Eschaton 2 - THE SIEGE OF ETERNITY

CHAPTER SIX

Dan Dannerman had never been in the deputy director's plane before. In spite of himself, he was impressed. It wasn't one of those custom-converted thousand-seat leviathans, like the President's Air Force One, but those few who had experienced both reported that it was just as luxurious. Dannerman and Pat Adcock were even given a private compartment of their own. Their little cubicle wasn't as fancy as the room Colonel Hilda had appropriated for her own use, and certainly it was nothing like the four-room private suite belonging to the D.D. himself, but it definitely was not shabby. It had full electronics. It had cut flowers floating in a sort of fishbowl, a pair of screens, a call button for one of the police-cadet flight attendants, even two pullout beds neatly made up in case they wanted to sleep on the way-on the way to wherever they were going, because neither Pat nor Dannerman had been given the word on where that might be.

Dannerman had lost his sense of time. Somehow a whole day had got away from him, all spent on waiting. After the long wait time while the deputy director got his ducks in order there was the waiting for the Bureau's sniffer squads to finish their routine inspections-you never knew where someone might sneak in a bomb. It was full dark again by the time they took off.

Dannerman saw Pat cast one yearning look at the beds, but then she resolutely turned her back on them. She had no time to sleep because she was busy at one of the screens, checking databases for information on the Tipler person for the deputy director. Dannerman wasn't sleeping, either, but the reason was different. The prospect of seeing this man who claimed to use his own name and spoke with his own voice had pumped him full of adrenaline. He used his screen on and off, sometimes to kill time by watching news summaries, sometimes to try to find answers to some of the questions that inflamed his thoughts. Perhaps some of the answers were there, but Dannerman didn't have enough clearance to penetrate these particular systems.

He was seriously considering trying out one of the beds after all when Pat made a small grunt of conditional satisfaction. She sat back, watching the printer squirt out hard copy.

"Did you find what you wanted?" Dannerman asked.

"I hope," she said, standing up, evidently getting ready to take the printout to Marcus Pell. "It's weird. You can read it for yourself on the screen."

"Weird how?"

But she was gone. He shifted to her seat and scrolled the screen, beginning to read.

Dr. Frank Tipler was a highly respected cosmologist until he published the book called The Physics of Immortality. In it Tipler predicted that the universe, currently expanding, sooner or later would fall back to what is called "the Big Crunch," reproducing the conditions of the Big Bang, but in reverse. At that time, Tipler said, everyone who had ever lived anywhere in the universe would be reborn to live again as an immortal. Most of Tipler's colleagues laughed at his idea, but there were two significant groups who shared his opinion, though Tipler had never heard of either.

"Weird" was the right word. This Frank Tipler had published a book, back in the closing years of the twentieth century. It was called The Physics of Immortality, and what it was about was Tipler's theory- only he didn't call it a theory; he claimed it was fact, and offered a hundred pages of equations to prove it-that the universe, after expanding as far as it could, would contract again into what he called "the Omega Point"… and then some very strange things would happen.

The first part of it wasn't surprising. That was what the messages from space had described, years before: the Big Bang and the universe's expansion, the recollapse into the Big Crunch. The surprising part was the consequence that was predicted in Tipler's book. According to Tipler, at that Omega Point or Big Crunch, whichever you chose to call it, everybody who had ever lived would inevitably be brought to life again-in perfect health, at the peak of their powers- and would go on living forever.

It was, Tipler said, the scientific reality that underlay all the ancient human yearnings for a Heaven after death.

Dannerman scrolled the report again; just to make sure he hadn't missed something-like the reason why this alleged other Dan Dannerman wanted the Bureau to know about this Tipler person. He hadn't. That was all there was.

That was typical of the way the Bureau was run. Nobody told any inferior anything until they absolutely had to. Dannerman had a cynical theory about that. It was turf protection. The more information the higher-ups hung on to for themselves, the harder it was for some lower-down to leapfrog above them in the chain of command. Of course, that kind of secrecy never worked for long. Sooner or later some one person in the know would see a tactical advantage for himself in telling Dannerman what was up…

Might, for instance, at least tell him where they were going. When they boarded the plane Pell had said they were going to meet the people from Starlab, and that was all. Dannerman craned his neck to peer out the window, but that didn't help. It was starry dark out there, no Sun or Moon to give him at least a clue about their direction of travel. The only thing he could be sure of was that they had io be heading generally west or north. Had to be; because otherwise they'd be out over ocean by now, and they weren't. He could catch glimpses of lights on the ground far below.

Resigned, he decided to get a little sleep.

As it turned out, it was very little. He had hardly closed his eyes when Pat Adcock returned from Pell's private quarters forward in the plane. She was holding a partly full cup of coffee, trying not to spill.my, and she looked annoyed. "Oh, listen," she said, setting the cup down, "I got this from one of the stews, but I didn't stop to think about whether you might want some."

Eschatology, which is the study of last things, is a fundamental part of nearly all of Earth's religions. Buddhism speaks of the eternal bliss called Nirvana, while the Biblical Book of Revelations describes the eschaton in more specific and concrete terms: "And death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more." It is what some religions call "Heaven." As it turned out, there were other parties who didn't think of that state as religious. For them it was a strategic objective, and they were prepared to fight for it.

– NBI briefing document

"I'd rather sleep. What's all this Omega Point stuff?"

She gestured toward the screen, which still displayed her report. "All I know is what it says there. I think somebody once mentioned Tipler and his idea in one of my seminars, but nobody took it very seriously, and I don't remember anything else about it."

"And you gave the report to the D.D.? What'd he say?"

She grinned. "He was asleep. I woke him up when I came in and what he said was, 'Shit.' That was all. Then he waved at me to get out, but I didn't go."

"You didn't?"

"Well, I had some questions I wanted answered-like what I was doing on this plane. So I asked him. I said I knew they wanted you along to confront this other Dannerman, but what did they want from me?"

Dannerman, who had been wondering the same thing, asked, "So why did they?"

"He didn't exactly say. He just said he'd rather I saw for myself."

"Saw what?"

She shrugged. "He didn't say that, either. Then when I stopped for coffee on the way back the stew told me that we were going to start coming down for a landing pretty soon, so we better strap ourselves in. Oh," she added, fumbling for her seat belt, "there was one other thing. You want to know where we're going? It's Canada. They ordered the escape vehicle from Starlab to come down at someplace called Calgary."

Calgary turned out to be really cold, and when Dannerman left the warm plane for the freezing dark outside an unexpected memory struck him. He had been there before. It had been a summer when the girl he was involved with at the time had made up her mind to go off on a fossil dig in the Alberta bone beds. Somewhere or other among his scattered possessions-most likely in one of the Bureau's warehouses for storing the things an agent couldn't carry around with him-he probably still had a souvenir of her. It was a pair of neckbones of some terrier-sized hundred-million-year-old dinosaur. She had had them made into cufflinks for him, just before she told him she was marrying her paleontology professor.

Dannerman didn't remember Calgary very well, but something he had been told about its airport had stuck in his mind. It possessed a hellish long runway, because at one time it had been designated as an alternate emergency landing site for the old Space Shuttle.

Which, of course, was just what was needed for Starlab's Assured Crew Return Vehicle.

Another plane was coming in, also a big one. It looked to Dannerman like a troop transport. He strolled over to where Colonel Morrisey was watching it land, close enough to the deputy director so he could find her if he had orders for her, far enough away not to intrude. "Okay, Hilda," Dannerman said, keeping his voice down, "explain something to me. I understand the return ship from Starlab probably needs a lot of landing strip, but why in Canada, for God's sake?"

She didn't look at him. "Security, what do you think? Everybody in the world is watching Starlab now, and they've seen the ACRV detach itself to come down. There'll be people waiting at every possible airport in the States." She gave him a sidelong glance, almost affectionate. "Don't worry. It's all worked out with the Canadians; the President himself flew to Ottawa to make a deal with the Prime Minister. Where's your cuz?"

"Pat went into the terminal to get warm." Actually Dannerman was thinking of doing the same thing. There was a freezing wind coming across the bare space of the airport; he'd been lucky enough to have the anorak he was taken to the headquarters in, but even so his face was hurting from the cold. Pat hadn't been that fortunate. When she was arrested they picked her up indoors and she hadn't been out in the open air ever since. At the last minute one of the stews had found her a spare jacket that belonged to one of the pilots, but it was meters too big and did nothing for her bare legs.

What kept Dannerman out in the cold was the spectacle overhead. There were more stars than he had seen in years, and what looked like a handsome aurora borealis display off toward the horizon. But when he pointed it out to Hilda she said mildly, "Asshole, that's the Sun getting ready to rise." She paused to listen to the button in her ear, and then said, "They've got through reentry all right. They say ETA in thirty-five minutes."

Dannerman felt a sudden chill of a different kind. He was that close to seeing this person who claimed to be himself. He tried not to speculate-some bizarre alien creature that had duplicated his voice as a disguise?-but it was a queasy, unpleasant feeling all the same.

Hilda was squinting at the horizon. "It ought to be broad daylight by then, and that's what they wanted-they didn't want to risk a night landing, but they wanted them to get down as fast as possible. But I dunno. I hope this Chinaman knows what he's doing. Isn't he going to be landing right into the Sun?"

"That's not how it works," Dannerman said, out of the superior experience of somebody who had actually once made a return flight from orbit. "They swing around to land from the east-it's to take advantage of Earth's rotation." He looked to see if she was impressed. She wasn't. "I think I'll go use the men's room while I can."

When he was inside the warmth of the terminal seduced him into lingering. He spotted Pat, wanly hunched over a cup of coffee by one of the vast glass windows with her junior-agent minder alertly sitting just behind. He located the place where the coffee was coming from and, supplied, sat down next to her; she glanced up at him, fretfully curious. "What are all the soldiers for?"

Looking out at the floodlit runway, he could see what she was talking about. The troop transport had nosed up to the hardstand next to the terminal. Its clamshell bow had opened and three personnel carriers, each filled with armed infantrymen, eased themselves down the ramp, followed by a company or more of commandos on foot. The newcomers were all in U.S. combat uniforms, but a pair of RCMPs were glumly watching the spectacle. "I guess the Mounties don't want anybody interfering," he said.

The minder cleared her throat to attract his attention. "Can I get you anything, Agent Dannerman?"

When he took a closer look at her he recognized the woman: Merla Tepp, the one who had interrogated him. "Since when are you a stewardess?"

"Since I volunteered for the flight, sir. You know how it is. You want to be promoted, you stay where the big brass can see you."

"You'll go a long way," Dannerman said absently, glancing toward the huge window. Something was moving. As it rushed past he identified it as another plane dropping toward the runway, and turned to the minder. "Hey, is that-"

She shook her head. "No, sir, it isn't the Starlab ACRV. That plane's from Ottawa; it's expected."

"Maybe I should get back outside."

Junior Agent Tepp touched her right ear, the one with the communications button. "They'll let me know when it's time," she offered. "If you want to stay in the warm, there'll be a while yet."

"Thanks," he said gratefully, and then realized that it wasn't all generosity on her part. As long as he and Pat stayed inside she could, too. He yawned and sat down, suddenly aware that the warmth had made him sleepy. Drowsily he watched as the new plane slowed, turned off the landing strip and trundled toward the terminal; it had a familiar look to Dannerman, though he couldn't see its markings.

Airport crews were already rolling a flight of steps toward it, and the door was opening almost before the plane stopped. Three or four people got out and hustled toward the group with the deputy director. At least one of them also looked vaguely familiar to Dannerman, but he couldn't make out the face. He yawned and closed his eyes…

He didn't realize he had fallen asleep until he felt Merla Tepp shaking his shoulder.

"Show time, sir," she was saying. "They want us out there now."

It was full daylight now, though not a whit less cold. But at least the bosses weren't standing out in the freezing winds anymore; someone had got smart enough to collect an airport bus, and they were all inside it, its heater going full blast, at the end of the runway. A squad of the commandos was deployed around it in full winter gear; all of them carrying weapons; but the soldiers waved them in when they saw the uniformed minder.

That was when Dannerman saw who it was who had just come from Ottawa. It was the Bureau director herself. The Cabinet officer. The woman whose pictures showed her always superbly coiffed, wearing what the latest fashion decreed, and perpetually busy on the highest of high-level affairs. Dannerman had not been physically in the director's presence since she addressed his graduating class.

When the American Congress got tired of passing laws that instructed their successors of a few generations later- but not themselves-to balance the damn budget once and for all, they took a different tack. They simply decided not to bother anymore. It was simpler just to borrow more money. Of course, that led to the problem of paying the interest on the money they borrowed. That was a cost of government they could not escape, nor could they avoid paying for more and more police. So everything else had to be cut- notably the space program.

– Ad Astro.

He could hear only fragments of what the director and the D.D. were talking about. "Yes, Marcus," the director was saying to her deputy, now suddenly deferential, "the Prez squared it all. I wrote the Prime Minister's order to the Calgary people myself." An unheard question from Marcus Pell, then an answer from the director almost as hard to hear, because she looked around and lowered her voice. She seemed to be saying that they'd promised something to the Canadians. Probably a share of whatever they got out of Starlab, Dannerman speculated, and amused himself by thinking about how much the Canadians would ever collect on that promise. If he knew the director, not a great deal.

"Here it comes," somebody said.

Dannerman caught a glint of metal over the mountains to the west. As predicted, the ACVR sailed past them, far overhead but descending as it banked and turned. It grew larger, settling down toward the ground, wobbling slightly… and then it was touching down at the far end of the runway. Plumes of smoke erupted from its tires as they squealed against the runway. Then suddenly the thing was screeching past them, still going a hundred kilometers an hour or better on its stilty landing gear. Behind it ground vehicles began to give chase: two of the personnel carriers filled with troops, a fire truck, an ambulance. "Get this thing moving!" the deputy director roared, and the bus driver obeyed.

The spacecraft was well ahead of them, still speeding. For a moment Dannerman feared that even the endless Calgary runway wasn't going to be long enough for this job. But it was-barely. By the time they reached the end of the runway the clumsy old antique was sitting there, its ancient ceramic tiles cracked and smoking, and two squads of riflemen had surrounded it-to protect it from any of those expected interlopers, Dannerman assumed, until he noticed that the ring of soldiers was facing in.

As they all piled out of the bus he could hear cracking sounds coming from it as it began to cool. "Get those people out of that thing," the director snapped.

One of the men with him cleared his throat. "It's risky," he said.

"The lander's still too hot to touch; we have to wait a minute-"

"So cool it off!"

The airport fire chief rubbed his chin. "We could foam it, I guess," he said, "but I don't know if that would make much difference. And of course we can't use water."

"Why can't you use water?"

The fireman looked surprised. "It would crack the tiles. It might ruin the vehicle permanently."

"Now, what difference do you think that would make? Listen, half the radars in the world have followed that thing down. We're going to have visitors in the next hour. Ruin the son of a bitch!"

When the pumpers started to pour water on the spacecraft everybody jumped back. Even so, they were splashed. The water from the hoses flashed into steam as soon as it touched the skin of the spaceship. Droplets of boiling hot water that almost instantly turned into icy cold water flew in all directions, and the ceramic tiles snapped and popped loudly.

But it worked. Within no more than a minute or two the pumpers stopped, and the airport crews trundled the wheeled steps up to the cabin door.

It opened.

The first person out of it was a real surprise to Dannerman and a far greater one to Pat Adcock. It was another Pat Adcock, grimy, worn, hunching one arm around her chest against the cold as she cautiously made her way down the steps.

The second person was a greater surprise still, because it was yet an additional Pat Adcock; with her arm around the frail and limping figure of a new Rosaleen Artzybachova. Who was alive! Dannerman had gone to Artzybachova's memorial service himself, after she died on the way back from their trip to Starlab. But here she was, suddenly possessing a new life.

The third figure was still another Pat Adcock. That made three of them to go with the fourth Pat Adcock who was standing beside Dannerman, who moaned to herself, "Oh, Jesus! What is happening here?"

Then a chunkier, male figure appeared. It had an unfamiliar skimpy beard, but it was definitely Jimmy Lin, the Chinese pilot, sulkily staring around him and shivering in the chill. He was almost immediately followed by someone who-though also bearded, and definitely somewhat beat-up and exhausted-looked exactly like Dan Dannerman.

It was Dan Dannerman. The watching Dannerman couldn't doubt it any longer. That was the face he had seen in his shaving mirror- less bearded then, of course-every morning of his life.

How that was possible he could not imagine; but that it was real was no longer in doubt. Those clear memories of what had happened in his trip to Starlab? They had somehow been falsified. His head had been implanted with that damn gadget the X rays showed, and his mind had been tampered with. And he hadn't been aware of a thing.

He shook himself and turned back to the gangplank. That had been six persons; but the Dannerman on the radio had spoken of a party of nine. Who were the other three? More Dannermans? A couple of Martin Delasquezes, the Floridian copilot on the expedition? Maybe even some more Pats?

It wasn't any of those. It was something a good deal more strange. The figure that appeared in the doorway was huge, pale, and not in any way human. It looked to Dannerman like a multiarmed golem, and it carried another creature stranger still-a dwarfish being that looked like a turkey with a cat's head, incongruously wearing a gold-mesh belly bag.

But he had seen those things before, Dannerman realized. Drawings of them, at least; they were two of the weird aliens whose pictures had appeared in the mysterious messages from space, long before.

As that first alien made his way down the steps a second of the same species appeared. By then the ring of soldiers had instinctively dropped to their knees, their rifles zeroed in on the aliens. "Don't shoot!" wailed a thin, high voice Dannerman had never heard before; and it was only one more surprise to realize that it came from the kitten-faced turkey that was cradled in the first golem's arms.