Hello again everyone.
I think I've got the end of the story sorted out, but we shall see if I can pull it off in less than 20 more chapters, or whether we end up with 5 more sub-plots.
Chapter 60
King of the World
It was surprising how much enjoyment Harriet Doom was getting from the work she was doing at the Railgun complex. With help from some of the electrical engineers, she had built on the experience she already had in repairing old circuitry and was becoming more and more confident with other kinds of electronics. Doom would usually assist those with more experience than she had, but she also carved out a little side line taking care of the need for audible notifications in all space related systems.
There was a time when an alert sound would simply be an alert sound; nothing more and nothing less. It could be a beep or a chirp but when it was heard, a person would need to check a control panel to find out what the alert meant. Doom suggested to the engineers that all alerts could be different so the problem could be partially assessed without the need to rush to a computer screen. After she had been given the go ahead, Doom began developing a new system, assigning different styles of music to different areas. Autonomous Rock Processors for example, all ended up using short phrases from the third movement of Mendelssohn Violin Concerto E Minor to let their operators know about a broken drill bit, a jammed regolith line or a hydraulic failure. Other machines or Space Station systems had music alerts ranging from Moanin' by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, to the metal sound of Hocus Pocus by the band Focus.
Doom's choices often bemused the other engineers, but the biggest surprise came with the first workshop test of the new Ten Meter Airlock door. Specifications stated the door would need a loud distinctive audible warning because being caught in it when closing would be fatal. Normally a piercing electronic alarm would be used but when the testing engineers began the closing procedure on their test unit, they were surprised to hear the sweet falsetto voice of Freddie Mercury, repeatedly singing the word Galileo.
"Can someone get Miss Doom down here to explain herself" the group leader ordered.
"It may have to wait till tomorrow Chief" one of his team answered "She's on a dinner date with Emerson; the guy from robotics she's been seeing lately."
As Doom enjoyed a romantic dinner (unaware of the controversy brewing over her creative use of Bohemian Rhapsody as a warning signal), a certain amount of skulduggery was afoot within the confines of Mars Base One. Jarred Kinderman had created a small overriding receiver and was about to show the first one to a friend he hoped was on the level, and not a secret member of the Deep Council.
"Hello Jarred, I haven't seen you once since you got back from space; welcome home" Barry Fine smiled when he saw who stood at his front door.
"Hi Barry; it's good to be back" he said as he signalled his friend to be silent.
As Barry wondered what his visitor was up to, Jarred set up a sound deflector on each side of the room. He then took a small band from his pocket and placed it on Barry's wrist.
"Sorry to do this but believe me, it is necessary" Jarred insisted. "Now I want you to listen carefully to the words I am about to say."
Barry nodded and even though he was very confused, he trusted Jarred enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
"Fruit Bat" Jarred said as Barry stared at the wrist monitor.
Looking at the readout on his tablet, Jarred could see there was no change to Barry's blood pressure or heart rate to the first of the control phrases, so he continued.
"Light emitting diode" Jarred continued before using the loaded words "Deep Council."
Barry continued to look slightly confused, but when there was still no change to the readout, Jarred was satisfied his friend had never heard of the Deep Council and so it was time to move on.
"Is this some kind of crude lie detector?" Barry asked about the band on his wrist.
"It could be used that way I suppose but I just wanted to test your knowledge of a certain subject."
'Fruit bats, light emitting diodes and a Deep Council" Barry pondered "It would have to be the last one."
"Just forget about it for now and have a look at this" Jarred said as he handed the Overriding Receiver to Barry.
"Hmmm... Cat6 Ethernet connections, looks like it was designed to be fitted between a LAN cable and whatever that cable is connected to."
"Very astute of you" Jarred said "How many of these would we need to fit out every monitor on the base?"
"Over four thousand" Barry noted.
"How about if we just outfit the big screens only?" Jarred asked "The ones in the living rooms of every home and in all the main offices."
"You could probably get away with just under a thousand" Barry replied.
"I've got a machine turning out about sixty per day" Jarred said "Can you get your maintenance team to start fitting them straight away?"
"Yes but they'll want to know why... and so would I."
"You I can tell, but we'll have to come up with an excuse for everyone else."
"Lay it on me J-man."
Barry sat down and began to listen as Jarred told his tale of discovery. Was it Barry's mouth or eyes that grew the widest? It was difficult to tell.
The electric vehicle carrying Linton and Henry drove a few kilometres away from the gate where Shifty had left them, before doing a sharp right turn and heading into a tall canyon. Only a few hundred meters further on they came to the entrance of a tall, twin lane tunnel with thick metal doors. As soon as all the buggies were inside, there was a deep rumble as the doors began to slowly close behind them.
"I've got a really bad feeling about this" Henry declared.
"Yes you said so once before" Linton noted.
The tunnel they travelled down had a slightly elevated walkway about a meter higher than the road and the whole set up looked very familiar. Any resemblance to the Railgun Complex was confirmed when the far end of the tunnel opened up into a huge room with a high curved ceiling, just like the one in West Sumatra where all the half dead trucks and construction machines had been stored for fifteen years. The obvious difference though, was this room was lined with triple bunk beds where hundreds of people would sleep. In front of the bunks were tables and chairs as well as a small number of people, mostly children along with some supervising adults.
After passing through into the corridor at the far end of the room, the party continued to drive through the same set up they had left behind in Sumatra, but with some very obvious differences. The clean rooms at home, where the various teams would manufacture and assemble the Mars Supply pods, did not exist here. Instead there were filthy overcrowded workshops where Linton and Harry saw countless people going through piles of scrap metal to find anything they could use to make something new or to repair something old. Every now and then they would see a farm tractor, backhoe or other piece of equipment, sometimes almost complete but usually nothing more than a frame surrounded by parts.
Further in, there was a factory room full of pipes and tanks, and they recognised the distinctive aroma of bio-fuel being refined. Twenty minutes after they had left the light of day behind them, the carts passed by a checkpoint staffed by at least fifteen armed guards. The other side was just as filthy, but only for the first few hundred meters along the corridor. As they drove around a nearby corner, the entire place took on a very different look and feel.
"I would have expected to see this place get worse the further we went in" Linton whispered "but look how clean it is here?"
"Even the air is better" Henry noted "Not just fresher, but positively fragrant."
Both men recognised the next corridor they travelled down as the same style in their home complex, but instead of passing underground farms, they drove by were doors and they all shut tight. Henry managed to get a quick peek inside one of the massive rooms when someone stepped outside and he was surprised to see it full of grape vines.
"I don't get it" he said to the Professor "This place is surrounded by food producing crops, so why are they using all this space for bio production as well?"
"We did too I suppose but then again, we were locked underground with no other choice" Linton replied.
The buggies finally stopped at the entrance to the last room but when Henry went to step down, he was ordered not to move. The commander of the guards walked over to an intercom by the door and pressed the talk button.
"Prisoner is here sir" he announced "and we've brought the other one too."
"Bring them in" a frail voice replied.
The inside of the room was a complete surprise to Henry and Linton. The arched roof was just as high as the ones back in West Sumatra, but the ceiling was coloured a brilliant sky blue and even had clouds projected from some unseen source. Small trees and hedges grew along the side walls seventy meters away, giving the entire place the basic illusion of infinity; they could tell they were still inside, but the outdoor feel was very pleasant. A gravel path wound its way down the centre of the room with symmetrical garden beds on each side. Occasionally the artificial sunlight was broken up by the canopy of a tree or a section of pergola and although there were wooden benches every fifty meters, the weary men were not permitted to rest.
"I don't know where we're going, but couldn't we have driven there?" Professor Adisa asked after they had walked half a kilometre.
"No vehicles permitted in here, except in an emergency" came the terse reply.
Eventually they found themselves walking along a winding section of path with a more rainforest look of tall ferns and other semi tropical plants but when they emerged on the other side, they were greeted by none other than a rose garden. Sections of manicured lawn framed a small stone cottage with a green tiled roof in the centre of the roses, but it was to the left of the cottage where they finally saw the person they were being taken too.
The elderly man was hunched over one of the rose bushes; he turned when he heard the group approach, but his back did not get any straighter. A wheelbarrow half filled with cuttings stood next to him and after he had placed his secateurs down in it, he removed his gardening gloves.
"Oh for heaven's sake take those silly things off' he waggled a bony finger at the handcuffs on Linton's wrists.
"But sir he's... EFA."
"He's bloody harmless, that's what he is" the old man insisted.
He wandered over to the commander and steadied himself on the soldier's arm.
"Linton Adisa is not a member of the EFA" the old man whispered "so get out and leave us alone."
"We'll be over here if you need us" the commander pointed to the edge of the rainforest.
"I told you to get out."
"If I could just leave one of my men..."
"GET OUT!" the old man shouted.
When the commander saw the old man clutch his chest and breath deeply, he decided it would be best not to upset him anymore.
"Follow me men" he ordered as they marched off.
"Idiots" the old man sniffed as he started to walk back to the cottage.
Linton was happy when one of the soldiers had removed the cuffs, but the whole situation still seemed more than a little odd. He looked over at Henry who just shrugged, so they followed the old man to the bench he was now sitting on.
"So... Professor Linton Adisa, as I live and breathe" the old man grinned "I thought you would be long dead by now."
This comment surprised both men for although Linton was in his eighties, the man on the bench looked like he was pushing the big century.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"
"This is Doctor Henry Deming... I mean Dias; Henry Dias" Linton corrected himself "I'm still not used to this."
"Dias..." the old man pondered "You're not April's husband are you?"
"Hardly" Henry shook his head "I'm her father in law."
"Of course, I should have remembered. Your son really made life difficult for me; falling in love with the wrong girl. It was not as if he did not have plenty of young women to choose from."
"No matter how hard you try, love won't always turn out the way you want" Henry grinned.
"All the other single Mars candidates managed to do the right thing."
"Only because they were all kept isolated from all other people during training and only permitted to socialise with each other" Henry noted "so they didn't really have much choice."
"Then how did your son end up meeting April?' the old man barked "She should not have had any contact with the colonists in training, because she wasn't going to Mars."
"April was one of the trainers" Henry smiled.
"And I'll bet you assigned her to that position, eh Adisa?"
"No, I was the one who did that" Henry admitted "But I did it on purpose to help get April back on the candidate list. Funny though how out of all the men she helped train in plant biology, it would be Luis who fell for her."
"You're very lucky I did not find this out back when it happened, or you would have met with a rather nasty and quite fatal accident" the old man pointed a bony finger at Henry.
"What on earth has it got to do with you anyway?" Linton asked accusingly.
A cheeky smile formed on the man's wrinkled old face.
"You still don't recognise me, do you? Not surprising really since I have had two heart attacks and a mild stroke since we last saw each other, but look carefully."
Linton did indeed look closely at the man, whose face resembled a half deflated pink balloon with cobwebs on the sides.
"Redding?" he wondered "Prime Governor Redding?"
"It took you long enough."
Smit Cloud Dancer put down his pitch fork when he heard the truck approaching; it seemed like a good excuse to stop turning the compost. He recognised the vehicle as the one used to take produce from the western side of the ranges to the bunker but was surprised to see his son driving it.
"What on earth are you doing here in that thing?" he asked when the truck stopped.
"Give me a hand Dad" Shifty called out as he hurried to the back.
He dropped the tailgate and pulled himself up inside. The sound of clanking metal preceded his return as he handed down a red jerry can. When his father had taken the first can, Shifty dropped back down and took a green can out.
"This one is ethanol and yours is bio-diesel" he said "Let's get them inside before someone sees us."
The two men hurried into the nearby barn and shut the door behind them. Smit brushed some loose hay off of the cellar door and pulled on the rope.
"Where did you get two full cans of fuel?" he asked.
"I've got these too" Shifty said as he pulled the cartridge boxes from inside his jacket.
"What the heck did you do Alvin?" Smit shook a little.
"I didn't steal them Dad; they were given to me... as a reward I think."
"A reward for what?" Smit looked suspicious.
"Okay listen to this; a sailing ship arrived yesterday and the people on it start unloading all this stuff and when it's assembled, they've got four small tanks but with no guns on 'em. We figured it was raiders so Gavin sets himself up in a good sniping position and I go down this morning before first light to give 'em the usual ultimatum to get lost. They tell us they're not raiders and one of them even introduces himself as none other than Professor Linton Adisa."
"The head EFA guy?" Smit gasped.
"Yeah but he says he's not with the EFA."
"Well he would say that" Smit huffed.
"That's right; so we take him into the Western Settlement, where I borrow the truck to take him and one of his friends over to the bunker. The leader of the gate guards is really impressed and gives me the cartridges, then tells one of his men to give me all the fuel I can carry. The guy at the gate don't seem in any hurry and they just start talking among themselves about this surprise arrival, so eventually I gets up the nerve to ask them if I can have the fuel I was promised and one of them goes off to get the cart. They really took their time, which turned out to be good because I'm still pumping fuel into the truck when the prisoner escort guys get back and I can overhear what they're gossiping about."
"Well don't keep me in suspense" Smit begged when his son paused for dramatic effect.
The big boss wanted to see the prisoner and his friend... alone; no guards, no escort and no handcuffs" Shifty almost whispered.
"Isn't that a little bit of a risk with someone from the EFA?"
"That's just it Dad; according to the boss, this Professor guy isn't EFA, just like he claimed."
"So why was he on the danger list?"
"No one seems to know" Shifty shrugged "I think it's time for Velma to dust off the ol' Mystery Machine."
Considering I know everything worth knowing, I'm thinking about changing my name to Google.