The Forge of God

7

Hicks, bleary-eyed, clothing rumpled, sat on the straight-backed hotel desk chair and scanned the contents of the file he had marked “Hurrah.” “Hurrah” contained the choicest bits of information from twenty-two hours and perhaps three hundred dollars’ worth of accessing specialist bulletin boards around the world. He did not care about costs. He was still high.

Australia did indeed have an artifact in their Great Victoria Desert, something apparently disguised to resemble a huge chunk of red granite. The Australian government had kept the find secret for about thirty days, until leaks through investigating military and scientific agencies threatened to scoop them on the greatest story of all time. This much and more — speculation, rumors — had been repeated again and again on all the networks he had accessed. While the government had not released full details, they were expected to do so any day.

The Regulus bulletin board was used solely by radio astronomers belonging to the 21cm Club, of which he was an honorary member. After searching through the general and special interest messages, in a small area headlined “Irresponsible Murmurs,” Hicks had found a cryptic and unsigned note: “Ham fanatic, right? Say no more about identity. Picked up unscrambled transmission to AFI” — that, Hicks decided, must be Air Force One, the President’s plane — “concerning ‘our own bogey in the Furnace.’ The Man’s heading west to Vandenberg. Could this be…?”

Hicks frowned again, reading that. He knew several shuttle pilots currently flying out of Vandenberg. Dare he call them up and ask if anything untoward had been happening? Dare he mention “our own bogey in the Furnace”?

A knock interrupted his reverie. He was heading for the door when it opened and a young Asian woman in lime-green blouse and slacks backed in. “Housekeeping,” she announced, seeing him. “Okay?”

Hicks looked over his room abstractedly, relieved that he had chosen to wear a robe. He often worked in the buff, paunch, gray chest hairs, and all — the habit of a bachelor of long standing. “Please, not yet.”

“Soon?” she asked, smiling.

“Soon. An hour.”

She shut the door behind her. Hicks paced back and forth from curtained window to bathroom door, chin in hand, face as clear and guileless as an infant’s. “I cannot think straight,” he muttered. Turning on the television and selecting a twenty-four-hour news station, he sat on the corner of the bed.

For a moment, he thought he had tuned to a movie channel by mistake. Three shiny silver objects, shaped like long-necked gourds, hovered above arid sandy ground. Nearby squatted a large van topped by an array of electronic sensing equipment. The van gave the objects scale; each was as tall as a man. Hicks reached over to turn up the volume, joining a male announcer in midsentence:

“—from four days ago, shows the three mechanical remote devices which the Australian government claims emerged from a disguised spacecraft. The government says these devices have communicated with their scientists.”

The video of the silvery gourds and van was replaced by a typical press conference scene, with a slender, thirtyish man in a brown suit standing behind a clear plastic podium, reading a prepared statement: “We have communicated with these objects, and we can now affirm that they are not living creatures, but robots, representing the builders of the spacecraft — it is now confirmed to be a spacecraft — buried within the rock. While the actual communications are still being analyzed and will not be released immediately, the substance of the information supplied was positive, that is, not threatening or alarming in any fashion.”

“Jesus bloody Christ,” Hicks said.

The image of the hovering gourds returned. “They’re flying,” Hicks said. “What’s holding them up? Come on, you bastards. Do your job and say what the bloody hell’s going on.”

“Commentary from world leaders, including the Pope, after these messages—”

Hicks flung his arms out and swore, kicked the cabinet holding the television, and punched the set off. He could spend another three hundred dollars chasing rumors across all the networks and bulletin boards in the world, or—

Or he could stop being a novelist wallah and start being a journalist again by finding the news behind the news. Certainly not in Australia. The Great Victoria Desert, by now, had representatives of the media three-deep, trying to interview every grain of sand.

A faint memory of some obligation suddenly flared into consciousness. He had had an appointment this morning. “Damn.” That single word, said almost happily, adequately expressed his slight irritation at having forgotten the local television interview. He should have been at the studio five hours ago. It hardly seemed to matter. He was on to something.

The “Furnace”…Where in hell would that be? Somewhere near Vandenberg, apparently. He had visited Vandenberg seven times in his career, twice covering important combined civilian-military shuttle launches to polar orbit. Hicks pulled out his pocket compact disk player from a suitcase and hooked it into the computer. He indexed the World Atlas sector on his reference disk and searched through the F’s in the gazetteer. “Furnace, furnace, furnace—”

He quickly found several Furnaces, the first in Argyll County, Scotland. There was also Furnace, Kentucky, and Furnace L (“What is L, lake?”) in County Mayo, Ireland. Furnace, Massachusetts…And Furnace Creek, California. He entered the map number and coordinates. In less than two seconds, he had a detailed color map of an area a hundred kilometers square. A flashing icon in the lower left-hand corner indicated a comparative satellite photograph was available. His eye searched the map until an arrow appeared, flashing next to a tiny dot.

“Furnace Creek,” he said, smiling. “On the edge of Death Valley proper, not far from Nevada actually…” But not very close to Vandenberg — across the state from it, in fact. He switched disks and keyed in a request for Automobile Club of Southern California information. The computer found a year-old listing. “1995L Brief: Furnace Creek Inn. 67 units. Golf, riding. Long-established, picturesque location overlooking Death Valley. Three stars.”

Hicks thought for a moment, very much aware that the facts were not coming together perfectly. Operating solely on instinct, he picked up the phone, punched a button for an outside line, and requested the area code for Furnace Creek. It was the same as San Diego’s although it was hundreds of miles north-northeast. Shaking his head, he called information and asked for the number of Furnace Creek Inn. A mechanical voice informed him, and he jotted it down, whistling.

The phone rang three times. A sleepy-voiced, young-sounding girl answered. Hicks checked his watch again, for the fourth time in ten minutes. For the first time, he actually paid attention to the dials. One-fifteen p.m. He hadn’t slept all night. “Reservations, please.”

“That’s me,” the girl said;

“I’d like to book a room for tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, sir, we can’t do that. We’re completely full.”

“Can I make a reservation for your dining room, then?”

“The inn is closed for the next few days, sir.”

“Big traveling party?” Hicks asked, his smile broadening. “Special reservations?”

“I can’t tell you that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not allowed to give out that information now.”

Hicks could almost see the girl biting her lip. “Thank you.” He hung up and fell back on the bed, suddenly’ exhausted.

Who else would have tracked this down?

“Can’t sleep,” he resolved, sitting up again. He called room service and asked for coffee and a substantial breakfast — ham, eggs, whatever they had. The clerk offered a three-egg concoction with ham and bell peppers mixed in — a Denver omelet, as if pigs and peppers might be special to that city. He agreed, held down the button, and called the downstairs travel agency listed in the hotel directory.

The agent, an efficient-sounding woman, informed him that there was a private airstrip near Furnace Creek, but the closest he could fly in commercially would be Las Vegas.

“I’ll take a seat on the next flight out,” he said. She gave him the flight number and departure time — about an hour from now, cutting it close — and the gate number at Lindbergh Field, and asked if he would need a rental car.

“Yes, indeed. Unless I can fly directly in.”

“No, sir. Only small airfields out that way, no commuter flight service. The drive between Vegas and Furnace Creek will take about two or three hours,” she said, adding, “if you’re like everybody else who drives on the desert.”

“Madmen all, eh?” he asked.

“Madwomen, too,” the agent said briskly.

“Mad, all mad,” Hicks said. “I’d like a hotel room for the night, as well. Quiet. No gambling.” It would be late afternoon by the time he arrived in Las Vegas, and he would not be able to make it to Death Valley before dark. • Best to get a good night’s sleep, he thought, and start out in the morning.

“Let me confirm your reservations, sir. I’ll need your credit card number. You’re a guest at the Inter-Continental?”

“I am. Trevor Hicks.” He spelled the name and gave his American Express number.

“Mr. Trevor Hicks. The writer?” the agent asked.

“Yes, indeed, bless you,” he said.

“I heard you on the radio yesterday.”

He pictured the travel agent as a well-tanned blond beach bunny. Perhaps he had been unfair to KGB-FM. “Oh, indeed?”

“Yes. Very interesting. You said you’d take an alien home to meet your mum. Your mother. Even now?”

“Yes, even now,” he said. “Feeling very friendly toward extraterrestrials, aren’t we all?”

The agent laughed nervously. “Actually, it frightens me.” “Me, too, dear,” Hicks said. Delicious, lovely fright.

8—

Harry stood before the glass, hands in his pockets, staring at the Guest. Arthur conferred with two officers at the rear of the room, discussing how the first physical examination was going to be conducted. “We won’t be entering the room this time,” he said. “We have your photographs and…tissue samples from the first day. They’ll keep us busy.”

Harry felt a small flush of anger. “Idiots,” he said under his breath. The Guest, as usual, was curled beneath the blankets on the low platform, only a “foot” and “hand” sticking out from the covers.

“Beg pardon, sir?” asked the current duty officer, a tall, muscular Nordic-looking fellow of about thirty.

“I said ‘idiots,’” Harry repeated. “Tissue samples.”

“I wasn’t there, sir, but we didn’t know whether the Guest was alive or dead,” the Nordic man said.

“Whatever,” Arthur broke in, waving his hand at Harry: slack off. “They’re useful, however they were taken. Today, I’m going to ask the Guest to stand up, allow us to photograph it…him—”

“It,” Harry said. “Don’t coddle our prejudices.”

“It, then, from all sides, in all postures, while active. I’ll also ask if it will submit to further examinations later—”

“Sir,” the Nordic man said, “we’ve discussed this, and considering the warning the Guest has delivered, we believe absolute caution is called for.”

“Yes?”

“We’re revealing a great many things about ourselves. It could be an information conduit to the object in Death Valley, and how we carry out our examinations, X rays, whatever, could tell them a lot about how advanced we are and what our capabilities are.”

“For God’s sake,” Harry said. He ignored Arthur’s sharp glance. “They’ve been listening to our broadcasts for who knows how many decades. They know everything there is to know about us by now.”

“We don’t believe that’s necessarily so. A lot of information is simply not conveyed in civilian broadcasts, and certainly not in military broadcasts.”

“They can type us down to our toenails just by the fact that we still broadcast analog radio waves,” Harry said, not moving from the window.

“Yes, sir, but—”

“Your warnings are well taken, Lieutenant Dreyer,” Arthur said. “But we can’t get anywhere unless we examine the Guest. If this means some two-way exchanges, so be it. If the Guest is a conduit to the ship, we might be able to learn how through the exams.”

“It’s an interesting idea,” Harry conceded in an undertone.

“Yes, sir,” Dreyer said. “I’ve been told to pass these on to you — your itineraries for the Commander in Chiefs visit. We’re at your disposal.”

“All right. Let’s have two-way back on.” Arthur walked down the slightly sloping floor to the window and stood beside Harry. He pushed the button activating the intercom to the Guest’s chamber.

“Excuse me. We’d like to continue our questions and examinations.”

“Yes,” the Guest said, pushing aside the blankets and standing slowly.

“What is the state of your health?” Arthur asked. “Are you feeling well?”

“Not altogether well,” the Guest said. “The food is adequate, but not sustaining.”

The Guest had been allowed to choose between a variety of carefully prepared “soups.” The first tissue samples had revealed that the Guest could conceivably digest dextrorotary sugars and proteins generally found in Earth life forms. Purified water was being supplied in beakers passed through with the “food.” Thus far, the Guest had not excreted anything into the wide stainless-steel sample tray left open in another corner. The Guest had eaten sparingly, and without apparent enthusiasm.

“Can you describe substances that would please you?”

“In space, we hibernated—”

Harry emphasized the “we” in his notepad.

“And our nutrition was provided by synthesizing machines throughout the voyage.”

Arthur blinked. Harry scribbled furiously.

“I am not aware of the names of substances in this language to describe them. The food you provide seems adequate.”

“But not enjoyable.”

The Guest didn’t respond.

“We’d like to conduct another physical examination,” Arthur said. “We are not going to take any more tissue samples.”

The Guest withdrew its three brown eyes and then produced them again, but said nothing, standing in what might have been a dejected posture — if the Guest could feel dejected, and if body language was at all similar…

“You do not have to cooperate,” Arthur said. “We don’t want to force anything on you.”

“Difficulties with speaking, with language,” the Guest said. It stepped sideways in one fluid motion to the far right corner of the room. “There are questions you do not ask. Why?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“You do not ask questions about interior thoughts.”

“You mean, what you are thinking?”

“Interior states are far more important than physical construction, are they not? Is this not true for your intelligences?”

Harry glanced at Arthur. “All right,” Harry said, putting down his notes. “What is your interior state?”

“Disorganized.”

“You’re confused?” Harry asked.

“Not at ease. Mission is completed. We will not survive this incident.”

“You won’t…” Arthur searched for clear words. “When the ship leaves, you won’t be aboard?”

“You are not asking proper questions.”

“What questions should we ask?” Harry tapped his pencil on a chair arm. The Guest appeared to focus its three sherry-colored eyes on this gesture. “What questions should we ask?” he repeated.

“Process of destruction. Past deaths of worlds. How you fit into the scheme.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Arthur said quickly. “We haven’t been asking those questions. We experience fear, a negative emotional state, and we do not really want to know. This may be irrational—”

The Guest lifted its “chin” high, revealing the two slits and a shadowed, two-inch-wide depression on the underside of the miter. “Negative emotions,” it repeated. “When will you ask these questions?”

“Some of our leaders, including our President, will be joining us tomorrow. That might be a good time,” Harry said.

“I think we’d better hear it now, first.” Arthur was uneasy at the thought of blindly springing information on Crockerman. He had no idea how the man would react.

“Yes,” the Guest said.

“First question, then,” Arthur began. “What happened to your world?”

The Guest began its story.