The Tunnel
The Hidden Dome – Volume 1
Copyright 2012 by Sean Monaghan
All rights reserved
Cover Art: Sean Monaghan
Published by Triple V Publishing
Author web page
www.seanmonaghan.com
Smashwords Edition
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Contents
Prologue
One
Kelly Barton threw her cards onto the table in the center of the car. “Gin!” she whooped.
An overtaking truck shuddered and bumped the car, right at her door.
The car's alarm sounded. Her father's chair whipped around, putting him back in front of the driver's console. He grabbed the wheel, but the nose had already hit the guardrail.
Kelly's brother Nate wailed.
The truck was still up against them. Out of control.
The guardrail burst.
The car became airborne. Gin cards fluttered up from the table. Kelly had a view of pine trees and grass before the interior flooded with crashgel.
She felt weightless for a moment. Then the car smacked down.
Glass shattered. She was upside down. Still moving.
Nate screamed.
The roof caved in around her. Crashgel squished, blue and soft, pushing against her cheeks and legs. The car bounced.
The Angeles Crest Highway, she thought for a moment. Up into the San Gabriel Mountains. A picnic for Nate's birthday. She'd brought her camera to see if she could get some good photos of the birds. There should be cardinals, this time of year.
The car bounced again. Tumbling down the hill.
Kelly wondered if the camera was going to be all right after this. She'd gotten it for her twelfth birthday just last month and this was her first best chance to use it since. But it was in the trunk and she didn't know if there was crashgel in there.
They bounced again. On their side. Nate had stopped screaming.
Kelly wondered when this was all going to stop. Delwyn Miller had been in a wreck last year in Colorado. Their car had been okay, but the car that had hit them rolled down the mountain more than two thousand feet. At least that was what Delwyn had said.
Another bounce. Something jabbed her leg, right through the crashgel.
Then they were rolling, not bouncing anymore. Over and over and over.
If her camera got wrecked Kelly was going to make sure that her parents sued every last living cent from the truck driver.
Cars weren't supposed to crash anymore anyway.
She'd never before seen her father or mother have to take the wheel except for those niggly little moments they muttered about when the parking wasn't quite straight enough, or Nate's bicycle was lying in the drive and they had to maneuver around it. Program your destination, then sit back and enjoy the ride.
Bounce. Her leg hurt worse. She wondered if it was broken. That might mean missing a day of school. Cool.
Leg, okay, she thought, camera not.
Bounce. This time she was thrown a little forward, as if the car was rolling end over end, rather than on its side.
They were going to need a new car.
When her father was a kid, he'd told her, the cars didn't drive themselves. His father – Grandpa Nathaniel – had to sit behind the wheel the whole time, steering around other crazy drivers and avoiding trucks and guardrails. It sounded like monster trucks on the freeway to her.
The car made a loud bang. Then something scraped along the side. Kelly was thrown back into her seat. The belt tightened a little across her chest.
Now thanks to some busted-up monster truck on the highway, here she was in her very own wreck. Good story for when she did get back to school.
Another bang. Something slammed against the door, then everything went black.
Two
Kelly woke to color sparkles. Something was buzzing nearby. Had they landed on a beehive? She hated stings. Honey was nice, but she was never going to be a beekeeper.
It was dark, and she was lying down. No crashgel on her. She wasn't in the car.
There were other sounds too. A quiet regular bleeping and a wheezing, like air blowing through a pipe.
It wasn't bees she could hear. She was in the hospital.
She'd probably broken her leg. It didn't hurt anymore so they must have stuck it with drugs.
Kelly wondered if she would get a two-day or a week-long cast. Week-long was better, you got more attention that way.
Sighing Kelly hoped it would be daylight soon and she could see her Mom and Dad.
She wondered if everyone else was okay. She could imagine Nate with a broken leg and a broken arm and milking that for all it was worth. Little sympathy hound. What did Mom call him? A malingerer? Yeah. She was never like that when she was nine.
“Is she awake?” she heard a quiet voice say. Was that her Dad?
“I'm awake Dad,” she said. “You can turn on the lights.” Letting her sleep or something. She could imagine him saying “Lots of bed-rest for my poor little angel.” A wonder she hadn't turned into a malingerer too.
He didn't say anything for a moment, then someone else spoke. A woman. “I'll talk to her.” Not her Mom.
“Lights please,” Kelly said. Sheesh. Was there some kind of stupid blackout?
She felt a hand on her arm, then the woman spoke again. “Kelly, can you hear me?”
“Not deaf,” she said. Uh-oh, she thought, recognizing something in the woman's tone. Someone got hurt worse than me in the wreck. No, no. It's going to be okay.
“Kelly I'm Doctor Milton. I'm sorry to have to...”
Kelly stopped listening. Turned off her ears. People didn't get hurt in wrecks. Not anymore. Cars were safe. Safe as planes, safe as swimming, safe as watching dumb movies in the living room with popcorn and huge swilling buckets of Coke, safe as wrestling your idiot brother because he took your Barbie that you didn't even play with any more, safe as getting wrapped up in Mom's arm because Bruce McGinty the stupid Australian exchange student said you were ugly.
Safe, safe, safe.
But nothing could turn off the words.
Mom was dead. Dad was dead. Nate was dead. It was like a list of the dead. Like a roll call at some stupid memorial service for a war, except this was her family and it had just been a little car wreck rolling down a hill. She'd just been playing gin, heading up to take some photos and they were all suddenly dead.
Kelly sniffed. It would work out. It would just be a mistake.
“I'm so sorry Kelly,” Doctor Milton said.
Sorry, she thought. Sorry. They really were dead.
The doctor rubbed Kelly's arm. “And you were hurt bad too.”
Kelly nodded. “My leg. I know.” She sniffed. She was going to cry any moment. “I felt it break,” she said. “We were rolling and rolling and something hit it bad.” Why were they telling her in the dark? Couldn't the doctor at least have brought a flashlight so Kelly could see her face?
The doctor took a breath. “Yes. Your leg. But your face too. I'm sorry Kelly, but we had to take your eyes.”
Book one
Part one
Chapter one
Sam Schmidt looked over the station plans. A fifteen hundred meter wide wheel. The rim was sixty meters high – enough for twenty stories of occupied apartments and business around the circumference. There were spokes leading to a central spherical hub itself designed to be sixty meters across too. Space enough for docking and supply, some micro-gravity labs that would help sell stocks, and some branded “zero-gravity” recreation spaces that would help sell apartments. And be a gateway to the communities on the surface.
“Construction will take how long?” Schmidt asked Jen Cooper, his chief architect.
“Four months, give or take.”
“And we have all the clearances?”
Schmidt watched her for a moment. She was slim, and kind of attractive, he thought, though a tad short and her eyes were a little dark and sunken, as though she had a tiny bit of raccoon in her genetics. Not that anyone her age had any gene-splicing at that level. Still, she was a good architect. He raised his eyebrows.
“We don't,” he said, “have clearances?”
“Well...”
Mapinkura was a newly opened up planet a dozen light years in from edges of explored space, two hundred light years from Earth. Standard transit time, thirty-three days. Not something he could wrap his head around – that you could be transported that kind of distance in mere moments – but that didn't interest him. What did interest him was real estate and how much dollar value could be extracted from its sale.
“How long?” he said.
“I'd need to talk to legal again.”
Schmidt nodded. It was always the business of 'talk to legal'. He didn't pay lawyers to tell him the law, he paid them to navigate it and keep the lawsuits to a minimum.
“Well,” Schmidt said. “Legal is here.” He stared down the table at Mike Jesson, today's legal rep. Jesson hadn't been at many meetings yet, so he was still fresh, still eager to look at the law from a moral standpoint, rather than a practical point. Black hair slicked back, tie perfectly straight, surgically perfect nose. His demeanor screamed 'Little whiner'.
“We could... uh,” Jesson stammered.
Schmidt kept watching him, waiting. It would be easy enough to fire Jesson and get someone else up here to say the right things. Jesson didn't even have kids, so there would be none of those stupid guilt looks from his secretary and other day staff.
“We could...?”
“If we file on the the... well, the assumption that there are no indigenous... creatures on the planet, then we could begin construction. If there...” Jesson sighed. “If there was a problem, we could sue for... for delays and recover costs plus.”
“That's what I like to hear,” Schmidt said. “So, what we could do-” he looked across the table at Doug O'Malley, his construction head “-is begin construction immediately.”
“Once we've filed,” Jesson said.
“Yes, yes.” Schmidt didn't look away from O'Malley. O'Malley smiled. Schmidt liked him. Unlike the others he didn't have any moral wavering. You just told him where to build and he built.
“Construction is well underway,” O'Malley said. “The robots have on site more than a month,” His smile broadened, showing bright strong teeth. O'Malley was a burly man, ginger-haired and gruff. At least not everyone on his staff was insipid.
“So effectively,” Schmidt said to Jesson as if explaining something to a child, “we have a month to file. Think your team can handle that.”
“Well, I...” Jesson's face drained to an almost pure white. “At least the filing should be done before the robots even... officially... leave.”
Schmidt drummed his fingers on the table. “Better get to it then.”
Chapter two
The russet grass waved in long lines, like the ocean waves. There was a nighttime chill just beginning to develop in the air as Greg Compton turned from the setting sun.
Mapinkura was being kind to him. Not only advancing his research – he'd published more papers in a year out here than in the previous three back at Dartmouth. And as Morgan was heading home, it looked like there might be a promotion to lead scientist coming his way. It would mean less time for research and ground work, but he would get to oversee all of the projects rather than just being focused on one. He would get to make suggestions and offer insights to the other researchers.
That was his strength, he was sure. Insights and ideas. Half of his publications had been a co-writing credit where he'd done little except offer a couple of pointers. The thought that the centipedes and the ants were more closely related had led to a re-evaluation of the DNA of both and the discovery that more than just being related, they were the same species, just different stages. Now in the lab they were hooking them up and watching the little yellow ants – those they didn't inadvertently kill in captivity – join together end to end and become a single creature. They had a single twenty-four legged centipede when there had been four ants.
A co-writing credit for a single pointer. He'd actually asked the others to keep his name off. It was part of the job, after all, but they'd insisted.
He watched the last of the lingering filaments of Serthin's light whip through the atmosphere as she set. Serthin was a Sol-like star, a little older, a little redder. She made for fantastic sunsets.
Greg turned back for the camp. Up over the crest of the hill, then down into their cluster of huts. The encampment was two dozen buildings, mostly small living cabins, with two big labs, the vehicle garage and maintenance shed and administration/recreation building. All built by robots before they arrived. Greg tried to stay away from the tailings' dump two valleys away. It seemed like an affront to the jungle, to the planet itself. The robots had extracted the raw materials for construction from the soil and rock in a concentrated circle sixty meters in diameter.
Even with all the care they were programmed for, they'd still left a mess. The plants they'd planted after, had barely started to get a toehold in the depleted, depressed ground.
Strange, this little patch just at the edge of the jungle. A rocky outcrop with little soil. The ideal spot for their fifth base on the planet.
At the edge of the compound a light on a tall stalk flashed at him, making sure he wasn't some unidentified carnivorous local fauna coming into the camp for dinner. The stalk whirred a little.
At the door to the rec room, Greg hesitated. He had to make sure that he didn't come over as smug about his chances of getting the new position. Especially since they'd shipped more than half the team off, with just one replacement coming, apparently. Six people from the team of ten. Gone. The powers were definitely winding down the research.
He said a little Zen mantra to himself. Somewhere, once, he'd read it and read that it helped to calm and center you in moments of stress. It wasn't really a stressful moment, but the mantra helped. I am a leaf, he thought, and there are many leaves. He had no idea what it meant, exactly, but it did the trick. He'd tried imagining the sound of one hand clapping, but that never worked. He just got himself into a feedback loop. Almost as bad as if a tree falls.
No, he thought. Don't think of that. I am a leaf.
He pushed the door open.
Chapter three
Kelly checked the number on the door and pushed it open. There were people inside, sitting around a table, with big charts projected up on the wall.
“... construction is well underway...” a red-haired man said, trailing off and looking over at her.
The group all turned and stared.
She was used to that. People stared at her eyes. Always.
“Help you?” the only woman at the table said. She looked like she needed a week's sleep. Kelly bet that people stared at her eyes too.
“Sorry, excuse me,” Kelly said. She looked up at the door again. 22-23. That was the number on her chit.
“Help you?” the man at the head of the table said.
She said the room number. “I have an interview,” she said. It was clearly the wrong room. Though up on the display she saw the words 'Mapinkura' and 'Indigenous'. That was to do with her interview. She pointed up at the display. “The Mapinkura position.”
One of them, a young man with a prim suit and short dark hair looked alarmed. “Not in here.” He touched something on the table and the display blanked.
The man at the head of the table glared at him. Tall, but balding, he was the one in charge. He seemed familiar to Kelly. Had she come across him in the news sometime?
Samuel Schmidt.
Jeepers.
He was high up in Sampang. His funding had opened the Mapinkura research facility to begin with. A philanthropist.
“I... I'll check back at reception,” she said. She let the door swish shut behind her and went back to the floor's lobby. Holding the appointment chit up to the automated receptionist, she waited for the confirmation.
There, on the screen, what she'd missed, right under “Help yourself to fresh coffee”, it read “Please take a set until your appointment time. Your interviewer will collect you from this lobby.”
Unfocused, that was her problem. She desperately wanted this job, not just for the pay – her last eye upgrade had bumped her medical premiums up another fifteen percent – but for the step away from the simple and specific work she'd been doing.
With a sigh, she went and took a seat.
Borneo, Kenya, Brazil. Three major research projects – each a doctorate's worth of work. And each looking at the jungle's relationship to the land and how the indigenous population dealt with it. It felt like there was nothing left to write about. At least here on Earth. The tribes still living as they had millennia ago, and people going back. In Kenya, the return of people from the cities to tribal life had been examined to the brink of boredom.
Off-planet was what she needed, and this was the perfect opportunity. From what she'd seen in that boardroom meeting, they were clearly very keen on developing Mapinkura. And opportunities like this didn't come along that often.
She was good fit. Field experience, academic qualifications and a solid publication record. She'd managed multiple projects with doctoral and post-doc students in the field. The only thing she lacked was time at any off-planet posts.
Well, that and the medical thing. Her eyes were always going to be a stumbling block for any employer. They just took one look at her implants and balked. She'd applied for positions with commercial organizations before – working with rights negotiations and resource management in the jungle areas. But she would never look right giving a presentation to shareholders. It was bad enough that a woman had to be pretty – still! – to get anywhere, but the obvious implants were too much.
And there was no way she was going to hide them behind darkened glasses. The implants automatically corrected for all light levels. Sunglasses would be purely cosmetic.
What had he meant by “construction has begun”? she wondered. Were they already starting to populate the planet?
A door behind the receptionist opened and a middle-aged man came out. He was in good shape, but the crow's feet at his eyes and peppery hair gave him away. He might be fifteen or twenty-five years older than her, it was hard to tell.
He beamed her a bright smile and held out a hand to shake as he came over. “Jim Eathorne,” he said.
Kelly stood and took his hand. “Kelly Barton.”
He nodded at her. “I'm supposed to be interviewing you today. Let's get down to our room and we'll complete the formalities.”
“Formalities?”
He smiled at her again. “It is just a formality as far as I'm concerned.” He paused, the smile fading. “I'm off-world research manager here. Notice I said that with a little irony? Never been off-world myself – not that I'm not interested. I just sign off on all you clever types who take the trip.”
“Uh-huh,” she said.
“This way.” He started along the corridor. Kelly followed.
“We're running the whole Mapinkura project off this floor,” Eathorne said. “Just me and a few others. There's a chance we'll be putting in a colony in a few years, so right now we've got to get in ahead with all the research for your lot.”
Eathorne stopped at the door marked 22-23. Kelly was about to say something, but he pushed it open.
“Oh, excuse me,” he said. He pulled the door closed again and looked at the number on it. He turned to Kelly. “Looks like a double-booking,” he said with a smile.
“I see,” she said. Was that a hint of slyness she saw in his smile?
“Let's go find another room,” he said. “Then we can sign you off and get you underway.”
Chapter four
Kelly stared at him. Sign her off and get her underway? What did he mean?
“Let's just go back to my office,” he said. “The view's not as good, but I think we can finish off things right there.”
With a glance back at the closed door, Kelly followed Eathorne along the corridor. They went back by reception, then into a narrow, cluttered office.
“The paperless office, huh?” Eathorne said as he went around the desk. “When did they predict that for? Twenty-fifty?”
“Something like that, I guess. I wasn't born.” There were filing boxes stacked on shelves and on the floor. Half of his desk was covered in folders. Beyond, there was a view out over the Hudson into the New Jersey skyscrapers.
He nodded at her, and indicated for her to take a seat. “Me either.” He sat behind the desk and pulled up a translucent film panel. Data scrolled up it. He sat back in his seat.
Eathorne took a breath. “I meant to say, I'm very sorry for your loss. That can't be an easy thing to deal with.”
Kelly nodded. Everyone had to mention the accident, say how sorry they were. “It was a long time ago.” Next would be something about the eyes, asking if she'd considered surgery or transplants. Then she would have to get into details about complications and lack of compatibility, without telling anyone that she actually liked the artificial implants.
But he didn't mention her eyes at all. He leaned forward a little. “You know that you have the position, right?”
Kelly shook her head. “This was supposed to be an interview. I thought there was going to be a panel, and a series of tests.” She pulled out her own sheet. “I've got my statement to read, like you asked for.” She stole a glance over her shoulder. “I thought I was going to be here all day.”
“Formalities,” he said. He leaned forward a little more. “Listen,” he whispered. “I'm out. They've made me 'redundant'. I have a week to work, then I'm off the premises. In many ways I'm lucky they didn't escort me off immediately.”
Kelly swallowed. “I see.”
Eathorne sat back and sighed. “They just want someone up there. Someone who will confirm there are no natives and they can start exploiting. Mostly it's colonial, but they'll also want to look at exports.”
Kelly shrugged. “Sure, that's normal. I've read how the off-world process works.” There were dozens of planets already being cropped and mined. The Lewis-Coray drive made hauling materials out of a gravity well a moot point, and Melton ships bypassed normal space to avoid breaking physics laws. They transited between stars in weeks. Things she barely understood.
“No,” Eathorne said. “Right now. They're starting the process right away and they haven't gotten their clearances. There's no proof that there aren't natives on the planet.”
Kelly squinted at him, then realized she was doing it. Strange how that unconscious action persisted even without real eyes. “They're beginning-”
The door burst open.
Kelly jerked.
A security guard came in. “Jim,” the guard said. “This is why they gave you notice. You can't go divulging things like this to the public. If Schmidt got wind of this you'd be out already and have lawsuits up your wazoo for the next two decades.”
“Yeah,” Eathorne said.
“Morning miss,” the guard said, nodding at Kelly. He did the usual double-take on her eyes, then focused back on Eathorne.
“I can't keep erasing tapes,” the guard said.
“She's an employee already,” Eathorne said. He reached out to his panel and pressed his thumb to it. “I've just signed off on her. And I do still have signing authority.”
The guard nodded. “You do.” He turned to Kelly. “Don't listen too much to what he has to say.” He pointed a finger at his own temple and waggled it. “He gets a little wacko. The company does not begin exploiting or colonizing planets until all the t's are dotted and the... t's are crossed and i's are dotted.”
“Ignore him,” Eathorne said.
“Is your medication up to date?”
“See, he thinks he's funny.”
Kelly looked between them nervously. This was the company that was running the research? It didn't give her any confidence.
“No,” the guard said. “Just sick of covering for you.”
“See he's the problem. I'm the one ethical guy in the place and-”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry, one of two ethical guys in the place. And it's cost me my job. That's okay. I have other things to do anyway.”
“Hey,” Kelly said. “I was here for an interview and some tests. I'm happy to jump through all the hoops, if you're serious. I don't even know what's going on here.” She stood up. She would find something else. Perhaps take up that position in Ecuador.
“Congratulations,” Eathorne said to Kelly. “Welcome aboard. Can you leave in the morning?”
Chapter five
Greg was out in the vegetable patch when Andrea came racing in from the camp. “Boss,” she hollered from on top of the low rise. “Boss, you gotta come look.”
He stood and pushed his sunhat back a little. The broccoli were doing fine, but the caulis just wouldn't take.
“Boss! Boss!” she kept running for him, waving.
This was supposed to be his afternoon off. Time to relax, get away from the research. He'd planned to dig and weed and plant and harvest out here for a couple hours, then retreat to his cabin with a good book before he took his evening stroll.
“What can be so important,” he said as she came up, “that it can't wait until tomorrow.” Even a medical emergency could be handled without him. He was technically still only acting director.
“You don't have your radio on?” Andrea said. She was twenty-seven, bright – double doctorate – but always a little nervous. He did wonder how she'd gotten through her final PhD interviews. She was tall, though, looming over him by a good half foot.
“No,” he said. “No, I don't have my radio on. Did you see the duty schedule? My afternoon off.” As he said it, he knew it sounded lame. If you were going to be director, you had to accept being on-call all day, every day. “But not anymore, I suppose.”
“Natives,” she said.
“Where? How many?” He started back between the rows of blooming broccoli. “Who found them? Are they-”
“I mean, an artifact,” Andrea said. She started following him back up the rise.
“Artifact?” Greg stopped. “An artifact? You came rushing to tell me that?”
“Thought you'd want to know. It's exciting. You need to see it. Floor and pillars.”
“A building then?” It would still be there in the morning. In some ways he felt torn. How much better did it get than finding an alien artifact? But then it was his one afternoon.
“Yes. Right on the valley wall.” Andrea shrugged. “I thought you'd want to know. Sorry to have troubled you.” She looked back at the vegetable patch. “I'll let you get back to your plants.”
“Come on,” he said. “The vegetables will still be here tomorrow.”
Andrea gave him one of her slightly lopsided smiles, then walked with him back to camp. Dave Gallow was waiting at the perimeter in the Mitsubishi rover, the electric motor chugging way.
The big-wheeled vehicles were narrow enough to negotiate their way between most of the big trees in the jungle, and flexible enough to get up steep slopes and over rocks and roots. It had three sections, a nose bulb with the engine and big front wheels, an open middle with four seats in a row, and four smaller wheels, and a rear section with a smaller engine and another set of the big wheels, as well as cargo space. All the sections were articulated. It looked like three giant grapes, laid end to end. With wheels.
“Hey,” Dave waved at them. “Let's go. Did you lose your radio?”
“Something like that,” Greg said as he climbed in behind Dave. Andrea got up behind him.
Dave sped around the encampment, then out onto one of the 'roads' that lead away. The road was really just a rutted track that had been driven over enough that the jungle had given up on re-growing over. They quickly dropped down from their little plateau into the warmth of the jungle.
The trees around them still dripped from the lunchtime rainstorm. Insects flitted around. Big dragonflies, that reminded him of Paleozoic monsters, clung to the trunks of trees. Off in the distance something wailed. Probably one of the pigs. They'd only seen them a few times, but Dave was trying to catch one to figure out where it fitted in the system.
They drove for twenty minutes, past the lake and clearing where three big trees had fallen, probably a few years ago, taking a lot of others with them. Suze Dailey wanted to camp out in the clearing to make some night observations. He'd struggled to convince her that they still had to stay in the relative safety of the compound, and that the remotes could take plenty of observations.