Frederik Pohl - The Cool War

She looked at him quickly—not with anger, he saw. She said placatingly, “I don’t know why. But when you and Reddi and Alys turned up, you looked like—invaders. You didn’t belong there. I did, and it felt wrong for me to let you capture me.”

“Capture you!”

“I know, Horny. I’m telling you the way it was in my head. You were on the other team. And I don’t think I was hypnotized, either—just kidnapped at a knife-point,” she said bitterly. “I don’t know how I could have escaped from the harem. But I didn’t even try.”

They drew off the road to let one of the tandem buses whine past, the passengers half asleep in the heat, paying no attention to them. Hake studied the map thoughtfully for a moment. “We’ve only got a couple of miles to go, near as I can figure it,” he said.

“Shall we get on with it?”

“I’ve got a better idea. If we’re going to snoop, I’d rather do it at night, and it’ll be sundown in a couple of hours. Let’s go for a swim.”

“Swim?”

“Up there.” He pointed to the now distant dunes, a few hundred yards ahead. There was a sand-covered side road leading between two of the larger ones. “Let’s take a look.”

The quarter-mile of coast behind the dunes had once been developed as a beach; there were abandoned cabanas and dressing rooms and the wrecks of refreshment pavilions. And no human beings in sight. They dropped their packs and their clothes in the shade of what had once been a lifeguard tower and ran down to the bright blue water. There was no surf to speak of, only gentle foot-high waves moving diagonally in from the sea, but the two of them splashed the water into foam. Leota’s painted skin made her look like a naiad in the crystal sea, and Hake could feel his parched tissues soaking up moisture as they floated and dove in the shallow water. They did not go out far, or stay in long. But when they returned to the lengthening shade and sprawled out, their bodies drying almost at once in the hot breeze, Hake felt a hundred times better, and Leota dropped off to sleep. —

He let her rest for an hour, and then they dressed, resumed their packs and started off again, with the sun now low behind them. Before they had gone a mile it set, quickly and definitively. There was a minute when their shadows were long and clear before them, and another minute when the shadows had gone entirely. The darkness did not hinder their walking. There was a more than half-moon already in the sky, ample to see where they were going. As the dry earth gave up its heat the night wind began to blow toward the sea and the temperature dropped. They stopped to add sweaters to their covering, and pressed on, with the moon bright before them and the dunes interrupting the spread of stars to their right. There was no one else on the road now, not even the occasional bus or truck.

But when Leota spoke it was almost in a whisper. She tugged Hake’s arm. “What’s that up ahead?”

Hake had been more intent on her than on the road, but he saw at once what she was pointing to. The old road ended only a few hundred yards ahead. It seemed to be swallowed up in an immense dune; and before the dune there was a wall of waist-high concrete set with reflectors, leading to a newer, far less elaborate detour that struck off at an angle into the desert. The dunes that covered the old road did not seem to be there by accident. They were buttressed by cement and faced with stone. They had not blown there at the whim of the winds. Someone had put them there.

“I think that’s it,” he said.

“This place? I don’t see any kind of generating plant.”

“It’s got to be on the far side of the dunes.” He hesitated. “We’re going to have to climb them. It’d be easier if we left the knapsacks here—”

“All right.”

“—but we might want to take pictures or something when we get to the top.”

Leota stopped, with the A-frame straps half off her shoulders. “Make up your mind, will you, Hake?”

“We’ll take them,” he decided. “But it’s going to be a tough climb.”

And it was, harder than any climb Hake had made in his post-invalid life. Even harder than the grueling exercises Under the Wire. The sand slipped away under their feet, so that they were constantly sliding back at almost every step, and where there was rock or concrete there were few footholds. To Hake’s surprise, however, the going became easier as they neared the top. The sand was firmer and more cohesive, and there was even a growing scatter of vines and stunted plants. There was a smell in the air that Hake could not identify. Partly it was the sea. But part of it was like the church lawn new-mown in the early spring: the smell of cut grass and stalks of wild scallions. And there was also a pungent, half-sweet floral odor that he had experienced somewhere before (but where?), which seemed to come from the scraggly volunteer growth. He did not understand these plant?. They were oddly succulent for this arid part of the world. Parched and half-dead, they still seemed improbably frequent on the dune; were they some sort of planting designed to keep the dune from moving in on the road?

And then they topped the ridge and looked out on the moonlit sea.

Panting from the climb, Leota found breath enough to whisper, “What’s that ?” Hake did not have to ask what she meant. The same question was in his own mind. A quarter-mile out to sea, rising from the water and braced with three moon-glittered legs like one of H. G. Wells’s Martian fighting machines, a tall tower rose. Its head was a squashed sphere, and it shone with a sultry crimson, like the heart of a dying fire. It was not only light that came from it. Even at the top of the dune, they could feel its heat. Around its legs were a cluster of metal domes, awash in the sea, and what looked like barges moored to them.

Hake stood up for a better look around. Below him, the reverse slope of the dunes made an immense open bowl facing the sea. It could not have been all natural. Bulldozers and blasting had helped that shape along. It was more ovoid than spherical, and not entirely regular, but a mile-long bite had been taken out of dunes seventy feet high. And the seaward face of the dunes was no longer barren. It looked like an abandoned suburban yard, with the honeysuckle gone wild. Here and there along the slope shrubs and bushes were scattered. Hake was no gardener, but he could not have identified them anyway. They were choked under coils of ropy vine. The vines were everywhere, glossy leaves, gray-green in the moonlight, furled flowers, vines that were thinner than wire or thicker than Hake’s forearm. The mown-grass smell came from them. It was stronger now, and with a smoky aroma like marijuana burning, or candles that have just been blown out.

The logic of the design spoke for itself. As the Texas Wire sloped to face its geosynchronous satellite, this receptor cupped to confront the sea. “It has to be solar power,” said Leota, and Hake nodded slowly.

“Of course. But where are the mirrors?”

“Maybe they take them in at night? For cleaning?”

He shook his head. “Maybe,” he said. “But look at the way this whole area is overgrown—it’s almost as if they used to have something here, and then abandoned it.”

Leota said simply, “That thing out there doesn’t look abandoned.”

Hake shrugged, and then came to a decision. “The best way to look at a solar power plant is when it’s working. I’m going to stay here till sunrise and see what happens.”

Leota turned to look at him. “Wrong, Hake. We’re going to stay.”

“What’s the point? You’ll be more comfortable down by the road. And maybe safer. If this thing is operational, there are bound to be crews putting up the mirrors and so on—it’s easier for one person to stay out of sight than two.”