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7: Agent

Wesley Liu blinked at the lanky, awkward man standing before him. “Uh…I see. What exactly do you do?”

Dr.-Cayley-Willows-of-the-University-of-Toronto-Department-of-Mathematics raised an eyebrow. Then he opened his mouth to elaborate.

The guy at the bank of computers cracked his gum. “He’s a bean counter.”

Willows closed his eyes with an expression of physical pain. “No, fractals and other such point dispersions, three-dimensional in particular. It can’t be as accurate as I’d like, but it can do the job. Come with me.”

Wes started to walk forward, but his feet felt like lead. It wasn’t too much effort, it was just — not what he was used to. “Wow. I thought the grav difference wouldn’t be too bad, the way they’ve got the lab section set up in Terramoon.”

Willows turned around sharply and squinted at Wes. “Gravity. Gravity…”

Wes blinked. “What?”

Willows waved a finger in the air and strode out the door from whence he’d come, his red hair flapping and flailing. Not like Terramoon, that little detail. There, a person’s hair moved gently as if in a faint breeze. Amazing how everything at home seemed so…alien.

This world is not my home, Wes thought, feeling a mild pain in his chest as the irony sank in — that, and the feeling of being completely adrift in the universe.

The two techs came up on either side of him, and he realized they were keeping an eye on him in case he collapsed. Tech One put a hand on his shoulder, not one of those solid stiff-upper-lip British knockabout claps this time. “Let’s get you sitting down for a bit.”

Wes didn’t object.

They didn’t direct him to the table and chairs in the briefing bay off the control room. They took him to a small lounge through one of the side doors and got him settled in a soft chaise longue sort of thing. Wes had a suspicion he was gonig to feel bruised in the morning. The Moonborn were going to feel it too.

He sat halfway up. “The kids — I should check in on them.”

“In a bit,” Tech Two said. “They were still pretty solidly sedated when the med staff disembarked them. Tell me what information got through to Terramoon.”

“We got some news vid feed, and we were able to monitor the collapse of the global communications network, so we knew it wasn’t just isolated. I think Dr. Parker’s been getting a fair bit of information from Terracorp HQ, but I don’t have any idea what the pragmatics of Ground Team’s situation might be.”

“Any indication whether Terracorp might have released this thing on purpose?”

Wes squinted and took a second look at the other tech. Middle Eastern, but totally Canadian, no accent. Not even an American one. “You guys don’t work for Terracorp, do you.”

The Brit shook his head. “Er, no.”

Wes sighed. “Does anyone here?”

“This is a UN base. Not a Terracorp outlet.”

Wes swallowed. “Oh. Right.” Did Elgin see no need to brief me on anything? Of course not.

“We’re with UNIA.”

“I’m not up to date on that particular acronym. I left nine years ago.”

“United Nations Intelligence Agency.”

The two techs no longer looked quite as friendly, somehow. Come to think of it, Wes could see a certain alertness about them as they eyeballed him.

Wes let his head fall back against the chair. “Guys, I don’t want any trouble. As far as I knew, you were just ship techs. Tell me what you need to know.”

The Brit cleared his throat. “We are ship techs, because all ships have cleared through UNIA on landing and takeoff for the last four years. The nanotech disaster is not the only battle in progress, and I hate to say it, but bad as it is, it may just be exactly that — a battle in a longer war.”

Wes closed his eyes. “This is a bit much to process, you know that?”

“Yes.” The word was spoken calmly, but with warmth.

“I thought Baffin Base was just an outpost. A science station. Last I heard, it was a privately run science station.”

“It’s a data processing outpost that handles a lot of intel. Among other things, like it always used to. The Arctic is a reasonably good location to build supercooled systems, and it’s been upgraded some since you left the planet.”

“I get the feeling the world isn’t as conquered as it looked from space.”

The agent chuckled. “Not hardly. We’re just getting started with this conflict, Dr. Liu. We’re not beaten by a long shot.”

Wes kept his eyes closed, suddenly exhausted. Must be the change in gravity. At the same time, he felt somehow lighter.