Chapter Eighteen

 

Lanier met Takahashi in a conference cubicle at the end of the second floor hall. Carrolson had joined Takahashi and the escort, unaware of Lanier's purpose. That wouldn't cause any problem, Lanier decided; best to keep up an atmosphere of normality. He asked for lunch to be brought to his office and they ate quietly before he outlined his new orders. When he was finished, Carrolson shook her head and sighed.

"Vasquez wants to mount another expedition, this time to the second circuit," she said. "I'm sure she won't like being barred from the libraries."

"Nobody goes into the libraries," Lanier said. "They're strictly off limits. And no second expedition. We freeze all activity on the Stone. I want the archaeologists back at the compounds, and the bore-hole studies shut down, too."

Takahashi regarded him dourly. "What happened with Hoffman?" he asked. Lanier didn't look at him; eating lunch together, he thought, was the last amenity in their relationship. But now was the time. As gracefully as he could manage, he asked Carrolson to leave. She gave him a puzzled look, but he barely noticed her going out the door. All his attention was focused on Takahashi.

"I'm going to defuse a very bad situation," Lanier said when they were alone. "I want you to help me with the defusing, and I want you to report it to your bosses."

"Pardon?" Takahashi asked. The mathematician's hand was a little less steady around the glass of orange juice he had been drinking.

"I want you to report it to your superiors, however you've been doing that."

"I don't understand."

"Nor do I," Lanier said, unmoving in his seat. "I'm not informing Gerhardt, though my instincts tell me I should. You will remain free to observe that we are shutting everything down until negotiations have resolved our differences. You will personally investigate and verify that we have found no information about weapons in the libraries."

"Garry, what are you talking about?"

"I know you are an agent for the Soviets."

Takahashi's jaw muscles tightened and he regarded Lanier from under straight, tense brows.

"There's a dance tonight," Lanier said. "Carrolson will expect all of us to attend. And we will. Gerhardt will be there. He won't be told, because he'd slap you in the bore-hole detention center and ship you back on the next OTV run, in irons, so to speak. I don't want that."

"Out of respect?" Takahashi asked, blinking.

"No," Lanier said. "I don't fall for that old shit about just doing our jobs. You're a goddamned traitor. I don't know where it all began, but it ends here, and I want it to end well. The information you fed back to Earth has damned near started a war. Inform your superiors that everything is cooling off, that we are backing away from the libraries and that in the long run, we may evacuate the Stone. Pull out, let everybody settle their differences. Understood?"

Takahashi said nothing.

"Do you know what's happening on Earth?" Lanier asked.

"No, not precisely," Takahashi said solemnly. "Perhaps we should explain a few things to each other. To help defuse the situation, as you say. Their stake in this is as big as ours."

"Ours?"

"I am an American, Garry. I did this to protect us as well."

Lanier felt his stomach go sour. He clenched his teeth together and turned his chair away from Takahashi. He fought back an urge to ask Takahashi if there had been a lot of money involved; he did not want to know.

"Right. Here's how we stand."

And he told Takahashi what he had learned on Earth.

He hoped to hell this was what Hoffman had intended.

 

Late in the afternoon, the sociology group presented another team report in the main compound lecture hall. About twenty team members were in the audience; not many more than sat on the low stage, behind the lectern. Rimskaya stood to one side while Wallace Rainer introduced the first of four sociologists.

Lanier watched and listened from the back, slumped in the seat. Ten minutes into the first presentation, Patricia sat beside him and folded her arms.

The first speaker outlined a brief hypothesis of Stone family groupings. She went into some depth on triad families, chiefly found among the Naderites.

Patricia glanced at Lanier. "Why am I barred from the libraries?" she asked in an undertone.

"Everybody is," he said. "As of today."

"Yes, but why?"

"It's very complicated. I can explain later."

Patricia turned away and sighed. "Okay," she said. "I'll do as much as I can outside. That's still allowed."

He nodded and felt a sharp surge of empathy for her.

The second speaker was Tanya Smith—no relation to Robert Smith—and she briskly elaborated on the previously presented report on the evacuation of the Stone.

Patricia half listened.

"It now seems apparent that a resettlement committee handled applications for corridor migration and coordinated transportation—"

Patricia glanced at Lanier again. His eyes met hers.

It was all crazy, no way to run a railroad, much less a huge research effort.

In its most crucial hour, the human race was represented by a team of blindly searching, hog-tied and gagged intellectuals. Thinking of Takahashi, and how useless all the security had been, Lanier's stomach went sour again.

The plan, of course, had been to allow researchers on the lower levels of security clearance and badge status to do their work as best they could, watched over by a senior member with almost full clearance. Their findings would then be filtered and collated and assembled into final statements, checked with corresponding documents in the libraries. It had to be that way. With so few people cleared to do research in the libraries, and with lifetimes of information stored away, decades would have passed before substantial overviews emerged.

That had been the reasoning, at any rate. Lanier had gone along because he was still, after all, a military man at heart, obeying if not implicitly trusting those beyond Hoffman in the chain of command.

Not that it mattered.

Not that it mattered one goddamn bit, because it was all being shut down anyway. They were going to pack up and go home and Takahashi would (if all went well) report that a good-faith effort was being made to placate the worried Soviets.

But the Soviets would still not be allowed into the libraries. Unless the President was totally mad. Only one hand in Pandora's box at a time.

He had seen some of the material on the Stoners' technological advances. He had experienced the education system used in the library. He had touched on the ways the Stoners had tampered with biology and psychology. (Tampered—did that betray a prejudice? Yes. Some of it had shaken him to his core and contributed to his worst bouts of being Stoned.) He was uncertain what his own beloved country would do with such power, much less the Soviets.

Patricia sat in on the charade a few more minutes, then left. He stood to follow after her and caught up near the corner of the women's bungalow.

"Just a minute," he said. She halted and half turned, not looking at him but at a potted lime tree growing in a wide space between two buildings. "I don't intend for you to stop your work. Not at all."

"I won't," she said.

"I just wanted to make that clear."

"It's clear." Now she faced him directly, hands slipping into her pockets. "You can't be happy with the way things are going."

His eyes widened, and he drew his head back, feeling a sudden anger at her presumption, obtuseness, whatever it was she rolled up into one short sentence.

"You can't be a happy man, keeping us here, knowing all that."

"I'm not keeping you here."

"You've never talked to me, to any of us that I've seen. You say things but you don't talk with us."

The anger evaporated and left behind an equally sudden pit of lostness, aloneness. "Rank hath its privileges," he said softly.

"I don't think so." Squinting at him. She wanted to challenge, to provoke. "What kind of person are you? You seem kind of. . . solid. Frozen. Are you really, or is that just a privilege?"

Lanier lifted a pointed finger and waggled it at her, his face creasing with a grim smile. "You do your job," he said. "I'll do mine."

"You still aren't talking."

"What the hell do you want?" he said in a harsh undertone, stepping closer to her, shoulders hunched forward and chin drawn back almost into his neck, an incredibly tense and uncomfortable posture, Patricia thought. She was startled by the sudden breakthrough.

"I want somebody else to tell me what to feel," she said.

"Well, I can't do that." Lanier's shoulders corrected themselves and he extended his jaw. "If we start thinking about anything—"

"But the work, the work," Patricia completed, on the edge of mockery. "Jesus, I'm doing the work, Garry. I'm working all the time." There were tears in her eyes, and to her further shock, she saw tears in his. Lanier's hand moved to his face but he held them back and one tear fell to his cheek, then down the furrow at the side of his mouth.

"Okay," he said. He wanted to leave but he couldn't. "So we're both human. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"I'm working," Patricia said, "but inside I'm just bloody. Maybe that's it."

Quickly, he wiped his eyes. "I'm not a snowball," he said defensively. "And it isn't fair to expect anything more from me, right now, than what I'm giving. Do you see that?"

"This is really peculiar," Patricia said, lifting her hands to her face, as if to mimic him. Her fingers went no higher than her cheeks, which were hot. "I'm sorry. But you followed me."

"I followed you. Shall we leave it at this?"

Patricia nodded, ashamed. "I never thought you were cold."

"Fine," Lanier said. He turned and walked quickly toward the cafeteria.

In her room, she pressed her fists into her eyes, now dry, and tried to mouth the words to a song she had dearly loved as a child. She couldn't quite remember them—or wasn't certain she remembered them correctly. But wherever you go, she ventured to accompany the tune, whatever you do, I'll be watching you. . . .