Нил Шустерман - Shuttered Sky

“Good. Consider yourself briefed.” Then he stepped deeper into the vault and flicked on a light switch.

If the cube was incongruous with its surroundings, the cube’s in­terior was stranger still. It was, in fact, a hotel room. A queen-sized bed, a desk, a chair. The only difference was the absence of windows.

“We like to keep our guest comfortable,” said Bussard. He walked around the room like a bellhop, pointing out the room’s features. “TV with DVD library. Extra linens. Bathroom with shower.” Then he got down to business. “Your assignment is very specific. It is your job to deliver three meals at seven hundred, thirteen hundred, and nineteen hundred hours precisely. You will have no contact with our guest, as he has therapy sessions at those times, and will not return until after you are gone. With each meal you bring, you will remove the tray from the previous meal. With the morning meal you will change the linens. With lunch you will clean the bathroom. With dinner . . . "

Bussard went on and on, but Maddy found herself unable to listen. Rage was rising in her. She was a cum laude cadet—top five percent of her class at West Point. She had come through officer’s training with commendations from everyone that mattered, and now the mil­itary saw fit to turn her into a chambermaid.

Bussard droned on as if reading her Miranda rights. “You will wear gloves at all times in this room, and dispose of them immediately after each use. You will find a detailed description of your duties in your quarters. Is there any part of your assignment you do not understand?”

“No, sir. Permission to speak freely, sir.”

“Permission denied.” He escorted her out of the chamber, and once they were back in the expansive void of the dead plant, he turned to her again. “There are only six people in the world with security clearance to be in that room—including the two of us. Consider your­self honored.”

“I’ll remember that, sir, while I’m cleaning the toilet.”

“I’ve been here since the beginning, and Bussard hasn’t seen fit to tell me anything,” Lt. Gerritson told Maddy over a cafeteria pot roast filled with more salt than meat. The cafeteria, like the plant itself, was a dinosaur that never saw the light of day. It was designed to seat about 100 employees of Michigan Power, but now there were never more than ten military personnel at peak hours. By Maddy’s second week, a meal with Lt. Vince Gerritson was a welcome relief to the oppres­siveness of a large table and a solitary dinner. Maddy was quick to discover that Gerritson was the only person bold enough to discuss what little he knew about their shadowy purpose there.

“It’s the lack of oversight that scares me,” Gerritson said. “They let Bussard run this place any way he sees fit. Tessic’s the only one Bussard doesn’t control.”

“They let civilians from Tessitech in this place?”

“No,” Gerritson said. “I mean Tessic, himself.”

“No shit!”

“He had something to do with the design of the vault. But now I think he pops in every once in a while just to piss off Bussard.”

Tessic was a name well known in the military ever since Tessitech beat out every competitor for a dozen military contracts over the past five years. His name was synonymous with cutting-edge technology; a former wunderkind who, now in his fifties, was on his way to being the richest man in the world. Maddy judged that his presence here was an exception to protocol and not to be taken lightly.

“When did this whole operation start?” Maddy asked.

Before answering, Gerritson glanced around to scan their present company. A few tables away were three men in lab coats discussing sports scores. Maddy didn’t know them, but had seen them at meals. The plant had a contingent of about ten Coats, as Gerritson had called them. Scientists, or technicians, or physicians—no one seemed to have a clue what their profession actually was. They didn’t associate with military personnel, undoubtedly by Bussard’s order.

“The plant was retrofitted for Project Lockdown about eight months ago,” Gerritson told her. “I was about to get a disability dis­charge, but instead they assigned me here.”

“Disability?”

“Long story.” Gerritson shoved a piece of grizzly meat in his mouth, and worked his jaws like it was an oversized piece of chewing gum. Maddy hoped he might elaborate, but no dice. Whatever the story, he wasn’t telling it.

“And exactly how do you fit into all of this? What’s your job here?”

Gerritson smirked. “Now, come on, Lieutenant Haas. That kind of information is on a need-to-know basis.”

Maddy volleyed back the smirk. “I need to know.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Gerritson glanced around again. It was almost a tick. A habit developed from being too long under Bussard’s scrutiny. He leaned over his plate, confidingly. “Security detail,” he whispered. “Right wing of team zero.”

“OK. Now in English.”

“There are three of us who escort our ‘guest’ to his so-called ‘ther­apy’ sessions. Three times a day; before breakfast, lunch and dinner. The rest of our time is spent on facility maintenance.”

“And our guest is . . . ?

Gerritson grinned. “Didn’t quite hear that. You’ll have to ask me some other time.”

“You heard me perfectly,” Maddy whispered, both irritated and appreciative of their little game of intrigue. Gerritson said nothing more, just grinned away. Maddy found herself taking a mental snapshot of that grin. His smile—his face—was worth remembering. Unfor­tunately her shutter speed was too slow. He knew he had just been scanned into her long-term memory, and he held the grin a moment too long, as if posing for her Kodak moment. There was, she knew, a danger couched in this sustained moment. Danger and opportunity.

“You hang around long enough,” Gerritson said, “and you won’t need me to give you ideas about our guest. You’ll have plenty of your own.”

“Well, can you tell me what he looks like?”

“Can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t,” he told her. “Ever read The Man in the Iron Mask?”

Maddy took a moment to let the casters click. “Oh,” Maddy nod­ded. “I see.”

“No, that’s the point. Nobody sees. Bussard makes sure of that.”

That was true enough. Maddy wasn’t even allowed into the con­tainment dome until their guest was removed, and, true to Bussard’s word, he never returned until long after Maddy completed her room service detail. Whoever it was, he ate all his meals cold.

The cafeteria door banged open. Another member of “team zero,” Gierritson told her. He grabbed a cellophane-wrapped sandwich from the counter, then left.

“So would Bussard rupture a sphincter if he knew we were talking like this?”

Gerritson laughed. “The man’s been holding it in since his diaper days. I don’t want to be there when he blows.”

Maddy shrugged it off, feigning indifference. “I’m a military brat— I’ve been around men like him all my life. I suppose it wouldn’t be so bad if he ran this place with more than just a skeleton crew. Then maybe he’d spread his good will a little thinner.”

“Bussard’s a minimalist,” Gerritson explained. “He figures the fewer the bodies—"

“—the fewer the graves?”

“The smaller the staff, the easier it is to control. The fewer chances for leaks, and snafus.” Gerritson looked down, and plowed a spoon around his mashed potatoes before giving up on them entirely. “Does it bother you that you’re the only woman in this place?”

“No,” she told him. “Why? Would you prefer it if I had a penis?”