A large hatch was open in the ship’s middle, and they were instructed to climb down the ladder to the tunnel below. There would be a second “debusing,” as the personnel man called it, then they would give their name and ID to the officer on the other side and be taken to their final destinations.
The chamber below was brightly lit; its walls and even floor were rounded and were of a translucent greenish color. They stopped in the middle, had the familiar sensation of being cleaned inside and out once more, then the light in the next section of tunnel went on and they proceeded down it. At the end of the next section there was a woman sitting on a stool in front of a small machine that came out from the wall. As each new arrival came to her, she asked crisply, “Last name, first name, middle initial, and company or military ID number, please.”
“Morgan, Jeremiah K.,” said the large, balding man in front of him. “76554-65845-6745LH. Say—when do we get some clothes?”
She checked her screen, nodded, then said, “We have no room for that here. Index finger in the slot, please.” She didn’t wait but grabbed it and stuck it in. She nodded again. “Proceed to next station. Next, please!”
“Haller, Toby G.,” he told her, then gave his own long string of numbers. She nodded again, and he stuck his index finger in the slot—and felt a sting. “Ow!”
“Thank you! Proceed to next station,” she said crisply. “Move along, please! We’re behind schedule now.”
He went along, thinking that he had worked with a number of computers with better, personalities and more human kindness than bureaucrats.
The end of the tunnel was stunning, and he almost forgot anything else when he saw it. A couple of times back on Titan he’d visited the inner area of the small Point that powered the base, but it was nothing like this. Just beyond the energy regulator, the only part of the massive amount of computer and machinery that was exposed, there swirled a beautiful maelstrom of pink and white cloud in which golden sparkles of energy were constantly flashing. He knew it was an optical illusion caused by all sorts of fancy physics, but it was stunning all the same.
And that was why, at this point, they had planted a sergeant in full uniform, and why they’d picked one who was two meters tall and weighed at least a hundred and fifty kilograms with no evidence of fat.
“Name and destination Anchor!” he announced, more than asked, in a deep but highly officious voice.
“Um—Haller, Toby G. Anchor L.”
The sergeant’s right hand pointed to his right. “That way!”
He looked and said somewhat sheepishly, “Uh—there’s only a blank wall that way.”
“Just walk into it. Don’t worry, bub—you’ll get there.”
He shrugged and walked into the wall. There was a sudden absence of all light, and a feeling of falling, but it was only momentary. Suddenly he was standing on a round metallic plate inside a huge pit. Beyond he could see people sitting behind folding tables with large cartons in back of them, and he went forward and approached the first one.
“Name, please?” said the woman.
“Haller, Toby G,” he responded.
“You want that table over there,” she told him. “Can’t you read?”
For the first time he saw that they had hand-lettered signs tacked on the front of the tables. He was at the one marked a to f
“Haller, Toby G.,” he said yet again, this time to the g to k table lady. She nodded, leaned back, and a young soldier in Logistics blue brought her a sealed box that, he saw, had his name and number on it.
She pointed to a small portable signature plate on the table. “Sign here,” she told him. “Then proceed forward before opening the box and dressing so as not to block others.”
He signed with the stylus provided, then took the box and did as instructed, joining several others. He had a lot of questions to ask, but first he wanted whatever was in his box.
It turned out to be some military-issue underwear and socks, all white, a pair of decent jeans, a flannel-style work shirt with two breast pockets, and a pair of solid low-cut work boots, black, also military issue. He put them on and was surprised that they fit so well. There was also a wide-brimmed cream-colored hat, creased in the crown, and it fit, too, although he almost never wore hats. Going further, he discovered a small case with basic toiletries, generic issue, a multifunction pocket knife, a wristwatch that read 0918:08 and said nothing else, a clip-on green-bordered ID card that had the same lousy hologram of him that he’d had on his company badge back on Titan, a small gray book marked Orientation Manual, Pocket Edition, and, wonder of wonders, a chocolate bar. After clothing himself, the chocolate bar got first priority.
While munching it, and discovering that it even had nuts in it, he looked around and saw another personnel officer standing there, looking over the new arrivals. She, at least, looked human—and slightly bored. He went over to her.
“Excuse me, but now where do I go?” he asked her.
She peered at his badge. “Up. There’s a lift to the side, there, that will take you to the surface. There’ll be a line of tents above. Look for the one with the Engineering logo on it. They’ll get you settled in.” She stopped a moment, then read the badge again. “Oh, my! They’ll be quite happy to see you. Dr. Haller. We all are.”
He was startled. “How’s that?”
“Well, you’re department head for Landscape Engineering, and God knows we need you bad. You’ll see when you get topside.”
He nodded. “Urn, thanks—I think. By the way—that wall I walked through to get up here? I had been led to believe that matter transmission was impossible. Flux or no Flux. Did I miss something?”
“Oh, no. As far as I know, the kind of matter transmission you’re talking about is impossible. Too many losses in transmission, I believe. The tube, as we call it, is a direct-by-wire transmit and receive system. You’re zapped at one end, then transmitted, one at a time, along a closed, sealed line running well below the surface all the way from there to here. It does save time, and the one thing we have here is energy to spare. There’s a line to each of the four Anchors in this region from the Gate. Good to remember if you have to get from here to, say, Mary, in a hurry.”
“Mary?”
“Anchor M for Mary. This is L for Luck, although some folks have other less pleasant names for it.”
“I see. Yes, that will be convenient, I suspect.” Convenient, hell! It meant that he’d be able, if need be, to travel the 6035 kilometers between L and M—urn, Luck and Mary—in a matter of minutes. It sure beat walking.
He was surprised at the lack of cargo robots about, but he realized that the instant transit system wouldn’t handle the modules of the enormous size he’d seen on the lower deck of the transit ship. They’d have to offload and bring them in the hard way.
The lift turned out to be an enormous, dirty platform obviously designed to lift or lower heavy machinery and construction robots up and down. The pit, he realized, was a lower floor of what was to be the operations and control center. The seven antennae were in place and rose majestically from the floor up to a height far beyond ground level, but as yet nobody had put the building on top of this foundation. Of course, it was impressive as it was, even if it didn’t look that way. Just to be at this point, he realized, he was already standing on about a square kilometer of Kagan 7800 computer and associated control and command rooms and equipment, all powered by direct lines tapping that Point over eighteen hundred kilometers distant. It looked like warmed-over shit, but it was a really impressive technological achievement.
He still didn’t really believe he was now on some distant moon, perhaps not even in the Milky Way galaxy although no one was really certain. When he reached the top, though, he began to feel not only distant but the full weight of what the personnel woman had told him.
In front of the pit were various large tents with the division logos on them, both civil and military. Engineering’s classical symbol, even without the superimposed apple tree, was easy to spot.
Beyond, though, as far as his eye could see, was a field of what looked, felt, and even smelled like genuine, plain old dirt. And on that dirt, back to the pinkish haze that surrounded it on all sides, was a sea of tents large and small. There was an odd and shifting quality to the light, but the place was duller and drabber than Titan had ever been, and the sky was a mass of pinkish-gray gloom beyond which could be glimpsed, just barely, the enormous orb of the great gas giant that held them all. There were no buildings evident, no power lines, no trees, grass, flowers, or anything else, and the air, while quite warm, was deathly still. It was, overall, the most depressing hole he’d ever seen in his life, and it was all his now.
“Hi, ho!” he mumbled to himself, making it sound like the clap of doom.
8
THE GODS OF ANCHOR LUCK
Sir Kenneth Korda hadn’t been kidding when he’d warned Haller that the area around Gate Four was the dumping ground. There was the convent, for example—a huge complex of wall-to-wall nuns from an order that liked to dress in the ancient style, like penguins, Haller thought. They were part of the advanced force for Populations—most were teachers, although some were nurses and the like—and they were here, bought and paid for, by the Vatican itself and as a favor to some of the board, a majority of whom were Catholics, including van Haas himself.