The Fold: A Novel Part 28

"You wouldn't," said Mike. He pointed back at the spinning red lights. "The Door's never open without all the warning lights on. They became part of it. You didn't see the lights, so you didn't look to see if it was actually closed."

"But it has to be recent," said Sasha. "We were looking at it just the other day. It wasn't open when we stripped the whole thing down."

"And it wasn't open when Bob died," added Olaf.

"It closed after Jamie came through," said Mike. "I was right up there on the walkway. So it just happened now. Why?"

"The last straw?" suggested Sasha. "If it was going to happen, it had to happen sometime. Why not now?"

They heard the echo of the door hiss. Olaf glanced over his shoulder. Mike looked at the rings. The sound had come from the other side of the room.

From the other room.

Quick footsteps echoed from Site B. Neil appeared on the far side of the three rings. "Oh, h.e.l.l," he said.

Mike toed the ramp. "You see us?"

"Clear as day. It's just like the Door's open, except..."

"It's open," said Mike. "What do the instruments there say?"

Neil slid into the chair at a workstation and his eyes flitted back and forth across the screen. "Everything here says the Door is shut down. Power's at zero, field is at zero, no program running, nothing."

"f.u.c.k," Sasha said again.

"What," said Olaf, "did you think everything there would say it was turned on?"

"Maybe," she said. She tapped her own screen with two fingers. "It could've been an instrument problem."

Neil was looking at them through the rings. "So," he said, "definitely not an afterimage."

Mike pointed at the ramp. "You see the coins?"

Neil's eyes flitted to the quarter, then around the floor. "A couple of them."

"They look okay?"

He shrugged. "They look like coins. I can't really tell from here." He took a step toward one of the dimes.

"Don't touch them," said Mike. "Not yet."

Sasha's back pocket let out a musical chirp. Mike recognized it as the Star Trek communicator sound. She tugged out her phone. "Arthur," she said. "Asking what's going on. Should I ignore it?"

"If you ignore it, he'll think something's wrong," Olaf said.

"Something is wrong."

"Just ask him if Jamie's with the doctor," said Mike. "And then get up to the control room. See what everything says there."

She nodded and walked away, head bent to her phone. Mike noticed she typed with her thumbs. The door hissed open and thumped shut.

"Neil," said Olaf.

"Yeah?" Neil raised his head up and peered through the rings.

"I want you to count with me, just to make sure this isn't some kind of residual image on either side. Count to five, one Mississippi between each number, starting right now."

"One," they said in unison. "Two. Three. Four. Five."

"d.a.m.n," Olaf said.

Mike looked at him. "Any other ideas?"

"A few," said Olaf. His mouth was a flat line below his eyes. They flitted from the Door to his screen and back again. "We're going to need to run all our basic tests again. Baseball. Maybe even animals."

"Once we hear back about Jamie," said Mike. "Once we know it's safe."

TWENTY-EIGHT.

"Well," said Arthur. "This is quite interesting."

He crouched at the top of the ramp in Site B and looked through the three rings at Mike and Olaf. He'd insisted on checking all the readings himself, in the control room and at each Door. Neil sat at one of the stations behind him. The one with Jamie's sweats.h.i.+rt on it.

On the floor by Neil were the ends of the power cables. He'd disconnected all five in each building and dragged the ends away. The bulky connectors looked like soup cans with spikes sticking out of the center. The Door hadn't even flickered.

"You never thought something like this could happen?" asked Mike.

Arthur traded a quick look with Olaf. "Never."

Mike closed his eyes and sighed.

"Sorry," said Arthur. "It's just force of habit. Anything that touches on our core research."

"I think it's time to forget about keeping secrets."

"I'm not sure I agree."

"In the past week, you've had one person die, one person risk her life, and I think it's safe to say you've now messed with the structure of reality," said Mike. "No more secrets."

"Don't be melodramatic," Arthur said. "It doesn't suit you."

"He does have a point," said Olaf. "Maybe it's time we come-"

Arthur glared at him and raised a finger. "No."

Mike looked between them. "Come...clean? About what?"

"A poor choice of words on Olaf's part, I'm sure," Arthur said.

Olaf pressed his lips together and nodded. He turned and walked back to his station.

Mike looked through the rings at Arthur. "So how do you want to do this? Olaf suggested going all the way back to basics, but I thought we should wait until we had more news about Ja-"

Arthur reached out and plucked the quarter from the walkway.

"Jesus," said Mike.

"Is there a problem?" asked Arthur.

"Seriously, do you have any concept of safety at all?"

"It's just a quarter." He straightened up and held the coin between his finger and thumb. George Was.h.i.+ngton's profile gleamed in the light. It was one of the old ones, before they were state themed.

"Which could be radioactive, for all you know."

"Unlikely."

"Not according to Bob's autopsy."

Arthur gave Mike a look. The Look. Mike used it as a teacher, but Arthur wielded it at professor-strength levels. He tossed the coin in his hand. "No burns," he said. "No heat at all. It's a bit cool, in fact."

"We should still examine it."

"We will." Arthur glanced up. "How many other coins did you toss, Sasha?"

Her voice thundered down from the control room. "I think there's three or four more. Two dimes, a nickel, two or three pennies. Plus Mike threw one, too."

"Another quarter," said Mike, rubbing his temple. "It should be against the far wall."

"We'll collect them all and check them for...well, everything. Olaf," he called out, "we still have a Geiger counter somewhere, don't we?"

"I think so."

"I've got it," Neil said. He pointed at the rings. "It's in the supply closet back on the main floor. We were using it to check for leaks in the s.h.i.+elding after Bob's...after the incident."

Arthur nodded.

Mike looked around the platform. "Maybe we should establish a safe distance from the rings."

"We've done that," said Arthur. He closed his hand around the quarter and gestured at the white lines.

"Maybe we should establish a new safe distance," Mike said, "while we figure out how this is happening."

Arthur's eyes flitted from the lines up to the rings and back. "You may be right," he said.

"Thank you." Mike turned to look at Olaf. "Do you think you could map a new safe zone?"

Olaf nodded without looking up from his station. "I'll figure something out."

Arthur traced the rings with his eyes. "Fantastic."

Mike looked at him. "Sorry?"

Their eyes met across ten feet and half a mile. "Don't misunderstand me," said Arthur. "This is a crisis, and we need to understand what happened. And how. But at the same time...it is a fantastic sight. A stable gateway across s.p.a.ce-time."

"We don't know that it's stable."

"We don't know that it isn't. Our power limitations meant we were able to keep the Door open for ninety-three seconds. This has been open for over two hours now."

Mike took a breath and counted to three.

Arthur looked down at the white line again. "I wonder how safe it would be to examine the components. It'd be interesting to see if they're still active, despite what the instruments say."

Over Arthur's shoulder, Mike saw Neil's eyebrows go up. "We'd need to do a lot of tests before I'd be willing to risk that," said the engineer.

"Same here," said Sasha.

Arthur glanced back and up. "When did you become timid?"

Neil shook his head. "Since this all started going wrong."

"What's gone wrong?"

"Bob," said Mike.

"That was a freak accident," Arthur said. "I think we've proven that at this point."

"Arthur, this isn't right," said Neil. "Even if you ignore what happened to Bob, there's no way this should be happening. It can't be happening."

"It's a new science," said Arthur.

"Yes," Olaf stated, "it is. And we shouldn't a.s.sume we understand it."

A few moments of silence stretched out. Arthur's phone beeped. "It's Jamie," he said, skimming the text. "Her first round of tests all came back with no problems. Physical, X-rays, CT scan. She looks fine. They should have basic blood work in the morning."

"Good," Mike said.

"Olaf," said Arthur, "if you could join me in my office, we'll start working on a testing routine. We can go over the originals, and between us I'm sure we can come up with an accelerated schedule."

He waited to see if anyone else had a comment, then continued.