[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
became the mystery of mysteries of the late twentieth century. A vast stone
head, over a mile and a half long by one mile wide."
Waving to the head looming above him, he contin-ued, "This is a model of the
mysterious Mars masque built to a fraction of the scale. I can testify the
original is much more awe-inspiring. As you may have guessed, the photograph
of the face was debunked by the au-thorities of the day as a result of natural
erosion, tricks of light and shadow."
Kane looked the head over again, trying to visualize the size of the original.
He found he could not.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...20Outlander%2005%20-%20Parallax%2
0Red.html (123 of 210) [12/28/2004 3:54:57 PM]
James Axler - Parallax Red
"Of course," Sindri continued, "although the pos-sibility of an
extraterrestrial civilization in our solar system was publicly sneered at, a
furious, concerted and covert campaign began to investigate and lay claim to
any artifacts this nonexistent Martian civilization may have left behind."
Sindri gazed up at the face, and his expression mir-rored the majestic sadness
etched into it. "They left behind very little of value. Wherever they went,
what-ever happened to them, the Danaan took their secrets with them."
Brigid had worked very hard in her years as an ar-chivist to perfect a poker
face, so her reaction was re-stricted to an almost imperceptibly raised
eyebrow. Grant seemed momentarily frozen, and Kane's whole body tightened, as
though a jolt of current coursed through him. He echoed, "The Danaan?"
Sindri cast him a curious glance. "Yes, that was the name they were known by.
Or more accurately, what they were called in Terran mythologies."
Kane stared at the head with a new intensity, whis-pering, "Son of a bitch
."
Page 94
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Sindri asked, "You know of them?"
Grant answered gruffly, "How could we?"
Ignoring him, Sindri said urgently, "You must tell me what you know, how you
know. I
need your co-operation."
"Cooperation?" echoed Brigid. "For what?"
"For the return to Earth of me and my people, to retrieve our long-denied
legacy as
Terrans."
"Why should we?" Grant asked.
Sindri nodded toward the trestle tables. "There are discoveries here worth
taking back to Earth."
"You're proposing a trade agreement?" Kane's tone still quivered with barely
suppressed surprise at the mention of the Danaan.
"Naturally. You can make it easier for us. You can tell us the safest places
for us to settle, to transplant the colony."
"Why do you want to come to Earth so badly?" inquired Brigid. "It's not
exactly an
Eden."
Sindri's features contorted, as if he were struggling to keep himself
composed. ' 'It is not that we want to. We need to."
"Why?" Brigid persisted. "The environmental con-ditions are not those in which
you were raised, the planet is still trying to recover from the war "
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...20Outlander%2005%20-%20Parallax%2
0Red.html (124 of 210) [12/28/2004 3:54:57 PM]
James Axler - Parallax Red
Sindri's words came out in a rush. "I told you we were all that remains of the
Cydonia
Compound col-ony. I meant that literally. We are the last of our kind, the
final, dwindling generation. Unless we leave Mars, we will die there will be
no more after us. Utter ex-tinction, Miss Brigid. Thorough and complete."
He drew in a sharp breath through finely drawn nos-trils. "That is all you
need to know, for the moment."
"The hell it is," rumbled Grant. "The little you've told us so far is through
inference, feeding us infor-mation in unconnected bits and scraps. If you want
anything from any of us, wipe the snake oil off your tongue and speak straight
from the shoulder."
Sindri's face revealed conflicting emotions. Anger, desperation, doubt and
something else, raw and primal and not easily identifiable. Finally, in a very
hushed tone, he declared, "I will tell you what you want. But as Mr. Kane
mentioned, I seek a trade agreement. I tell you and you tell me. We will
barter with information. A fair exchange, I think. Do we have a bargain?"
Brigid, Grant and Kane regarded him silently, with flinty eyes and
expressionless faces.
Sindri rapped sharply on the floor with the ferrule of his cane. Elle sidled
close, stubby fingers poised over the harp strings. In the same low voice, he
said, "Make no mistake.
I can put all three of you in so much agony you'd kill each other to be the
first to answer my ques-tions. I prefer not to do that. It is coercion, not
coop-eration, and such actions do not come naturally to me. However, if you
leave me with no other option, I
will undertake that course. Regretfully, but very, very de-votedly."
His eyes flicked back and forth across their faces. "Do we have a bargain?"
When the answer wasn't forthcoming, Sindri clenched his delicate hands, the
knuckles standing out against the flesh like ivory knobs. He thrust his head
forward and roared furiously, "Answer me!
Do we have a bargain
?"
Page 95
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Lips compressed, Kane glanced into his friends' faces, cast his gaze to the
harp, remembered the uni-verse of pain it had put him in and said grimly,
"Bar-gain."
Sindri instantly unknotted his fists. He extended his right hand. Kane
reluctantly took it, noting how his almost completely folded over Sindri's.
The little man gave his hand two swift, perfunctory pumps and an-nounced,
"Done and done."
He laughed, his eyes shining brightly. Kane recog-nized the quality of the
laugh and the light burning in Sindri's eyes. They were those of a madman.
Sindri smoothly slipped back into the persona of congenial host. He offered to
take them on a tour of the space station, not that there was, he added,
anything particularly remarkable to see.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...20Outlander%2005%20-%20Parallax%2
0Red.html (125 of 210) [12/28/2004 3:54:57 PM]
James Axler - Parallax Red
He directed them to a comer of the warehouse where a small, four-wheeled,
battery-
powered cart was parked. He had rigged an enclosed canopy of sorts with sheets
of transparent plastic draped over an aluminum framework. A small tank hissed
a steady stream of ox-ygen into the cramped interior.
Brigid sat beside Sindri in a bucket seat as he ma-nipulated foot pedals and a
steering wheel. Grant and Kane sat facing each other in the back, heads low,
their knees pressed into each other's.
Sindri drove the cart along the corridors, chatting gaily, as if he were on a
Sunday drive in the country with long-lost cousins. He told them about
Parallax Red
, or at least what he knew about it.
Construction on the station began in early 1977, shortly after the
photographic discoveries of the
Viking
Mars probe. Originally the project was a covert joint undertaking between
America and Russia, but the com-manding organizational body had been something
called Overproject Majestic.
Some years previously, a small secret base had been established on the Moon in
the
Manitius Crater region. This site was chosen because of its proximity to
arti-facts that some scientists speculated were the shattered remains of an
incredibly ancient city, once protected by massive geodesic domes.
The early shuttlecraft program ferried construction materials to a point in
the Moon's orbit, where they were retrieved by the engineers living there via
short-range unmanned vessels. From there, they were con-veyed to Lagrange
Region 2, on the dark side of the
Moon.
Parallax Red had a twofold purpose to establish a permanent Terran military
presence in space and to use the base as a jumping-off point for missions to
Mars.
However, the construction project was mind-staggeringly costly and
excruciatingly slow.
The loss in life was exceptionally high, as well, due to accidents and the
cumulative debilitating effects of zero gravity.
"From what I read in the few journals still extant," Sindri said, "conditions
in the first decade of the pro-ject were beastly, technical problems nearly
insur-mountable and the schedule was woefully behind, on the order of three
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]