the tension that had existed since the day she took the job crackled between them.
Shed never heard of Mount Weather. But she couldnt see any harm in indulging him. She climbed into the car, and he followed; they would be alone together.
They pulled out. The convoy took Route 66 and met Highway 50, heading west. The road was full of traffic, but their speed was high.
How far are we going?
Be there in half an hour. Paxton sat there and glowered, visibly irritated.
I know whats bugging you, Bob. Its Professor Carel, isnt it?
The muscles in his grizzled cheeks worked, as if he longed to be chewing gum. I dont know anything about this old English guy.
No doubt you had him vetted.
As best we could. He doesnt have anything to do with this. Not part of the team.
Hes coming at my invitation, she said firmly. In fact, in a sense, to her this elderly British scientist was part of the team, a deeper and older team-up than anything she was involved in with Paxton.
Professor Bill Carel had once been a graduate student working with Siobhan McGorran, another British astronomer who had become involved in the grand effort to build the sunstorm shieldand who
had, in its aftermath, married Bud Tooke, and then nursed him through his cancer, a cruel legacy of that astounding day. That personal link was in fact the channel through which Carel had contacted her, and had tried to persuade her that he had a contribution to make regarding the presence of the object in the solar system, which he had heard of in whispers and leaks.
She tried to express some of this to Paxton, but he just waved it away. Hes a cosmologist, for Christs sake. Hes spent his life staring into deep space. What use is he going to be today?
Lets keep an open mind, Bob, she said firmly.
He fell into a silence that lasted all through the rest of the drive. Bella had raised a child, she was used to sulks, and she just ignored him.
After eighty kilometers they pulled off onto Route 101, a narrow two-lane rural road that clambered up a ridge. At the crest of the ridge they came to a line of razor-wired fencing. A faded sign read:
U.S. PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING
Beyond that Bisesa could make out a few battered aluminum huts, and beyond them, a glassy wall.
They had to wait while their cars interfaced with the bases security systems. Bella was aware of a faint speckle of laser light as she was probed.
So, Mount Weather, she prompted Paxton.
Five hundred acres of Blue Ridge real estate. In the nineteen-fifties they set up a bunker here, a place to shelter government officials from D.C. in the event of a nuclear exchange. It fell into disuse, but was revived after 9/11 in 2001, and again after 2042. Although now its essentially a loan from the U.S. government to the World Space Council.
Bella tried not to grimace. A bunker from the Cold War, the War on Terror, and now the War with the Sky. Appropriate, I suppose.
Manned by navy officers mostly. Used to confinement and canned air. Mount Weather is a good neighbor, Im told. They keep up the roads, and send out the snow plows in winter. Not that theres much snow nowadays...
She had been expecting the convoy to pass on to a gate in that shining impenetrable wall. She was shocked when, with a rip of foliage, the whole chunk of land beneath the car turned into an elevator and dropped her into darkness.
Bob Paxton laughed as they descended. I feel like Im coming home.
As smiling young naval officers security-processed the party and escorted it to its conference room, Bella
glimpsed a little of Mount Weather.
The ceilings were low, paneled with grimy tiles, the corridors narrow. But these unprepossessing corridors enclosed a small, old-fashioned town. There were television and radio studios, cafeterias, a tiny civilian police station, even a little row of shops, all underground, all contained within a hum of air conditioning. It was like a museum, she thought, a relic of the mindset of the mid-twentieth century.
At least the conference room was modern, big and bright and fitted with softwalls and table screens.
And here Bill Carel was waiting for her. In a room full of heavy, rumbling figures, mostly men, mostly about Paxtons age, mostly in one uniform or another, Carel in his shabby old jacket was standing alone beside a coffee percolator.
Bella ignored Paxtons cronies and made straight for Carel. Professor. Its good