mirage, unsubstantial as dust swirling above the desert floor. Their steps quickened-his, then hers-but they said nothing, each wanting to spare the other false hopes. Step by step, the phantom took form.

The outline of the City stretched for miles. Nothing led up to it; it was simply there, in the middle of the flat desert plain. There were no freeways leading in or out, no traffic on the streets inside the City or in the air above. There was a low wall around the perimeter that appeared to be made of polished red rock. A break in the wall led onto a smooth, paved street. There was no gate where the road met the sand; it simply terminated in a straight edge at the desert. Inside and outside: two sides of a coin.

The ma.s.s of the City was made up of buildings-white high-tech boxes as nondescript as children's blocks. They were all exactly the same shade of white, and there was nothing to distinguish one from another except a variance in height and width. Windows were small and few, dark and blank as shark's eyes. The street grid had an extreme orderliness, as if someone had neatly lined up the buildings, row upon row, with a ruler and plumb line.