Offworld (50 page)

"We're leaving!" he said. "The exit's just ahead, go on!"

She nodded urgently and he watched her run.

He ran as well, but was forced to dive face-forward onto the
catwalk when someone shot at him from behind. The catwalk nearly
gave way as the quantum machine let loose a powerful jolt, and Terry
knew their time was up.

The quantum machine was dying and was not going quietly into
the night.

Trisha was frantically pounding keys on the main data terminal,
blood oozing from small scratches along her hands and face, sweat
pouring down her neck and back, when the entire Vault shuddered
violently and she was thrown to her knees.

She looked up to see Owen climbing a set of stairs from an
opening near the center of the machine where the light originated.
But he wasn't alone....

"What are you doing?!" she cried.

"He's hurt!" Owen replied, lowering Chris to the ground and
pressing a piece of fabric to Chris' neck wound.

At that moment, someone fell out of the sky behind her, and
Owen raised his rifle just as she spun in place.

It was Terry, who'd just jumped-or maybe fell, she wasn't sure
which-from the catwalk two stories up. He rolled with the impact
and came up close to where she stood.

"Watch out!" Terry shouted as a spray of gunshots rained down
behind him.

Owen saw something she didn't and raised his gun to point
over her head. He fired a single shot, and the gunshots from above
stopped.

"Thanks," said Terry, before he raised his hand to his ear and
shouted, "Mae! Where are you?"

"Outside already!" she called back.

Terry didn't reply. Owen said to him, "Take Chris, and keep putting pressure on his neck! I'm going back to the Box!"

Owen was already running as Terry hefted Chris with both arms.
He began moving toward the exit, which consisted of a big metal
blast door that slid down vertically. Turning to Trisha, Terry said, "Less
than three minutes left! Did you enter the code?"

Trisha shook her head in a frenzy. "This thing's too slow! I'm still
waiting for the command prompt to come up."

She looked again at the screen. There was a tiny hole in it, with
cracks radiating outward. And it had gone dark.

"Oh no!" she said. Her stomach lurched, and her heart was beating so hard she thought it might jump out of her chest. "Beech, I
need you!"

She glanced back at Terry, but he'd already gone through the
exit with Chris in his arms. She looked down at the ground, where
cables from the back of the screen were snaking down to a computer
box.

Owen ran up to her. "Oh, sweet Moses .. " he said, inspecting
the damage to the data terminal.

"Okay, okay, don't panic," she said, as much to herself as to him.
"We can still do this. The screen is dead, but all we really need is
power to the CPU. The box is welded to the ground, there. It looks
like an L-series, I think."

Owen knelt and examined all sides of the small, nondescript silver
cube. Four wires and cables stuck out and twisted away into other parts of the machine. "Ports are a little different. I think it might be
some kind of advanced prototype from the same manufacturer."

The Waveform Device shook hard, and Trisha thought she heard
the sound of bits of metal tearing free from somewhere in the machine,
but she didn't let herself look to see what it was. She didn't want to
lose her nerve. Instead, she clung to the railing beside the console
for dear life, determined to stay on her feet.

"I can see a yellow LED light inside, through the vent!" said Owen,
his tone reminding her that they had only seconds remaining.

"Exactly what I was thinking," she replied. "I'll enter the fail-safe
code, and if you see the light blink when I tap the keys, that means
the CPU read the keystrokes."

Let'' just hope the commandpromptfinally came up, she thought
as she typed the three-letter code.

M. A. E.

"It blinked three times!" shouted Owen.

"Okay, you can get up!" she said, standing back from the
terminal.

Owen rose to his feet. "How will we know if the fail-safe is
working?"

The white lights in the Vault suddenly switched to blood red and
started blinking. A loud siren began to wail like a tornado warning,
and there was a high-pitched sound that went lower and lower as they
listened. It was the sound of the machine shutting down, and it was
earsplitting. The blast door at the exit began to descend as well.

"It's working," commented Trisha, looking around at the machine
self-destructing above and below them.

Owen grabbed her and pushed her toward the exit. "Get out of
here, Trish! I have to get back to the Box ... !"

She ran through the exit, but grabbed him by the hand and
wouldn't let go. Her arm was right under the blast door as it continued to descend.

"What are you doing?!" he screamed. 'let go!"'

"Look at the time!" she countered. "Two minutes! You can't reach
the Box in two minutes!"

Owen faltered for a moment, and she could see in his eyes that
he knew she was right. `Just come on!" she said, giving his hand a
good yank.

Trisha refused to let go of Owen's hand, so he had no choice
but to slide under the door, just before it fell closed with a powerful
clang. Then they ascended several winding flights of steps in a small
cement stairwell.

At the top, Trisha glanced at her watch. They were down to just
under two minutes. She had to be sure all five of them were clear of
the stadium; this was going to be a very big blast....

But she knew something was wrong the second she emerged
from a small closet-type room at the top of the stairs and ran into a
wide access corridor at the ground level of Rice Stadium. It was night
already, and Terry waited there, still carrying Chris just outside the
door. Chris was awake but groggy and weak, and holding the cloth
at the side of his bleeding neck.

Tears filled Terry's eyes, and he looked at Trisha with infinite
sadness.

And she knew.

"I thought ... she was out," Terry said. "She lied, on the radio....
I shouldn't have taken my eyes off-"

"Get out, Terry! Move.!" she ordered, and together they managed
to lift Chris out of the building and into the parking lot. Roston's men
were scrambling and ignoring them in pure panic, some of them
making a run for it on foot, others piling into jeeps and squealing
out of Roston's makeshift base.

About fifty feet clear of the stadium, they stopped and sheltered
as a group behind a parked jeep.

Trisha looked down at her watch. Ninety seconds.

With a glance back at Terry, who had collapsed and wouldn't
look up at her or anyone, she put a finger to her ear.

"Mae?" she said, and she was shaking now, weariness and dread
filling her soul. "Can you hear me?"

"Yep," Mae replied. "Think I see it. Just followed the light, like
that guy in the dream said."

"Why?" said Trisha. She felt tears burning her eyes but fought
them back.

"Knew since the dream," Mae replied. "Old man said it had to be
one of us that did it. Knew it had to be me-I'm the one who don't
belong here. Or anywhere."

Trisha gasped.

"How could you know about ... ?" asked Owen. "We never told
you

"Put it together on my own," said Mae. "Smarter than I look, ya
know."

Owen smiled ruefully. "Yeah, you sure are."

"Makes sense," continued Mae. "Not supposed to he alive. And
all y'all have stuff to live for."

"I'm sorry," whispered Chris in a weak voice, and Trisha only
now realized he was listening and aware of what was happening.
"This isn't how any of us thought it would end"

"S'okay," Mae replied in an unwavering voice. "Finally get to do
somethin' to help."

"You helped," said Chris, looking into Trisha's eyes. "You helped
all of us. More than you'll ever know."

Despite her best efforts, Trisha couldn't prevent a pair of tears
from rolling down her cheeks. She had to swallow hard to get her
voice working again. "Is there anything we can do for you?"

A brief silence was followed by Mae's voice, saying, "Would'a liked
to a' heard some of Terry's poetry. Don't much matter now."

Terry looked up, and he stared into the night sky, his eyes darting back and forth as he tried to focus on the stars but seemed to be
piecing something together in his mind. Voice trembling, he spoke:

"The stars, the heavens, they whisper in song.
Unbound from Earth, her soul here belongs.
As life and death wrestle forlorn years,
Let sleep wipe free her distant tears...."

Deep within the quantum machine, Mae smiled wide, closing her
eyes, Terry's words washing over her. When Terry was silent, Mae
reached out and opened the Box without fanfare or flourish.

The artifact inside was so painfully bright to look at, but she
didn't let herself turn away. The truth was, it was beautiful. Terrifyingly so.

A heartbeat later, the artifact's energy was set free from the Box
and the Vault began to quake, violent explosions tearing through
the machine. Her eyes seared in pain and she closed them. She was
alone, but not truly alone, as she covered her head with her hands
and listened to the machine coming apart all around, crashing, rending, tearing, screeching.

Mae looked up at the machine as it started to fall. A small part
of her wished that she wasn't alone at the end.

You are not alone, a voice whispered like the call of a dove.

Then she smiled. I'm not alone, she thought to herself. Never
alone.

Pipes fell, catwalks ripped free, circuits and transistors sparked
and caught fire, monitors and lights blinked out, and the machine
coughed up endless volumes of fog and steam. Despite her eyes being
closed, she could sense the artifact was glowing brighter still, until it
seemed to turn inside out and was removed from this world.

Mae opened her eyes.

Without the presence of the artifact and the beacon of light, the
room was now utterly dark. Once the cacophony of sounds came
to an end and the last pieces of steel settled inside the Vault, there were ten seconds of silence as both inside the chamber and on the
surface above, everything became ominously still.

Then the world ripped open.

An explosion went off, powerful enough to shake every corner
of Houston.

And the world went dark.

And Mae was no longer alone.

Everywhere around the world where people had once breathed
and eaten and slept and talked and loved and lived ... they lived
again.

In the most remote primal villages in Africa, and in the mountaintop monasteries of Tibet. In the frozen tundra of Russia and
northern Europe and Canada. In the deserts of Africa, Asia, and
America. In the tropical paradises of the Caribbean and the South
Pacific. In the streets and homes of the civilized world, including
Houston, Texas.

Wherever they were when the Waveform Device removed them
from existence was where the device returned them. Not everyone
that disappeared reappeared in a safe place. If they were driving cars,
they were put right back in the drivers' seats of their cars-whether
still on the road or not. Lives were lost, of course, far too many in
airplanes that had crashed and were obliterated, or in boats capsized
and sunk to the bottom of the sea.