The Zenith Angle - Bruce Sterling [77]
“Mike, do you know any of those survivalist types?”
Hickok’s lids fluttered. He sat up in the Humvee’s backseat. “You bet I do! Us ‘snake-eaters’ can live right off the land! Escape and evasion under the stars! Cover your face up with dang mud! I used to train around these parts. If I recall myself correctly, there should be a roadside depot yonder. Sell you most anything you need to know!”
Van soon found Hickok’s depot. The place didn’t look like much. A big red barn. He wanted to press right on and get to Dottie’s place. Then he saw a glowing yellow roadside sign standing next to some rusty gas pumps. The sign was measled with shotgun pellets. KNIVES AMMO, it bragged. GUNS GUNS GUNS.
“Whoa,” said Van, hitting the brake.
Van arrived late at his destination, pitched out at the end of a two-lane road. The drunken Hickok wheeled his Humvee and roared back down the mountainside. He’d said something about a girl waiting in Fort Collins, but Van was not convinced of it. With that briefcase finally off his wrist, Hickok had the look of a man aiming for a major-league bender.
Van was left standing alone in a cold Colorado night, under two pools of amber light that fell from curving, snake-shaped poles. Observatories hated light pollution. So these Martian-looking light poles carried weird LED panels that shed a very thin gleam. Reading by their light was like wading underwater in a hookah.
Van set down his brand-new survivalist backpack and stared up at a beautifully painted sign. ALFRED A. GRIFFITH INTERNATIONAL ASTRONOMICAL FACILITY, it announced. This big sign—it was a dignified metal billboard, really—carried eye-squinting little logos for a whole swarm of federal sponsors and private contractors. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION. AURA. NOAO. NASA. NORTHRUP GRUMMAN OPTICAL SYSTEMS DIVISION. CANADIAN SPACE AGENCY / AGENCE SPATIALLE CANADIENNE. MAX PLANCK INSTITUT FUR EXTRATERRESTRISCHE PHYSIK. Warning: This Is a U.S. Interior Department Endangered Species Refugium.
To Van’s right, to his left, stretched a galvanized twelve-foot steel elk fence. It was topped with nasty whorls of razor wire.
Too bad nobody had included a doorbell here.
There was no way for Van to enter Dottie’s facility. It was very clear that nobody ever showed up here who wasn’t fully expected. The fences were too tall and sharp to climb. The gates looked built to resist a headlong charge by angry buffalo. There was no intercom and no guard on duty.
Van had no cell phone.
The winter night was getting colder.
Van opened his pack and pulled out his laptop. Another tough break: there was no wireless signal for his laptop’s Wi-Fi card, either.
As Van was accustoming himself to complete defeat, the overhead light poles winked out. How very bright a million stars were in the mountains, suddenly.
Van opened his laptop. The federal dot-pdf on his screen was horribly titled “Draft Reporting Instructions for the Government Information Security Reform Act and Updated Guidance on Security Plans of Action and Milestones.” Van did not have to read any more of this awful document, though. Instead, his computer was going to give him enough light and heat to survive the night.
Van dug in his pack and wrapped himself in a four-dollar NASA surplus astronaut blanket. He chewed a brick of indestructible NASA-surplus spaghetti. He warmed his hands on the hot battery of his laptop. He’d been in a paranoid mood, back at the survival store.
Hooded in his windproof blanket like a silver garbage bag, Van sat on his bulletproof backpack and confronted the glow on his screen. What did it matter if he was alone, cold, lonely, and humiliated on the end of the road? Van had a lot of important office work on his lap. Many unread reports, many policy statements, and important federal white papers. Requests for commentary. Invitations to important seminars. He could achieve a lot while freezing in a wilderness.
The air was thin up here, and it got colder yet. Van rearranged and color-coded his many, many files and folders. As he typed, his fingers turned blue.
After an hour and