Shame made him cringe: the first strong emotion he had experienced since leaving his body. Oh, Mouse, he thought. What are you doing here? I told you to stay put.
The boy raised his head and seemed to look directly at Alf, at the softly radiant sphere which Alf had become. A hard blue sh.e.l.l of light shone around the child"s skull. Mouse smiled, his perfect teeth dazzling like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for munic.i.p.al fluoride. h.e.l.lo, Alf, he said. I think you"d better go back now. Don"t worry, we"ll be okay. Hey, one thing: get them to bring delFord here.
Alf said: Who?
They"ll know, Mouse told him.
Absolved, dizzy with astonishment, Alf allowed himself to drift back through the wall. His body was breathing by itself, and greasy perspiration covered its face. There was a stubble of beard on its dark cheeks and neck. A tube protruded from its crusted mouth, held in place by a semi-rigid plug. That lump is not me, Alf thought with revulsion. It drew him, though, summoned him, denied him the pleasure of weightless drifting. He fell like a leaf toward the draped body on the bed. His mind-to-mind conversation with Mouse receded into deep unconsciousness.
In darkness, he was jostled. Now the voices seemed too distant for interpretation. The immense ma.s.s of the earth pressed him. A whine, a clatter, jolting, endless journey from h.e.l.l to -- -- a moment of consciousness: pounding rain, a sky roiling with heavy charcoal cloud, feet running, a cold sheet of streaked plastic lifted past his face and held above him to ward off the rain by two swearing orderlies while a third tugged his trolley, the chill suddenly elevating the hairs on his skin, pain in his throat, chest, piercing shocking hurt in the depths of his brain -- He came half-awake with a spotlight glaring on his face. Several voices were engaged in laconic, droning dialogue. A high-pitched electronic beeping punctuated their words; it yelped to the beat of his heart. As his eyes opened a fraction, another voice called out excitedly. Alf let his lids close. Red haze, a cavorting strip of after-image. He could not understand what the men were saying. Straining for meaning, he realised that they spoke in a language unfamiliar to him. It sounded like ... what? Stage Russian? No, by G.o.d, it sounded like the authentic article. Which was absolutely ridiculous, in the middle of an Australian desert, just him and Mouse and the scrubby spinifex ... Alf giggled vaguely, and his teeth grated on something jammed into his mouth. It was too much effort. He relapsed into unconsciousness.
When he woke again he panicked. A clinical odour filled his nostrils. Male voices were talking, talking. Keeping his eyes closed, Alf told himself: There"s been an accident. I"m in hospital. p.r.i.c.kling at fingers and toes. He could not recall the accident. With increasing alarm, he found that he could not remember anything at all since ... yes, there had been an incident, a stone had been thrown up by The Beast"s front wheel and gone straight through the radiator. He"d had to stand out in the roasting sun for fifteen minutes trying to heal the d.a.m.ned thing and finally broke an egg into the boiling water. Good old bush expedient, floats to the hole and cooks, sealing it like regrown skin. Yet a mishap like that could scarcely put you into hospital. There seemed to be spiders perched all over his scalp. Wires. h.e.l.l, he was in an intensive care ward, wired for EEG.
One of the voices said: "Theta"s dropping out. I"m getting stronger beta. He"s coming round."
"Right. Page Security."
Somebody had kicked him in the throat. He swallowed and it hurt. In a dry, croaking voice, Alf said: "_Cooma el ngruwar, ngruwar el cooma, illa booka mer ley urrie_."
"He"s awake." A man in white was craning past a pole topped by a bottle of pale liquid. "What did you say?" With a practised movement, the man pulled up Alf"s right eyelid and speared a penlight beam into the centre of his brain. Alf blinked and jerked back his head. "Good, full pupillary contraction. Let"s just try the other one."
"Throat." The anthropologist tried to lift his arm, to ma.s.sage the afflicted region. An IV tube snagged on its support.
"Yeah, it"ll rasp for a while. We"ve been breathing for you. What language were you speaking just now?"
Another voice laughed raucously. "Physician, heal thy self-image. I never knew you hankered to be an intelligence agent, Irwin."
"Aboriginal rite," Alf told the first man. "Traditional saying." After they"d kicked him in the throat, they had obviously pulled a bike chain through his gullet. He forced himself to finish his answer. "It means, "One is all, all is one, the soul will not die.""
"Wow," said the second voice, still scornful. "Reincarnation of the Three Musketeers." A door banged, and a number of additional men came into the room, crowding around the bed.
"Shut your mouth, Casey," one of them said. "You were given strict instructions not to talk to the patient. Has he said anything, Joinville?"
"Very little, sir." The first medical man repeated Alf"s translation word for word. "He won"t be able to handle too much stress right now, he"s just woken up. And his larynx will still be sore from the endotrach."
"I"ll bear that in mind, Doctor," the sharp baritone said. "Okay buddy, let"s hear your tale. We"ll start at the start. How did you and the kid get into the Vault zone without being observed?"
Appalled, Alf pushed himself up from the sweaty sheets. "Mouse?" he cried. "Oh Jesus, I saw Mouse in there. Is he -- ?" Confused, then, he sagged back. "No. No. Nightmare. Mouse stayed in the cavern." Again his muscles spasmed. "G.o.d Almighty, how long have I been here? You"ve got to get Mouse out of that place." He began to cry. "The poor little b.a.s.t.a.r.d..."
"Easy, Mr Dean." A note of concern softened the baritone. "That is your name? Alfred Dean? And the child"s name is...?"
"Mouse," Alf said, choking on the taste of warm salt. His emotions were out of control. Nothing made any sense. "Hieronymus, actually. His mother had no brains. It must be hereditary." He shook his head. "You found him? He"s not hurt?"
"We have him right here with us, just down the hall," the man said soothingly. He wore a military uniform, punctiliously pressed, with a sky-blue UN Peacekeepers" cap. His eyes were a surprisingly soft green, and his cheeks were pitted very faintly with the acne scars of adolescence. Far from being a sinister touch, the dusting of scars was rather disarming. "Mouse is fine. All we want to know, Mr Dean, is how you both got down there."
With labile irritation, Alf said: "Doctor."
"I"m not a doctor, I"m a United States Army intelligence officer. Surely you grasp by now that -- "
Disregarding the I.V. channel, Alf heaved himself to a sitting position. "I don"t give a pig"s fart in h.e.l.l about your credentials, sport. _I"m_ a doctor." He tried to get out of bed. "Where"s Mouse? I want to see him."
Instantly, one of the medics was restraining him, pressing him back onto the bed. It was hardly an equal match. "Dr Dean, control yourself. You"ve only been out of coma for two days. Your PVCs -- "
"Spare me the mumbo-jumbo, I"m not that brand of doctor." Alf subsided. Mumbling, he said: "Witchdoctor. I"m a PhD witchdoctor." His overtaxed body started to close down the blood supply to his cortex, and he fell away into grey wool swarming with vitreous humours. They would not let him see his nephew. Were they his custodians or his jailers? He could not even estimate their provenance. Was he still in Australia? An insane question, but unavoidable. All the accents were foreign, and there was no consistency in them. Against all reason, some were American, and some were ... Russian? Eastern European, at any rate. His recovery room was makeshift modular, neat but meant to be stripped down and put up again in a hurry, after an overseas jaunt in a cargo plane. No windows. It had the look of a sick-bay designed to serve a modest community, undoubtedly of military service personnel. Three other beds were currently vacant but ready for use, made up with linen and blankets.
Under the artificial lights, Alf Dean put himself back together. When the lights went off he slept, and often enough he slept when they were on. In sleep he was bombarded by disturbing images that evaporated on touch. Somehow he was aware that his interval of coma had contained long stretches of just such bizarre and fearful dreams, but he could not recall their shape. One detail alone remained to plague him: an image of himself spread on a table, dying, tubes plugged into every orifice, while simultaneously he hung above that near-corpse, hung watching it, watching and talking to ... Whom? What? It was, of course, ludicrous even to wonder. Fantasies left over from drastic illness could hardly aid him in his present crisis.
"How did you get in there, Dr Dean?" they were asking him again, again, again.
"In _where?_" he yelled with frustration. "I don"t know where I am, you won"t tell me who you are, what you represent. I"ve told you everything I can and none of it pleases you. For G.o.d"s sake, what more can I say?" He shook with ire. "And where the f.u.c.k is Mouse? I demand to see him!"
It did no good. The interrogations were restrained by a prudent alertness to his physical debility, but the men who questioned him told him nothing at all. The procedure was utterly ruthless. Only one fact was obvious: they believed nothing he said. Except perhaps his name. a.s.suming indeed that they had checked his ident.i.ty with the Australian authorities, with his university, with his ex-wife for that matter, the corroboration of his statements had not persuaded them of his trustworthiness.
"Let"s go over it again, Dr Dean. You were driving across the Tanami desert in a Land Rover, accompanied only by your nephew."
With panic that soon shifted to bile, he sketched them shaky diagrams of his route. When they brought him large scale ordnance maps, he pin-pointed the place where he had left The Beast. Their faces conveyed no trace of belief or scepticism and so he was obliged to read their professional impa.s.sivity as hostile rejection of his truth. His anger mounted. All his life, despite his privileged circ.u.mstances, white sons of b.i.t.c.hes had met his gaze with a chilly filter to mask out the spontaneous warmth they freely offered each another.
This version of it was worse, but still he knew its kind of old. Trained neural receptors in his black skin were sensitive to the temperature.
"Although you are a full-blood Australian Aborigine, your nephew happens to be a white r.e.t.a.r.d."
"That"s right. It"s a long story, and none of your business." Constricted rage throttled his larynx.
"I believe the evaluation of pertinency is our domain, Dr Dean."
"By what right, you nosy b.a.s.t.a.r.d? I demand to speak to a solicitor. And what the h.e.l.l is your _name?_"
"Names are unimportant. I"m sorry, but you cannot be permitted to contact an attorney at this point in time. The entire station is under the quarantine of military security."
"By whose orders?"
The man sighed. "By the orders of the Australian Government, under the auspices of the United Nations."
"Bulls.h.i.t."
"Use your brain, man. You"ve seen American and Russian personnel here working side by side. Doesn"t that prompt some estimate of the gravity of this operation?" He caught himself, and smiled. "But of course you know all this anyway. How else could you have gotten into the Vault?"
Was he locked into some farcical lunatic asylum? "I don"t know what you mean by the Vault. Look, it"s obvious that Mouse and I stumbled over some f.u.c.king stupendous secret research project in the desert. Holograms in the middle of ancient caves, whatever. Is it an extraterrestrial artefact? It must be. The Rainbow Serpent data goes back too far."
Dryly, the man said: "And it was the Rainbow Serpent you were looking for, of course. Not the Vault. By pure accident you crept into the middle of the most extensively guarded installation in this hemisphere. In the world, maybe."
"I don"t know what you are talking about," Alf shouted. Migraine clamped his brow, hammered down into his nasal septum. "Yes, I was looking for the Rainbow Serpent, if you wish to be simple-minded about it. Yes, I was doing so in this locality. For the love of G.o.d, I"ve drawn you a map. 250 kilometres west of Tennant Creek, 280 south-east of Wave Hill. Right here, you buffoon! Unless you"ve moved Mouse and me to one of your spy satellite ground stations while we were unconscious."
The security man considered Alf impa.s.sively. "In fact, we haven"t moved you very far at all. Several klicks vertically, in essence."
Alf slapped his sheeted knee in disgust. "Do you take me for a fool? We"re on the ground. I _have_ travelled in a plane, you know. Don"t let my skin fool you. I"m not an ignorant savage."
"Dr Dean," the man a.s.sured him, "if I thought you were an ignorant savage we would be conducting this interview according to rather different rules."
The door opened. The man who entered spoke with marked Russian accent. "Search team Four has located the vehicle, Colonel. Its position was as indicated." He handed the intelligence man a folder, saluted and closed the door.
"Hmm." Flicking pages swiftly, the American glanced once at Alf. "Extraordinary." He rose. "Thank you for your co-operation, Dr Dean." And he was gone, leaving Alf with an open mouth. Migraine closed on him. Brutally, he thumped the b.u.t.ton beside his bed. An orderly appeared almost instantly. Within minutes, the anthropologist was asleep, his headache scrubbed away by the same drugs which banished anger, bafflement and thought itself.
The pain in his throat had eased when he woke, and he was hungry. Oddly enough he felt no craving for a cigarette. His watch was still missing, but light came in a parallelogram slanting from his open door. A remote drumming sounded, as always, above the hush of the air conditioners. It reminded him of something commonplace, but his rational interpretative cortex blocked the a.s.sociation.
Vertically, the man had said. That could mean several kilometres downward, of course. And Alf"s original wild speculation had been that the alien device was a teleportation portal, linking the Tanami desert tunnel with some other location on earth. So it could have shifted him to, say, the Himalayas. Had the legend of the Yeti arisen because, over the centuries, a series of foolhardy naked black men had appeared magically, to freeze in the howling snows? But the man had also said that authorisation had come from the Australian government. There were no mountains three kilometres high in Australia.
Alf climbed unsteadily from the bed, shaking his head at his own bad smell. He called from the door for breakfast. The light in the corridor seemed to flicker oddly with a marginal oscillating haze.
Before he had finished digesting the food, the bra.s.s arrived. His previous interrogator was not one of their number. Indeed Alf recognised none of them.
"The changing of the guard," he said sourly.
One of them wore stars, and looked exhausted. He extended his hand. "I"m Dwayne Sutton, Dr Dean. Scientific liaison. I apologise for the peremptory treatment you"ve had from us in the last few days. How are you feeling?"
"Wary, General." There were sympathetic chuckles. "I want to see my nephew."
"Of course you do. We"ll arrange a visit very shortly. You needn"t worry, he"s in good hands."
"With a tube down his throat and a drip in his arm?"
Sutton"s tanned expression was horrified. "My G.o.d, no. Haven"t they told you? He"s fine. You"re the one who"s been worrying us, Alf. Can I call you Alf?"
"Call me Jackie if you feel like it. Just let me out of this b.l.o.o.d.y prison."
"Oh." The general was nonplussed. "I understood your name was -- "
"My name is Alf, for Christ"s sake. Why am I being detained?"
"Basically, Alf, because you"ve managed the equivalent of stumbling into the middle of the Manhattan Project with no security clearance and no warning given." Sutton gave a genuine grin. "For which we have to thank you. Although Victor here might not," he added, with an attempt at joviality. "Your arrival in the Vault caused his three best physicists to abandon reductionism in favour of miracles."
"Not even my three worst physicists," objected the white-haired man at the foot of the bed, "lose sleep worrying about materialism. As for miracles, you are getting me confused with General Sawyer."
Sutton stiffened very slightly. "General Sawyer"s religious convictions are really none of our concern, Victor."
The Russian shrugged. To Alf he said, "Good morning, Doctor. I am Fedorenko. It is true that you have set the fox among the hens in my department." He fetched forward the burly fellow at his side. "And this is Captain Hubert Lapp, of the NASA Shuttle team. Hugh and I have some questions we would like to pose, if you feel recovered enough to help us."
Alf regarded each in turn, without warmth. "Your nameless colleague filled a tape-recorder with answers. To date I haven"t managed to prize the simplest item of information out of anyone. Let"s see if we can start by balancing the scoreboard."
Sutton helped himself to a gla.s.s of fresh orange juice from the bedside tray. "Sure. A good beginning might be the Gate -- the device you found in the Tanami desert. You must have realised by now that it wasn"t built by human beings."
Literally, Alf experienced a jolt through his body. Intellectually he had been driven to that conclusion, emotionally he had walled off the insight, denied it, ridiculed his own imagination. Hearing the proposition endorsed by an establishment figure like Sutton was more than startling. It was physically horrendous. He sagged against his pillows, face chilled.
"Oh my G.o.d. And I just stepped straight into it. I left Mouse there alone and walked through it."
"I a.s.sure you, Dr Dean," Fedorenko said with concern, "the boy is perfectly safe. It was with his a.s.sistance that we got you out of the Vault. You have cause to be proud of him. And grateful." He paused, and then added: "Had he not been there to get you to medical aid, you would have died, you see."
It came back: sc.r.a.ps of nightmare, shards of madness. Screaming pain and the breath s.n.a.t.c.hed from his blazing lungs, the steps upward into a strange light, falling, falling endlessly, whips of flame running back and forth into a matrix of cold clarity, infinite connection, a billion voices speaking together in a thousand tongues, the dragons -- Closing his eyes, Alf denied the memories. It had not happened that way. He had _not_ left his body...
Shivering, he hugged himself. "What did it do to me?" he asked in a thin voice.
"It moved you through s.p.a.ce," said Fedorenko. "It shifted you 600 kilometres in no time at all. It put you into a place we term the Vault."
Abruptly, a lot of the pieces slotted together. In the centre of the pattern a void remained, but its periphery was whole and beyond argument. Alf Dean knew where he was. The political rumours had been correct. There was a covert military base in Central Australia.
He exhaled. "I see. You"ve known about the alien installation for years."
"Only the Vault," Sutton told him. "Not the Teleport Gate. Not until you and the child fell through it."
"You"ve been out to the cavern?"
"We followed your directions," Lapp said. With a grin, the astronaut said: "You might be pleased to know that we"ve brought your Land Rover in to the station. Slung her from a chopper and lifted her in here."
That piece of news was absurdly gratifying. Alf laughed out loud. "Wonderful. I always swore The Beast could fly if you handled her right." He honked into his handkerchief, tucked it back under his pillow, considered them with greater cordiality. "You might ask your maintenance man to go over the radiator for me. There"s a hole in it, full of boiled egg."
"We found it," Lapp said. "Delicious. Which reminds me. Anyone hungry?"
"Captain, do you think of anything but your belly?" Sutton shook his head in dismay.
Alf was galvanised with questions. "Why did it try to kill me?"
"An automatic protective system," Fedorenko said gravely. "It does not like visitors."
"But it didn"t hurt Mouse?"
"Exactly. We don"t know why. Perhaps it recognised that he represented no active threat."
Acutely, Alf said: "So you want to get into this ... Vault -- but it won"t let you near it?"
"Just so."
"And the Tanami desert entrance has given you a way to short-circuit its defences."
"Probably not," the general said regretfully. "Your accidental insertion shows that the protective zone extends down to the Gate. Besides, the question is academic. The Gate is now defunct."
"Huh? Then how do you know that Mouse and I really did -- ?"
"One of our tests seems to have killed it," Hugh Lapp told him. He bowed sardonically toward Fedorenko. "The Professor shot it with his ray gun."
The Russian shrugged, but he was mournful. "An unhappy by-product of our safety precautions. We could hardly risk another gauge glitch."
As forcefully as he could, Alf said: "Hang on. You"ve run away from me again. Ray gun?"
"Hubert"s undergraduate humour," Fedorenko observed without resentment. "You must understand, firstly, that the Vault will not tolerate electromagnetic fields in its presence. Atrocious phenomena ensue. Alf, you can be thankful that you failed to take your flashlight into the Vault zone with you."
"There was enough light from the zone. I left the flashlight with Mouse."
"Evidently he dropped it when he pursued you into the Gate. We are grossly handicapped in our investigations, you see, for we are obliged to use only rudimentary instruments and methods."