The Forge of God

16

Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, wearing a white helmeted suit with self-contained breathing apparatus, stood beside two assistants in similar garb in the isolation chamber once occupied by the Guest, and now by its corpse. Harry Feinman entered the chamber in his own suit, stepping with some awkwardness around the others. With four in the chamber, and equipment brought in for the autopsy, there was little room for maneuvering. Arthur sat in the laboratory beyond the glass and observed.

The Guest lay on its back on the central table, now elevated a meter above the floor. Its long head extended full length with “chin” paralleling the tabletop. The four limbs were splayed outward, held against a natural resilience by plastic straps.

Phan indicated with a sweep of one plastic-gloved hand the three video cameras behind their protective plastic plates. “Beginning twelve-seventeen a.m., October eighth, 1996. I am Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, and I am beginning an autopsy of the extraterrestrial biological specimen found near Death Valley, California. The specimen, also called the Guest, died at five fifty-eight p.m., October seventh, in isolation room three of the Vandenberg Emergency Retrieval Laboratory, Shuttle Launch Center Six, Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

“There is no evidence of physical injury or any apparent sign of internal trauma.” Phan removed a scalpel from a tray proffered by an assistant. “I’ve already collected external culture samples from the Guest when it was alive. I will now take samples from sites along its limbs and on its body and head to see if terrestrial microorganisms have begun to multiply on its external tissues.” Using the scalpel to abrade the skin, and swabs to pick up the samples, he carried out this task. Each swab was dropped into a tube which was then stoppered. “As you can see, the body exhibits no signs of lividity, or indeed of any decay or change, external or internal.” Phan lifted a forward limb. “There is resilience, but no stiffness. Indeed, the only visible evidence of death is a lack of movement and no reaction to stimuli.

“There is no sign of electrical activity within the Guest’s cranium, or anywhere else in the body. As such activity existed before, we can only assume that this is another indicator of death. The Guest has not moved in ten hours and thirty-one minutes. Dr. Feinman, do you concur that the Guest is now dead, by any measurements we can make?”

“I concur,” Harry said. “There are no reflexes. The Guest’s body previously exhibited a living tension when touched. In its present state, there is no living tension in evidence.”

“Obviously, this is more in the nature of an exploratory dissection than a true autopsy,” Phan continued, his voice weary. “We have already conducted a thorough examination of the Guest through external means, including X ray, ultrasound exploratory, and NMR imaging. We have located several shapes which might be organs, a few small cavities, some fluid-filled and some apparently empty, within the Guest, and using these printouts as maps” — he pointed a scalpel at several sheets of paper hung on the outside of the viewing windows — “I will investigate the Guest’s interior more directly.

“The Guest’s thoracic skeletal structure differs substantially from our own. It appears to be made of a series of spines — in the porcupine sense of the word — connected by collagenous flexible joints, all wrapped around the internal cavity. There are no hollow lungs. In fact, there are few hollows of any kind.” Phan drew the scalpel along a pronounced ridge running the length of the “breast” and revealed a clean gray-green surface with the sheen of bathroom tile. The sliced edges of skin were coppery blue-green in color.

“Here is the central breast ‘bone’ or ‘process’ we first saw in our X rays.” He peeled back the skin, cutting delicately at adhering tissue, until one side of the thorax was exposed. “These joined processes provide a flexible but efficient cage around the thoracic organs. As you can see, the cage is fairly rigid in one direction” — he pushed with his finger toward the Guest’s head, producing no movement — “but flexible in another.” He pressed down and the cage sank slightly. “There is an obvious similarity between the Guest and ourselves at this point, with a protective cage around the thorax, but the similarity ends there.”

Phan took a small electric circular saw and cut through the processes on the Guest’s left side, facing the window. Working the saw twenty centimeters across the top, then down on two sides another twenty centimeters, then across the bottom, he was able to lift free a glutinous section of the thoracic cage. Below lay a pearly membrane.

Arthur sat rooted in his chair, fully focused on the opening to the Guest’s thorax. Phan maneuvered past Feinman and the assistants around the table, pausing for a moment to glance at the printouts. He then reached for a syringe and inserted it into the pearly membrane, withdrawing a sample of fluids. Harry pushed a slender biopsy core sampler through the membrane a little lower and removed a long, slender tube of tissue.

This he passed to an assistant, who sealed it in a glass phial and passed it with the other samples to the outside through a stainless-steel drawer.

“The temperature is now twelve degrees centigrade. We are reducing that to several degrees above zero, to inhibit terrestrial bacterial growth. The core and fluid samples will be analyzed and the autopsy will continue at a later hour. Gentlemen, it is time I rested. My assistants are going to make further measurements and take core samples from the limbs. Later this morning we will begin on the head.”

Hicks sat at the table across from the President, smiling at the waitress as she poured him a cup of coffee. They were alone in the dining hall; it was early, just past seven in the morning. The President had called him at midnight and requested his presence at breakfast for a private discussion. “What’s your pleasure, Mr. Hicks?” Crocker-man asked him.

“Toast and scrambled eggs, I think,” he said. “Can you make a Denver omelet?”

The waitress nodded.

“The same for me,” Crockerman told her. As she left, Crockerman pushed his chair back a few inches and bent to pull papers from an open valise beside him. “I’ll be meeting with a distraught mother at nine o’clock, and with an admiral and a general at eleven. Then I fly back to Washington. I’ve been making notes all night long, trying to put my thoughts in order. I hope you don’t object to my bouncing a few ideas off you.”

“Not at all,” Hicks said. “But first, I must make my situation clear. I’m a journalist. I came here for a story.

All this — your request that I stay here, instead of being booted out with the others — is…well, it’s extraordinary. I must honestly say that under the circumstances, I…” He ran out of words, looking into Crockerman’s rich brown eyes. Lifting his hand, he gestured vaguely at the door of the dining room. “I’m not trusted here, nor should I be. I’m an outsider.”

“You’re a man with imagination and insight,” Crockerman said. “The others have expertise. Mr. Gordon and Mr. Feinman have imagination and expertise, and Mr. Gordon has been very close to this kind of problem, as administrator of BETC. Perhaps he’s been too close, I don’t know. I’ve been wondering whether or not we’re dealing with extraterrestrials, as he would have us believe. You have a distance, a fresh perspective I could find very useful.”

“What is my official capacity, my role?” Hicks asked.

“Obviously, you can’t report this story now,” Crocker-man said. “Stay here, work with us until the story is about to be released. I suspect we’ll have to go public soon, though Carl and David strongly disagree. If we do go public, you have your exclusive. You get first crack.”

Hicks frowned. “And our conversations?”

“For the time being, what we say to each other is not to be discussed elsewhere. In the fullness of history, in our memoirs or whatever…”Crockerman nodded to the far walls. “Fine.”

“I’d like some more details,” Hicks said, “especially if Mr. Rotterjack and Mr. McClennan or Mr. Lehrman have control over me or my story. But for the time being, I’ll agree. I will not report what we say to each other privately.”

Crockerman put the papers on the table in front of him. “Now, here are my thoughts. Either we’ve been invaded twice in the last year, or somebody is lying to us.”

“The choice seems to be between doom and a hands across space policy,” Hicks said.

The President nodded agreement. “I’ve made some logic diagrams.” He held up the first sheet of paper. “Venn diagrams. Scant remnants of my college math days.” He smiled. “Nothing complicated, just drawings to help me sort the possibilities out. I’d appreciate your criticisms.”

“All right.” Hicks glanced at the piece of paper before the President. Brief notations of possible scenarios lay within nested and intersecting and separated circles.

“If these two spacecraft have similar origins, I see several possibilities. First, the Australians are dealing with a splinter group of extraterrestrials, some kind of dissident faction. But our information is correct, and the primary aim of the overall mission is to destroy the Earth, and the Guest does indeed represent survivors of their last conquest. With me so far?”

“Yes.”

“Second,” the President continued, “we are dealing with two separate events, which by some literally astronomical chance are happening simultaneously. Two groups of aliens, unacquainted or only marginally acquainted with each other. Or third, we are not dealing with aliens at all, but with emissaries.”

Hicks raised an eyebrow. “Emissaries?”

“I’m not completely comfortable with the vastness of the universe.” Crockerman said nothing for ten or fifteen seconds, staring at the table, his face passive but his eyes darting back and forth between the candle and his cup of coffee. “I suppose that you are.”

“I’m human,” Hicks said. “I’m limited, too. I accept the vastness without truly understanding it or feeling it.”

“That makes me feel better. I’m not doing too badly, then, am I?” Crockerman asked.

“No, sir.”

“I wonder if, perhaps, in charting our universe from a scientific perspective, we haven’t lost something…an awareness of…” Again he paused, searching for words. “Transgressions. If we think of God as a superior intelligence, not human, but demanding certain obediences…Do you follow me?”

Hicks nodded once.

“Perhaps we are no longer satisfying this superior intelligence. He, or more accurately, It, sends Its emissaries, Its angels if you will, to brandish the kind of sword we understand. The end of the Earth.” Crockerman raised his eyes to meet Hicks’s.

The waitress brought their breakfast and asked if they wanted more coffee. Crockerman refused; Hicks accepted a warm-up. When she had gone, Hicks investigated his omelet with a fork, no longer very hungry. His stomach knotted, acid. He could feel a kind of panic coming on.

“I’ve never been comfortable with religious interpretations,” he said.

“Must we classify this as a religious interpretation? Couldn’t this just as easily be an alternative to theories of conflicting aliens, or factionalized invaders?”

“I’m not sure what your theory is.”

“ ‘The moving finger, having writ.’ That.”

“Ah. ‘Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,’ or whatever.”

“Precisely. We’ve screwed up. Polluted, overarmed. The twentieth century has been a mess. The bloodiest century in human history. More needless human death than at any other time.”

“I can’t argue with that,” Hicks said.

“And now, we move outward. Perhaps we’ve been suffered only so long as we remained on Earth. Now—”

“It’s an old idea,” Hicks interrupted, his unease converting rapidly to irritation.

“Does that mean it’s invalid?”

“I think there are better ideas,” Hicks said.

“Ah,” Crockerman said, his own breakfast still untouched. “But none of them convince me. I am the only judge I can truly rely upon in this situation, am I not?”

“No, sir. There are experts—”

“In my political career, I have ignored the advice of experts many times, and I have prevailed. This made me different from other, more standard aspirants to high office. Now, I grant you, such a ploy has its risks.”

“I’m getting lost again, sir. What ploy?”

“Ignoring experts.” The President leaned forward, extending his hands across the table, fists clenched, his eyes moist. Crockerman’s expression was a rictus of pain. “I asked the Guest one thing, and received one important answer, from all of our questions…I asked it, ‘Do you believe in God,’ and it replied, ‘I believe in punishment.’” He leaned back, looking at his fists and relaxing them, rubbing the palms, where fingernails had dug deep. “That must be significant. Perhaps the Guest is from another world, another place where transgressors have been dealt with severely. That thing out there in the ‘Furnace,’ Death Valley of all places…We have been told it will render the Earth down into slag. Total destruction. We have been told we cannot destroy it. I believe in fact we cannot.”

Hicks was about to say something, but Crockerman continued, his voice low.

“God, a superior intelligence, sculpts us all, finds us wanting, and sends our material back into the forge to be reshaped. That thing out there. The Furnace. That’s the forge of God. That’s what we’re up against. Might be up against.”

“And the Australian artifact, the robots, the messages?”

“I don’t know,” Crockerman said. “It would clearly sound insane to claim the Australians were dealing with an adversary…But perhaps.”

“Adversary…a kind of Satan?”

“Something opposed to the Creator. A force that hopes we will be allowed to continue our transgressions, to put all creation out of balance.”

“I think there are better explanations, Mr. President,” Hicks said quietly.

“Then please,” Crockerman pleaded, “tell me what they are.”

“I am not qualified,” Hicks said. “I know almost nothing about what’s happened. Only what you’ve told me.”

“Then how can you be critical of my theory?”

The way Crockerman spoke, like a child though using grown-up words, chilled Hicks to the bone. A friend had once spoken to Hicks in a similar tone in London in 1959; she had died by her own hand a month later.

“It is not realistic,” he said.

“Is anything about this situation realistic?” Crockerman asked. Neither had done much more than push the food around on his plate.

Hicks took a bite. The omelet was cold. He ate it anyway, and Crockerman began to eat his. Neither spoke again until the plates were empty, as if engaged in a contest of silence. The waitress took the plates away and poured more coffee into Hicks’s cup.

“I apologize,” the President said, wiping his lips with the napkin and folding it on the table. “I’ve been rude with you. That’s unforgivable.”

Hicks mumbled something about the strain they were all under, and how it was understandable.

“You give me a kind of perspective, however,” Crockerman said. “I can see, just watching your reaction, how others would react. This is a very difficult time, in more ways than one. I’ve had to interrupt my campaign schedule. The election is less than a month away. Timing is very important. I see I need to trim the rough edges from my phrases…”

“Sir, it is not phrasing. It is perspective,” Hicks said, his voice rising. “If you pursue these theories of cosmic recrimination, I can hardly imagine the damage you might cause.”

“Yes. I see that.”

Do you? Hicks asked himself. And then, examining Crockerman’s suspicious, half-lidded expression, Yes, perhaps you do…but that won’t stop you.

17

Arthur unfolded a newspaper as the Learjet taxied across the runway. On a far apron, B-l bombers lined up, their sleek tan, gray, and green shapes obscured by a layer of early morning sea haze. It took a few seconds for him to focus on the headlines. His thoughts were still on Harry Feinman, and on the autopsy.

The Guest had no discrete internal organ structure. Stuffed within the thoracic cage was shell-pink tissue continuous except for occasional cavities, more like a brain than anything else. The head consisted of the Lexan-like articulated bone material, arranged in large solid masses, with no discernible central nervous system. Small nodes the size of BBs interrupted the continuity of the bone; they appeared to be made of some sort of metal, perhaps silver.

Harry would soon be undergoing his own probing and examination in Los Angeles.

The plane completed its taxi and began to accelerate down the runway, small jets screaming thinly beyond the insulated walls.

Arthur focused on the newspaper. The front page headline read,

The same unscrambled transmission that had brought Trevor Hicks to Furnace Creek had led other reporters, just hours later, to reach similar conclusions. Hicks had struck a mother lode. The others had had to make do with testimony from inhabitants of Shoshone and one phone call to Furnace Creek Inn that had gotten through to the apartment of a maid who spoke only Spanish. Bernice Morgan had not been interviewed. Perhaps Crockerman persuaded her, Arthur thought, tracking the story several times to see if he had missed any telling details.

General Paul Fulton, Commander in Chief of West Coast Shuttle Operations, was on the flight with Arthur. He came forward as soon as they were in the air and had finished their climb to 28,000 feet.

“Ah, the good old free press,” he commented, taking the neighboring seat. “Pardon me, Mr. Gordon. We haven’t had time to just sit and talk.”

“You’re going back to testify?”

“Before some key congressmen, before the Space Activities Committee senators — God only knows what Proxmire is going to make of this. How he got on that committee in the first place is beyond me. The man’s politically immortal.”

Arthur nodded. He felt as if his brain were mush. He had hoped to sleep through the entire flight, but Fulton seemed to have something on his mind.

“A lot of us are worried about Crockerman’s choice of Trevor Hicks. He’s a science fiction writer—”

“Only recently,” Arthur said. “He’s quite a decent science writer, actually.”

“Yes, and we actually don’t fault the choice of Hicks, but we wonder about the President’s need to go beyond the…primary group. His staff and advisors and Cabinet. The assigned experts.”

“He wanted a second opinion. He mentioned that a couple of times.”

Fulton shrugged. “The Guest shook him.”

“The Guest shook me, too,” Arthur said.

Fulton dropped the subject abruptly. “There will be two of our Australian counterparts in Washington when we arrive. Flown in fresh from Melbourne. They were spare parts down there, I suspect. The really important man — Quentin Bent — is staying behind. Do you know him?”

“No,” Arthur said. “There’s something of a gap between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, science-wise, in all but astronomy. Bent’s not an astronomer. He’s a sociologist, I believe.”

Fulton looked dubious. “Your colleague, Dr. Feinman… Is he going to be able to keep up?”

“I think so.” Arthur recognized that he was taking a disliking to General Fulton, and wondered how reasonable that was. The man was only trying to gather information.

“What does he have?”

“Chronic leukemia.”

“Terminal?”

“His doctors think it’s treatable.”

Fulton nodded. “I wonder if that’s not a good diagnosis for the Earth.”

Arthur didn’t catch his meaning.

“Cancer,” Fulton volunteered. “Cosmic cancer.”

Arthur nodded reflectively and looked out the window, wondering when he would find time to call Francine, talk to Marty, touch base with the real world.

Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers took the radio message in hand and climbed out of the rear door of the communications trailer, down the corrugated metal steps to the crunchy white sand. He didn’t really want to think about the implications of his orders; thinking on such an esoteric level would do him no good whatsoever. The Guest was dead; Arthur Gordon had ordered his team to investigate the interior of the Furnace. Rogers would not allow anyone but himself to do it.

He had been planning for such a mission. He had drawn incomplete diagrams of the bogey’s interior in a small notebook, little more than suppositions based on length, height, width, and the angle and length of the tube running through solid rock. Climbing the tube would present no problem — even where it angled straight up, he could take it like a rock climber in a chimney, back against one side, legs/jackknifed and feet pressed against the other, inching his way up. He would carry a miniature digital video recorder, smaller than the palm of his hand, and a helmet-mounted finger-sized video camera. A Hasselblad for high-resolution pictures and a smaller, lighter automatic film-packed 35mm Leica completed his equipment. He doubted the investigation would take more than a day. There was, of course, the possibility that the bogey was honeycombed with interior spaces. Some-how, he doubted that.

As a sergeant and corporal brought the supplies he requested from the stores trailer, he drew up his itinerary and discussed emergency measures with his second-in-command, Major Peter Keller. Rogers then donned the chest pack and heavy climbing boots, coiled three lengths of rope neatly and hung them from his belt, and walked around the south side of the bogey.

He checked his watch and set its timer. It was six a.m. The desert was still wrapped in gray dawn, high cirrus stretching from horizon to horizon in a thin layer. The desert smelled of clean cold air, a hint of dry creosote bush.

“Give me a lift,” Rogers instructed Keller. The major meshed the fingers of both hands to make a stirrup and Rogers stepped into the stirrup with his left foot. With a heave-ho, Keller lifted him into the tunnel. Rogers lay on his back in the angled shaft for a moment, staring at the first bend, about forty feet into the rock. “Okay,” he said, punching the button on his watch for the timer to start. “I’m off.”

They had decided against unwinding a telephone wire and communicating directly with him as he climbed. The video recorder was equipped with a small lapel mike, into which he would make oral observations; the video camera would make an adequate record of what he saw from moment to moment. If time and opportunity presented, he would take pictures with the other cameras.

“Good luck, sir,” Keller called as. he began his low-angle ascent up the tunnel.

“The hell with that,” Rogers grunted under his breath. The first thirty feet were easy, a wriggling crawl. At the bend, he paused to shine a light up into the darkness. The tunnel angled straight up after the first thirty feet of incline. He noted this aloud for the record, then looked down over his stomach and legs at the cameo of Keller’s face. Keller made an okay sign with circled thumb and index finger. Rogers blinked his light twice.

“I’m going into the belly of an alien spaceship,” he told himself silently, grimacing fiercely to limber his tense jaw and face muscles. “I’m crawling up into an unknown. That’s it. Don’t be afraid.” And he wasn’t — a kind of energetic calm, almost a high, came over him.

He thought of his wife and four-year-old daughter living in Barstow, and a variety of scenarios stacked up behind their faces. Heroic dead father and lifetime benefits. Actually, he wasn’t clear on the benefits. He should be. He vowed to check that out immediately when he got back. Much better thought: heroic live father and retirement at twenty years and going into some business, defense contract consultant maybe, though he had never thought of that before. First man inside an alien spaceship. Real estate was more likely. Not in Barstow, however. San Diego, maybe, though being ex-Navy or ex-Marine would be more help there.

He began to climb, rubber-soled boots grabbing the rock and hands bracing against the opposite wall. A foot at a time. No damaging the spacecraft; not even a scratch. He heaved himself up with a grunt, again locking his boots and hands against the rock. Smooth surface, nothing like lava. Featureless and gray, amorphous. Astronauts had been trained in geology when they landed on the moon. No need to train an Army colonel. Besides, this wasn’t a natural place; what good would geology do?

At least it wasn’t slippery.

He had climbed fifteen feet when he paused and shined his light forward. Another bend above him, beyond which they had not probed with the pole-mounted cameras. Truly unknown. Rogers conjured up the few science fiction movies he had seen. He had never been a big fan of science fiction movies. Most of his buddies had enjoyed Aliens when they watched it on a VCR just out of boot camp. He tried to forget about that one.

The Guest was dead. What if that made the others angry? What if they knew, somehow, and were waiting for him?

He was still calm, still slightly high, eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dark, face moist with exertion. Up, up, and then over the lip of the bend. He rested in the nearly level tunnel beyond the bend, shining his light into impenetrable darkness. Pulling out his notebook, he worked quickly to figure angles and distances. He was about fifteen or twenty feet from the outer surface. Shining his light on a notebook page with the chart of the interior, he drew in the level tunnel. His path resembled a dogleg tire iron, thirty feet into the mound at an upward angle, then straight up twenty feet or so, and now horizontally into the interior.

Silence. No sounds of machinery, no voices, no air moving. Just his own breathing. When he had rested a few minutes, he crawled, flashlight strapped to one wrist sweeping the tunnel with every motion.

Ninety feet ahead, the tunnel opened into a larger space. He did not hesitate. Eager to be out of the confinement, Rogers scrambled forward and grabbed the lip of the tunnel with both hands, pulling his head out. He played the light across the enclosed volume.

“I’m in a cylindrical chamber,” he said aloud, “about thirty feet long and twenty across. I’m probably in the middle of the mound” — he referred to his sketch — “below the peak maybe sixty or eighty feet. The walls are shiny, like enamel or plastic or glass. Dark gray, with a bluish tint. The tunnel opens near the rear of the cylinder, and at the front” — he consulted his chart — “pointing northwest, there is another space, even larger. No sign of quarters or inhabitants. No activity.”

He stood up in the cylinder, testing the surface with his boots. There was still enough traction to walk easily. “I’m going forward.”

Rogers walked to the edge of the cylinder, keeping his light shined ahead. Then he opened his chest pack and pulled out two superbright torches. Holding them away from his eyes, he flicked the switches on both.

Mouth wide open, Rogers surveyed a cavern at least a hundred feet long and eighty feet high. The cylindrical chamber was squarely in the center of one end, placing him about twenty feet above the bottom. “It’s full of shiny facets, like a gem,” he said. “More like glass, not mirrors but shiny. Not just facets, either, but structures — beams, supports, braces. It’s like a cathedral inside here, but made of blue-gray glass.” He took several dozen pictures with the Hasselblad, then lowered the camera and just stared, trying to impress the memory and make sense out of what he was seeing.

From the end of the cylinder to the ornate gleaming surface below was a drop of at least thirty feet. No rappelling down; there was nothing to tie the rope onto, and he would not even try to hammer a piton into place.

“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “There’s nothing moving. No place I’d call living quarters. No machinery visible, even. And no lights. I’m going to turn off the torches and see if anything glows afterward.” He plunged himself into complete darkness. For a moment, his throat constricted and he coughed, the sound breaking into a chatter of echoes.

“I don’t see anything,” he said after a few minutes of darkness. “I’m going to turn the torches on to take more pictures.” He reached for the switches and then paused, squinting. Directly ahead, burning dimly and steadily, was a tiny red light, no more than a star in the vastness. “Wait. I don’t know if the video can pick that up. It’s very weak. Just a single red light, like a pinprick.”

He watched the gleam for several more minutes. All motions it made were easily explained by optical illusion; it changed neither in position nor brightness. “I don’t think the ship is dead. It’s just waiting.” Then he shook his head. “But maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, just because of one little red light.” Turning on his wrist flashlight, he mounted a telephoto lens on the Hasselblad and set the camera to a long exposure, then rested it on the lip of the cylinder, facing the red light. With a remote button, he opened the camera lens. When the exposure was complete, he reset for even longer and shot another. Then he turned on the torches and sat down to fill his memory with as much detail as he could. “It’s still silent,” he said.

After fifteen minutes, he got to his feet and instinctively brushed off his pants. “All right. I’m going back.”

To his enormous relief, nothing interfered with his return journey.

19

Edward Shaw learned of the Guest’s death two days later, when they all received a visit from Colonel Phan. After a ten-minute warning, in which time Edward quickly dressed, the curtains were drawn and all four of them faced the small, muscular brown man in his pin-neat blue uniform, standing in the central laboratory.

“How long have we got, Doc?” Minelli asked. He had been getting more and more flippant, less predictable, as the days passed. He talked often of the President and how they would soon be “outta this dump.” His speech more and more resembled a comic imitation of James Cagney. Minelli had never reacted well to overbearing authority. Edward had heard of a time, years before Minelli came to Austin, when he had been jailed on a minor dope charge, and had bloodied his face against a jailhouse door. Edward worried about him.

“You are all healthy, with no signs of contamination or illness,” Phan said. “I plan no more tests for you. You have heard from your duty officer, I believe, that the Guest is dead. I have finished the first level of autopsy, and found no microbiologicals anywhere within its system. It appears to have been a completely sterile creature. This is good news for you.”

“No bugs, m’lady,” Minelli said. Edward winced.

“I have recommended that you be released,” Phan said, staring levelly at each in turn. “Though I do not know when they will do so. As the President said, there are security concerns.”

Edward saw Stella Morgan through her window and smiled at her. She did not return the smile; perhaps the light was wrong and she did not see him; perhaps she was feeling as depressed as Reslaw, who seldom said anything now.

The combination of free interaction through the intercom and separate confinement seemed to undermine the camaraderie Edward thought was typical of prison camp inmates. They were not being abused. They had nothing really solid to fight against. Their confinement, until now at least, had not been senseless. Consequently, they were not “drawing together” as Edward thought they might. Then again, he had never before been held in long-term detention. Maybe his expectations were simply naive.

“We are preparing papers that you will sign, promising not to speak of these last few days—”

“I won’t sign anything like that,” Minelli said. “There aren’t any best-sellers if I sign that. No agents, no Hollywood.”

“Please,” Phan said patiently.

“What about Australia?” Edward asked. “Are you talking with them?”

“Conferences begin today in Washington,” Phan said.

“Why the wait? Why didn’t everybody start talking weeks ago?”

Phan did not answer. “Personally, I hope all is made public soon,” he said.

Edward tried to control a building anger. “Why can’t we get together? Take us out of here and put us in a BOQ or something.”

“Barbecue?” Minelli snorted.

“Bachelor officer’s quarters,” Edward explained, his lower lip trembling. He was beginning to cry. He checked that response immediately, putting on an air of indignant rationality. “Really. This is hell. We feel like we’re in jail.”

“Worse. We can’t make zip guns or knives,” Minelli said. “Bottom of the world, Ma!”

Phan regarded Minelli with an expression between irritation and concern. “That is all I have to tell you now. Please do not worry. I am sure you will be compensated. In the meantime, we have new infodisks.”

“Goody,” Minelli said. As Phan turned away, he shouted, “Wait! I’m not feeling well. Really. Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” Phan asked, gesturing to a watch supervisor behind him.

“In my head. Tell them, Reslaw.”

“Minelli’s been disturbed recently,” Reslaw said slowly. “I’m not doing too well, myself. He doesn’t sound good. He’s different.”

“I’m different,” Minelli concurred. Then he began to weep. “Goddammit, just put us back out where the rocks are. Let us go in our truck. I’ll sign anything. Really. Please.”

Phan glanced at them all, then turned and left abruptly. The curtains hummed back into place. Edward’s drawer opened and he removed a newspaper and the new packet of infodisks. Hungrily, he read yesterday morning’s headline.

“Christ,” he muttered. “They know about the President. Stella!” He punched her number on the intercom. “Stella, they know the President came out here!”

“I’m reading,” she said.

“Do you think your mother got through?”

“I don’t know, really.”

“We can hope,” Edward said.

Minelli was still weeping.

20

Hicks lay back against a pillow in the Lincoln Bedroom, a foot-high stack of reports on the round draped night-stand beside him, a small glass-globed lamp glowing softly above the reports. The late Empire-period pendulum clock on the marble mantelpiece ticked softly, steadily. The large, high-ceilinged room looked haunted, in a cozy sort of way; haunted by history, by association. This had been Abraham Lincoln’s Cabinet room originally; here he had signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

He shook his head. “I’m crazy,” he said. “I’m not here. I’m imagining all of it.” For a moment, he hoped desperately that was true; that he was dreaming in the hotel room at the Inter-Continental, and that he would soon be promoting his novel for six minutes or less on another radio show, before another young announcer…

On the other hand, what was so undesirable about being in the White House in Washington, D.C., personally chosen by the President of the United States to advise him on the biggest event in human history? “The man doesn’t listen,” he murmured.

Hicks picked up the topmost report on the stack, a thick sheaf of photocopied papers on the Death Valley site, the Guest, and all that was known about the Great Victoria Desert site.

The Guest’s interim autopsy report was third in the stack. Using a talent acquired across years of research, he skimmed the first two papers quickly, stopping only for essential details. The reports, not unexpectedly, were “safe” — hedged through and through with ambiguous language, craftily defused theories, prompt second-guessing. Only the autopsy report showed promise of being substantive.

Colonel Tuan Anh Phan, a man Hicks would like to meet, was clear and to the point. The Guest’s physiology was unlike that of any living thing on Earth. Phan could not conceive of an environment that would evolve such a physiology. There were structures that reminded him, again and again, of “engineering shortcuts,” totally unlike the more intricate, randomly evolved structures terrestrial biology exhibited. His conclusion was not hedged in the least:

“The Guest’s body does not appear to be in the same biological category as Earth life forms. Some of its features are contrary to reasonable expectations. The only explanation I can offer for this is that the Guest is an artificial being, perhaps the product of centuries of genetic manipulation combined with complex bioelectronics. Since these abilities are far beyond us, any suppositions I might make as to the actual functions of the Guest’s organs must be considered unreliable, perhaps misleading.”

A chemical analysis of the Guest’s tissues followed. There was no cell structure per se in any of the tissues; rather, each area or organ in the Guest’s body appeared to have a separate metabolism, which cooperated with, but was not part of, other areas or organs. There was no central waste-disposal system. Wastes appeared to build up without relief in tissues. Phan thought this might have been the cause of death. “Perhaps nutrients unavailable in an Earth environment triggered processes below the level of detail our investigation can uncover. Perhaps the Guest, in its native environment, was attached to a complex life-support system that purged its body of waste products. Perhaps the Guest was ill and certain body functions were inactive.”

Buried in a footnote: “The Guest does not appear to have been designed for a long life span.” The footnote was signed by Harold Feinman, who had not attended the final parts of the autopsy. There was no further elaboration.

Despite the report’s clarity, Something was being left unsaid. Feinman, at least, seemed to be hinting that the Guest was not what it appeared…

In the bottom report of the stack was an Australian booklet, prepared with obvious haste and considerable deletions. This booklet began with a synopsis of statements made by the mechanical visitors that had emerged from the Great Victoria Desert rock.

Hicks rubbed his eyes. The light was poor for reading. He had leafed through this booklet once already: Yet he needed to feel completely prepared for the next morning, when he accompanied the President into the Oval Office to meet with the Australian representatives.

“The comprehensibility of the mechanical beings’ statements to our investigators is astonishing. Their command of English appears to be perfect. They answer questions promptly and without obfuscation.”

Hicks studied the glossy color photographs inserted into the booklet. The Australian government had just two days before provided a set of these photographs along with video disks to every news organization in the world; the images of the three silvery, gourd-shaped robots hovering near a wood-posted razor-wire fence, of the great smooth water-worn red rock, of the exit hole, were in every civilized household in the world by now.

“The robots, by their every word, convey a sense of goodwill and benevolent concern. They wish to help the inhabitants of the Earth to ‘fulfill your potential, to come together in harmony and exercise your rights as potential citizens of a galaxy-wide exchange.’”

Hicks frowned. How many years of fictional paranoia had conditioned him to be dubious of extraterrestrials bearing gifts? Of all the motion pictures made about first contact, only a bare handful had treated the epochal event as benign.

How often had Hicks’s eyes misted over, watching these few films, even when he tried to keep a scientific perspective? That great moment, the exchange between humans and friendly nonhuman intelligences…

It had happened in Australia. The dream was alive.

And in California, nightmares.

The Guest does not appear to have been designed for a long life span,

He put the Australian booklet on the top of the stack and reached awkwardly over the stack to turn off the light. In the darkness, he disciplined himself to take regular, shallow breaths, to blank his mind and go to sleep. Even so, sleep came late and was not restful.

21

Crockerman, wearing slacks and a white shirt but no coat or tie, a powdery patch of styptic pencil on his chin from a shaving cut, entered the office of his chief of staff, and nodded briefly, at those assembled there: Gordon, Hicks, Rotterjack, Fulton, Lehrman, and the chief of staff himself, plump and balding Irwin Schwartz. It was seven-thirty in the morning, though in the windowless office time hardly mattered. Arthur thought he might never get out of little rooms and the company of bureaucrats and politicians.

“I’ve called you in here to go over our own material on the Great Victoria Desert bogey,” Crockerman said. “You’ve read their booklet, I presume?” Crockerman asked. All nodded. “At my request, Mr. Hicks has been sworn in, and his security clearance has been processed…”

Rotterjack looked dyspeptic.

“He’s one of us now. Where’s Carl?”

“Still in traffic, I think,” Schwartz said. “He called a half hour ago and said he’d be a few minutes late.”

“All right. We don’t have much time.” Crockerman stood and paced before them. “I’ll play his part. We have ‘one or more’ agents at the Australian rock. I need not tell you all how sensitive this fact is, but take this as a reminder…”

Rotterjack threw a very pointed glance at Hicks. Hicks received it calmly.

“Ironically, the information passed on to us only confirms what the Australians have been saying in public. Everything’s Pollyanna as far as they’re concerned. We’re about to enter a new age of discovery. The robots have already begun to explain their technology. David?”

“The Australians have passed on some of the physics information the robots have given to them,” Rotterjack said. “It’s quite esoteric, having to do with cosmology. A couple of Australian physicists have said the equations are relevant to superstring theory.”

“Whatever that is,” Fulton said.

Rotterjack grinned almost maliciously. “It’s very important, General. At your request, Arthur, I’ve passed the equations on to Mohammed Abante at Pepperdine University. He’s arranging for a team of his colleagues to examine the equations and, we hope, file a report in a few days. The robots have not been confronted with the fact of our bogey. The Australians may want to leave it to us to tell them.”

Carl McClennan entered the office, topcoat hung over his arm and briefcase half hidden in the folds. He looked around, saw there were no available seats besides the two reserved for the Australians, and stood by the rear wall. Hicks wondered if he should stand and give the national security advisor his seat, but decided it would win him no affection.

Crockerman gave McClennan a rundown of what had been discussed so far.

“I finished the first round of negotiations with their team leaders and intelligence experts last night. They’ve agreed to keep it secret,” McClennan said. “The discussion today between the Aussies and ourselves can be open and aboveboard. No forbidden territory.”

“Fine,” Crockerman said. “What I’d like to work toward, gentlemen, is a way of presenting all the facts to the public within a month’s time.”

McClennan paled. “Mr. President, we haven’t discussed this — “ Both Rotterjack and McClennan cast unhappy glances at Hicks this time. Hicks kept his face impassive: Not my show, gentlemen.

“We haven’t discussed it,” Crockerman agreed, almost nonchalantly. “Still, this is what we should aim for. I am convinced the news will leak soon, and rather our citizens learn the facts of life from qualified personnel than from gutter gossip, don’t you agree?”

Reluctantly, McClennan said yes, but his face remained tense.

“Fine. The Australians will be in the Oval Office in about fifteen minutes. Do we have any questions, disagreements, before we meet?”

Schwartz raised his hand and wriggled his fingers.

“Irwin?”

“Mr. President, is Tom Jacks or Rob Tishman on our list yet?” Schwartz asked. Jacks was in charge of public relations. Tishman was White House press secretary. “If we truly are going public in a month, or even if we’re just thinking about it, Rob and Tom should be given some lead time.”

“They aren’t on the list yet; by tomorrow they will be. As for my esteemed Veep…” Crockerman frowned. Vice President Frederick Hale had had a falling-out with the President three months before; they hardly spoke now. Hale had involved himself in unsavory business dealings in Kansas; the resulting scandal had dominated newspapers for two weeks and nearly resulted in Hale’s being “thrown to the wolves.” Hale, as slippery and adept as any man in the Capital, had floundered ungracefully in the storm, but he had weathered it. “I see no reason to put him on the list now. Do you?”

Nobody indicated they did.

“Then let’s adjourn to the Oval Office.”

22

Seated in chairs around the President’s desk, the men listened intently as Arthur summed up the scientific findings. The Australians, both young and vigorous-looking, tanned in contrast to the pale features of the Americans around them, appeared serenely untroubled by what Arthur had just told them.

“In short, then,” he concluded, “we have no reason to believe our Guest is being less than truthful. The contrast between our experiences is pretty sharp.”

“That’s true understatement,” said Colin Forbes, the senior in age and rank of the two. Forbes was in his early forties, weathered and vigorous, with white-blond hair. He wore a pale blue sports coat and white slacks and smelled strongly of after-shave. “I can see what the fuss is about. Here we are, bringing a message of hope and glory, and your little green man tells you it’s all a sham. I’m not sure how we can resolve the discrepancy.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rotterjack asked. “We confront your robots with what we’ve been told.”

Forbes nodded and smiled. “And if they deny it all, if they say they don’t know what the hell’s going on?”

Rotterjack had no answer for that.

Gregory French, the junior Australian, with neatly combed and trimmed black hair and dressed in a standard gray suit, stood up and cleared his throat. He was obviously not comfortable in this high level of company. To Arthur, he looked like a bashful student.

“Does anybody know if there have been other bogeys? The Russians, the Chinese?”

“No information yet,” Lehrman said. “That’s not a negative. Just a temporary ‘we don’t know.’”

“I think if we’re the only ones blessed or cursed, we should get the issue resolved before any public release,” French said. “This could tear people apart. Standing between devils and angels.”

“I agree,” Arthur said.

“There are problems with waiting,” Crockerman said.

“Pardon me, sir,” McClennan broke in, “but the possibility of unofficial release is much less disturbing than the impact of…”He waved his hands energetically through the air. “The confusion. The fear. We’re sitting on a real time bomb. Do you truly understand this, Mr. President?” he practically shouted. McClennan’s frustration with the President had come to a painful head. The room was silent. The national security advisor’s tone had been far stronger than anyone would have expected, coming from the cautious Carl McClennan.

“Yes, Carl,” Crockerman replied, eyes half lidded. “I believe I do.”

“Sorry,” McClennan said, slumping slightly in his seat. French, still standing, seemed acutely embarrassed.

“All right,” Forbes said, gesturing with an elegant flip of his finger for French to be seated. “We confront our bogeys. We’d better get on with it. I invite as many of your people as you can spare to return with us. And I think I’ll recommend to Quentin that we start shutting the doors again. Fewer press reports. Does this seem reasonable?”

“Eminently,” Rotterjack said.

“I’m curious as to why Mr. Hicks is here,” Forbes said. “I admire Trevor’s work enormously, but…” He didn’t finish his thought. Arthur looked at Hicks, and realized he genuinely liked and trusted the man. He could understand the President’s choice. But that would cut no ice with McClennan and Rotterjack, who clearly wanted Hicks away from the center.

“He’s here because he’s as conversant on these subjects as anybody in the world,” Crockerman said. “Even though we do not see eye to eye.”

Rotterjack ineffectively masked his surprise, sitting up in his chair and then awkwardly leaning his elbow on the arm. Arthur watched him closely. They thought Hicks might be behind the President’s attitude.

“I’m glad Trevor’s here,” Arthur said abruptly. “I welcome his insights.”

“Fine with me,” Forbes said, smiling broadly.

The New York Daily News, October 12, 1996: Sources in the State Department, on condition that they not be named, have confirmed that there is a connection between the disappearance and alleged government captivity of four people and the secret visit by President Crockerman to Death Valley earlier this week. Other informed sources have confirmed that both of these incidents are connected with the Australian extraterrestrials. In a related story, the Reverend Kyle McCabey of Edinburgh, Scotland, founder of the Satanic Invader’s League, claims that his new religious sect now numbers its followers at a hundred thousand throughout the United Kingdom and the Irish Republic. The Satanic Invader’s League believes that the Australian extraterrestrials are representatives of Satan sent to the Earth to, in the Reverend’s words, “soften us up for Satan’s conquest.”

On the Hollywood Freeway, neck and back stiff from the early morning flight into LAX, Arthur Gordon grimly steered the rental Lincoln, listening to a babble about national lottery results on the radio.

His mind was far away, and visions of the river outside his Oregon home kept intruding into his planning. Smooth, clear green water, steady and unaware, working its natural way, eroding banks. How did each particle of dirt stripped from its place feel about the process? How did the gazelle, caught in the slash of a lion’s paws, feel about becoming a simple dinner, all its existence reduced to a week or so of sustenance for another creature? “Waste,” he said. “Goddamn waste.” Yet he wasn’t sure what he meant, or what all his thoughts were pointing to.

Cat’s paws. Playing with the prey.

Suddenly, Arthur missed Francine and Marty terribly. He had spoken with them briefly from Washington before leaving; he had told them very little, not even where he was or where he was going.

Did a gazelle, caught in the meshing gears of a lion’s paws, worry about doe and fawn?

Harry’s home was a spacious split-level “stick-built” ranch house from the early 1960s, wandering over much of a eucalyptus-covered quarter-acre lot in Tarzana. He had purchased the home in 1975, before his marriage to Ithaca; it had seemed hollow then, with only one occupant, and was still a place of vast white walls and rug-dotted linoleum floors, a little chilly and severe for Arthur’s taste.

Ithaca beyond any doubt ruled the roost. Tall, with dark red hair and features more suited to a Shakespearean actress than a Tarzana homemaker, her quiet presence balanced the broad rooms. Harry had once told Arthur, “Wherever she is, there’s enough, and never too much.” Arthur had known exactly what he meant.

She opened the door at Arthur’s knock, smiled warmly, and extended her hand. Arthur took the fingers and kissed them solemnly. “Milady,” he said ceremoniously. “Is the good doctor in?”

“Hello, Arthur. Good to see you. He’s in and being insufferable.”

“His treatments?”

“No. Something else, having to do with you, I presume.” Ithaca would never inquire. “Can I get you coffee? It’s been cold this winter. Today is especially dreary.”

“Yes, please. The office?”

“Sanctum sanctorum. How’s Francine? Marty?”

“They’re fine.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, obviously anxious to join Harry. Ithaca nodded.

“I’ll bring the coffee into the office. Go.”

“Thanks.” He always felt like complimenting Ithaca on her appearance, which was, as usual, wonderful — but she did not take kindly to compliments. How she looked and dressed was as natural to her as breathing. He smiled awkwardly and headed down the hall to the office.

Harry sat in an overstuffed chair, fire crackling brightly in the grate. His office had originally been the master bedroom, and after his marriage, he had kept it there. There were three large bedrooms with fireplaces in the house, enough to go around. Stacks of books rose beside his chair, some of them huge, old, and well thumbed. An Olympia typewriter hung keyboard down over the fireplace like a hunting trophy, while from its return key dangled three carbon-encrusted test tubes looped together by a red ribbon. The story behind this had to do with Harry’s doctoral thesis and was seldom told when Harry was sober.

In Harry’s lap rested a copy of Brin and Kuiper’s book on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. McClennan and Rotterjack had kept copies of the same book on their office desks. Arthur also noticed Hicks’s novel on the corner of a roll-around table, almost crowded off by stacks of infodisks.

“Finally, by God,” Harry said. “I’ve been stuck here getting over nausea and waiting for the word. What’s the word?”

“I’m to go to Australia with most of the task force. I’m leaving in three days, with a couple of hours stopover in Tahiti. We should just be able to put out a short report.”

“The newshounds are on our trail,” Harry said, raising his thick eyebrows.

“The President thinks we should release the story within a month. Rotterjack and the others aren’t enthusiastic.”

“And you?”

“Newshounds,” Arthur concurred, shrugging. “We may not have much choice soon.”

“They’ll have to release those folks at Vandenberg. Can’t hold them forever. They’re physically clean and healthy.”

Arthur closed the office door. “The Guest?”

Harry’s face worked. “Bogus,” he said. “I think it’s as much a robot as the Australian shmoos.”

“What does Phan think?”

“He’s good, but this has stretched him. He thinks it’s a product of a biologically advanced civilization, kind of a future citizen, sterile and largely artificial, but still bona fide an individual.”

“Why do you disagree?”

“It was never meant to process wastes. Planned obsolescence. The Guest poisoned itself and broke down. There was no evidence of any way to void the wastes through any sort of external dialysis. No anus, no urinary tract. No valves, no exit points. No lungs. It breathed through its skin. Not very efficient for a creature its size. And no sweat glands. Unconvincing as hell. But — I’m not so convinced that I’m going to stand up and shout howdy before all the President’s men. After all, that just complicates things, doesn’t it?”

Arthur nodded. “You’ve read Colonel Rogers’s report and seen his pictures?”

Harry held up a new infodisk, the security plastic sticker Day-Glo orange on its label. “An Air Force car brought it by yesterday. Impressive.”

“Frightening.”

“I thought you’d be spooked,” Harry said. “We think alike, don’t we?”

“We always have, within limits,” Arthur said.

“Okay, I say the biology’s a ringer. What about the rock?”

“Warren’s brought in his report on the externals. He says it appears authentic, right down to mineral samples.

However, he agrees with Edward Shaw about the suspicious lack of weathering. Abante can’t make heads or tails of the interior. He says it looks like a set from a science fiction movie — pretty but nonspecific. And no sign of any other Guests.”

“So what do we conclude?”

Arthur pulled a folding stool from behind the door, opened it, and squatted. “I think we see the outlines of our draft, don’t you?”

Harry nodded. “We’re being played with,” he said.

Arthur held up an extended thumb.

“Now, why would they want to play with us?” Harry asked.

“To draw us out and discover our capabilities?” Arthur ventured.

“Are they afraid we can beat them if they aren’t careful?”

“That might be an explanation,” Arthur said.

“Lord. They must be thousands of years ahead of us.”

“Not necessarily.”

“How could it be otherwise?” Harry asked, his voice rising an octave.

“Captain Cook,” Arthur offered. “The Hawaiians thought he was some sort of god. Two hundred years later, they drive cars just like the rest of us…and watch TV.”

“They were subjugated,” Harry said. “They didn’t have a chance, not against cannon.”

“They killed Cook, didn’t they?”

“Are you suggesting some sort of resistance movement?” Harry asked.

“We’re getting way ahead of ourselves.”

“Damn right. Let’s stick to basics.” Harry folded the book on his lap. “You’re wondering about my health.”

Arthur nodded. “Can you travel?”

“Not far, not soon. Yesterday they pumped me full of magic bullets. Bullets to restructure my immune system, to strengthen my bone marrow…Thousands of little tame retroviruses doing their thing. I feel like hell most of the time. Still, I’ve got what’s left of my hair. We’re not doing radiation or heavy chemicals yet.”

“Can you work? Travel around California?”

“Anywhere you want me, within a two-hour emergency hop to UCLA Medical Center. I’m a wreck, Arthur. You shouldn’t have chosen me. I shouldn’t have agreed.”

“You’re still thinking clearly, aren’t you?” Arthur asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you’re useful. Necessary.”

Harry looked down at the folded book in his lap. “Ithaca’s not taking this well.”

“She seems cheerful.”

“She’s a good actress. At night, in her sleep, her face…she cries.” Harry’s own eyes were moist at the thought, and he seemed much younger, almost a boy, glancing up at Arthur. “Christ. I’m glad I’m the one who might die. If things were the other way around, and she was going through this, I’d be in worse shape than I am now.”

“You’re not going to die,” Arthur said sternly. “We’re almost into the twenty-first century. Leukemia isn’t the killer it used to be.”

“Not for children, Arthur. But for me…”He raised his hands.

“You leave us, and I’m going to be pretty damn inconsolable.” Completely against his will, he felt his own eyes grow damp. “Remember that.”

Harry said nothing for a moment. “The Forge of God,” he finally commented, shaking his head. “If that ever gets into the papers…”

“One nightmare at a time,” Arthur said. Harry called Ithaca to prepare a guest bedroom for Arthur. As she did that, Arthur placed a collect call to Oregon, the first he had had a chance to make in two days.

His conversation with Francine was brief. There was nothing he could tell her, except that he was well. She was polite enough, and knew him well enough, not to mention the news reports.

The call was not enough. When it was over, Arthur missed his family more than ever.

24

A newsreel preceded the feature film on the Qantas flight to Melbourne, projected over the heads of passengers onto a tiny screen. Arthur looked up from his disk reader and open ring binder. Beside him, an elderly gentleman in a gray herringbone wool suit dozed lightly.

A computer-animated graphic of Australia Associated Press News Network filled the screen, backed by a jaunty jazz score. The rather plain, rugged middle-aged face of AAPN anchor Rachel Vance smiled across the darkened seats and inattentive heads. “Good day. Our lead story today is, of course, still the Centralian extraterrestrials. Yet another conference was held yesterday between Australian scientists and the robots, familiarly known as Shmoos, after comic artist Al Capp’s remarkably generous characters, which they resemble in shape. While the information exchanged in the conference has not been released, a government spokesman acknowledged that scientists are still discussing theoretical physics and astronomy, and have not yet begun discussions on biology.”

The spokesman appeared, a familiar face already. Arthur half listened. He had heard it all by now. “We have received no information about the density of living things in the galaxy; that is, we still do not know how many planets are inhabited, or what types of creatures inhabit them…”

His picture faded to a shot of the three Shmoos in motion down a dirt path to conference trailers set up in fields of dry spinifex grass near the huge false rock. The robots’ floating propulsion was still eerie, deeply disturbing. In that motion could be signs of an immensely advanced technology…or of some sort of visual trick, a show for the primitive natives.

Vance returned, her smile warmly fixed in stone. “The Washington Post and The New York Times reported today that the remnant of an old volcano near Death Valley, California, has been closed off to the public. The Post makes a connection between this closing and the disappearance of three men and a woman, all allegedly held by military authorities in California.”

Nothing new, but closer…perilously closer. Arthur leaned back in his seat and stared out of the window at the ocean and clouds passing in review tens of thousands of feet below. Immense, he thought. It seems to be all there is. Ocean and clouds. I could spend my entire life traveling and not see all of it. This did not necessarily demonstrate the size of the Earth, but it did put his life and brain in perspective.

He tried to nap. They would be in Melbourne in a few hours, and he was already exhausted.

The Rock, still unnamed, stretched for half a mile across the horizon in the early morning light, gloriously colored from the bottom up in layers of purple and red and orange. The sky overhead was a trembling dusty blue-gray, hinting at the heat to come. It was spring here, but there had been little rain. There was hardly a breath of wind. Arthur jumped down from the bulky, big-tired gray Royal Australian Army staff vehicle into red dust and stared across the golden plain at the Rock. The science advisor, David Rotterjack, stepped down behind him. Less than a dozen meters away, the first circle of razor-wire-topped hurricane fence began, curving in broad scallops through silver-gray mulga scrub and spiky spinifex.

Quentin Bent walked with a short-legged, almost eager waddle along the red dirt path to the edge of the road. Bent was in his mid-forties, heavy and florid-faced, with a forward-swept bush of gray hair, an easy smile, and sharp, pessimistic blue eyes. He extended his hand to Rotterjack first. In another Army vehicle, Bent’s assistants, Forbes and French, accompanied Charles Warren, the geologist from Kent State.

“Mr. Arthur Gordon,” Bent said, shaking Arthur’s hand. “I’ve just finished reading the draft American task force report. Your work, and Dr. Feinman’s, largely, am I correct?”

“Yes,” Arthur said. “I hope it was clear.”

“All too clear,” Bent said, lifting his chin as if smelling the air, but keeping his eyes on Arthur. “Very disturbing. Gentlemen, I’ve received a message from our Shmoos — we all call them that now, they can’t really be offended, can they? — and we’re scheduled to have a meeting with them at noon today in trailer three.” Almost breathlessly, he said, “Each day…they travel from the Rock to our conference trailer. They never leave the vicinity of the Rock. Before then, we will have breakfast in the mess trailer, and then a tour of the site, if you’re up to it. Did you get enough sleep, Dr. Gordon, Mr. Rotterjack, Dr. Warren?”

“Sufficient,” Rotterjack said, his eyes dark.

Bent flashed a smile and waddled into place ahead of them. “Follow me,” he said.

Arthur fell in step beside Warren, a man of middle height and build with wispy, thinning brown hair brushed across a bald spot and large eyes above a long nose. “What does it look like?” he asked.

“A lot like Ayers Rock, only smaller,” Warren answered, shaking his head. “It’s less convincing than the cinder cone in Death Valley. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find it at Disney World.”

The breakfast went smoothly. They were introduced to several of the scientists measuring and analyzing the Rock, including the head of the materials team, Dr. Christine Carmichael. She explained that the minerals making up the Rock were all clearly earthbound — none of the surrounding “camouflage” material had arrived from space. Arthur tried to visualize the construction of the Rock, away from all human witnesses; he could not.

Other discussion was brief. Bent asked only three questions: how they planned to release the news (Rotterjack replied that at present there were no such plans), how they interpreted the Guest’s story about planet-eating spacecraft (it seemed straightforward), and whether they believed there was a connection between the Death Valley cinder cone and the Rock. Rotterjack was unwilling to commit himself. Warren did not believe he had spent enough time on the project to render a useful opinion. Arthur nodded once; there was a definite connection.

“Can’t have too many interstellar visitors in one year, eh?” Bent asked.

“It seems very unlikely,” Arthur said.

“But not impossible?” Bent pursued.

“Not beyond possibility, but difficult to conceive.”

“Still, we’re all quite ignorant about what’s out there, aren’t we?” Forbes asked, smoothing back his white-blond hair with one hand.

“There could have been a wave of machine migrations, finally reaching this vicinity,” French added. “Perhaps whole civilizations have grown up along an evolutionary timetable, and like rain precipitating out of a cloud, the time has come …”

Bent leaned over his now empty plates of steak, eggs, and fruit. “We’re an optimistic bunch, Dr. Gordon. Our nation is younger than yours. Let me say, right out, that we have an interest in this being a good thing. The P.M. and the Cabinet — not to mention the Reverend Mr. Caldecott…” He glanced around, grinning broadly. Forbes and French mimicked his grin. “We all believe this could lift us into the forefront of all nations. We could be a center of immense activity, construction, education, research. If the Furnace is something horrible, which it seems to be, we might still cling to the notion that the Rock is different. Whether it serves us ill or not. Am I clear?”

“Perfectly clear,” Rotterjack said. “We’d like to agree with you.” He glanced at Arthur.

“We can’t, however,” Arthur said.

“For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds. Gentlemen, we have a helicopter waiting.”

In the late morning light, the Rock’s colors had been subdued to a bright russet mixed with streaks of ocher. Arthur, looking through the concentric networks of tiny scratches in the helicopter’s Plexiglas windows, shook his head. “The detail is astonishing,” he shouted above the whine of the jets and the thumping roar of the blades. Warren nodded, squinting against a sudden glare of sun. “It’s granite, all right, but there’s no exfoliation. The banding is vertical, which is entirely wrong for this area — more appropriate to Ayers Rock than here. And where are the wind features, the hollows and caves? It’s a reasonably convincing imitation — unless you’re a geologist. But my question is, why go to all the trouble to disguise the Rock, when they knew they’d be coming out in the open?”

“They haven’t explicitly answered several of our questions,” Bent admitted. “Directly below us is the opening through which our Shmoos emerge to confer with us. There are two other openings we know of, both quite small — no more than a meter wide. Nothing has emerged from them. We haven’t sent anybody in to investigate the openings. We think it best to trust them — not to look gift horses in the mouth, no?”

Arthur nodded dubiously.

“What would you have done?” Bent asked, showing a flash of irritation and perplexity.

“The same, probably,” Arthur said.

The helicopter circled the Rock twice and then landed near the conference trailer. The engine noise declined to a rhythmic groaning whine and the blades slowed. Arthur, the Australians, and Rotterjack walked across the red dust and pea gravel to the gray and white trailer. It rose a meter above the ground on heavy iron jacks and concrete blocks, its eight rugged tires dangling sadly.

Bent pulled out a key ring and opened the white-painted aluminum door, ushering Gordon, Rotterjack, and Warren in, but going ahead of Forbes and French. Inside, an air conditioner hummed quietly. Arthur mopped his brow with a handkerchief and reveled in the cool air. Forbes and French pulled seats up to the spare conference table. French switched on a monitor and they sat to watch the opening in the Rock, waiting intently for the Shmoos to emerge.

“Have they ever asked to travel elsewhere?” Arthur asked.

“No,” Bent said. “As I said, they don’t leave the vicinity.”

“And they haven’t revealed whether they’re going to land others soon?”

“No.”

Arthur raised his eyebrows. Three gleaming gourd-shaped objects emerged from the two-meter-wide hole, descending to hover thirty or forty centimeters above the rugged ground. Bobbing and weaving gracefully, the Shmoos traversed the half kilometer between the trailer and the Rock, three abreast, reminding Arthur of gun-slingers approaching a showdown.

His hands trembled. Rotterjack leaned toward Arthur and said matter-of-factly, “I’m scared. Are you?”

Bent looked at them both with a drawn, ambiguous expression.

We’ve brought him into our nightmare. He was innocent until we arrived. He was in a scientist’s heaven.

A wide hatch opened on the opposite side of the trailer, letting in a draft of hot air and the hot, dusty-sweet smell of the mulgas. In the sunlit glare outside, the Shmoos ascended a wide ramp and floated into the trailer, arraying themselves on the opposite side of the conference table. The hatch swung down again. The air-conditioner compressor rattled faintly on the roof.

Arthur surveyed the gleaming robots. Beyond their shape and the bluish-gunmetal gleam of their surfaces, they were featureless; no visible sensor apparatus, no sound-producing grilles or extruding arms. Blank.

Bent leaned forward. “Welcome. This is our fifteenth meeting, and I’ve invited three guests to attend this time. More will be attending later. Are you well? Is everything satisfactory?”

“Everything is satisfactory,” the middle robot replied. Its voice was ambiguously tenor, neither masculine nor feminine. The inflections and assumed Australian accent were perfect. Arthur could easily picture a cultured and prosperous young man behind the voice.

“These gentlemen, David Rotterjack, Charles Warren, and Arthur Gordon, have traveled from our ally nation, the United States of America, to speak with you and ask important questions.”

“Greetings to Mr. Rotterjack and Mr. Warren and Mr. Gordon. We welcome all inquiries.”

Rotterjack appeared stunned. Since he was clearly unwilling to speak first, Arthur faced the middle Shmoo and said, “We have a problem.”

“Yes.”

“In our country, there is a device similar to your own, disguised as a volcanic cinder cone. A biological being has emerged from this device.” He related the subsequent events concisely, marveling at his own apparent equanimity. “Clearly, this being’s story contradicts your own. Would you please explain these contradictions to us?”

“They make no sense whatsoever,” the middle robot said. Arthur controlled a sudden urge to flinch and run; the machine’s tone was smooth, in complete control, somehow superior. “Are you certain of your facts?”

“As certain as we can be,” Arthur said, his urge to flee replaced by irritation, then anger. They’re actually going to stonewall. God damn!

“This is very puzzling. Do you have pictures of these events, or any recorded information we can examine?”

“Yes.” Arthur lifted his briefcase onto the table and produced a folio of color prints. He spread the pictures before the Shmoos, who made no apparent move to examine them.

“We have recorded your evidence,” the central robot said. “We are still puzzled. Is this perhaps attributable to some friction between your nations?”

“As Mr. Bent has said, our nations are allies. There is very little friction between us.”

The room was quiet for several seconds. Then Rotterjack said, “We believe that both of these devices — yours and the cinder cone object in California — are controlled by the same — people, group. Can you prove to us that we are incorrect?”

“Group? You imply that the other, if it exists, is controlled by us?”

“Yes,” Arthur said. Rotterjack nodded.

“This makes no sense. Our mission here is clear. We have told all of your investigators that we wish to gently and efficiently introduce humans to the cultures and technologies of other intelligences. We have made no threatening gestures.”

“Indeed, you have not,” Bent said placatingly. “Is it possible there are factions among your kind that oppose your actions? Someone perhaps trying to sabotage your work?”

“This is not likely.”

“Can you offer any other explanation?” Bent asked, clearly frustrated.

“No explanations are apparent to us. Our craft is not equipped to dismantle worlds.”

Arthur produced another packet of photos and spread them before the robots. “Half a year ago, a moon of the planet we call Jupiter — are you familiar with Jupiter?”

“Yes.”

“The sixth moon, Europa, disappeared. We haven’t been able to locate it since. Can you explain this to us?”

“No, we cannot. We are not responsible for any such large-scale phenomenon.”

“Can you help us solve these mysteries?” Bent asked, a hint of desperation coming into his voice. He was clearly experiencing the same sense of dread that had long since come over all associated with the Furnace bogey. Things were not adding up. Lack of explanations at this stage could be tantamount to provocation…

“We have no explanations for any of these events.” Then, in a conciliatory tone, “They are puzzling.”

Bent glanced at Arthur: We’re getting nowhere. “Perhaps we should begin with our regular schedule of discussions for the day.”

The robot did not speak for several seconds. Visibly unnerved, Bent tensed his clasped hands on the desk.

“Possibly there is a problem of communication,” it said. “Perhaps all of these difficulties can be overcome. Today’s session is not important. We will cancel this meeting and meet again later.”

With no further word, ignoring the polite objections of Quentin Bent, the Shmoos rose, backed away from the table, and passed through the hatchway. Desert heat once again beat in on the men in the trailer before the hatch closed.

Stunned by the sudden end of the interview, they simply stared at each other. Bent was on the edge of tears.

“All right,” he said, standing. He glanced at the TV monitor perched high in one corner. Cameras conveyed the Shmoos’ return to the Rock. “We’ll see—”

A sharp crack and a roar rocked the trailer. Arthur fell from his chair in seeming slow motion, bumping into Rotterjack’s chair, thinking on the way down, It’s begun. He landed on hands and butt and quickly got to his feet, pulling on a table leg. Bent pointed to the monitor, still functioning though vibrating in its mount. The Shmoos were gone.

“They blew up,” he said. “I saw it. Did anybody else see it — on the screen? They just exploded!”

“Jesus,” Rotterjack said.

“Is somebody shelling them?” Forbes asked, looking sharply at Rotterjack and Arthur.

“God knows,” Bent said. They scrambled outside the trailer and followed a raggedly organized team of scientists and soldiers down the path to where the Shmoos had last been seen. Fifty meters down the path to the Rock, three craters had been gouged in the dirt, each about two meters in diameter. The robots had left no sign — neither fragments nor burn marks.

Quentin Bent stood hunched over with hands on his knees, sobbing and cursing as he looked up across the blinding noonday plain at the Rock. “What happened? What in bloody hell happened?”

“There’s nothing left,” Forbes said. French nodded vigorously, his face beet red. Both kept glancing at the Americans: their fault.

“Do you know?” Bent asked loudly, turning on him. “Is this some goddamned American thing?”

“No,” Arthur said.

“Airplanes, rockets…” Bent was almost incoherent.

“We didn’t hear any aircraft…” French said.

“They destroyed themselves,” Arthur said quietly, walking around the craters, careful not to disturb anything.

“That’s bloody impossible!” Bent screamed.

“Not at all.” Arthur felt deeply chilled, as if he had swallowed a lump of dry ice. “Have you read Liddell Hart?”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Bent shouted, fists clenched, approaching Arthur and then backing away, without apparent aim. Rotterjack stayed clear of the men and the craters.

“Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s Strategy.”

“I’ve read it,” Rotterjack said.

“You’re crazy,” French said. “You’re all bleeding crazy!”

“We have the incident on tape,” Forbes said, holding up his hands to calm his colleagues. “We must review it. We can see if any projectile or weapon struck them.”

Arthur knew very well he was not crazy. It was making sense to him now. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll explain when everybody’s in a better frame of mind.”

“Fuck that!” Bent said, regaining some composure. “I want the physics group out here immediately. I want a message sent to the Rock now. If there’s a war beginning here, let’s not give the impression we started it.”

“We’ve never sent or received transmissions from the Rock,” Forbes said, shaking his head.

“I do not care. Send transmissions, as many frequencies as we can handle. This message: ‘Not responsible for destruction of envoys.’ Got that?”

Forbes nodded and returned to the trailer to relay the orders.

“Mr. Gordon, I’ll try very hard to put myself in a suitable frame of mind. What the hell has strategy to do with this?” Bent asked, standing on the opposite side of the three craters.

“The indirect approach,” Arthur said.

“Meaning?”

“Never come at your adversary from an expected direction, or with your goals clear.”

Bent, whatever his state of mind, caught on quickly. “You’re saying this has all been a ruse?”

“I think so.”

“But then your Guest is a ruse, too. Why would they tell us they’re going to destroy the planet, and then make that seem like a sham…tell us they’re going to save us, and that’s a sham, too?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “To confuse us.”

“Goddammit, man, they’re powerful beyond our wildest dreams! They build mountains overnight, travel across space in huge ships, and if what you say is true, they dismantle whole worlds — why bother to deceive us? Do we send greetings to bleeding ants’ nests before we trample them?”

Arthur could not answer this. He shook his head and held up his hands. The heat made him dizzy. Oddly — or not so oddly — what worried him most now was how the President would react when he learned what had happened here.

“We have to talk to Hicks first,” he told Rotterjack as they climbed aboard a truck to be taken back to the outer perimeter.

“Why? Aren’t we all in enough trouble already?”

“Hicks…might be able to explain things to the President. In a way he’ll listen to.”

Rotterjack lowered his voice to a whisper in the back of the vehicle. “All hell’s going to break loose. McClennan and Schwartz and I will have a real fight…Whose side are you on?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you voting for Armageddon, or do we have a chance?”

Arthur started to reply, then shut his mouth and shook his head.

“Crockerman’s going to flip when he hears about this,” Rotterjack said.

Arthur called Oregon from Adelaide’s airport while waiting for the Army limo to pick up the United States group. He was exhausted from the day and the long flight back. It was early in the morning in Oregon and Francine answered with a voice full of sleep.

“Sorry to wake you,” Arthur said. “I’m not going to be able to call for a couple of days,”

“It’s lovely to hear from you. I love you.”

“Miss you both desperately. I feel like a man cut loose. Nothing is real anymore.”

“What can you tell me?”

“Nothing,” Arthur said, pinching his cheek lightly.

“Well, then, I’ve got something to tell you. Guess who called?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Who? Not—”

“You guessed it. Chris Riley. He told me to write it down. ‘Two new unusual objects the size of asteroids have been discovered, each about two hundred kilometers in diameter. They have the albedo of fresh ice — almost pure white. They are traveling in highly unusual orbits — both hyperbolic. They may or may not be huge, very young comets.’ Does this make any sense to you? He said it might.”

“Fragments of Europa?”

“Isn’t this romantic?” Francine asked, still sleepy. “He said you might think that.”

“Go on,” Arthur said, his sensation of unreality increasing.

She continued to read the message. “’If they are fragments of Europa, they are traveling along virtually impossible paths, widely separated. One of them will rendezvous with Venus next year, when Venus is at…’ Just a second. Got another page here…’at superior conjunction. The other will rendezvous with Mars in late 1997.’ Got that?”

“I think so,” Arthur said.

“Marty’s asleep, but he told me to tell you that Gauge will now sit and heel at his command. He’s very proud of that. Also, he’s finished all the Tarzan books.”

“Attaboy.” His eyes closed for a moment and he experienced a small blackout. “Sweetheart, I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to fall over if I don’t get to sleep shortly.”

“We both hope you’re home soon. I’ve gotten used to having you around the house. It seems empty now.”

“I love you,” Arthur said, eyes still closed, trying to visualize her face.

“Love you, too.”

He climbed into the limo beside Warren and Rotterjack. “What have you heard about two ice asteroids?” he asked them.

They shook their heads.

“One will probably resurface Venus, and the other will wreak havoc on Mars, both next year.”

Warren, despite his exhaustion, gaped. Rotterjack seemed puzzled. “What’s that have to do with us?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Arthur replied.

“Funny damned coincidence,” Warren said, shaking his head.

“They’re going to hit Venus and Mars?” Rotterjack asked, the implications sinking in slowly.

“Next year,” Arthur said.

The presidential science advisor drew his lips together and nodded, staring out the window at passing traffic, light this late hour of the evening. “That can’t be coincidence,” he said. “What in the name of Christ is going on?”

25

Walt Samshow moved with a long-accustomed grace on the ladders of the Glomar Discoverer, sliding his hands along the rails as his feet pumped in a blur down the steps, stuffing his chin into his clavicle to remove his leather-brown, freckled, and sun-spotted bald pate from the path of passing bulkheads. Whatever effects of age dogged him on shore vanished; he was more spry at sea than on land. Samshow, a long-legged, narrow-faced beanpole of a man, had spent more than two thirds of his seventy-one years at sea, serving ten years in the Navy from 1942 to 1952, and then moving on to forty years of research in physical oceanography.

Deep in the ship’s hold, spaced across an otherwise empty cargo bay, were his present crop of children: three upright, man-high, steel-gray cylindrical gravimeters measuring the gravity gradients of the trench ten thousand meters below. The Discoverer was on its sixth pass over the Ramapo Deep. The sea outside the hull was almost glassy, and the ship moved forward at a steady ten knots, as stable as bedrock, ideal for this kind of work. They could probably get accuracy to within plus or minus two milligals over the average of all six runs.

Samshow descended into the hold, his feet hitting the cork-covered steel deck lightly. His much younger partner, David Sand, smiled at him, face a corpselike green and purple in the glow of the color monitor. Samshow presented the covered aluminum plate he had carried down from the mess.

“What’s the bill of fare?” Sand asked. He was half Samshow’s age and almost half again his weight, strong and wide-faced, with eyes pale blue, a tiny Scots button of a nose, and a full head of wiry auburn hair. Samshow removed the plate’s cover. Deep in the elder oceanographer’s thoughts, Sand had become one of many sons; he treated younger assistants with the tough-minded affection he would have bestowed on his own child. Sand knew this, and appreciated it; in his entire career, he would probably have no better teacher, partner, or friend than Walt Samshow.

“Fried sole, spinach pie, and beets,” Samshow said. The ship’s Filipino cook took pride in his special Western meals, served twice a week.

Sand grimaced and shook his head. “That’ll make me pretty heavy — might affect the results.” Samshow set the plate down beside him and glanced at the gravimeters, spaced in a triangle in two corners and the middle of the opposite bulkhead.

“Wouldn’t want to ruin an incredible evening,” Sand murmured. He tapped a few keys intently, nodded at the display, and applied a fork to the beets.

“That good?”

“Damned near perfect,” Sand said. “I’ll eat and you can spell me in an hour.”

“Your eyeballs are going to fall right out on the floor,” Samshow warned.

“I’m young,” Sand said. “I’ll grow another pair.”

Samshow grinned, returned to the ladder, and ascended through the maze of corridors and hatches to the deck. The Pacific lay around the ship as thick and slow as syrup, rippling iridescent silver and velvet black. The air was unusually dry and clear. From horizon to horizon the sky was filled with stars to within a few degrees of a fresh sliver of moon, a tiny thing lost in the yawn of night. Samshow rested his feet on the anchor chain near the bow and sighed in contentment. The week’s work had been long and he was tired in a way he enjoyed, contented, deep in the mellowness brought on only by satisfactory results.

He glanced at his pocket navigator, tied in to a Navstar signal. The first approximation on the illuminated display read, ›E142°32’10” N30°45’20”‹, which put the Discoverer about 130 kilometers east of Toru Island. In four more hours, they would swing around again for a seventh pass.

He belched contentedly and began to whistle “String of Pearls.”

Samshow had outlived one wife after thirty years of stormy, blissful marriage, the true love of his life, and now had two fine women who doted on him when he was ashore, about seven months out of the year. One was in La Jolla, a plump rich widow, and another was in Manila, a black-haired Filipina thirty years younger than he, distantly related to the long-gone and lamented President Magsaysay.

It was a warm, strange dry night, quiet and still, a night for deep thinking and old memories. He felt a sudden onslaught of laziness; the hell with science, the hell with perfect results and plus or minus two milligals. He’d rather be walking some beach watching breakers explode with phosphorescence. The feeling passed but left its mark; it was one of the few ways his body told him he was getting old. He turned and stepped over the chain, then froze, catching something odd in the upper half of his vision.

He jerked his head back. A tiny point of light arced rapidly from the north: a satellite, he thought — or a meteor. He could barely see it now. The point had almost lost itself among the stars when it suddenly brightened to blowtorch intensity, throwing two distinct flares southward at least three degrees. The flares lighted the entire sea in stark, eerie pewter, and then went out. The much dimmer object passed directly overhead. He made a mental note of the position — about four o’clock high — and was working on which constellation it had appeared in, when the object brightened again about twenty degrees farther south, much smaller, barely a pinprick. He had never seen a meteor like it — a real stunner, an on-again, off-again fireball.

“On the bridge! Heads up!” he yelled. “Hey! Everybody, look at this!”

The prick of light fell slowly enough to track easily. In a few minutes, it met the horizon and was gone, leaving tiny patches of green and red swimming in his vision.

Where it had struck, a column of water and steaming spray arose, barely visible in the moonlight, radiating a halo of cloud about ten degrees above the horizon.

“Jesus,” Samshow said. He started for the bridge to ask if anyone else had seen it. Nobody had replied to his shout. He was halfway up the steps when a horrendous gonglike shudder rang through the ship. He paused, startled, and finished his climb to the bridge.

The first officer, an intense young Chinese named Chao, glanced at Samshow from the controls. The bridge and most instrumentation were illuminated in dull red, not to impair night vision. “Big storm coming,” Chao said, pointing to the ship’s status display screen. “Fast. Typhoon, waterspout. Don’t know.”

Four men leaped onto the bridge from three different hatches, and voices squawked on the intercom from around the ship.

“A meteor,” Samshow explained. “Went down just like that, made a big spout about thirty kilometers due south.”

Captain Reed, twenty years younger than Samshow but even more gray and grizzled, came onto the bridge from his cabin, nodded curtly, and gave him a dubious glance. “Mr. Chao, what is this coming?”

“Blow, Captain,” Chao said. “Damn big storm. Coming fast.” He pointed to the enhanced radar images. Clouds rushed at them in a blue and red scythe. The storm was already visible through the glass forward.

David Sand came from belowdecks huffing, red-faced, and swearing. “Walt, whatever that was, it’s just screwed up everything. We have a — Jesus Christ!” He recovered from the sight of the approaching front and began swearing again. “It was going just fine, and now there’s a jag on the graph.”

“Jag?” Captain Reed asked.

“Extremely short wavelength anomaly. Deep decline, zero for an instant, then a slow increase — it’s ruined! We’ll have to recalibrate, maybe even send all three tubs back to Maryland.”

The captain ordered the ship turned bow-on to face the storm. Warnings, whistles and shouts and electric bells, sounded all around the ship.

“What’s happening?” Sand asked, concern finally replacing his anger.

“Meteor,” Samshow said. “Big one.”

The front hit seven minutes after Samshow saw the fireball strike the horizon.

The ship fell forward into canyonlike wave troughs, its bow knifing ten and fifteen meters into the black water, and then rode upward over the crests, the bow now pointing at the rain-lashed sky. Samshow and Sand tightly gripped rails mounted on the bridge bulkheads, grinning like fools., while the crew worked to control the ship and the Captain stared stonily forward.

“I’ve been through worse!” Samshow shouted at his partner over the roar.

“I haven’t, I don’t think,” Sand shouted back.

“It’s exhilarating. Something truly exotic — a real first. An observed large meteor fall in midocean, and its results. We’d better alert all coasts.”

“Who’s going to write the paper?”

“We’ll do it together.”

“I locked down the equipment after the anomaly. We’ll have to make another run when this clears up.”

The Discoverer, Samshow thought, would weather the storm easily enough. It was not going to be a long blow. When he was sure of this, as the violent rain and waves declined, he retired to his quarters to look up the facts and figures and equations he would need to understand what had just happened. Sand staggered down the stairs and corridors, stopping in Samshow’s hatchway long enough to say he was going to check again on his blessed gravimeters.

The next day, when it was their turn to present the story by radio to the expedition’s chiefs in La Jolla, they had still not sorted out their findings.

One thing puzzled them both immensely. All three gravimeters had registered the “jag” simultaneously. Shock had not caused the anomaly; the gravimeters had been designed to be carried aboard aircraft as well as ships, and could weather relatively rough treatment handily. Besides, the shock had occurred after the appearance of the spikes.

Sand put together a list of hypotheses, and revealed one candidly to Samshow when they were alone. “It’s simple, really,” he said in the galley over a late breakfast of corned-beef hash and butter-soaked wheat toast. “I made some calculations and compared the spikes on the three traces. The three tubs aren’t really far enough apart to make the results authoritative, but I checked the digital record of each spike and found a very small time interval between them. I can explain the time interval in only one way. Doing a tidal analysis, and subtracting the ship’s reaction as a gravitated object, the traces show an enormous mass, about a hundred million tons, traveling in an arc overhead.”

“Coming from what direction?” Samshow asked casually.

“Due north, I think.”

“How far away?”

“Anywhere from a hundred to two hundred kilometers.”

Samshow considered that for a moment. Whatever the fireball had been, it had been far too small to mass at anything like a hundred tons, much less a hundred million. It would have spread the Pacific out like coffee in a cup if it had been a mountain-sized meteoroid. “All right,” he said. “We ignore it. It’s an official anomaly.”

“On all three gravimeters?” Sand asked, grinning damnably.

NEC National News Commentator Agnes Linder, November 2, 1996:

The newest twist in a very twisted election year, the arrival of visitors from space, almost defies imagination. United States citizens, recent polls show, are in a state of rigid disbelief.

The Australian extraterrestrials have arrived on Earth too soon, some pundits have said; we aren’ t ready for them, and we cannot begin to comprehend what they might mean to us.

Presidential candidate Beryl Cooper and her running mate, Edgar Farb, have been on the offensive, charging that President Crocker-man is hiding information provided by the Australians, and questioning whether in fact the United States is not behind the destruction — some say self-destruction — of the robot representatives in the Great Victoria Desert.

The American people are not impressed with these charges. How many of us, I wonder, have fixed any emotional or rational response at all? The scandal of the destruction of the extraterrestrials refuses to spread; the Australian government’s accusations of American complicity have been practically ignored around the world.

We have lived our lives on a globe undisturbed by outside forces, and now we are forced to expand our scale of thinking enormously. Western liberal tradition has encouraged an inward-turning, self-critical kind of politics, conservative in the true sense of the word, and President Crockerman is the heir to this tradition. The more forward-looking, expansive politics of Cooper and Farb have not yet struck a chord with Americans, if we are to believe the recent NEC poll, which gives Crockerman a rock-steady 30 percent lead just three days before voters go to the polls. This, without the President issuing any statements or making any policy regarding the Great Victoria Desert incidents.

26

Mrs. Sarah Crockerman wore a solemn, stylishly tailored gray suit. Her thick brown hair was carefully coiffed, and as she poured Hicks a cup of coffee, he saw her hands were immaculately manicured, the fingernails painted a metallic bronze, glinting softly in the gray winter light entering through French windows behind the dining table. The dining room was furnished in coffee-colored Danish teak, spare but comfortable. Beyond the second-story windows lay the broad green expanse of the U.S. National Arboretum.

Except for a Secret Service agent assigned to Hicks, a stolid-faced fellow named Butler, they were alone in the Summit Street apartment.

“The President kept this flat rented largely at my insistence,” she said, replacing the glass pot on its knitted pad. She handed him the cup of coffee and sat in the chair catercorner from him, her nyloned knees pushing up against the table leg as she faced him. “Few people know it’s here. He thinks we might be able to keep the secret another month or two. After that, it’s less my private hideaway, but it’s still here. I hope you appreciate how much this secret means to me.”

Butler had gotten off the phone and now stood by the window, facing the doorway. Hicks thought he resembled a bulldog, and Mrs. Crockerman a moderately plump poodle.

“My husband has told me about his preoccupations, naturally,” she said. “I can’t say I understand everything that’s happening, or…that I agree with all of his conclusions. I’ve read the reports, most of them, and I’ve read the paper you prepared for him. He is not listening to you, you know.”

Hicks said nothing, watching her over the rim of his cup. The coffee was very good.

“My husband is peculiar that way. He keeps advisors on long after they’ve served their purpose or have his ear. He tries to maintain an appearance of fairness and keeping an open mind, having those about him who disagree. But he doesn’t listen very often. He is not listening to you.”

“I realize that,” Hicks said. “I’ve been moved out of the White House. To a hotel.”

“So my secretary informs me. You’re still on call should the President need you?”

Hicks nodded.

“This election has been sheer hell for him, even though he hasn’t been campaigning hard. Their ‘strategy.’ Let Beryl Cooper hang herself. He’s sensitive, and he doesn’t like not campaigning. He’s still not used to being top dog.”

“My sympathies,” Hicks said, wondering what she was getting at.

“I wanted to warn you. He’s spending a lot of time with a man whose presence at the White House, especially during the campaign, upsets many of us. Have you ever heard of Oliver Ormandy?”

Hicks shook his head.

“He’s well known in American religious circles. He’s fairly intelligent, as such men go. He’s kept his face out of politics and out of the news the past few years. All the other fools” — she practically spat out the word — “have turned themselves into clowns before the media’s cyclops eye, but not Oliver Ormandy. He first met my husband during the campaign, at a dinner held at Robert James University. Do you know of that place?”

“Is that where they asked for permission to arm their security guards with machine pistols?”

“Yes.”

“Ormandy’s in charge of that?”

“No. He leaves that to one of the bellowing clowns. He glad-hands politicians in the background. Ormandy is quite sincere, you know. More coffee?”

Hicks extended his cup and she poured more.

“Bill has seen Ormandy several times the past week. I’ve asked Nancy, the President’s executive secretary, what they discussed. At first she was reluctant to tell me, but…She was concerned. She was only in the room for the second meeting, for a few minutes. She said they were talking about the end of the world.” Mrs. Crockerman’s face might have been plastered on, her anger stiffened it so. “They were discussing God’s plan for this nation. Nancy said Mr. Ormandy appeared exuberant.”

Hicks stared at the table. What was there to say? Crockerman was President. He could see whom he pleased.

“I do not like that, Mr. Hicks. Do you?” • “Not at all, Mrs. Crockerman.”

“What do you suggest?”

“As you say, he doesn’t listen to me anymore.”

“He doesn’t listen to Carl or David or Irwin…or me. He’s obsessed. He has been reading the Bible. The crazy parts of the Bible, Mr. Hicks. The book of Revelation. My husband was not like this a few weeks ago. He’s changed.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“He’s called Cabinet meetings. They’re discussing economic impact. Talking about making an announcement after the election. There’s nothing you could tell him…?” she asked. “He seemed to place great trust in you at first. Maybe even now. How did he come to trust you? He talked about you often.”

“It was a difficult time for him,” Hicks said. “He saw me after he met with the Guest. He’d read my book. I never agreed with his assessment…”

“Punishment. In our bedroom, that’s the key word now. He almost smiles when he talks about Ormandy’s use of the word. Punishment. How very trite that sounds. My husband was never trite, and never a sucker for religious fanatics, politically or otherwise.”

“This has changed all of us,” Hicks said softly.

“I do not want my husband undone. This Guest found his weakness, when nobody in three decades of politics — and I’ve been with him all that time — has ever gotten to him. The Guest opened him wide, and Ormandy crept into the wound. Ormandy could destroy the President.”

“I understand.” He could do worse than that, Hicks thought.

“Will you please do something? Try talking with my husband again? I’ll get you an appointment. He’ll do that much for me, I’m sure.” Mrs. Crockerman stared longingly at the French windows, as if they might be an escape. “It’s even strained our marriage. I’ll be with him on election eve, smiling and waving. But I’m thinking about staying here now. I can only take so much, Mr. Hicks. I cannot watch my husband undo himself.”

The air in the chief of staff’s office was thick with gloom.

Irwin Schwartz, face long and forehead pale, startling in contrast to his florid cheeks, sat on the edge of his desk with one leg drawn up as far as his paunch would allow, raised cuff exposing a long black sock and a few square inches of hairy white calf. A small flat-screen television perched on his desk like a family portrait, sound turned down. Again and again, the screen replayed the single videotaped record of the explosion of the Australian robot emissaries. Schwartz finally leaned over and poked the screen off with a thick finger.

Around him, David Rotterjack and Arthur Gordon stood, Arthur with hands in pockets, Rotterjack rubbing his chin.

“Secretary Lehrman and Mr. McClennan are with the President now,” Schwartz said. “There’s nothing I can say anymore. I don’t think I have his confidence.”

“Nor I,” Rotterjack said.

“What about Hicks?” Arthur asked.

Schwartz shrugged. “The President moved him out to a hotel a week ago and won’t see him. Sarah called a few minutes ago. She spoke with Hicks this morning, and she’s working on getting an appointment for him. Everything’s tight now. Kermit and I have had it out several times.” Kermit Ferman was the President’s appointments secretary.

“And Ormandy?”

“Sees the President every day, for at least an hour. Off the calendar.”

Arthur couldn’t get Marty out of his wandering thoughts. The boy’s grinning face was detailed and sharp in memory, though static. Heir apparent. He could not conjure an overall picture of Francine’s face, just individual features, and that bothered him.

“Carl’s got one last chance,” Rotterjack said.

“You think he’s giving him the good old ‘presidential’ speech?” Schwartz asked.

Rotterjack nodded.

Arthur glanced between them, puzzled.

“He’s going to talk to the President about what it means to be presidential,” Schwartz explained. “Taking coals to Newcastle, if you ask me. The Man knows everything there is to know about presidentiality.”

“The election’s day after tomorrow. Time to remind him,” Rotterjack said.

“You and I both know he’s got this election sewed up, as much as any election can be. You don’t understand what’s going on in his head,” Schwartz said.

“You’re supposed to be his cushion, his buffer, goddammit,” Rotterjack shouted, one arm shooting out suddenly and almost hitting Arthur. Arthur backed away a few inches but did not react otherwise. “You’re supposed to keep the crazy idiots away from him.”

“We’ve done everything we can to save him from himself,” Schwartz said. “McClennan tried ignoring his suggestions about national preparation. I pushed the meetings with the governors back in the schedule, lost the timetable the President drew up, changed the subject in Cabinet meetings. The President just smiled and tolerated us and kept hammering on the subject. At least everybody’s agreed to hold off until after the election and the inauguration. But between now, and whenever, we have to put up with Ormandy.”

“I’d like to talk with him,” Arthur said.

“So would we all. Crockerman doesn’t specifically forbid it…but Ormandy never lingers long enough for any of us to confront him. The man’s a goddamn shadow in the White House.”

Rotterjack shook his head and grinned. “You’d think Ormandy was one of them.”

“Who?” Schwartz asked.

“The invaders.”

Schwartz frowned. “See what’s going to happen if the President goes public? We’re even beginning to think like gullible idiots.”

“Have you thought what could be happening?” Rotterjack persisted. “If they ‘manufactured’ the Guest, couldn’t they make robots that look human, human enough to pass?”

“I’m more frightened about what that idea can do to us than I am about it’s being true,” Arthur said.

“Yeah, well, there it is,” Rotterjack said. “Take it for what it’s worth. Somebody out there is going to think of it.”

“It’ll tear us apart,” Schwartz said. “Just what they might want. Christ, now I’m talking like that.”

“Maybe it’s just as well we bring it out in the open,” Arthur said. “We haven’t accomplished anything keeping it quiet.”

“Not the way he’d release it,” Rotterjack said. “What’ll you do if McClennan fails to get his point across — again?” he asked Schwartz.

“Eventually, after the election, I could resign,” Schwartz said, his tone flat, neutral. “He might want to put together a wartime Cabinet anyway.”

“Will you?”

Schwartz stared down at the sky-blue carpet. Arthur, following his gaze, thought of the myriad of privileges suggested by that luxurious color, so difficult to keep clean. A myriad of attractions to keep men like Schwartz and Rotterjack working.

“No,” Schwartz said. “I’m just too goddamn loyal. If he does this to me — to us, to all of us — I’ll resent him like hell. But he’ll still be the President.”

“There are quite a few congressmen and senators who’ll work to change that, if he does go public,” Rotterjack said.

“Don’t I know,”

“They’d be the real patriots, you know, not you and I.”

Schwartz’s face filled with pained resentment and frank acknowledgment. He half nodded, half shook his head and stood up from the desk. “All right, David. But we’ve got to keep the White House together somehow. What else is there? Who’ll take his place? The Veep?”

Rotterjack chuckled ironically.

“Right,” Schwartz said. “Arthur, if I make an appointment — if I ram it down the President’s throat — can you get Feinman out here, and can you and Hicks and he do your best to…you know? Do what we can’t?”

“If it can be in the next day or so, and if there are no delays.”

“Feinman’s that sick?” Rotterjack asked.

“He’s in treatment. It’s difficult.”

“Why couldn’t you have found…never mind,” Rotterjack said.

“Feinman’s the best,” Arthur replied to the half-stated query.

Rotterjack nodded glumly.

“We’ll give it a try,” Arthur said.

Arthur walked through the afternoon crowds at Dulles, suit hanging on him, hands in pockets. He knew all too well that he resembled a scarecrow. He had lost ten pounds in the last two weeks, and could ill afford it, but he was seldom hungry now.

Glancing at the American Airlines screen of arrivals and departures, he saw he had half an hour until Harry’s plane landed. He had a choice between forcing down a sandwich or calling Francine and Marty.

Arthur was still trying to remember his wife’s face. He could picture nose, eyes, lips, forehead, the shape of her hands, breasts, genitals, smooth warm white stomach and breasts the color of late morning fog, the texture of her thick black hair. He could recall her smell, warm and rich and breadlike, and the sound of her voice. But not her face.

That made her seem so far away, and him so isolated. He had spent ages, it seemed, in offices and in meetings. There was no reality in an office, no reality among a group of men talking about the fate of the Earth. Certainly no reality surrounding the President.

Reality was back by the river, back in the bedroom and the kitchen of their house, but most especially under the trees with the smooth hiss of wind and the rushing music of water. There he would always be in touch with them, could be isolated and yet not alone, out of sight of wife and son yet able to get back to them. If death should come, would Arthur be away from them, still performing his separate duties…?

The airport, as always, was crowded. A large tight knot of Japanese passed by. He felt a special kinship with Japanese, more so than with foreigners of his own race. Japanese were so intensely interested, and desirous of smooth relations, one-on-one. He walked around the knot, passed a German family, husband and wife and two daughters trying to riddle their boarding passes.

He could not remember Harry’s face.

The open phone booth, with its ineffective plastic half bubble, accepted his credit card and thanked him in a warm middle-aged female voice, teacherlike and yet less stern, impersonally interested. Synthetic.

The phone rang six times before he remembered: Francine had told him the night before that Marty would have a dentist’s appointment in the morning.

He hung up and crossed a central courtyard to a snack shop, ordering a turkey-pastrami sandwich and Coke. Twenty-five minutes. Sitting on a tall stool by a diminutive table, he forced himself to eat the entire sandwich.

Bread. Mayonnaise. Bird taste of turkey beneath an overlay of pastrami. Solid but not convincing. He made a face and took the last meatless dry double wedge of bread into his mouth.

For a moment, and no more, he felt himself slide into a spiritual ditch, a little quiet gutter of despair. To simply give up, give in, open his arms to the darkness, shed all responsibility to country, to wife and son, to himself. To end the game — that was all it was, no? Take his piece from the board, watch the board swept clean, a new game set up. Rest. Oddly, coming out of that gutter, he took encouragement and strength from the thought that if indeed they were going to be swept from the board, he could then rest, and there would be an end. Funny how the mind works.

At fifteen minutes after two, he stood at the gate, to one side of a crowd of waiting friends and families. The open double doors brought forth business men and women in trim suits gray and brown and that strange shade of iridescent blue that was so much in fashion, peacock’s eyes Francine called it; three young children holding hands and followed by a woman in knee-length black skirt and austere white blouse, and then Harry, clutching a leather valise and looking thinner, older, tired.

“All right,” Harry said after they hugged and shook hands. “You have me for forty-eight hours, max, and then the doctor wants me back to blunt more needles. Jesus. You look as bad as I do.”

In the small government car, winding through the maze of a bare concrete parking garage, Arthur explained the circumstances of their meeting with the President. “Schwartz is putting aside half an hour in Crockerman’s schedule. It’s getting very” tight. He’s supposed to be in New Hampshire this evening for a final campaign rally. Hicks, you and I will be in the Oval Office with him, undisturbed, for that half hour. We’ll do what we can to convince him he’s wrong.”

“And if we don’t?” Harry asked. Had his eyes lightened in color? They seemed less brown than tan now, almost bleached.

Arthur could only shrug. “How are you feeling?”

“Not as bad as I look.”

“That’s good,” Arthur said, trying to relax that anonymous something in his throat. He smiled thinly at Harry.

“Thanks,” Harry said. “I have an excuse, at least. Is everybody else around here going to look like extras in a vampire movie?”

“What do you weigh now?” Arthur asked. The car moved out into watery sunlight. Snow threatened.

“I’m back to fighting trim. I weigh what I weighed in high school. Graduation day.”

“What’s the prognosis?”

Harry crossed his arms. “Still fighting.”

Arthur glanced at him, did a frank double take, and asked, “Is that a wig?”

“You guessed it,” Harry said. “Enough of that shit. Tell me about Ormandy.”

The wide double doors to the Oval Office opened and three men stepped out. Schwartz nodded at them. Arthur recognized the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Secretary of the Treasury.

“An emergency meeting,” Schwartz murmured after they had passed. Hicks raised his eyebrow in query. “They’re thinking of implementing Section 4 of the Emergency Banking Act, and Section 19a of the Securities and Exchange Act.”

“What are those?” he asked.

“Temporarily close the banks and the stock exchanges,” Schwartz said. “If the President makes his speech.”

The President’s secretary, Nancy Congdon, came to the doors and smiled at the four of them. “Just a few minutes, Irwin,” she said, silently easing them shut.

“Do you need a chair?” Schwartz asked Harry. Harry shook his head calmly. He was already used to people being solicitous. He takes it with something beyond dignity — with aplomb.

The secretary opened the doors and invited them in.

Mrs. Hampton had redecorated the President’s office, hanging the three windows behind the President’s large, ornately decorated desk with white curtains and ordering a new oval green rug with the presidential seal. The room seemed filled with light, verdant and springlike despite the gray winter skies outside. Through the windows, Arthur caught a glimpse of the snow-patched Rose Garden. He had last been in the Oval Office a year and a half before.

Crockerman sat behind the Victorian-era desk, looking over a stack of briefs tucked into brown folders. Some of the folders, Arthur noticed, were marked DIRNSA — Director, National Security Agency. Others were from the offices of the Secretary of the Treasury and the Securities and Exchange Commission. He’s not going off half cocked. He’s preparing, and he deeply believes in what he’s doing. He hasn’t stopped being presidential.

“Hello, Irwin, Arthur…” Crockerman stood and reached across the desk to shake their hands. “Trevor, Harry.” He pointed to the four leather-bottomed, cane-backed chairs arranged before the desk. Addressing Hicks in particular, he said, “Sarah mentioned I might be meeting with you.”

“I think we’ve all joined forces, Mr. President,” Schwartz said.

“Are you feeling up to this, Harry?” Crockerman asked, politely solicitous.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Harry replied smoothly. “I’m not needed back with the mice and monkeys until the day after tomorrow.”

“We need you here, Harry,” the President said earnestly. “We can’t afford to lose you now.”

“That’s not what I’ve been hearing, Mr. President,” Harry said. Crockerman showed some puzzlement. “You haven’t been listening to anybody I trust around here, much less myself.”

“Gentlemen,” Crockerman said, raising his eyebrows. “Time to speak openly. And I apologize for being inaccessible recently. Time has been precious.”

Schwartz leaned forward on his chair, clasping his hands. As he spoke, he raised his eyes slowly from his feet to Crockerman’s face. “Mr. President, we’re not here to mince words. I’ve told Harry, and Trevor, and Arthur, that it’s going to take some powerful persuasion to move you back onto a rational course. They’ve come loaded for bear.”

Crockerman nodded and rested his hands lightly on the edge of the desk, as if he might push away at any moment. His expression remained pleasant, alert.

“Mr. President, the First Lady did indeed speak to me,” Hicks said.

“She’s not speaking to me, you know,” Crockerman said levelly. “Or not often, at any rate. She doesn’t share our convictions.”

“Yes,” Hicks said. “Or rather, no…Mr. President, my colleagues — “ He cast a pleading look at Arthur.

“We assume you’re still planning to tell the public about the Death Valley bogey,” Arthur said, “and about the Guest.”

“The story will break soon one way or the other,” Crockerman said. “It must be kept quiet past the election and the inauguration, but after that…” He lifted three fingers from their grip on the edge of the desk and shrugged slightly.

“We’re not at all sure about your emphasis, sir…” Arthur paused. “Surrender will not sit well with the country.”

Crockerman hardly blinked. “Surrender. Accommodation. Nasty words, aren’t they? But what choice have we against superhuman forces?”

“We do not know they are superhuman, sir,” Harry said.

“It would take us thousands, perhaps millions of years to rival their technology — if indeed we can even call it technology. Think of the power to destroy an entire moon, and push its fragments into collisions with other worlds…”

“We don’t know that these events are connected,” Arthur said. “But I think we could equal them with a couple of hundred years of progress.”

“What does it matter, two centuries or two millennia? They can still destroy our world.”

“We don’t know that,” Schwartz said.

“We don’t even know of whom we speak when we say ‘they,’” Hicks said.

“Angels, powers, aliens. Whatever they might be.”

“Mr. President,” Hicks said, “we are not facing God’s wrath.”

“It seems we face something equivalent in force, whatever the ultimate source,” Crockerman said. “Can something so catastrophic happen to the Earth without God’s approval? We are His children. His punishments are not random, not when they’re on such a huge scale.”

Hicks noted that the President’s pronoun for God had assumed traditional gender now. Was that Ormandy’s doing?

“We have no evidence the Earth can be destroyed,” Harry said. “What we need . .’. we need a smoking gun, something that proves that the power they claim to have does indeed belong to them. We don’t have a smoking gun.”

“They reveal their intentions clearly enough,” Crockerman said. “The self-destruction of the Australian robots shows them to be bringers of false testimony. When their lies are discovered, and pointed out to them, they vanish. Their message of hope is a deception. I believe I knew that, sensed it, before the news from Australia arrived. Ormandy certainly did.”

“None of us puts any faith in Mr. Ormandy,” Schwartz said.

Crockerman was obviously irritated by this, but kept his calm. “Ormandy does not expect the accolade of scientists. He — and I — believe affairs have passed out of the control of our particular witch doctors. Not to show disrespect for your hard work and expertise. He and I realized there was a job to do here, and that we are the only ones capable of doing it.”

“What exactly will your job be, Mr. President?” Arthur asked.

“Not an easy one, I assure you. Our country doesn’t believe in giving up without a fight. I acknowledge that much. But we cannot fight this. Nor can we go to our fate ignorant of what is happening. We have to face the music courageously. That’s my job — to help my country face the end bravely.”

Crockerman’s face was pale and his hands, still pushing on the edge of the desk, trembled slightly. He might have been close to tears.

Nothing was said for several long seconds. Arthur felt a blanket of shock closing around him. Microcosm of what the country will feel. The world. Not a message we want to hear.

“There are alternatives, Mr. President. We can take action against the bogeys, both in Australia and Death Valley,” Harry said.

“They’re isolated,” Schwartz said. “The political repercussions…almost nil. Even if we fail.”

“We can’t simply do nothing,” Arthur said.

“We can do nothing effective, truly,” Crockerman said. “I think it would be cruel to raise false hopes.”

“More cruel to dash all hope, Mr. President,” Schwartz said. “Are you going to close the banks and stock exchanges?”

“It’s being seriously considered.”

“Why? To preserve the economy? With the end of the world in sight?”

“To keep calm, to maintain dignity. To keep people at their jobs and in their homes.”

Hicks’s face was flushed now. “This is insanity, Mr. President,” he said. “I am not a citizen of the United States, but I cannot imagine a man in your office…with your power and responsibility…” He waved his hands helplessly and stood. “I can assure you the British will not react so mildly.”

Ganging up on him, Arthur thought. Still can’t see her face.

Crockerman opened the folder marked DIRNSA. He pulled out a group of photographs in Mylar envelopes and spread them on the table. “I don’t think you’ve seen the latest from the Puzzle Palace,” he said. “Our NSA people have been very busy. The National Reconnaissance Office has compared Earth satellite photographs from the last eighteen months for almost all areas of the globe. I believe you initiated this search, Arthur.”

“Yes, sir.”

“They’ve found an anomaly in the Mongolian People’s Republic. Something that wasn’t there a year ago. It looks like a huge boulder.” He gently pushed the photographs at Schwartz, who examined them and passed them on to Arthur. Arthur compared three key photographs, beautiful computer-enhanced abstractions of blue-gray, brown, red, and ivory. A white circle about an inch wide surrounded a bean-shaped black spot in one photograph. In two earlier, otherwise practically identical photos, the black spot was absent.

“That makes a triad,” Crockerman said. “All in remote areas.”

“Have the aliens talked with the Mongolians, the Russians?” Arthur asked. The Mongolian People’s Republic, despite a fiction of autonomy, was controlled by the Russians.

“Nobody knows yet,” the President said. “If there are three, there could easily be more.”

“What sort of…mechanism do you envisage them using?” Harry asked. “You and Mr. Ormandy.”

“We have no idea. We do not second-guess the agents of supreme power. Do you?”

“I’m willing to try,” Harry said.

“Will you disband the task force?” Arthur asked.

“No. I’d like you -to keep on studying, keep asking questions. I am still capable of admitting we might be wrong. Neither Mr. Ormandy nor I are fanatics. We must talk with the Russians, and the Australians, and urge cooperation.”

“Can we ask you to postpone your speech, Mr. President?” Schwartz asked. “Until we are more sure of our position?”

“You already have almost two months. I do not know to the day when the speech will be delivered, Irwin. But once it becomes clear to me when I must speak, it will not be postponed. I must go with my convictions. Ultimately, that’s what this office is all about.”

The four of them stood in the hallway outside, their half hour concluded, clutching copies of the NSA report.

“Fat lot of good my being here did,” Harry said.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” Schwartz said.

“He’s going to be very effective on television,” Hicks said. “He almost convinces me.”

“You know the worst of it?” Arthur asked as they left through a rear door, Schwartz following them out to their cars. “He’s not crazy.”

“Neither are we,” Schwartz said‹

An hour after they left the White House, Hicks, Arthur, and Feinman ate lunch at Yugo’s, a steak and rib restaurant favored by those in the know, despite its location in one of Washington’s less decorative neighborhoods. They ate in silence, Hicks finishing his plate while Arthur and Harry barely picked at theirs. Harry had ordered a salad, a wilted and blue-cheese-overloaded mistake.

“We’ve done everything we can,” Arthur said. Harry shrugged.

“What next, then?” Hicks asked. “Carry on scientists?”

“We haven’t been shut down,” Harry said.

“You’ve just been ignored by your Chief Executive,” Hicks commented dryly.

“You’ve always been the odd man out here, haven’t you?” Harry said. “Now you know how we feel. But at least we had a definite niche to fill.”

“A role to play in the grand comedy,” Hicks said.

Harry began to bristle but Arthur touched his arm. “He’s right.” Harry nodded reluctantly.

“So begins phase two,” Arthur said. “I’d like for you to join us in a larger effort.” He stared at Hicks.

“Outside the White House?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve made plans.”

“My plans take me back to Los Angeles, and nowhere else,” Harry said.

“Harry will consult,” Arthur said. “Presidents’ minds can be changed any number of ways. If the direct approach doesn’t work…” He smoothed his fingers across the granite-patterned Formica tabletop with a squeak. “We work at a grass-roots level.”

“The President’s a shoo-in, as you say…” Hicks reminded.

“There are ways of removing standing presidents. I think, once he makes his speech—”

Harry sighed. “Do you realize how long impeachment and a trial would take?”

“Once he makes his speech,” Arthur continued, “all of us at this table are going to be in big demand on the media circuit. Trevor, your book is going to be the hottest thing in publishing…And we’re all going to be on talk shows, news interviews, around the world. We can do our best…”

“Against the President? He’s a very popular figure,” Hicks said.

“Schwartz hit the nail on the head, though,” Arthur said, picking up the tab from its plastic tray. “Americans hate the thought of surrender.”

Hicks looked over the neatly folded clothes in his suitcase with some satisfaction. If he could pack his belongings with dignity and style, while all about him hung their laundry out to dry…

The number of stories about the self-destruction of the Australian aliens and the Death Valley mystery had declined in both newspapers and television. Election eve was gathering all the attention. The world seemed to be taking a deep breath, not yet consciously aware of what was happening, but suspecting, anticipating.

Hicks jumped as the desk phone beeped. He answered with a nervous jerk of the handset, fumbling it. “Hello.”

“I have a phone call for Trevor Hicks from Mr. Oliver Ormandy,” a woman stated in pleasant, well-modulated midwestern American.

“This is Hicks.”

“Just a moment, please.”

“I’m pleased to speak with you,” Ormandy said. “I’ve admired your writings.”

“Thank you.” Hicks was too surprised to say much more.

“I believe you know who I am, and the people I represent. I’ve been discussing some things with the President, as a friend and advisor…sometimes, as a religious counselor. I think we should meet and talk sometime soon. Could you make a space in your schedule? I can have a car pick you up, bring you back, no difficulties there, I hope.”

“Certainly,” Hicks said. “Today?”

“Why not. I’ll have a car pick you up at one.”

Precisely at one, a white Chrysler limousine with a white landau roof drove up in the hotel loading zone and Hicks climbed in through the automatically opened door. The door closed with a quiet hiss and the driver, a pale, black-haired young man in a conservative dark blue business suit, smiled pleasantly through the glass partition.

Snow lay in white and brown ridges, rucked up at the street edges by plows. This was one of the coldest and wettest falls in memory. The air smelled unusually sharp and clean, intoxicating, pouring against his face through the window, opened a small crack by the driver at Hicks’s request.

The car took him out of the concentric circles and confusing traffic loops of the Capital and into the suburbs, along expressways lined with young skeletal maples and out to country. An hour had passed when the Chrysler turned into the parking lot of a modest motel. The driver guided him through the lobby to the second floor and knocked on a room at the rear comer of the building. The door opened.

Ormandy, in his middle forties and balding, wore black pants and a gray dress shirt. His face was bland, almost childlike, but alert. His greeting was perfunctory. The driver closed the door and they were alone in the small, spare room.

Ormandy suggested he take an armchair by a circular table near the window. Hicks sat, watching the man closely. Ormandy seemed reluctant to get down to business, but since he could obviously manufacture no small talk, he turned abruptly and said, “Mr. Hicks, I have become very confused in the past few weeks. Do you know what is happening? Can you explain it to me?”

“Surely the President—”

“I’d like you to explain it to me. In clear language. The President is surrounded by experts, if you know what I mean.”

Hicks drew his lips together and leaned his head to one side, organizing his words. “I assume you mean the spacecraft.”

“Yes, yes, the invasion,” Ormandy said.

“If it is an invasion.” Now he was being overly cautious, reluctant to be pushed into conclusions.

“What is it?” Ormandy’s eyes were childlike in their openness, willing to be taught.

“To put it bluntly, it seems that we’ve fallen in the path of automatons, robots, seeking to destroy our planet.”

“Could mere machines do such a thing?” Ormandy asked.

“I do not know. Not human-made machines.”

“These are Godlike powers you’re discussing.”

“Yes.” Hicks started to rise. “I’ve been over all this with the President. I do not see the point in bringing me here, when you’ve advised the President to act contrary to—”

“Please sit. Be patient with me. I’m hardly the ogre you all think I am. I am way out of my depth, and just two nights ago, that really came home to me. I’ve talked with the President, and made my conclusions known to him…But I have not been at all sure of myself.”

Hicks sat back slowly. “Then I presume you have specific questions.”

“I do. What would it take to destroy the Earth? Would it be significantly harder than, say, destroying this place called Europa?”

“Yes,” Hicks said. “It would take much more energy to destroy the Earth.”

“Would it be done all at once, a cataclysm? Or could it begin in one place, spread out, like a war?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Could it begin first in the Holy Land?”

“There don’t seem to be any bogeys in the Holy Land,” Hicks said dryly.

Ormandy acknowledged that with a nod, his frown deepening. “Could there be a way of saying, scientifically, whether aliens can be considered angels?”

“No,” Hicks said, smiling at the absurdity. But Ormandy did not see the absurdity.

“Could they be acting on behalf of a higher authority?”

“If they are indeed robots, as they seem to be, then I presume they are acting on the authority of biological beings somewhere. But we can’t even be sure of that. Civilizations based on mechanical—”

“What about creatures that have gone beyond biology — creatures of light, eternal beings?”

Hicks shrugged. “Speculation,” he said.

Ormandy’s childlike face exhibited intense agitation. “I am way out of my depth here, Mr. Hicks. This is not clear-cut. We’re certainly not dealing with angels with flaming swords. We’re not dealing with anything predicted in apocalyptic literature.”

“Not in religious literature,” Hicks corrected.

“I don’t read science fiction much,” Ormandy said pointedly.

“More’s the pity.”

Ormandy smirked. “And I’m not in the mood to cross knives with you or anybody else. What I’m saying is, I’m not sure I can present this to my people in a way they’ll understand. If I tell them it’s God’s will…How can I be sure of that?”

“As you said, there seem to be Godlike forces at work,” Hicks offered. Perverse, perverse!

“My people still think in terms of angels and demons, Mr. Hicks. They dearly love halos of light and brilliancies, thrones and powers and dominations. They eat it up. They’re like children. And no one can deny there is beauty and power in that kind of theology. But this…This is cold and political, deceptive, and I don’t feel comfortable attributing such deception to God. If this is a work of Satan, or of Satan’s forces, then…The President, with my help, I admit, is about to make a tremendous mistake.”

“Can you get him to change his mind?” Hicks asked, less eagerly than he might have.

“I doubt it. Remember, he called me, not the other way around. That’s why I say I’m out of my depth. I’m not so proud I can’t admit that.”

“Have you told him your misgivings?”

“No. We haven’t met since I…became unsure.”

“Are you fixed in a theological interpretation?”

“Emotionally, by all that my parents and teachers handed down to me, I must believe that God intervenes in all our affairs.”

“What you’re saying, Mr. Ormandy, is that when push comes to shove, and the end of the world comes on apace, you no longer yearn for apocalypse?”

Ormandy said nothing, but his frown intensified. He held out his beseeching hands, ambiguous, opinion fixed neither one way nor the other.

“Can you talk to the President again, at least try to get him to change his mind?” Hicks asked.

“I wish he’d never involved me,” Ormandy said. He hung his head back and massaged his neck muscles with both hands. “But I’ll try.”

27

Arthur was in a late night conference with astronomers in Washington, discussing the appearance of the ice objects and their possible connection with Europa, when word came that William D. Crockerman was projected to win election as President of the United States. Nobody was surprised. Beryl Cooper conceded the next morning, at one a.m., while the conference was still proceeding.

No conclusion was reached by the astronomers at the meeting. If the ice chunks had come from Europa, which seemed undeniable given their paths and composition, then their present almost straight-line orbits had to be artificial, and some connection with the extraterrestrials could be assumed. The facts were clear enough: both were fresh, almost pure water-ice; the smaller of the two, barely 180 kilometers in diameter, was traveling at a velocity of some 20 kilometers per second and would strike Mars on December 21, 1996; the larger, some 250 kilometers in diameter, was traveling at about 37 kilometers per second and would strike Venus on February 4, 1997. Whatever had caused Europa’s destruction had not warmed the objects substantially, perhaps because ablation had carried away the heat. Both were quite cold and would lose little of their mass to vaporization by the sun’s energy. Consequently, neither would show much of a cometary coma, and both would be visible only to sharp-eyed observers with telescopes or high-powered binoculars.

Arthur left Washington the next day, convinced that his team now had solid evidence for making a connection. He had sufficient time, he thought, to prepare a case and present it to Crockerman, that all of these events were linked, and that some grand strategy could now be worked out.

He could not convince himself the President-elect would listen, however.

Major Mary Rigby, the latest in their series of duty officers, buzzed them all at six-thirty in the morning to listen to the radio. Shaw bunched his pillows up and sat in his cot as “Hail to the Chief” played — a true Crockerman touch — and the Speaker of the House listened gravely to the announcement of the appearance of the President-elect of the United States.

“Maybe the old fart’s going to write our ticket out of here,” Minelli said, his voice raspy from a night of protests and shouting. Minelli was not doing well at all. This infuriated Edward. But cold, subdued fury had been his state of mind for the last two weeks. This experience was going to leave all of them warped in one way or another. Reslaw and Morgan said very little anymore.

“Mr. Speaker, honorable members of the House of Representatives, fellow citizens,” the President began. “I have called this emergency conference after weeks of deep thought, and many hours of consultation with trusted advisors and experts. I have an extraordinary announcement to make, and a perhaps even more extraordinary request.

“You have no doubt been following with as much interest as I the events taking place in Australia. These events in the beginning seemed to bring hope to our stricken planet, the hope of Godlike intervention from outside, of those who would act to save us from ourselves.

We began to feel that perhaps our difficulties were indeed only those of a young species, faltering in its early footsteps. Now these hopes have been dashed, and we find ourselves in even deeper confusion.

“My sympathies lie with Prime Minister Stanley Miller of Australia. The loss of the three messengers from outer space, and the mystery surrounding their destruction — perhaps self-destruction — is a deep shock to us all. But it is time to confess that it has been less of a shock to me and to a number of my advisors. For we have been following a similar series of events within our own country, kept secret until now for reasons which will soon become clear.”

Disembarking from a shuttle bus at Los Angeles Inter: national Airport, on his way to Death Valley and then to Oregon for three days’ rest, Arthur entered a lounge area to await his taxi and heard the President’s voice. He sat before a color television with eleven other travelers, his face ashen. He’s jumping the gun.

“Late last September, three young geologists discovered a hill in the desert not far from Death Valley, in California. The hill was not on their maps. Near this hill they found an extraterrestrial being, an individual in ill health. They brought this individual to a nearby desert town and notified authorities. The extraterrestrial being—”

Trevor Hicks listened from his Washington hotel room, the remains of breakfast spread on a serving tray at the foot of the bed. Just yesterday, he had learned that Mrs. Crockerman had moved to her flat permanently. Later that afternoon, he had heard the first rumors of David Rotterjack’s resignation.

The President-elect’s version of what happened in the Vandenberg laboratory was clear enough; he could find no fault so far.

“…And as I spoke with this being, this visitor from another world, the story it told me was chilling. I have never been so deeply and emotionally affected in my life. It spoke of a journey across ages, of the death of its home world, and of the agency of this destruction — the very vehicle which had brought it to Earth, now landed in Death Valley and disguised as a volcanic cinder cone.”

Ithaca called Harry in from the bathroom, where he had just finished taking his shower. She wrapped him in a thick terry robe as he stood before the television, feeling how warm his skin was. “Great fucking birds flapping in the air,” he breathed.

“What?” Ithaca asked.

“He’s making the announcement now. Listen to him. Just listen to him.”

“When I asked the Guest if it believed in God, it replied in a steady, certain voice, ‘I believe in punishment.’” The President paused, staring across the fully attended house. “My dilemma, and the dilemma of all my advisors, military and civilian, and of all our scientists, was simple. Could we believe that our extraterrestrial visitor and the visitors in Australia were linked? They told such different stories …”

There was a knock on Trevor’s door. He closed his robe and hurried to open it, hardly even seeing who was outside, his attention still focused on the television.

“Hicks, I owe you an apology.” It was Carl McClennan, dressed in a raincoat and clutching a bottle of something wrapped in a brown paper bag. “That’s him, isn’t it?”

“Yes, come in, come in.” Hicks didn’t bother to ask why McClennan was here.

“I’ve resigned,” McClennan said. “I read his speech last night. The bastard wouldn’t listen to any of us.”

“Shhh,” Hicks said, holding his finger to his lips.

“I wish that I brought news of some comforting solution to all who listen to me today. But I do not. I have never been a faithful churchgoer. Still, within myself I have held my own faith, and thought it wise, as the leader of this nation, not to impose this faith on others who might disagree. Now, however, through these extraordinary events, I have had my faith altered, and I can no longer keep silent. I believe we face incontrovertible evidence, proof if you will, that our days are numbered, and that our time on Earth — the time of the Earth itself — will soon be at an end. I have sought advice from those with more spiritual experience than I, and they have counseled me. I now believe that we are facing the Apocalypse predicted in the Revelation of John, and that on Earth, the forces of good and evil have made themselves known. Whether these forces be angels and demons, or extraterrestrials, seems to be of no importance whatsoever. I could say that I have spoken with an angel, but that does not seem literally true—”

“He’s even departing from his text. Damn him,” McClennan shouted, sitting with a bounce on the bed next to Hicks. “Doesn’t he understand what he’s unleashing? What social—”

“Please,” Hicks admonished.

“I can only conclude that in some fashion, our history on Earth has been judged, and we have been found inadequate. Whether the flaw lies in our bodies, or in our minds, it is clear that the history of human existence does not satisfy the Creator, and that He is working to wipe the slate clean, and begin again. To do this, He has sent mighty machines, mighty forces which could begin, at any moment, to heat this Earth in God’s forge, and beat it to pieces on a heavenly anvil.”

The President paused again. Raised voices on the floor of Congress threatened to drown him out, and the Speaker had to rap his gavel many long minutes. The camera pulled back to show Crockerman surrounded by a phalanx of Secret Service men, their faces grim, trying to look in all directions at once.

“Please,” the President pleaded. “I must conclude.”

The noise finally subsided. Sporadic shouts of anger and disbelief rose from the representatives.

“I can only say to my people, and the inhabitants of Earth, that the time has come for us all to pray fervently for salvation, in whatever form it might come, whether we can expect it or not, or even whether we truly deserve salvation. The Forge of God cannot be appeased, but perhaps there is hope for each of us, in our private thoughts, to make peace with God, and find a way out from under the blows of His anger and disappointment.”

Sitting in the airport lounge, a woman weeping softly beside him, several men loudly arguing with each other and the television screen, Arthur Gordon could only think of Francine and Martin.

“All hell’s going to break loose,” a bulky middle-aged black man shouted as he stalked out of the lounge.

“We’d better not fly now,” a young man told the pregnant girl, hardly more than a teenager, sitting next to him. “They should ground all flights.”

Trying to stay calm, angry at how deeply the speech had affected him, Arthur made his way through the morning crowds to an airline counter to again check his reservations to Las Vegas.

McClennan had stopped his tirade of swearing and now stood by the blank television, fumbling at a cigarette and lighter. He still wore his raincoat. Hicks had not moved from the edge of the bed.

“I’m sorry,” McClennan said. “Christ, I haven’t smoked in five years. I’m a goddamned disgrace.”

“What will you do, now that you’ve resigned?” Hicks asked. What an amazing situation. Straight inside line on this story.

McClennan gave up on the cigarette in disgust. He flung it into the hotel ashtray, on top of an unused book of matches, and more gently lay his plastic lighter beside it. “I suppose the President will appoint replacements for David and myself. I imagine Schwartz will stay on. I imagine just about everybody will stay on.” McClennan looked at Hicks with suspicion. “And you’ll write about all of it, won’t you?”

“I suppose I might, in the long run.”

“Do you think he’s crazy?” McClennan asked, pointing at the blank screen.

Hicks considered the question. “No.”

“Do you think…” and here the rage returned, making McClennan’s hands tremble, “he’s violating his oath of office, to carry out the United States Constitution and promote the general welfare?”

“He’s calling them as he sees them,” Hicks said. “He thinks the end of the world is at hand.”

“Christ, even if it is…” McClennan pulled out the desk chair and sat down slowly. “He’s in trouble. He’s showing his weakness. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a move now to block the inauguration, or to impeach him.”

“On what grounds?” Hicks asked.

“Incompetence. Failure to promote the general welfare. Hell, I don’t know…”

“Has he done anything illegal?”

“We’ve never had a President go nuts in office. Not since Nixon, anyway. But then, you think he isn’t nuts.

Listen, he disagreed with you, even after he brought you into the inner circle…What is he trying to do?”

Hicks had already answered that question, after a fashion, and saw no reason to do it again.

“All right,” McClennan said. “What he’s doing, what it all comes down to, is he’s surrendering without a single shot being fired. We have no idea what these…bastards, these machines, these aliens, can do. We can’t even be sure they’re here to destroy the Earth. Is that even possible! Can you tear a world apart, or kill everything on its surface?”

“We ourselves can kill all life on Earth, if we so choose,” Hicks reminded him.

“Yes, but the Guest talked about leaving nothing but rubble behind. Is that possible?”

“I suppose it is. You’d have to unleash enough energy to place most of the Earth’s mass into orbit about itself, so to speak, or to give it escape velocity. That’s an awful lot of energy.”

“How much? Could we do it?”

“I don’t think so. Not with all the nuclear weapons we have now. We couldn’t even begin to.”

“How advanced would a…Jesus, a civilization have to be to do that?”

Hicks shrugged. “If we posit a straight line of development from where we are now, with the rate of major breakthroughs increasing, perhaps a century, perhaps two.”

“Could we fight them off? If they have that ability?”

Hicks shook his head, uncertain. McClennan took the answer for a negative. “So he calls them as he sees them. No way out. What if they aren’t here to destroy the Earth, just to confuse us, set us back, keep us from competing…You know, like we might have done to the Japanese, if we’d known what they’d put us through, in the twentieth century…?”

“The aliens are doing a good job of that, certainly.”

“Right.” McClennan stood again.

“What are you going to do?”

The ex-national security advisor stared blankly at the window. His look reminded Hicks of the expression on Mrs. Crockerman’s face. Bleak, close to despair, beyond tears.

“I’ll work in the background to save his ass,” McClennan said. “So will Rotterjack. Damn us all, we’re dedicated to that man.” He raised his fist. “By the time we’re done, that son of a bitch Ormandy won’t know what happened. He is going to be one dead albatross.”

With three hours until his flight to Las Vegas, Arthur decided there would be time to take a taxi to Harry’s house in the Cheviot Hills.

The cab took him up the San Diego Freeway and through a brightly decorated but impoverished Los Angeles barrio.

“D’ya hear what the President said, man?” the driver asked, glancing over the seat at Arthur.

“Yes,” Arthur said.

“Isn’t that something, what he said? Scared the piss out of me. Wonder how much of it is true, or whether, you know, he’s gone off his nut.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur replied. He felt strangely exhilarated. Everything was coming into focus now. He could actually see the problem laid out before him as if on a road map. His weariness and resignation had vanished. Now he was enriched by a deep, convicted fury, his distance and objectivity scorched away. The air through the cab window was sweet and intoxicating.

Lieutenant Colonel Albert Rogers finished listening to the recording of the broadcast and sat in the back of the trailer for several minutes, numb. He felt betrayed. What the President had said could not possibly be true. The men at the Furnace had not yet heard the speech, but there was no way he was going to keep it from them. How could he soften it for them?

“The bastard’s surrendered,” he murmured. “He’s just left us here.”

Rogers stood in the rear door of the trailer and looked at the cinder cone, dark and nondescript in the full morning light. “I can take a nuke right up inside that son of a bitch,” he said quietly. “I can carry it in and stand over it until it goes off.”

Not without the President’s authority.

Actually, that wasn’t entirely true.

But the President wouldn’t actually stop them from making an attempt to defend themselves…would he? He hadn’t said as much. He had simply stated that he thought it unlikely…what were his words? Rogers returned to the TV monitor and ran the tape back. “…The time has come for us all to pray fervently for salvation, in whatever form it might come, whether we can expect it or not…”

What did that mean?

And who would give Rogers his orders, the proper orders, now?

“He’s feeling weak today. The trip to Washington didn’t help him any,” Ithaca said, leading Arthur to the bedroom. Harry lay back on thick white pillows, eyes closed. He looked worse than when they had parted a week ago. His facial flesh was sallow and blotchy. His breathing was regular, but when he opened his eyes, they seemed washed out, unenthusiastic. He smiled at Arthur and grasped his hand firmly.

“I’m going to resign,” Harry said.

Arthur started to protest, but Harry waved it off. “Not because of that speech. I’m not going to be much use. I’m still fighting, but…It’s getting worse very fast. I’m on a short rope. I can’t leave town anymore, and I’m going to be in a hospital all the time by next week. You don’t need that kind of grief now.”

“I need you, Harry,” Arthur said.

“Yeah. God knows I’m sorry. I’d much rather be up and about. You have a tough fight now, Arthur. What are you going to do?”

Arthur shook his head slowly. “McClennan and Rotterjack have resigned. The President hasn’t given any orders to the task force.”

“He wouldn’t dare disband the group now.”

“No, he’ll keep us together, but I doubt he’ll let us do anything. I talked to Hicks a few hours ago, and from what he says, Crockerman’s even gone a step beyond Ormandy. Apocalypse. Get your papers in order. Here comes the auditor.”

“He can’t be all that…” Harry shook his head. “Can he?”

“I haven’t talked to him since we went into the Oval Office together. Now comes the media sideshow. We are going to be roasted alive over a slow fire. Since I have no specific orders, I’m going to check into the Furnace, and then go back to Oregon for a few days. Hide out.”

“What about the people in detention? Why are we holding them? They’re healthy.”

“They’re certainly no security risk,” Arthur agreed.

“We have the authority to let them go, don’t we?”

“We’re still ranked just below the President. I’ll call Fulton,” He still held Harry’s hand. He hadn’t let it go since sitting on the bed. “You’ve got to win this one, Harry.”

“Feeling mortal yourself, huh?” Harry’s face was serious. “You know, even Ithaca…She cries openly sometimes now. We cried together last night after she drove me back from the tests.”

“Nobody’s giving up on you,” Arthur said with surprising vehemence. “If your damned doctors can’t…we’ll find other doctors. I need you.”

“I feel like a real shit, letting you down,” Harry said.

“You know that’s a—”

“I mean it. I am very sick now. I don’t feel it yet, but in a week or two they’ll start other treatments, and I’ll be a wreck. I won’t be able to think straight. So let me tell you now. We have to start fighting back.”

“Fighting the Furnace, the Rock?”

“They’ve got us confused. They’ve accomplished that much…whoever they are. Blowing up their emissaries. Jesus! What a masterstroke. Giving us two stories, then making both seem like lies. And we’ve been a real good audience. It’s time to do what we can.”

“What is that?”

“You haven’t been thinking about it?”

“All right,” Arthur admitted. “I have.”

“You have to reestablish your channels of communication with the President. Encourage McClennan and Rotterjack to stay on. If that’s out of the question—”

“Too late now.”

“—Then talk to Schwartz. He knows damn well what the public reaction is going to be. Americans won’t accept this easily.”

“I’d hate to see the polls as to how many people believe anything is happening.”

“Leadership,” Harry said, his voice husky. “He has to assert his leadership. And we have to fight back.”

Arthur nodded abstractedly.

“Killing Cook. Remember?”

Arthur shook his head. “Only if they’re not omnipotent.”

“If they are, why would they try to confuse us?” Harry asked, his face darkening. He gripped Arthur’s hand more tightly. There was a time when Harry’s grip could have ground knuckles. Now it was a steady, insistent pressure; no more. “They have to believe we can hurt them somehow.”

Arthur nodded. Another conclusion had occurred to him, however, and it frightened him. He could hardly put it into words, and he certainly would not reveal it to Harry now. Poke a stick in the ants’ nest, he thought. Watch them scurry around. Learn about them. Then stomp the nest.

“Have you thought about what will happen to me if you don’t pull through?” Arthur asked.

“You’ll invite Ithaca up to Oregon, get her settled up there. Introduce her to friends. Find somebody promising who needs a good woman. Marry her off.”

“Christ,” Arthur said, crying now.

“See,” Harry said, tears running down his own cheeks. “You really care.”

“You bastard.”

Harry rolled his head aside and pulled up a pillow cover to wipe his eyes. “I’ve never been jealous of you. I could go for years without seeing you, because I knew you’d be there. But Ithaca. He’d better be a damned good fellow, the one you introduce her to. If anybody’s going to lie between her thighs but me, I’d better like him a hell of a lot.”

“Stop this.”

“All right. I’m tired. Can you stay around for dinner? I’m still able to eat. I won’t be able to keep it down much after next week. The old-fashioned treatments.”

Arthur told him he had to catch a plane shortly. Dinner was out of the question.

“Give me a call tomorrow, then,” Harry said. “Keep me informed.”

“You bet.”

“And talk some more with Hicks. He could replace me.”

Arthur shook his head at the whole idea.

“I don’t want you to get the impression I’ve been pinned to the mat by this,” Harry said. “I’ve been thinking crazy thoughts for days now. I’m going to write them down soon.”

“Crazy thoughts?” Arthur asked.

“Putting it all in perspective. The aliens, my cancer, the Earth, everything.”

“That’s a tall order.”

“You bet. Keeps my mind off the rest of this nonsense.” He thumped his chest and abdomen with his hand. “Might even be useful, sometime…”

“I’d like to hear it,” Arthur said.

Harry nodded. “You will. But not now. It still hasn’t jelled.”

29

The blue and white taxi roared and jerked along the winding road up the slope of the hill with frightful speed and efficiency. Samshow sat rigid in the back, leaning this way and that against the curves, wondering if he should have accepted the invitation when there was so much work to be done. Outside, night jungle rushed by, relieved by lighted entrances to private roads and ghostly houses floating out above the hillside. Below, visible occasionally through the trees, lay the bright spilled jewel box of Honolulu.

Sand had told him there would be interesting people at the party. He had gone on ahead two hours before. The Glomar Discoverer had put in at Pearl Harbor that morning, and the invitation from Gina Fusetti had come by telephone at ten o’clock. Mrs. Fusetti, wife of University of Hawaii physics professor Nathan Fusetti, was known across the Pacific for her parties. “We can’t turn this one down,” Sand had said. “We need a few hours’ rest, anyway.”

Samshow had reluctantly agreed.

Fingers faltering through a palm full of dollar bills and change, he paid and tipped the driver and stepped back quickly to avoid a spray of gravel from the rear wheels. Then he turned and looked at a broad, split-level pseudo-Japanese house draped with hundreds of electric folding paper lanterns, its stone walkway flanked by carved lava tikis with candle-burning eyes.

Even from where he stood, he could hear people talking — but no loud music, for which he was profoundly grateful.

A tall young woman opened the door at his knock and smiled brightly. “Mom!” she called out. “Here’s another. Who are you?”

“Walt Samshow,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Tanya Fusetti. My parents…you know. I’m here with my boyfriend.”

“You must be Doctor Samshow!” Gina Fusetti stalked intently through the archway leading to the sunken dining room, rubbing her hands and smiling gleefully. In her late sixties, hair gone completely white, she regarded Sam-show with smiling, squint-eyed worship, ushering him inside, equipping him with a beer (Asahi) and a paper plate of hors d’oeuvres (teriyaki tuna and raw vegetables). “We’re very pleased to have so distinguished an author and scientist with us,” Mrs. Fusetti said, smiling her thousand-watt smile. “Mr. Sand is in a back room with some friends…He told us you’d be here.”

Sand came through a side door. “Walt, glad you’ve finally come. Something extraordinary—”

“Ah, there he is!” She nodded at both of them, still smiling. “Such a pleasure to have men capable of saying something when they talk!” Another arriving guest drew her away. As she departed, she gave him an ushering wave of both hands — party, enjoy.

“She’s pretty extraordinary,” Samshow said.

“Acts like that with everybody. She’s a charmer.”

“You’ve been to her parties before?”

“I dated her older daughter once.”

“You never told me that.”

Sand shook his head and grinned. “Do you know Jeremy Kemp? He says he knows you.”

“We shared a cabin years ago, I think — some expedition…no, it was during a seminar at Woods Hole. Kemp. Geophysicist, earthquakes, isn’t he?”

“Right.” Sand pushed him forward. “We all have to talk. This is a real coincidence, his being here, our being here. And I sort of broke our rules. I brought up our sighting.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve already sent our data to La Jolla,” Sand said, by way of an excuse.

Samshow was not completely mollified. Sand opened the door to a back bedroom. Kemp and two other men sat on chairs and on the bed’s Polynesian print coverlet, beers and cocktails in hand. “Walt! Very good to see you again.” Kemp stood, shifted his cocktail, and shook Samshow’s hand firmly. Introductions were made and Samshow stood in a corner while Sand encouraged Kemp to explain his own scientific problem.

“I’m in resources discovery for Asian Thermal, an energy consortium in Taiwan and Korea. We’re keeping track of Chinese oil, for Beijing — it’s official — and we’re trying to chart the whole southwestern Pacific all the way south to the Philippines. Partly we chart through seismic events and analysis of the wave propagation through the deep crust. Now this is at least as proprietary as what you’ve told me…Understood?” He glanced conspiratorially at the door. Sand closed it and latched it.

“My group has listening stations in the Philippines and the Aleutians. We’re also tapped in to the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Information Center in Colorado and the Large-Aperture Seismic Array in Montana. We have an anomalous seismic event. We think it’s a bad reading or a screwed interpretation. But maybe not. It’s from the vicinity of the Ramapo Deep. We got it on the night of November first, Eastern Pacific Time.”

“The night of our skyfall,” Samshow said.

“Right. We place the time at about eight-twenty p.m. Right?”

“That’s our time, within ten minutes,” Sand acknowledged.

“Okay. Not an earthquake per se. Not a fault slide. More like a nuclear detonation — and yet, not. We get a PcP — reflection off the outer core — in Beijing and reflections from the P260P and P400P in Colorado, then we get P-prime-P-prime waves at the LASA in Montana. Not only that, but we get persistence in the high-frequency P-waves. No Love or Rayleigh surface waves, just body waves. No immediate shear waves. Just compression waves and lots of really unusual microseisms, like something burrowing. Right in the Ramapo Deep. What could that be?”

Sand grinned like a small boy, mischievous. “Something that weighs perhaps a hundred million tons.”

“Right,” Kemp said, mirroring his grin. “So let’s talk crazy. Anything that masses in at ten to the eighth metric tons, strikes the ocean like a mountain. But all you get is a minor squall. So it didn’t transfer much of its energy. Very small profile. Just shot right through, lost a tiny, tiny percentage of its velocity to the water, maybe some heat as well. Something less than a meter wide.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Samshow said.

“Not at all. A plug of superdense matter, probably a black hole. Hitting the ocean nearby, falling to the bottom of the Ramapo Deep, voila! Burrowing.”

“Incredible,” Sand said, shaking his head, still grinning.

“All right. We both have anomalies. My people have a nuclear event profile that isn’t, and you have a jag.” Kemp lifted his drink. “Here’s to shared mysteries.”

Sand had his electronic notebook out and was busy entering figures. “A black hole that size would be a strong source of gamma rays, right?”

“I don’t know,” Kemp said.

Sand shrugged his shoulders. “But it’s so dense and so small it falls directly to the center of the Earth. Actually, it bypasses the center because of Coriolis, and bounds up the other side. There’s very little effective drag. It’s just like passing through thin air.”

Kemp nodded.

“When it reaches the core, it’s traveling about ten kilometers per second. Can you imagine the shock wave coming off that thing? The whole Earth would ring like a bell — your microseisms. The heat released would be incredible. I don’t know how to calculate that…We need somebody conversant in fluid dynamics. Its period — the time it takes to ‘orbit’ in its closed loop around the center of the Earth — would be about eighty, ninety minutes.”

“Wouldn’t whatever sound it makes get lost in background noise?” Samshow asked, feeling years out of date.

“Oh, we’re hearing it, all right,” Kemp said. “Chattering like an imp. Can I borrow your notebook?”

Somewhat reluctantly, Sand handed it to him. Kemp figured for a moment. “If we assume no factional effects, it would come right up out of the antipodes of its entry point. But I don’t know whether there would be drag — it’s sucking in matter and releasing some of it as gamma rays, creating a plasma, or maybe it’s…Hell, I don’t know. Let’s assume the core has very little drag effect on it. Maybe it doesn’t break the surface…”

“But the shock wave does,” Sand said.

“Right. So we’d have tremendous effects in…” Kemp’s brow furrowed.

“South Atlantic Ocean,” Samshow said. “Thirty south and forty west. About eleven hundred nautical miles east. of Brazil, somewhere along the latitude of Porto Alegre.”

“Very good,” Kemp said, his smile fixed now. “Some seismic events there, and then, it swings back to Ramapo eighty or ninety minutes later. And again and again, until its motion is damped by whatever drag it feels and it rests right in the center of the Earth. Do you realize what a black hole could do at the center of the Earth?”

Samshow, suddenly troubled, stood and walked through an open sliding glass door to the veranda. He looked deep into the night jungle behind Mrs. Fusetti’s house, quiet except for the noise of the party and the whirring of insects. “How in hell would something like this get to the Earth? Wouldn’t our radar spot it, our satellites?”

“I don’t know,” Kemp said.

“There’s definitely some correlation, Walt,” Sand said. “Our gravimeters were working perfectly.” He joined Samshow on the veranda.

“The party’s full of talk about the President’s announcement,” Kemp said, standing in the open doorway. “What I’ve been thinking…”

Sand’s eyes widened. “Oh, Jesus,” he said. “I hadn’t even…”

“So?” Samshow asked.

“Maybe it’s not just a fantasy,” Kemp said. “You have a jag we can’t trace, a meteor strike you can’t explain, and we have compression waves we can’t explain. And the President has aliens.”

“Now wait,” Samshow interrupted. “We haven’t got any information about the South Atlantic.”

“Could this black hole, or whatever it is, cause substantial damage to the Earth?” Sand asked.

“It would eventually eat it up, swallow it completely,” Kemp said.

“Then we’d better tell somebody,” Samshow said.

Kemp and Sand looked at him like children chastised for being caught in a dirty game.

“Shouldn’t we?” Samshow asked. “Who’s going to San Francisco, to the American Geophysical Society convention?”

“I am,” Kemp said.

“I’d like to,” Samshow said, running on instincts now. Sand regarded him with some confusion. Perhaps he felt like backing down now, having carried things too far and seeing the Old Man take them all seriously. “Can we swing it, David?”

“I…want to try some calculations.”

“We obviously don’t have the expertise,” Samshow said. “But somebody there will.”

“Right,” Kemp said. “I know just the fellow. Jonathan Post will be there.”

The Furnace was now surrounded by three concentric wire fences, the innermost electrified. Troops patrolled the perimeter in Jeeps and helicopters. Beyond the barricades, hundreds of the curious sat idle in their cars, Jeeps, and trucks, binoculars trained on the black mound five miles or more distant. Still more hikers circled the forbidden area, none finding a way to get any closer.

A makeshift pressroom — little more than an unheated shack — stood at the main gate to the Furnace. Here, nine preselected reporters waited in abject boredom for news releases.

Except for the ubiquitous helicopters, the site itself was quiet. In the steady late morning sun, the cinder cone loomed black and purple, lava boulders and flows still in place, nothing changed, all silent and eternal.

As the blades and turbines on Arthur’s helicopter ride from Las Vegas slowed, Arthur climbed down from a hatch and approached Lieutenant Colonel Rogers across the salty sand and gravel landing strip. Rogers greeted him with a handshake and Arthur handed him a folder.

“What’s this?” Rogers asked as they walked alone toward the electronics trailer.

“These are orders telling you and your men to stay out of the bogey and do nothing to disturb the site,” Arthur said. “I received them in Las Vegas. They’re from the office of the President.”

“I already have orders to that effect,” Rogers said. “Why send more?”

“The President wants to make sure you understand,” Arthur said.

“Yes, sir. Tell him—”

“We aren’t communicating regularly,” Arthur said. He glanced around the area and put his hand on Rogers’s shoulder. “We’re going to have senators and congressmen all over this place in a few days. Senate subcommittees are inevitable. Congressional oversight committees. Anything you can imagine.”

“I heard that senator from Louisiana, what’s his name — Mac something.”

“MacHenry.”

“Yeah,” the colonel said, shaking his head. “On the radio. Calling for impeachment.”

“That’s the President’s problem,” Arthur said coldly. “MacHenry’s not alone.” They stopped twenty yards from the trailer. A path had been cleared between the landing strip and the complex of Army equipment. Bored soldiers had bordered the path with uniformly sized, whitewashed lava boulders. “I have something important to ask you. In private. This seems to be as good a place as any.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there any way to destroy the bogey?” Arthur asked.

Rogers stiffened. “That option hasn’t been mentioned, sir.”

“Could you do it?”

The colonel’s face was a battleground of conflicting emotions. “My team can do damn near anything, sir, but it would take specific orders to even discuss such an option.”

“This is off the record,” Arthur said.

“Even off the record, sir.”

Arthur nodded and looked away. “I’m only going to be here for a few hours,” he said. “You have your orders — but frankly, I don’t have any specific orders. And I believe my authority supersedes yours here, am I correct?”

“Yes, sir, except where you might contradict direct orders from the President.”

“You have no orders to prevent me from entering the bogey, do you?”

Rogers thought that over. “No, sir.”

“I’d like to do that.”

“It’s not difficult, sir,” Rogers said.

“Only difficult if you’re the first one in, right?”

Rogers smiled faintly.

“I’ll have your lead to follow. Tell me what I need to know, and what sort of equipment will be necessary.”

AP News Network in Brief, November 17, 1996, Washington, D. C.:

Representative Dale Berkshire, R-V., recommended before the full Congress today that the House Judiciary Committee begin hearings on President-elect Crockerman’s actions with regard to the Death Valley spacecraft. “There is strong sentiment among my people for impeachment,” Berkshire said. “Let the process begin here and now.” Berkshire and numerous other congressmen have reportedly asked the House and Senate to delay the President-elect’s inauguration ceremonies. No action on a delay has been taken at present.

30

Mary, the duty officer, greeted them over the intercom with a smile in her voice. “Rise and shine,” she said. “You’re getting out today. I just heard it from Colonel Phan.”

Edward had been awake for hours. He had not been able to sleep much the last couple of days. The cool clean plastic smell of cubicle air filled his entire body; he could not remember what real air tasted like. Minelli had been worse than usual, babbling sometimes, weeping, and Edward’s anger had curled up inside him, helpless, hot, yet anesthetic, slowing him down rather than pushing him to action. Action resulted in nothing.

“You’re a liar, Mary, Mary,” Minelli said. “We’re prisoners for life.” An Air Force psychologist had spoken with Minelli and concluded the man was suffering from “extreme cabin fever.” So were they all.

“We’re not security risks anymore?” Reslaw asked.

“I guess not. You’re healthy and the President’s announcement makes the rest pretty unnecessary, don’t you think?”

“I’ve been thinking that for days,” Reslaw said.

At ten a.m. Colonel Phan appeared with General Fulton. The isolation chamber window covers were withdrawn and Fulton greeted them all solemnly, apologizing for the inconvenience. Minelli said nothing.

“We’ve announced your release,” Fulton said, “and made arrangements for a press conference at two this afternoon. We have new clothes for you and all your confiscated personal effects.”

“A cheap suit and ten bucks in pocket,” Minelli said.

Fulton smiled grimly. “You’re free to say whatever you want. There’s no sense our stonewalling; we’ve had perfectly good reasons for everything we did. I hope, even now, that you can see those reasons. I don’t expect sympathy.”

Edward bit his lip gently, eyes focused on Fulton’s cap. Then he looked in the direction of Stella’s window and saw her standing in the white fluorescent light, gaunt, almost ghostly. She had lost a lot of weight. So had Reslaw. Minelli, strangely, had become almost plump.

“I’ve taken the liberty of having Mr. Shaw’s Land Cruiser given a thorough check-over at our motor pool garage. The oil’s been changed, engine tuned, and a new set of tires put on. Think of it as the least we can do. We’ve also arranged for monetary compensation for your time here. Should you need any medical attention in the next few years, that’s on us, too. I assume one or more of you will sue us.” Fulton shrugged. “All right. Your hall doors will be opened in five minutes. If you’re up to it, I’d like to thank each of you personally and shake your hand. My gratitude is sincere, but I won’t require you to acknowledge.”

“Shake the fucking President’s hand,” Minelli roared. “Ah, Christ, let me out.”

Fulton walked with the watch supervisor down the connecting corridor between the cells, his face ashen. “This whole thing…has become the worst screwup…of my entire career,” he said, eyes half closed.

Within half an hour, the four stood in sunshine outside the smooth concrete walls of the Experimental Receiving Laboratory, blinking. Edward made a point of keeping close to Stella. She seemed frail, excessively quiet, her face drawn and haunted like that of a starved child.

“You going to make it?” Edward asked.

“I want to go home. I’m clean, but I want to take a shower at home. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense,” Edward said. “Wash off all the prison cooties.”

She smiled broadly, then opened her arms wide and held them out to the sky, making an ecstatic feline wriggle. “God. The sun.”

Minelli covered his eyes with one hand against the sun, stretching the other hand out palm-up to catch the rays. “Beautiful,” he said.

“What do you want to do, Edward?” Stella asked.

“Take a hike,” Edward said without hesitating. “Get back out to the desert.”

“If any of you wants to spend some time in Shoshone…” Stella paused. “It might be silly, you probably want to get as far away from here as possible, but you can stay at our house. I realize you must have other things to do.”

“We’re at loose ends,” Reslaw said. “I am, anyway.”

They passed General Fulton and Colonel Phan as the watch supervisor escorted them into a small auditorium near the base public information office. An Air Force lawyer talked to them about their immediate future and offered legal assistance, including the agenting of book and movie offers, without fee. “I think I’m pretty good, and so does the Air Force,” he said. “Nothing mandatory, of course. If you don’t like me, the service will pay for any lawyer you choose, within reason.”

The press conference, though an ordeal, was mercifully brief — only half an hour. They sat alone at a long table while approximately three hundred reporters competed to ask questions, one at a time, through remote microphones. For Edward, the questions blurred into one another: How did you find the alien? Were you actually looking for spaceships and aliens? Are you going to sue the Air Force or the United States government? (“I don’t know,” Edward replied.) What do you think of the Australian spaceship? Of the President’s address to the nation? (“If we are being invaded,” Minelli said, “I think his message sucks.”) Bernice Morgan, Stella’s mother, sat in a roped-off section. She wore a belted print dress and carried a broad white sun hat. Her face was calm. Beside her sat the Morgan family lawyer, older and much more grizzled than the military counsel, in a dark blue suit, clutching a briefcase.

By three, they were back hi the auditorium. Stella stood beside her mother while their lawyer discussed the circumstances of their release. He then offered to represent all four of the detainees, as he referred to them.

A staff sergeant handed Edward a bag containing the keys to his Jeep, and they were all given their packets of personal effects. “I can drive you all right out of here,” Edward said. “If we can avoid the reporters…”

“That’s going to be difficult. If you’d like an escort…” the military counsel offered.

“No thanks. We’ll manage.”

Reslaw and Minelli went with Edward. Stella accompanied her mother to the lawyer’s limousine. “Where are we going?” she asked Edward.

“I’ll take up your offer if it’s still open,” Edward said. Minelli and Reslaw agreed.

“Open to all.”

The Jeep and the limousine pulled away from Vandenberg’s main eastern gate, away from the crush of reporters. A few valiant camera trucks and press cars followed them, but Edward managed to shake them off by taking a devious route through Lompoc.

The climb up the shaft was not difficult; Rogers had indicated it was a much more impressive journey mentally than physically. Yet Arthur was not entirely certain why he was making the trip. What could the hollow interior tell him, that he hadn’t already seen in Rogers’s photographs and video?

Still, he had to do it. His inner confusion had to be resolved. He half hoped for some intuitive breakthrough. And perhaps something would have changed — a change that might indicate where the truth actually lay.

Arthur clambered around the second bend and crawled on all fours along the last stretch of tunnel. In a few minutes, he emerged into the broad cylindrical antechamber, switching on the video camera mounted over his ear.

His lamps played off the complex faceting of the opposite side of the main chamber. Walking to the lip of the antechamber, circling the beam of his torch over the faceted cathedral vastness, he tried to make out the red light Rogers had photographed. He couldn’t see it. Taking a deep breath — as he imagined Rogers had done before — he turned off all his lights and settled into a squat a couple of meters from the edge.

Circular. Designed for weightless conditions? How could all this crystalline structure survive planetfall? What in hell is the function? After five minutes, he still couldn’t make out a red light in the vastness. “One change, at least,” he noted aloud for the recorder.

He switched on the torch again and scrutinized the faceting intently, moving his eyes a few degrees, then again, trying to discern some pattern or evident function. It was beautiful, which implied a pattern, but beyond that…

Could all the facets be used to focus some sort of radiation drive? If so, then was the throat of the drive where he was now standing, in the (presently) closed antechamber? Would the tunnel into the mound then represent a kind of relief valve, left open to evacuate the contents of the chamber after landing? There were no traces of hot exhaust blast outside. Perhaps all that had been obscured after the landing, during the time the craft was camouflaged.

If he stood on tiptoes, he still could not hold the torch high enough to put it in the focal center of the antechamber cylinder, which was about two meters above the greatest stretch of his arms. A simple stepladder…and he could see if the facets reflected the beam directly back at him.

Even from where he stood, that didn’t seem likely.

What would Marty think, knowing his daddy was even now standing inside an alien spacecraft? What would Francine think?

If it is a spacecraft. Everybody seems to assume that. Perhaps the spacecraft left machines to construct this, and it was never in space at all. If so, why?

The cool dark quiet was profound, almost comforting. Reminds me of an anechoic chamber. Maybe the facets are dampers of some sort. He whistled sharply. The whistle returned, muted but clear. His voice, however, did not return. He shut off the microphone and shouted several times to make that point. The first two shouts were wordless, mere yells, apelike, and somehow he felt better after them. The third shout came out of him so rapidly he had no time to think.

”What the hell are you doing here? What are you doing to us, goddammit?”

Embarrassed, his face hot, Arthur approached the lip again and pointed his torch at the facets directly below. He thought of the Guest’s triple sherry-colored eyes, protruding from the surrounding dusty gray-green flesh. What a nightmare. All of it. Day by day we learn and it means nothing, has no pattern. We are befuddled being befuddled. Deliberate.

He tried to subdue his unreasoning rage. Surely there were ways to bring a nuclear weapon into this chamber. Backpack nukes hadn’t been manufactured for twenty years, and had never been field-tested. What else was in the arsenal that could be hauled into the chamber by one or at most two men?

Lieutenant Colonel Rogers knew. He had thought of just such a contingency before Arthur had broached the subject. His reaction — immediate, brusque — made that clear. If two were thinking of it, then others were, as well. How could they circumvent Crockerman’s authority over all nuclear weapons?

What good would it do?

“I’d like to ask you a few more questions,” he said, leaving the mike off. “Just between one human individual and whatever, whoever you are. Are we no more to you than a nest of ants? You go to the trouble to create an artificial being…”He was convinced of that, though the proof was not absolute. “You feed us two stories, maybe more. What are you telling the Russians in Mongolia? Are you telling them the universe is run on socialist principles? We thought, years past…we thought the arrival of something like you would change us all. You’ve taken advantage of that. You seem to know us better than we know ourselves. Or are we just so simple you can predict our behavior? If you’re superior, then why are you torturing us? How many civilizations have you destroyed?”

He did not expect an answer. The circular gray-faceted cathedral interior gloomed around him, silent and implacable, unreal despite his intense scrutiny.

“You’re going to eat the Earth, and spit it out, and move on,” he continued, his voice trembling. His rage was almost overwhelming; he wanted to smash things. With some haste, he retreated to the tunnel, to reach the outside before his decorum vanished completely and he wept in frustration.

Once through the twisted tunnel and standing in the desert sun, he immediately faced Rogers and two sergeants and weeping was again out of the question.

“Your red light has gone out,” he said, doffing his gear. “Nothing else has changed.”

“How did it feel, sir?” Rogers asked softly.

“Like I was of no consequence whatsoever,” Arthur said.

The officer smiled grim agreement and helped him remove the camera.

New York Times editorial, November 20, 1996: The election of President William D. Crockerman may have been a colossal blunder. Had the nation been given the complete facts about the present situation — facts concerning the existence of yet another alien device in Death Valley, California — and had we been informed about the President’s attitude to these alien devices, how many Americans would have voted for a President who seems to accept impending destruction with open arms? Perhaps there is no hope. Perhaps the Earth is doomed. But for the President of the United States to admit defeat and urge us all to say our prayers is — and we do not hesitate to use the word — treasonous.

The Times Editorial Board is unanimous in recommending that the House Judiciary Committee investigate the President-elect’s actions, and vote on whether or not to recommend impeachment.

31

It took Reuben Hordes three weeks to come to grips with his mother’s death, and it happened in a bizarre and darkly comic way.

His father, as tall as Reuben but getting plump about the middle, had for the time being given up on life, his rough bearded face dark grayish olive from grief and stress, sitting in the ragged lounger in the living room, napping before a dark TV.

It was up to Reuben to keep the house clean and make sure all the chores were done as his mother would have wished. He took that upon himself as a duty to the both of them. His father would recover. Life would go on. Reuben was sure of that.

On a Wednesday, three weeks exactly after the funeral, Reuben pulled out the old upright vacuum cleaner and plugged it into a herniated wall socket. The plug threatened to fall out, but held long enough for Reuben to kick the button with his naked toe and switch the machine on. He then methodically ran the vacuum over the patchy Oriental-design carpet and the wood floors, swooping down on dust kittens and moving chairs and coffee table when necessary. He vacuumed around his father, who smiled up at him and tried to say something, but could not be heard over the racket. Reuben patted his shoulder in passing.

In the bathroom, as he passed the machine carefully over the almost-new throw rug, the vacuum started laboring. He thought he smelled hot metal and electricity. Punching the button with his toe, he tipped the machine over, flipped two latches, and removed the bottom metal cover. In some amazement, he stared at the roller brush and belt.

Thick strands of his mother’s fine, long crinkly black hair had wrapped around the entire length of the roller, filling the groove of the rubber belt and impeding its progress.

Reuben picked the hair off delicately with long, spatulate fingers, examining broken pieces of it in his palms. He pulled loose a thick tangle and made a motion to drop it into the wastebasket. He couldn’t follow through.

He sat back against the kitchen door, holding the tangle to his cheek. For a moment, his thoughts were filled with a velvet nothingness.

Then it came. His head thumped against the door and he wept quietly, not wanting his father to hear, finally covering up by switching the vacuum on again. With his mother’s hair removed, it ran smoothly and loudly.

Warren, Ohio, lay acquiescent under an old blanket of snow, some of it still clean, some pushed up in dirty brown and black-spotted ridges by the roadways. Skeletal trees stood out against the yellowing dusk, and gusts of sharp cold wind leaped around him like invisible dogs, glad to see you, happy to have you here. Reuben clutched the two library books under his arm, one on how to pass the civil service exam for the Postal Service, another containing the short stories of Paul Bowles. Reuben, who had fancied himself a Muslim in his early teens — to his mother’s horror — had steeped himself in the lore of Africa and the Middle East. Bowles intrigued him even more than Doughty or T. E. Lawrence.

Reuben had quit high school the year before to work. His formal education had been fitful, but his intelligence, when focused, was a devouring and almost frightening thing. When Reuben Bordes latched on to a question or a book or a subject that interested him, his short, broad face tightened with an intent, fixed expression and his eyes enlarged until it seemed they might fall out of his head.

He was tall and strong and feared nobody. His route through the darkening streets, between the dirty brick buildings and along narrow service alleys behind businesses, was not chosen for its shortness or logic. Reuben needed to delay. Getting back to his father was necessary, but he did not relish the intensity of pain he felt at home.

Halfway there, pacing through slush puddles behind a liquor store, he saw a silvery glint in the shadows beside a dumpster. He walked on, turfiing his head, thinking it was nothing more than a broken bottle. But the glint persisted. He returned to the dumpster and peered into the shadows. A glittering toylike thing, perhaps a kid’s broken robot, rested on a dark brown and nondescript lump. He peered closer.

The toy sat on a dead mouse or a small rat. Very slowly, the toy lifted one of six jointed shiny legs, and then brought it down again. The leg pierced the rodent’s skin.

Reuben stood up and backed away. Night was almost on him.

The way the spider or whatever it was had raised its leg — with a clockwork precision, an oily smoothness — scared him. It was not a toy. It was not an insect. It was something spider-shaped and made of metal and it had caught and killed a mouse.

With slow grace, the spider stepped off the mouse and turned to face Reuben, two front legs held high as if to defend itself. Reuben backed up against a rough board fence, eight or nine feet away, twenty feet from the street. He glanced to his left, ready to run.

Silver flashed on the fence boards behind him. Reuben screamed and pushed off with his arms and shoulders but the flash followed, sitting on his shoulder where he couldn’t see it clearly. He brushed it away and felt its heavy, resisting sharp legs let go of his shirt. The spider fell into the slush with a splash and leaden clunk.

“Oh, Jesus, help!” Reuben screamed. The street beyond the alley was empty of pedestrians. A car drove by but the driver didn’t hear him. “Help!”

He ran. Two spiders ambled into his path and he tried to stop, feet sliding out from under him in a patch of wet ice. He fell on his back in the dirt and slush. Moaning, he rolled over, the wind knocked out of him, and lifted his head. A spider waited with front legs raised not a foot from his face, a small line of green luminosity drawn between the legs where its eyes might have been. Its body was smooth, a single elongated egg shape. Its legs were jewel-fine.

No joke.

Nobody makes things like that.

He faced the thing, breath coming back in sharp jerks, his arms tingling from the fall. Something moved along his back, gently pinching, and he could not reach up to grab it or brush it off. He could not scream again; there wasn’t enough air in his lungs. Then the weight and the legs were in his hair. Something sharp brushed his scalp. Pricked.

Reuben moaned and lay his head down in the slush, his eyes closed, his face masked with a rictus of fear. After a few minutes, he felt himself getting up and lying back against the fence, his movements poorly coordinated. Nobody came by, or if they did, they did not stop. He was still behind the liquor store. He was dirty and wet and he looked like a filthy drunk. A cop might come along to investigate, but nobody else.

He was very cold but not frightened anymore. There was a high vibration in his skull that reassured him. Reuben suddenly decided to fight the reassurance and his whole body stiffened, slamming his head against the fence so hard the wood cracked.

That sobered him. What parts of his head could still think, urged caution. He could taste blood in his mouth. This is how an animal feels in the wild when the zoo people come, he thought.

The vibration continued, waxing and waning, lulling him even through the bone-chilling cold and damp. He tried several times to get up, but he had no control over his limbs; they tingled as if asleep.

He felt a crawling behind his head. A spider delicately climbed down the front of his coat, legs prodding and lifting the edge of his hip pocket where it lay rucked up in his lap. The thing disappeared into the pocket, legs folding as it entered. The bulge it made was barely noticeable.

His legs stopped tingling. With some effort, Reuben stood, wobbling back and forth uncertainly. He checked himself over and found no injuries, no blood or evidence of abrasions, and only a few tender bruises. When his hand went toward his pocket, he thought better of it — or rather, something else urged caution — and slowly withdrew his arm. Hand held idly out, shivering and puzzled, Reuben looked around the alley for more of the spiders. They were gone.

The mouse lay still beside the dumpster. Reuben was allowed to kneel and examine the tiny carcass.

It had been neatly dissected, its purple, brown, and pink shiny organs laid out to one side, incisions made here and there, as if samples had been taken.

“I have to go home,” Reuben said to nobody or nothing in particular.

He was allowed to finish his walk home.

32

Arthur was delayed three days unexpectedly in Las Vegas to speak informally with three congressmen from the House Judiciary Committee. His first evening back home, back with his family and the river and the forest, he sat on the living room throw rug, legs curled into a lotus. Francine and Marty sat on the couch behind him. Marty had laid the fire in the grate all by himself, lighting the carefully placed tinder with a long match.

“Here’s what’s happening, really, as much as I know,” he said, raising himself on his arms and sweeping his locked legs around to face them. And he told them.

The heater came on at midnight and blew warm air over Arthur and Francine as they lay in bed in each other’s arms. Francine’s head rested on his shoulder. He could feel her eye movements as she stared into darkness. They had just made love and it had been very good, and against all his intellectual persuasions, he felt good, at home, at rest. Not a word had been said between them for fifteen minutes.

She lifted her head. “Marty—”

The phone rang.

“Oh, Christ.” She rolled out of his way. He reached across her to pick up the phone.

“Arthur, Chris Riley here. I’m sorry I woke you up—”

“We’re awake,” Arthur said.

“Yes. This is a bit of an emergency, I think. There are some guys in Hawaii who’d like to talk with you. They heard I knew your home number. You can call them now or I—”

“I’d like to be incommunicado, Chris, at least for a couple of days.”

“I think this could be very important, Arthur.”

“All right, what is it.”

“From the little they’ve told me, they might have found the — you know, what the press is talking about, the weapon the aliens might use against us.”

“Who are they?”

“One is Jeremy Kemp. He’s a conceited son of a bitch and hell to deal with, but he’s an excellent geologist. The other two are oceanographers. Ever hear of Walt Sam-show?”

“I think so. Wrote a textbook I read in college. He’s pretty old, isn’t he?”

“He and another fellow named Sand are with Kemp in Hawaii. They say they saw something pretty unusual.”

“All right. Give me a phone number.” He switched on the light over the nightstand.

“Samshow and Sand are on board a ship in Pearl Harbor.” Riley enunciated the number and name of the ship for him. “Ask for Walt or David.”

“Thanks, Chris,” Arthur said, hanging up.

“No rest?” Francine asked.

“Some people think they might have found the smoking gun.”

“Jesus,” Francine said softly.

“I’d better call them now.” He got out of bed and went into the den to use the extension there. Francine followed a few minutes later, wrapped in her robe.

When he had finished with the call, he turned and saw Marty standing beside her, rubbing his eyes.

“I’m going to San Francisco this weekend,” he said. “But I’ve still got a couple of days with you guys.”

“Show me how to use the telescope, Dad?” Marty asked sleepily. “I want to see what’s going on.”

Arthur picked the boy up and carried him back to his bedroom.

“Were you and Mom making love?” Marty asked as Arthur lay him down in the bed and pulled the covers over him.

“You got it, Big Ears,” Arthur said.

“That means you love Mom. And she loves you.”

“Mm-hm.”

“And you’ll go away but you’ll come back again?”

“As soon as I can.”

“If we’re all going to die, I want you both here, with me, all of us together,” Marty said.

Arthur held his son’s hand for a long moment, eyes moist, throat gnarled with love and a deep, inexpressible anguish. “We’ll start with the telescope tomorrow, and you can look tomorrow night,” he finally said in a harsh whisper.

“So I can see them come,” Marty said.

Arthur could not lie. He hugged his son firmly and stood by the bed until Marty’s eyes were closed and he was breathing evenly.

“It’s one o’clock,” Francine said as he slipped under the covers beside her.

They made love again, and it was even better.

“Gauge! Bad dog! Dammit, Gauge, that’s a frozen chicken. You can’t eat that. All you can do is ruin it.” Francine stomped her foot in fury and Gauge slunk from the kitchen, berry-colored tongue lolling, ashamed but pleased with himself.

“Wash it off,” Arthur suggested, sliding past Gauge to stand in the kitchen door, grinning.

Francine held the thoroughly toothed but whole bird in two hands, shaking her head. “He’s mangled it. Every bite will have his mark.”

“Bites within bites,” Arthur said. “How recursive.”

“Oh, shut up. Two days home and this.”

“Blame it on me, go ahead,” Arthur said. “I need a little domestic guilt.”

Francine put the bird back on the countertop and opened the sliding glass door. “Martin! Where are you? Come chastise your dog for me.”

“He’s outside with the telescope.” Arthur examined the chicken sadly. “If we don’t eat it, that’s one bird’s life wasted,” he said.

“Dog germs,” Francine argued.

“Hell, Gauge licks us all the time. He’s just a puppy. He’s still a virgin.”

Dinner — the same bird, skinned and carefully trimmed — was served at seven. Marty seemed dubious about his portion of leg and thigh, but Arthur warned him his mother would not take kindly to their being overfastidious.

“You made me cook it,” she said.

“Anything interesting?” Arthur asked his son, pointing up.

“It’s all twinkly out there,” Marty said.

“Clear night tonight?” Arthur asked.

“It’s slushy and cold,” Francine said.

“Lots of stars, but I mean…you know. Twinkly like faraway firecrackers.”

Arthur stopped chewing. “Stars?”

“You told me only supernovas would get bright and go out,” Marty said seriously. “Is that what they are?”

“I don’t think so. Let’s go look.”

Francine dropped her wing in disgust. “Go ahead. Abandon dinner. Arthur—”

“Just for a minute,” he said. Marty followed. After hanging back by the service porch door for a minute in protest, Francine joined them in the backyard.

“Up there,” Marty said, pointing. “It’s not doing anything now,” he protested.

“It’s awful cold out here.” Francine looked at Arthur with an unexpressed question on her face. Arthur examined the sky intently.

“There,” Marty said.

For the merest instant, a new star joined the panoply. A few seconds later, Arthur spotted another, much brighter, a couple of degrees away. The sparkles were all within a few degrees of the plane of the ecliptic. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “What now?”

“Is this something important?” Francine asked.

“Daddy,” Marty said nervously, glancing at his parents, alarmed by the tone of their voices.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe it’s a meteor shower.” But the sparkles were not meteors. He was sure of that much. There was one person he could call who might know — Chris Riley. Always Riley, a still point in the moving world.

In the darkened den, he dialed Riley’s home phone. On the first attempt, it was busy. A few moments later, Riley answered, breathless.

“Chris, hello. This is Gordon, Arthur Gordon.”

“My man. Just the man.” Riley paused to catch his breath. “I hear you set up a meeting with Kemp and Samshow. I’d like to be there, but it’s getting real busy here. I’ve been running out to the telescope and back. I should get a phone out there.”

“What’s happening?”

“Have you seen it? All through the plane of the ecliptic — asteroids. They’re blowing up like firecrackers! Since dusk, apparently. I just got confirmation from Mount Laguna and somebody left a message a few minutes ago from Pic du Midi in France. The asteroid belt looks like a battlefield.”

“Damn,” Arthur said. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Marty and Francine standing in the doorway, Marty with his arms wrapped tight around his mother’s waist.

“When is this task force going to come clean?” Riley asked. “Lots of people are really angry, Arthur. The President shoots his mouth off, and nobody else is talking.”

“We can’t be sure this is connected.”

“Arthur! For God’s sake! Asteroids are blowing up! How the hell could it not be connected?”

“You’re right,” Arthur said. “I’m flying to San Francisco tomorrow. How many sparkles so far?”

“Since I’ve been watching, at least a hundred. Got to run now.”

Arthur said good-bye and hung up. Marty was owl-eyed, Francine only slightly more restrained. “It’s all right,” he said.

“Is it starting?” she asked. Marty began to whimper. Arthur had not heard his son whimper in recent memory — months, a year.

“No. I don’t think so. This is far away, in the asteroids.”

“Are they sure it’s not shooting stars?” Marty asked, a very adult rationalization.

“No. Asteroids. They’re out beyond Mars, most of them between Mars and Jupiter.”

“Why out there?” Francine asked.

Arthur could only shake his head.

33

Minelli had spent the night lying in a lounger by the broad picture windows. He was there now, head lolling, snoring softly. Edward tightened the knot on the bathrobe he had borrowed from Stella and walked past the lounger to stand by the glass. Beyond a concrete patio and a dried-up L-shaped ornamental fishpond, frost whitened several acres of winter-yellow grass.

Coming here had been a good idea. Shoshone was peaceful, isolated without being cut off. For a few days at least, they could rest, until the crowds of reporters found them again. The few townspeople aware of their return were making sure nobody knew where they were. They spent most of the day indoors, and only Bernice answered the phone.

He heard Minelli stir behind him.

“You missed the show,” Minelli said.

“Show?”

“All night long. Like a parade of lightning bugs.”

Edward raised an eyebrow.

“No joking, and I’m not crazy. Out over the mountains, all night long. Clear as a bell. The sky twinkled.”

“Meteors?”

“I’ve seen meteors, and these wasn’t them.”

“End of the world, no doubt,” Edward said.

“No doubt,” Minelli echoed.

“How are you feeling?”

“Rested. Better. I must have given everybody a bad time back there.”

“They gave us a bad time,” Edward corrected. “I was feeling a little nuts myself.”

“Nuts.” Minelli shook his head and cocked a dubious glance at Edward. “Where’s Reslaw?”

“Still sleeping.” He and Reslaw had shared a middle bedroom.

“These folks are real nice. I wish I’d had a mother like Bernice.”

Edward nodded. “Are we going to stay here,” he asked, “and keep imposing, or are we going back to Texas?”

“We’re going to have to face the music eventually,” Minelli said philosophically. “The press awaits. I watched television a little last night. The whole country’s gone nuts. Quietly, mind you, but nuts all the same.”

“I don’t blame them.”

The phone rang.

“What time is it?” Minelli asked. Edward glanced at his watch.

“Seven-thirty.”

On the second ring, the phone was silent.

They stared at it apprehensively. “Bernice must have answered it in the back bedroom,” Minelli said.

A few minutes later, Stella came out, followed by her mother, both unselfconsciously attired in flannel pajamas and flower-print robes. Bernice smiled at them. “Breakfast, gentlemen? It’s going to be a long day.”

“That was CBS,” Stella said. “They keep sniffing.”

“We can only fool them so long,” Bernice said.

Edward looked across the quiet, frosty field. A pickup truck parked just off the highway held two men in brown coats and cowboy hats — locals sworn to keep “snoops” from setting up cameras and interfering with the Morgan family’s privacy. Even at a hundred yards’ distance, they looked formidable.

Stella shook her head. “I don’t know what to say. We didn’t do anything important. I didn’t, anyway. You found the rock.”

Edward shrugged. “What’s to say about that?”

Reslaw, dressed in jeans and a blue-and-white-striped long-sleeved shirt, walked out of the hallway, past the entrance alcove and the baby grand piano in an adjacent corner. “Somebody ask about breakfast?”

“Coming up,” Mrs. Morgan said.

“You know,” Edward said, “it was probably a bad idea to come here. For you two. We all need our rest, but your mother has been through a lot.”

Bernice Morgan walked stiffly into the kitchen. “It was exhilarating, really,” she said. “I haven’t had a fight like that in years.”

“Besides, she got to talk to the President,” Stella said, grinning.

“Makes me ashamed to be a Democrat,” she said. “Mike and the boys are keeping a watch. I just have to make sure they don’t get too zealous. You stay as long as you want.”

“Please stay,” Stella said, looking at Edward. “I have to talk. To all of you. I’m still confused. We should help each other out.”

“What about the fireworks?” Minelli asked. “Maybe there’s something on the news now.”

He stretched and swung his legs off the lounger, then stood and walked across the linoleum floor and wide Navajo rugs to the living room, a few steps from the marble-top pedestal table in the open dining area. He sat in front of the television. Slowly, as if it might be hot, he turned it on, then backed up, licking his lips. Edward watched him with concern.

“Just cartoons,” Minelli said quietly. Without changing channels, he lay back to watch, as if he had forgotten his original purpose. Edward walked over and changed channels for him, looking for news. On the twenty-four-hour News Network, an announcer was finishing a story on conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

“Nothing,” Minelli said pessimistically. “Maybe I was seeing things.”

Then, “Astronomers in France and California have offered varied explanations for last night’s unprecedented meteor activity in the solar system’s asteroid belt. Seen throughout the Western Hemisphere, clearly visible to the naked eye in areas with clear skies, bright explosions flashed throughout the ecliptic, the plane occupied by the Earth’s orbit and the orbits of most of the sun’s planets. Speaking from his phone in Los Angeles, presidential task force advisor Harold Feinman said it might take days to analyze data and learn what had actually happened deep in space, beyond the orbit of Mars. When asked if there was any connection between the meteor activity and the alleged spacecraft and aliens on Earth, Feinman declined to comment.”

“Smart man to admit he’s an idiot,” Minelli said. “Asteroids. Jesus.”

Edward flipped past other channels, but found nothing more.

“What do you think, Ed?” Minelli asked, slouching back in the corner of the broad L-shaped couch. “What the hell did I see? More end-of-the-world shit?”

“I don’t know any more than they do,” Edward said. He entered the kitchen. “Do you have a doctor in town? A psychiatrist?” he asked Bernice.

“Nobody worth the name,” she answered, her voice as low as his. “Your friend’s still not doing too well, is he?”

“The government got rid of us in a real hurry. He should be in a hospital somewhere, resting, cooling down.”

“That can be arranged,” she said. “Did he actually see something?”

“I guess so,” Edward said. “I wish I’d seen it.”

“Day of the Triffids, that’s what it was,” Minelli said enthusiastically. “Remember? We’ll all go blind any minute now. Break out the pruning shears!”

Stella stood by the stove, methodically cracking eggs into a pan one by one. “Momma,” she said, “where’s the pepper mill?” She brushed past Edward, tears in her eyes.

34

Walt Samshow stepped from the cab on Powell Street under the shadow of the St. Francis Hotel awning and turned around briefly to look across at long, silent lines of hundreds of marchers parading around Union Square, a cable car grumbling by covered with swaying tourists, spastic traffic of cars and more cabs, civilized mayhem: San Francisco, other than the marchers, not terribly different from his memories of it in 1984, the last time he had been downtown.

In the spacious, elegant lobby of the St. Francis, with its polished black stone and dark lustrous woods, Sam-show began hearing the rumors practically the moment he set his luggage down by the front desk.

The convention of the American Geophysical Society was in full swing. Kemp and Sand had gone ahead, and apparently big things had happened since their arrival Thursday. Now it was Saturday and he had a lot to catch up on.

As he checked in, two professorial young men passed by, engaged in earnest conversation. He caught only three words: “The Kemp object—”

The bellhop carted his luggage over thick carpet to the elevator. Samshow followed, unwinding his arms and stretching his fingers. Two other conventioneers — an older man and a young woman — stood near the elevators, discussing supersonic shock waves and how they might be transmitted through mantle and crust.

Reporters and camera crews from three local television stations and as many national news networks were in the lobby when Samshow returned from his room to check in at the convention desk. He avoided them deftly by walking around several pillars.

With his badge and bag of pamphlets and program guides came a note from Sand:

Oz, Samshow learned from a desk clerk, was the bar and disco at the top of the “new” tower of the St. Francis. He looked at his frayed sports coat and his worn-out running shoes, decided he was easily ten years behind the times and thousands of dollars short in refurbishing his wardrobe, and sighed as he entered the elevator.

The trip from Honolulu to La Jolla had been arranged by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He had paid for that by lecturing the night before at UCSD. It never ceased to dismay him, after twenty-five years, how popular he was. His huge, expensive book on oceanography had become a standard text, and hundreds of students were only too pleased to listen to, and shake hands with, the modern Sverdrup.

On his own tab, he had taken a flight out of Lindbergh Field to San Francisco. Not yet did he have a clear idea what they were all doing here; there was still much work to be done on the Glomar Discoverer, beginning with the collation of billions of bits of data from their passages over the Ramapo Deep.

He suspected much of that data would be pushed aside indefinitely now. Sand’s gravimeter anomaly would be the key element. Somehow, that saddened him.

Braced against the ascent of the high-speed elevator, he realized he had been feeling his age for the past week. Psychologically, he had been caught up in the national malaise that had followed Crockerman’s announcement. He felt no different from the young people carrying their blank signs just across the street. What was there to protest? Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process. Even now, the instrument of that destruction — or an instrument — might be lancing through the Earth’s core.

The Kemp object. That attribution, he assured himself, would change shortly. Sand-Samshow object…Not a catchy name, but it would have to do. Yet…why? Why lay claim to the discovery of the bullet that might have everyone’s name on it?

The elevator door opened and Samshow stepped out into a blare of noise. Oz glittered, silver and gray, glass-walled and high-ceilinged. Young people in elegant dress danced across the central floor, while drinkers and talkers sat and stood on the surrounding raised carpeted areas. The sweet smells of wine and Bourbon wafted from a passing waitress’s tray.

Samshow winced at the noise and glanced around, looking for Sand or Kemp. Sand stood in a corner waving to catch his eye.

Their round table was barely a foot across, and five people were crowded around it: Kemp, Sand, two others he did not recognize, smiling as if they were old friends, and now himself. He shook hands as Sand introduced Jonathan V. Post, an acquaintance of Kemp’s, dark and Levantine with a gray-shot curly beard, and Oscar Eglinton from the Nevada School of Mines. Post declaimed a brief and embarrassing poem on meeting the legendary Old Man of the Sea. When he was finished, he smiled broadly.

“Thank you,” Samshow said, not very impressed. The waitress came and Post sacrificed his own Corona that Samshow might have a drink sooner.

He had once downed a case of Corona in two days while whale-watching at Scammon’s Lagoon. That had been in 1952. Now more than one beer gave him heartburn.

“We have to fill you in, Walt,” Sand said. “Kemp talked with seismologists in Brazil and Morocco. One of them is here — Jesus Ochoa. We have the nodal traces. October thirty-first. The disruptions and shock waves. There’s been high surf in some very suspicious places, and seismic events like nobody’s ever seen…”

“Thirty-five south, forty-two west,” Kemp said, with the same smug grin he had worn a week ago in Hawaii.

“He convinced me that was good enough evidence to talk to Washington. They referred me to Arthur Gordon—”

“The President isn’t interested, apparently,” Kemp said, his grin vanishing. “We couldn’t even talk to the new national security advisor, what’s his name…”

“Patterson,” said the muscular, dark-tanned Eglinton.

“But Gordon says he’ll be here tonight to talk with us. There’s going to be a lot to discuss. Post here has spoken to some physicists and space scientists. Chris Riley, Fred Hardin. Others. Asteroids are on their mind.”

“You’re all convinced we’ve got something appropriate, a true extraterrestrial bullet?”

“We have more than that,” Kemp said, leaning forward. Sand put a hand on his arm, and Kemp nodded, falling back into his seat. Sand leaned over to Samshow as if to explain something delicate.

“There was a central Atlantic fireball sighted by a cargo ship four days ago. Like the previous object, as far as we can discover, nobody picked it up on radar coming in. Similar phenomenon — deep-ocean splash, small storm, and peculiar seismic traces. This fireball was much brighter, though — blinding, huge, leaving a glowing tail behind it. Captain and crew were treated for retinal burns. The doctors treating them noticed hair loss and strange bruises and questioned them, and they admitted to having bloody stools. Everyone on deck is suffering from severe radiation exposure.”

“Meteors don’t do that,” Kemp said. “And then…we have records of another seismic event in the same area as the cargo ship. Burrowing,” he added triumphantly. “Trace like a bomb explosion. And then…microseisms and deep P-waves.”

Samshow raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“More nodal traces,” Sand said, “and even stronger microseismic activity…This was either a bigger object, more massive, or…”

“It’s different,” Kemp said. “Don’t ask me how.”

“They’re talking about a Kemp object downstairs,” Samshow said. “Far be it from me to worry about attribution—”

“We’ll straighten that out at the symposium tomorrow morning,” Kemp said. “Gordon will attend, and everything we know will be laid before the convention.”

“And the public?”

“Nobody’s told us to keep it secret,” Sand said.

“There are camera crews downstairs.”

“We can’t hold this back,” Kemp said.

“Can’t we wait until it’s confirmed?”

“That could be months,” Sand said. “We may not have the time.”

Samshow frowned deeply. “Two things bother me,” he said. “Besides this god-awful noise. One.” He held up a single finger. “How in hell can any of this theorizing do us any good? And two.” A second finger. “Everybody here seems to be having such a fine time.”

Sand glanced at the others. Post appeared suddenly crestfallen.

“The gods are dancing on our grave,” Samshow said, “and here we are, like kids in a toy store.”

35

Reuben Bordes stood by the screen door, staring out at the cold rain washing the streets of Warren, half smiling and half frowning. His lips moved slowly to some inner song, and his eyes longed for something far away.

“Close the door, boy,” his father demanded, standing in the hallway, dressed in ragged pajamas. “It’s cold outside.”

“All right, Pop.” He swung the door closed and turned to watch his father settle into his easy chair. “Can I bring you anything?”

“I’ve eaten lunch, and I’ve had my nap, and I’ve been a lazy s.o.b. all day. Why should you bring me anything?” His father looked at him through rheumy, exhausted eyes. He was still crying at night, still sleeping with his arms wrapped around a pillow. Reuben had seen him in the morning, fast asleep, his face wreathed in empty bliss, his dead wife’s thick feather pillow clutched firmly to him under the scattered blankets.

“Just asking,” Reuben said.

”I’d invite them to meet my mum. My mother.”

But she’s dead.

“You could turn on the tube.”

“What channel?” Reuben asked, kneeling before the television.

“Find me that show where everybody argues about the news. Take my mind away.”

Reuben found the Worldwide News Network and waddled back, still crouched, hands dangling between his knees.

“You know, you don’t have to hang around to keep me happy,” his father said. “I’m working out Bea’s death. I’m getting it straight in my head. I’ll live.”

Reuben smiled over his shoulder. “Where would I go?” he asked. But he knew he’d be leaving soon. There were necessary things to do. He had to carry what was in his coat pocket; he had to find the person that something was for. He had been given memories of a voice, a distinct English accent, but little more.

He leaned back against his father’s knees and listened as the hosts of Freefire squared off against each other, bristling even as they announced their guest. The young liberal’s stiffly formal visage seemed to soften.

“He’s acted as advisor to the President on the Death Valley spaceship, and he’s well known in scientific and journalistic circles. He’s had over forty books published, including his recent prophetic novel, Starhome, a scientific romance about first contact. His name is Trevor Hicks, and he’s a native of Great Britain.”

“Citizen of the world, anymore, actually,” Hicks said.

Reuben stiffened.

Voice.

I’d take them home to meet my mum. My mother.

“That’s him,” he said.

“Who?”

Reuben shook his head. “Where is he?”

“They’re in Washington, like always,” his father said.

“—Mr. Hicks, are we to understand that it was you who first advised President Crockerman to reason with these invaders?” the eager-faced conservative asked.

“Not at all,” Hicks said.

Reuben’s brow furrowed with the intensity of his concentration. That’s the one. He’s Trevor Hicks. His name, his voice.

“Then what did you tell the President?”

“Gentlemen, the President would not have listened to me no matter what I said. He hoped for a sympathetic ear, and I tried to provide that, but I am as adamantly opposed to his policy regarding the spacecraft as I imagine you are, Mr…Mr…”

“What do you recommend we do with the spacecraft? Should we destroy it?”

“I doubt that we could, actually.”

“So you do hold defeatist views—”

Reuben trembled with excitement. Washington, D.C.

He had enough money saved to go there. Big town, though. Where would Trevor Hicks be in Washington, D.C.?

He listened closely, hoping to pick up clues. By the end of the show, he had a fair idea where to begin.

The next morning, at dawn, Reuben stood in the door to his parents’, his father’s, bedroom. His father stared at him from the bed, blinking at the orange hall light behind his son’s silhouette.

“I’ve got to leave now, Pop.”

“So sudden?”

Reuben nodded. “It’s important.”

“Got a job?”

Reuben hesitated, then nodded again.

“You’ll call?”

“Of course I’ll call,” Reuben said.

“You’re my son, your momma’s son, always. You remember that. Make us proud.”

“Yes, sir.” Reuben went to the bed and hugged his father and was surprised again at how light and frail he seemed. Years past, his father had loomed a muscled giant in Reuben’s eyes.

“Good luck,” his father said.

Reuben pulled the overcoat around him and stepped out into the early morning frost, his boots crunching and slipping on the glazed steps. In one deep side pocket, the metal spider lay curled tight as an untried puzzle. In the other jingled two hundred dollars in change and bills.

“Good-bye, Momma,” he whispered at the locked door.

36

The afternoon had been tiring and the early evening showed signs of being even more strenuous. Samshow had already attended the public presentation of two papers in rooms filled half with geologists and half with TV correspondents and camera crews, ever hopeful of finding new revelations. What they got for the most part were technical presentations on resources discovery, migration of metallic ores in deep crust, and discussions of pinpointing Middle Eastern underground nuclear tests.

Samshow had left the last presentation and wandered into the spacious white-tiled men’s rest room of the St. Francis.

He glanced up at his image in the mirror. Two young men in business suits, hair trimmed short, faces shaved so clean they might have been beardless adolescents, took positions at the urinals.

“This oxygen reading bothers the hell out of me,” said one.

“Not just you,” said the other.

“There’s no place for it to come from. Increase by one percent.” He shook his head as he zipped up. “More of that, and we’ll all be drunk.”

He rejoined Kemp and Post and they walked to the elevator, squeezing in beside four bewildered elderly tourists and two middle-aged geologists dressed in jeans and old sweaters. Arthur Gordon had arrived too late on Saturday to attend their first scheduled meeting. He had invited them to come to his room at seven, to talk and perhaps join him for late dinner after.

The hotel room was small. Post and Kemp sat on the bed, leaving the two guest chairs for Samshow and Gordon. Arthur shook Samshow’s hand firmly and offered ice water. As he poured the glass in the bathroom, he asked, “Is there any consensus on this object supposed to be burrowing through the crust?”

He returned and handed Samshow the glass.

“None,” Post said. Samshow agreed with a small nod.

“Maybe there’s no consensus, but nobody doubts that something’s there,” Kemp said.

“Are you convinced your meteor sighting and the seismic traces are connected?” Arthur asked Samshow.

“I suppose I am,” Samshow replied. “The South American traces we predicted did occur.”

“And the object is still making noise.”

“I talked with my company stations in Manila and Adak this morning,” Kemp said. “Still grumbling like an old bear.”

“Are the sounds weakening at all?”

“We think so. Our measurements aren’t so precise we can be sure at the moment.”

Post removed an electronic notepad from his pocket. “That’s probably deceleration because of drag.”

“And the second object…?” Arthur prodded.

Somebody knocked at the door. “That’s Sand, probably,” Samshow said. Post got up to open the door.

Sand came in clutching a thick bunch of computer printouts. “Naval Ocean Systems just came through. I pulled these off the conference printer after setting up a data link.” He spread the sheets out on the table. “There’s half a dozen folks downstairs who can’t wait to look these over, but since Mr. Gordon made the arrangements, I thought he should be the first. I’ve also got more on the oxygen figures, and Coomaraswami in Sri Lanka has distributed a paper on…” He pulled a stack of copies from his briefcase and handed them around the room. “On reduction of mean sea levels.”

“Jesus,” Samshow said. He took a copy and scanned it quickly. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Arthur hefted the printout and pursed his lips. “What about the second object?” he asked again.

“Actually, that’s shown…” Sand stood beside his chair and riffled through the sheets. “Right here. Wave analysis of the microseisms. There are two objects, orbiting around the center of the Earth — within the mantle and the inner and outer cores. They are slowing down at the rate of about one percent a day… and,” Sand said, almost triumphantly, “the supercomputers at UCSD have duplicated the effects using several different models. The best model requires an object less than a few centimeters wide, very long — hundreds of meters long — traveling at between two and three kilometers a second.”

“What in hell would do that?” Samshow asked.

Nobody answered.

“Eventually, because of drag the objects will settle down at the center, right next to each other, right?” Arthur asked.

“Inevitably,” Sand said.

Samshow finished his glass of water and set it on the table. He held a cube of ice in his mouth, bouncing it back and forth from the hollow of one cheek to the other with his tongue. “Would the President understand this, Mr. Gordon?” he asked.

“I don’t understand it,” Arthur replied.

“Two objects,” Samshow said, “orbiting inside the Earth, missing each other, I presume, their harmonic motions being damped until they meet at the center. What does that remind you fellows of?”

Kemp didn’t answer. Sand shrugged. Post’s expression was one of extreme puzzlement, then slow enlightenment. “A fuse,” he said. “It’s like a timer. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“I don’t know what I’m thinking. We’re all running around so fast, we’re bound to fall flat on our butts…But yes, I suppose, a fuse or a bomb comes to mind.”

“A timer powered by gravity,” Post mused. “That’s elegant.”

“So what happens when they meet?” Kemp asked. “You might get one black hole. Nothing more exciting about one black hole, compared with two…”

“If they are black holes. The computer analysis says they can’t be. They’re drawn out now, elongated like worms, and the second one is different,” Sand said. “Look at its traces. High radiation in the atmosphere. It’s making more noise than the first. And remember the sighting — it sparked like a sonofabitch when it came through the air. Walt? How did you describe the first?”

“Two long, bright flares at first. Then small, much less bright.”

Post’s hand worked restlessly with his shirt collar. “Hell, it could be a plain old meteor, too,” Arthur said. “Meteors spark. Would an amateur know the difference?”

“But what about the radiation? Every guess we make, we go out on a limb,” Sand said.

“No kidding,” Post chuckled.

Samshow leaned forward. “But let’s assume the second one was a more spectacular fall. Bigger object?”

“The traces could indicate a slightly bigger object. Or…explosive disturbances along its path?” Sand suggested.

Arthur listened, amused by the creative confusion. “What would release radiation?”

“Small black holes might,” Post said. “But they’d be considerably smaller in cross section than a few centimeters, if they massed in at only a hundred million tons. I don’t think they’d make much of a show at all. And if they’re putting out gamma rays at a high enough level to irradiate sailors dozens of kilometers away…” His face fell. “They’re not going to last very long. Besides, they can’t be black holes, remember?”

“What do you mean, about them not lasting very long?” Samshow asked.

Post made a frustrated face. “They’re not black holes. We can be pretty sure of that. But, all right, black holes put out radiation all the time. When they’re big, they’re colder than the universe around them, but they’re not at absolute zero…Still, the effect is a net intake of energy. But after tens of billions of years, or if they were created small to begin with, they become much hotter, and lose their mass much more rapidly, percentage-wise. When they drop down to about ten thousand tons of mass, they explode all at once — ten thousand tons of pure energy.” He worked quickly on his calculator. “Not enough to cause much damage if they’re deep inside the Earth, actually.”

“But what we have is a hundred million tons,” Sand said. “Or maybe twice that, if we count the second object.”

“I was getting to that,” Post said, holding up a hand. “The worst case is that the black hole, or holes, could suck up mass inside the Earth, grow, and eventually suck up all of the Earth.”

The group looked at each other, wondering how much they were willing to believe, how far out they might be willing to go.

“That wouldn’t make sense if the aliens had any intention of using the Earth’s raw material to make more spaceships,” Post said.

“What about something else, something we know nothing about?” Arthur persisted.

Samshow laughed. “You’re saying we know anything about black holes?”

More silence.

“Maybe it’s trivial,” Samshow finally said. “But I’d like to discuss this oxygen increase and decrease in mean sea level…what are the figures?”

“Oxygen level up one percent, mean sea level decreased by one centimeter. What if they’re related?”

“I’m sure we’ve all been thinking about that,” Arthur said. “Something might be dissociating seawater into hydrogen and oxygen, on a huge scale.”

“So?” Sand prompted. “Where’s the hydrogen?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Samshow said. “Just thought I’d mention it.”

Post’s frown intensified. “Very interesting,” he said.

“Has anybody got any good news?” Arthur asked. “Something to cheer us up before we go to dinner?”

Nobody did.

37

On a rare, dangerous but necessary outing to the town, Edward sat in the cafe, a plate with the remnants of a large hamburger and fries pushed to one side, and looked over the papers sent by his department head in Austin. Chits for release of back pay, amended W-2 forms, suggested teaching schedules for the next semester. A liability waiver from the school’s attorneys, asking that the school be released from whatever slight responsibilityit might have had for their being in Death Valley. The implication was, of course, that signing all these papers — especially the last — would mean his reinstatement and the resumption of his career.

Minelli entered the caf6 and sat down quietly beside him. “You going to sign?”

“I don’t see why not,” Edward said. “You?”

“Sure. Back to normal.” He grinned wanly and lifted a thumb, then looked at the thumb intently. “Hitchhiking back into life. The old school’s acting as if they’re afraid of us.”

The waitress, young and plump and bright-faced, came out of the kitchen with a keypad. “You want to order something?” she asked.

“How’s the meat loaf?” Minelli asked.

The waitress lifted her eyes heavenward. “Not recommended,” she said. “We don’t have any, actually.”

“Nah, nothing for me.”

“Anything else?” she asked Shaw. He declined. She issued a printed bill from the front of the keypad and he handed her his charge card.

“We should cut our book deals soon,” Minelli said.

“There haven’t been any offers,” Edward reminded him.

“They’re…” Minelli seemed to lose his train of thought. “Reslaw thinks we’re just lying too low to get any offers. We should talk to that Air Force attorney, or maybe to Mrs. Morgan’s lawyer.”

“You really want to write a book now?” Edward asked softly. “Go back over all we’ve been through, when nobody really knows what’s going on yet?”

“You mean, why try anything until it’s all over…”

Edward nodded. “We can stay here for another couple of days, spend some time out in the desert—”

“Away from Death Valley.”

“Right. And then get back to Austin and hope the reporters have forgotten about us.”

“Fat chance,” Minelli said.

Reslaw came into the cafe and slid into the seat beside Minelli. He withdrew a folded New York Times from under his arm and spread it in a clear space on the table. The headline read:

“That’s where we should be,” Reslaw said, pointing to the picture of a meeting room in the St. Francis Hotel. “Talking to these people.” There were pictures of Kemp, Sand, and Samshow on the next page.

“What could we tell them?” Edward asked. “What do we know that they don’t?”

Reslaw shrugged. “At least we’d be doing something useful.”

“If they wanted to talk to us, they’d let us know.”

“The President came to talk to us,” Minelli said. “Look what he’s done. We’re a jinx. Did you ever think perhaps the alien put something in all of our minds…?” He made a vague gesture toward his temple, eyes wide. “Something that makes us stupid and weak? Maybe it’s making the President say things he doesn’t mean.”

Edward looked at Reslaw. “Anything in your head?”

“Not that I can feel.”

“It’s not impossible,” Minelli said.

“No,” Edward admitted, “but it’s paranoid as hell, and that’s the last thing we need, more fear.”

Minelli turned the paper around to face him and read the article quietly.

“Stella says there have been more people on the highway, stopping at the motel, the trailer park,” Reslaw said. “Most are going out to the cinder cone.” He bit off an ironic laugh and shook his head. “I remember an old ‘Peanuts’ cartoon with Snoopy. The end of the world is coming, so let’s hide under a sheet. With eyeholes cut out.” He made circles around his eyes with his fingers and peered at Edward.

“Stop it,” Minelli said pleasantly. “You’re acting like me. Only one crazy fellow allowed in this group.”

“What gives you privileges?” Reslaw asked, equally pleasant.

“Weak character. It’s on my resume.” Minelli handed the paper to Edward. “This is really going to send them into a tailspin. They call it the smoking gun, whatever the hell it is. We’ve already been shot in the head, maybe, and we just haven’t died yet.”

“You do have a way with words,” Reslaw said, staring at the palm of one hand. The waitress approached and he ordered a milkshake and a hamburger.

Edward finished the article and stood, dropping his tip on the table. “If everybody’s going to be camping on the desert, there’s no sense our looking for solitude. We should clear out of here and get back to Austin and leave these good people alone.”

“Makes sense to me,” Minelli said.

“What about your book deals?” Reslaw asked.

“Fuck fame and fortune. Who’d have time to spend the money?”

Stella had invited Edward to join her on a horseback ride that afternoon. They loaded four bales of alfalfa into the Morgan Company jeep and drove to a run-down corral a mile outside town. Three horses — a roan, a chestnut quarter horse, and a small, energetic pinto-stood with ears attentive in the middle of a broad pasture.

“I haven’t had time to ride for months,” Stella said, lifting a bale from the back of the Jeep and hefting it to a half-demolished feed pen within the fence. All three horses approached warily, tails swishing. “They’re half wild by now.” She smiled at him, flicking straw from the sleeves of her Pendleton. “Up to a challenge?”

“I’m an amateur. I haven’t ridden in years.”

The horses gathered to snuffle at the alfalfa, then settled in to feed. Stella hugged the pinto’s neck and it regarded her with a wild pale eye, though not resisting her caress. “This is Star. Used to be my horse all the time. When I came back from school, I’d ride her all over the desert, out to the opal beds and down to the Indian digs, across the dry creek beds. We had a good old time, didn’t we?”

Star munched.

“You should ride the chestnut gelding, that’s Midge,” she suggested. “Midge is even-tempered. Get acquainted.”

Edward approached the chestnut and stroked its neck and mane, murmuring “Good horse, nice friendly horse.”

After a few minutes of reacquainting the horses with human company, Stella brought two blankets and saddles from the Jeep, Star accepted the blanket skittishly, Midge with resignation.

“I’ll get on them both first,” Stella said. “Try them out and get them used to riders.” She adjusted the cinch on Star and mounted easily. The pinto backed away from the alfalfa and paced around the feed pen nervously, then stood still and hoofed the soft dirt and old straw in a corner. Stella dismounted and approached Midge. Edward backed away.

She mounted Midge just as gracefully. Midge bucked from the feed and reared, throwing Stella on her back in the dirt. Edward yelled and grabbed the reins and kept his feet clear of the prancing hooves. When he had guided the horse away, he sidled it into a corner and went to help Stella to her feet.

“I’m fine. Just embarrassed.” She brushed her jeans with quick, disgusted strokes.

“Gentle, hm?” Edward asked.

“He’s your horse, obviously.”

“I’ll try to convince him of that.”

A few minutes later, Midge accepted Edward’s weight without protest, and Stella rode the pinto beside them. They rode to the far end of the corral and she dismounted to lift the wire loop on a sun-bleached gate.

Shoshone, like most of the desert resorts in the area, sat on a thermal hot spring that poured hundreds of gallons of water a minute out across the desert, and had done so, without letup, for decades. The runoff formed a creek that meandered under California 127, borax pans covered with grass and scrub, throwing up thick fringes of cattails along its banks.

They rode across the creek and into the dry desert beyond, coming finally to a borax-topped decline. With some prodding, the horses slid down the decline. They rode in shadow through the Death Valley sage of a quiet gully, glancing at each other and smiling but saying nothing.

The gully spread out onto a broad plain and the sage gave way to hummocky yellow salt grass. Part of an old narrow-gauge mining railway ran to their left, rails rusting on a long embankment of cinders and gray dirt. Birds called out in the stillness and a thick rat snake slid its meter length through the scrub.

“All right,” Stella said, reining her horse up short and facing him. “I’m just about cured. How about you?”

Edward nodded. “This sure helps.”

She sidled the pinto closer to him and patted its shoulder. “I’ve lived here all my life, with a few years at school and traveling. Europe. Africa. Peace Corps. My mother and sister and I have done everything we could to keep the town together after my father died. It’s become my life. Sometimes it’s an awful responsibility — you wouldn’t think that, would you, since it’s so small? But it weighs on me. Mother takes it in her stride.”

“She’s a wonder,” Edward said.

Stella leaned her head to one side, looking sadly at the gravel. “You know, I said I was a radical. It was my sister who was the real radical. She went to Cuba. She has a complete set of Lenin and Marx on her bookshelves. She loves Shoshone as much as I do, but she had to leave. We think shers in Angola. Lord, what a place to be now. Me, I’m just a capitalist like all the rest.”

“Hard on your mother, I guess.”

“Who, me or my sister?” Stella smiled.

“I meant your sister. I suppose both of you.”

“What about your family?”

“None to speak of. My father vanished more than twenty years ago, and my mother lives in Austin. We don’t see much of each other.”

“And your connections at the university?”

“I’m not sure I’ll stay there, now.”

“No long-term plans?”

Edward brushed at a buzzing horsefly and watched it veer across the hummocks until it vanished. “I don’t see why.”

“Mother and I have been making plans for selling mineral rights. We’ll redo the town’s sewage line with a government loan, but this extra money — that could keep the town going for years, even if the tourists keep flocking over to Tecopa.”

“The big resort.”

She nodded. “What a disaster for us all. Tecopa used to be a bunch of shacks built over hot springs. Rowdy. Now it’s plush. The desert is like that.”

“It’s beautiful here. Something big could happen to Shoshone.”

“Yes, but would we want it to?” She shook her head dubiously. “I’d like to keep it the way it was when I was a girl, but I know that’s not practical. The way it was when Father was alive. It seemed so permanent then. I could always come back.” She shook her head slowly, looking out across the grass to a lava-covered hill beyond. “What I’m getting around to saying is, we could use a geologist here. In Shoshone. To help us work out the mineral rights and figure out what we have, exactly.”

“That would be nice,” Edward agreed.

“You’ll think it over?”

“Your tourist business should be real good for the next few months,” he said.

Stella made a face. “We’re just getting the freaks now. Religious nuts. All going out to the cinder cone. Who needs them? Everybody else is going to stay at home and wait it out. Do you think it’s all going to go away?”

“I don’t know.” But he did know, in his gut. “That’s not true, actually. I think it’s all over.”

“The things inside the Earth?”

“Maybe. Maybe something we don’t even know about.”

“It makes me so goddamned mad,” Stella said, her voice breaking. “Helpless.”

“Yeah.”

“But I’m going to keep on planning. Maybe the whole deal will fall through. The commodities markets are going crazy. Maybe nobody will want to buy mineral rights now. But we have to keep working.”

“I don’t think I can stay,” he said. “It sounds wonderful, but…”

Her eyes narrowed. “Restless?”

“I don’t think I can really have a home now. Not even here, nice as this is.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’ll travel. Probably break away from Reslaw and Minelli. Go out on my own.”

‘Sometimes I wish I could do that,” she said wistfully. But my roots are too deep here. I’m not enough like my sister. And I have to stay with Mother.”

“There was a place,” Edward said, “where my father took my mother and me before he ran away. My last summer with him, and the best summer I’ve ever had. I haven’t been back since. I didn’t want to be disappointed. I wondered if it would have changed…For the worse.”

“Where was that?”

“Yosemite,” he said.

“It’s beautiful there.”

“You’ve been there recently?”

“Last summer, driving through on the way to the wine country. It was really lovely, even with all the people. Without crowds, it would be wonderful.”

“Maybe I’ll go there. Live on my back salary. I’ve dreamed about it, you know. Those peculiar dreams where I go back and it’s completely different, but still something special. I think to myself, after all those years of just dreaming about being there, I’m finally back. And then I wake up…and it’s a dream.”

Stella reached out to touch his arm. “If…it works out, you can come back here after.”

“Thank you,” Edward said. “That would be nice. My teaching position will certainly be closed by that time. I can’t expect them to wait forever.”

“Let’s strike a deal,” Stella said. “Next summer, you come back here and help Mother and me. After you go to Yosemite, and after the world gets its act together.”

“All right,” Edward said, smiling. He reached out and touched her arm, and then leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek. “It’s a deal.”

Compunews Network, November 29, 1996, Frederick Hart reporting:

Here in the winter desert, only a few miles from Death Valley proper, it gets bitterly cold at night, and thousands of campfires light up the grass and sand around the government-declared National Security Site. In the middle of the site, rising against the clouds of stars like a great black hump, is the so-called Bogey, the imitation extinct volcano that has burrowed into the national imagination as the Kemp objects have burrowed into the Earth’ s core, and into our nightmares. People have come here from around the world, kept back a mile from the site by barbed wire and razor-wire barricades. They seem to have come to worship, or to just sit quietly under the warm desert sun and stare. What does it mean to them, to us? Should they wish to storm the site, will the Army be able to keep them back?

Among their numbers are approximately ten thousand Forge of Godders, with their various prophets and religious guides. The American branch of this cult has arisen in just three weeks, sown in the fertile religious ground of the American South and West by the President’s blunt, uncompromising words. I have spoken with these people, and they share the President’ s convictions. Most are fundamentalist Christians, seeing this as the Apocalypse predicted in the Bible. But many come from other faiths, other religions, around the world. They say they will stay here until the end. As one cultist told me, “This is the center. This is where it’s at. Forget Australia. The End of the World begins right here, in Death Valley.”

38

Lieutenant Colonel Rogers, in mufti of hunter’s cap and bush jacket and denims, hands in jacket pockets, stood at the edge of the Furnace Creek airstrip. A sleek eight-passenger private LearFan Special coasted to a stop twenty yards beyond, its two in-line props swishing the air with a diminishing chop-chop-chop. The plane’s landing lights were extinguished and its side door opened. Two passengers — a man and a woman — stepped down almost immediately, peering around in the darkness, then approached Rogers.

“The President refuses to see any of us,” said the man. Dressed in a recently donned and still disarrayed overcoat, black suit, and a silk shirt, he was very portly, late middle-aged, and completely bald. The woman was slender, in her forties, with large attractive eyes, a narrow jaw, and full lips. She, too, wore an overcoat and beneath that a dark pants suit.

“What does your group plan now?” the woman asked.

Rogers rubbed his jaw reflectively. “My group…hasn’t fixed its plans yet,” he said. “We’re not used to this kind of activity.”

“Congress and the committees are really on Crockerman’s tail. They may bring him down,” the man said. “We still haven’t gotten McClennan and Rotterjack to join us. Loyalists to the last.” The bulky bald man curled his lip. Loyalty beyond pragmatism was not something he understood. “Even so, it may be too late. Have you talked to the task force?”

“We’re going to keep them out of this, as much as possible,” Rogers said. “I talked to Gordon, and he even broached this sort of plan to me, but we don’t know which of them might have supported his decision covertly.”

“Do you have the sleeping bag?” the woman asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Do you know where you’ll get it, if the time comes? Oak Ridge is in my district…”

“We will not get it from civilian sources,” Rogers said.

“What about the codes, the complications, the authorization you’ll need…the chain of command?” the woman persisted.

“That’s on our end. We’ll take care of it. If the time comes.”

“They have the smoking gun, goddammit,” the man said. “We’ve already been shot.”

“Yes, sir. I read the papers.”

“The admiral should know,” the man said, with the air of drawing their conversation to a conclusion,” that our group can do no more in a reasonable period of time. If we do bring the President to ground, it will take months. We can’t stop or delay the swearing in. The recommendation from the House Judiciary Committee will take weeks. The trial could drag on for half a year beyond that. He’s going to hold out for at least that long. That puts the ball in your court.”

Rogers nodded.

“Do you know when you’ll act?” the woman asked.

“We don’t even know if we can, or whether we will if we can. It’s all up in the air.”

“Decisions have to be made soon,” she reiterated. “Everybody’s too upset…this is too extraordinary a conclave for it to stay secret long.”

Rogers agreed. The two returned to their LearFan Special and the plane’s counterrotating props began to spin again, with eerie softness. Rogers returned to his truck and drove away from the airport as the plane whined into the blackness and silence of the overcast night.

Around the bogus cinder cone, for a distance of several hundred yards, soldiers patrolled well-lighted squares of the desert in Jeeps and on foot. Beyond the patrols and the fences, a mile from the object of their interest, the civilians gathered in trucks and vans and motor homes. Even this late, almost into the morning, campfires burned in the middle of wide circles of mesmerized watchers. Raucous laughter in one area was countered by gospel singing in another. Rogers, maneuvering his truck down the fenced approach corridor to the site, wondered if they would ever sleep.

39

Two o’clock in the morning, the phone beside their bed rang, and Arthur came awake immediately, leaning forward to pick up the receiver. It was Ithaca Feinman. She was calling from a hospital in Los Angeles.

“He’s going fast,” she said softly.

“So soon?”

“I know. He says he’s fighting, but…”

“I’ll leave…” He looked at his watch. “This morning. I can be down there by eight or nine, maybe earlier.”

“He says he’s sorry, but he wants you here,” Ithaca said.

“I’m on my way.”

He hung up and wandered into the living room to look for Francine, who said she had not been asleep, but had been sitting on the living room couch with Gauge’s head in her lap, worrying about something, she wasn’t sure what.

“Harry’s going, or at least Ithaca thinks so.”

“Oh, God,” Francine said. “You’re flying down there?”

“Yes.”

She swallowed hard. “Go see him. Say…Say goodbye for me if he’s really…Oh, Arthur.” Her voice was a trembling whisper. “This is an awful time, isn’t it?”

He was nearly in tears. “We’ll make it through,” he said.

As Francine folded some shirts and pants for him, he slipped his toiletries into a suitcase and called the airport to book a flight for six-thirty. For a few seconds, dithering in the yellow light of the bedside lamp, he tried to gather his wits, remember if he had left anything behind, if there was anybody else he should notify.

Francine drove him to the airport. “Come back soon,” she said, then, realizing the double implication, she shook her head. “Our love to Ithaca and Harry. I’ll miss you.”

They hugged, and she drove off to get Marty ready for school.

At this hour, the airport was almost deserted. Arthur sat in the sterile black and gray waiting area near his gate, reading a discarded newspaper. He glanced at his watch, and then looked up to see a thin, nervous-looking woman, hardly more than a girl, standing a few feet away, staring at him. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said.

“Beg pardon?”

“I followed you from your house. You’re Arthur Gordon, aren’t you?”

Arthur narrowed his eyes, puzzled. He didn’t answer.

“I know you are. I’ve been watching your house. I know that sounds terrible, but I have. There’s something I have to give you. It’s very important.” She opened the shopping bag and took out a cardboard box large enough to hold a baseball. “Please don’t be alarmed. It’s not a bomb or anything. I showed it to the airport security people. They think it’s a toy, a Japanese toy for my cousin. But it’s for you.” She held out the box.

Arthur looked her over carefully, then said,

“Open it for me, please.” He seemed to be operating on some automatic program, cautious and calm at once. He hadn’t given much thought to assassination attempts before, but he could be a likely target for Forge of Godders or anybody tipped over the edge by the news of the last few weeks.

“All right.” She opened the box and removed an ovoid object, steel or silver, brightly polished. She held it out to him. “Please. It’s important.”

With some reluctance — it did resemble a toy more than anything sinister — he took the object. Quickly, it unfolded its legs, gripped his palm, and before he could react, nipped him on the fleshy part of the thumb. He stood up and tried to fling it away, swearing, but it would not let go. Warmth spread quickly up his arm and he sat down again, face pale, lips drawn back. The young woman retreated, shaking her head and crying. “It’s important,” she said. “It really is.”

“All right,” Arthur said, more calm on the exterior than deep in his mind. The spider crawled into his suit coat, cut through the fabric of his shirt, and nipped him again on the abdomen.

The woman walked off quickly. He paid her little attention.

By boarding time, he was beginning to receive information, slowly at first. On the aircraft, as he pretended to nap, the information became more detailed, and his fear subsided.

40

Hicks had stayed in Washington, hoping with a kind of desperate hope that there was still something he could do. The White House did not summon him. Beyond the occasional television interviews, fewer and fewer since the fiasco on Freefire, he was woefully unoccupied. His book had sold in a fresh spurt the past few weeks, but he had refused to discuss it with anybody. His publishers had given up on him.

He took long, cold walks in the snow, ranging a mile or more from the hotel in the gray midafternoons. The government was still paying his expenses; he was still ostensibly part of the task force, although nobody on the task force had talked with him since the President’s speech. Even after the extensive reports of explosions in the asteroids, he had been approached only by the press.

When he was not out walking, he sat in his room, dressed in an oatmeal-colored suit, his overcoat and rubbers laid out on the bed and the floor, staring at his image in the mirror above the desk. His eye tracked down slowly to the computer on the desktop, then to the blank television screen. He had never felt so useless, so between, in his life.

The phone rang, He stood and picked up the receiver. “Hello.”

“Is this Mr. Trevor Hicks?” a young male voice asked.

“Yes.”

“My name is Reuben Bordes. You don’t know me, but I’ve got a reason to see you.”

“Why? Who are you, Mr. Bordes?”

“I’m just a kid, actually, but my reason is good. I mean, I’m not dumb or crazy. I’m in the bus station right now.” The youth chuckled. “I went to a lot of trouble to find you. I went to the library and learned your publisher, and I called them, but they couldn’t give your address…you know.”

“Yes.”

“So I called them back a couple of days later, I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and said I was with the local television station, and we wanted to interview you. They wouldn’t give me your address even then. So I figured you might be staying in hotels, and I started calling hotels. I’ve been doing that all day. I think I got lucky.”

“Why do you need to talk to me?”

“I’m not a nut, Mr. Hicks. But I’ve had some odd things happen to me in the last week. I’ve got some information. I know somebody…well, who wants to get in touch with you,”

The lines in Hicks’s face deepened. “I don’t think it’s worth the bother, do you?” He started to put the phone down.

“Mr. Hicks, wait. Please listen and don’t hang up just yet. This is important. I’d have to come out to the hotel and find you if you hung up.”

Oh, Christ, Hicks thought.

“I’m being told something now, something important.” The youth didn’t speak for a few seconds. “All right. I got it now. The asteroids. There’s a battle, there was a battle going on out there. There’s this place called Europa, it’s a moon but not our own, isn’t it? That wasn’t a battle. We have friends coming. They needed the…what was it, water under the ice in Europa? For power. And the rock way under the water and ice. To make more…things. Not like the machines in Australia and Death Valley. Do you understand?”

“No,” Hicks said. A spark went off in his head. Something intuited. The boy’s accent was urban, middle-western bland. His voice was resonant and he sounded convinced and rational, words crisp. “You could be a complete nut, whoever you are,” Hicks said.

“You said you’d take them home to meet your mom. Your mother. They heard you out around Europa. When they were building. Now they’re here. I found one dissecting a mouse, Mr. Hicks. Learning all about it. I think they want to help, but I’m very confused. They haven’t hurt me.”

Hicks remembered: he had made that statement in California, on a local radio show. It would have been very difficult for a midwestern teenager to have heard it.

There was something earnest and truly awed and frightened in the young man’s voice. Hicks glanced at the ceiling, licking his lips, realizing he had already made his decision.

He had always been something of a romantic. To stay in journalism so long, one had to secretly believe in events full of drama and significance, key moments, points of turnaround in history. He was beginning to shake with excitement. Instincts conflicting — reporter’s instincts, survival instincts.

“Can you come out to the hotel?” he asked.

“Yeah, I can take a cab.”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby. I’d rather be careful, you know. I’ll be in the middle of lots of people.” He hoped the lobby was crowded. “How will I know you?”

“I’m tall, like a basketball player. I’m black. I’ll be in an old green army coat.”

“All right,” Hicks said. “In an hour?”

“I’ll be there.”

KNBC man-in-the-street interview, December 15, 1996, conducted at the gate to the Universal Studios tour “Earthbase 2500” attraction: Anchor: We’re asking people what they think about the President’s proclamation. Middle-aged Man (Laughs): I don’t know…I can’t make heads or tails, can you? (Cut away)

Anchor: Excuse me, we’re asking people what they think about the President’s statement that the Earth is going to be destroyed.

Young Woman: He’s crazy, and they should get him out of office. There aren’t any such things as what he’ s talking about.

Anchor: Standing here, in the shadow of a giant invading spacecraft, its weapons aimed at the crowd, how can you be so sure?

Young Woman: Because I’m educated, dammit. He’s crazy and he shouldn’t be in office.

Anchor (Moving on to an adolescent boy): Excuse me. What do you think of the President’ s statement that aliens have landed and are intent on destroying the Earth?

Adolescent Boy: It scares me.

Anchor: Is that all?

Adolescent Boy: Isn’t that enough?

41

What Arthur saw, in the bed, was already a ghost: thin wrinkled arms pale on the counterpane, face blotched, pale translucent green oxygen tube going to his nose, drugs seeping into his arm controlled by a small blue box with a flat-screen readout.

His oldest and dearest friend had become ancient, shrunken. Even Harry’s eyes were dull, and the grip of his hot hand was weak.

A curtain had been stretched between Harry’s bed and the room’s other occupant, a heart patient who slept all during Arthur’s visit.

Ithaca sat in a chair at Harry’s right, face tightly controlled but eyes rimmed in sleepless red, hair drawn into a bun. She wore a white blouse and skirt with a reddish-brown sweater. She would never wear black, Arthur knew; not even to Harry’s funeral.

“Glad you could come,” Harry said hoarsely, his voice barely a whisper.

“I didn’t think it would be so soon,” Arthur said.

“Magic bullets missed their target.” He gave a tiny shrug of his shoulders. “Status report: I’d cash in, but who stole my bag of chips?”

Simply talking tired Harry now. He closed his eyes and let go of Arthur’s hand, withdrawing his slowly until it dropped to the sheet. “Tell me what’s going on in the real world. Any hope?”

Arthur spoke of the conference and the objects within the Earth.

Harry listened intently. “Ithaca reads from the newspapers…I’ve been watching TV,” he said when Arthur finished. “I finished my essay…about two days ago. Dictating. It’s on tape.” He pointed to a portable recorder on the nightstand. “Good thing, too. I can’t concentrate now. Too many…ups and downs. Sons of bitches. Can no more will them away…than I can make myself healthy, huh?”

“I guess not,” Arthur said.

“All the king’s men.” He drummed his fingers softly on the bed. “Anybody willing…to kill Captain Cook?”

Arthur smiled, his cheek twitching.

“Hope. Let’s hope.” Harry rolled his head to one side, facing a framed poster of sequoias to the left of the window. “The essay is for you alone. I don’t want it published. It’s not my best work. Use it…as you see fit.” He closed his eyes. “Sometimes I don’t know whether I’m dreaming or not. I wish I was dreaming now.”

Arthur turned to Ithaca. “Harry and I have to speak alone for just a few minutes.”

“All right,” Ithaca said, with barely concealed resentment. She stood up and went into the corridor.

“Something juicy?” Harry asked, opening his eyes again.

“Do you remember when we were eleven, and I played that trick on you?”

“Which one?” Harry asked.

“I said I had been inhabited by a spaceman. That my body was being used to help investigate the Earth.”

“Jesus,” Harry said, shaking his head, smiling. “I’d forgotten about that one. You really took it to extremes.”

“I was a kid. Life was dull.”

“You spent three weeks acting like an alien whenever you were around me. Asking all sorts of weird questions, telling me about life on your planet.”

“I never apologized for pulling that on you.”

Harry held up one hand.

“You told me you had prayed to God to tell you whether I was a spaceman or not, and God had said—”

“God had told me you were a fraud.” Harry’s face seemed almost healthy now, with the memories coming back. “I was a pretty rampant little theologian then. So you ducked out.”

Arthur nodded. “I said I’d be going away, and never coming back — the alien inside me, rather. And it did.”

“You refused to acknowledge you had ever acted like an alien. Total memory blank. What a scam.”

“Our friendship survived. That surprised me a little, years later, thinking about it…”

“I wouldn’t have believed you if I hadn’t wanted to. As you say, life was dull.”

Arthur looked down at Harry’s shriveled arms. “It wasn’t right. I deeply regretted it. It might be the only thing between us I do regret…”

“Besides stealing Alma Henderson from me.”

“That was a favor. No. I mean it. I especially regret doing that to you now, because…I’m about to do it again.”

Harry’s grin took an edge of puzzlement. Arthur’s expression was deadly serious, but enthused; his arms fairly twitched with holding something in, and he reached up to pinch his cheek, as he always did when thinking.

“All right,” Harry said.

That brought the tears to Arthur’s eyes. The way Harry accepted whatever was coming from him, without hesitation, forthrightly. You could be married a million years and such instant rapport would be impossible. Arthur loved Harry fiercely then. The tears slid down his cheek and he took a deep breath, then leaned over and whispered in his friend’s ear.

“Christ,” Harry said when he had finished. He stared earnestly at Arthur. One finger slowly tapped the blanket. “Now I know I’m dreaming.” He blinked at the cloud-filtered sunshine coming through the window curtains. “You wouldn’t…” Abandoning that question, he said, “When did this happen to you?”

“This morning.”

Harry looked at the curtain. “Ithaca. She can tell me. I’ve been confused. She left…”

Arthur took the metal spider from his pocket and held it before Harry’s face, resting it in his palm. It moved its legs in a slow, restless dance. Harry’s eyes widened and he made an effort to back up against the pillows. “Christ,” he repeated. “What is it? What is it doing here?”

“It’s a miniature von Neumann probe,” Arthur said. “It explores, recruits. Does research. Gathers samples. It makes copies of itself.” He returned the spider to his pocket. “Captain Cook has his own enemies,” he said.

“So what are you, a slave?”

Arthur didn’t respond for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Who else…?”

Arthur shook his head. “There are others.”

“What if it’s another…layer of deception?” Harry asked, closing his eyes again.

“I don’t think it is.”

“You’re saying there’s hope.”

Arthur’s expression changed to puzzlement. “That’s not the word I’d use. But there’s a new factor, yes.”

“And this is all you know.”

“All I know,” Arthur said. He touched Harry’s arm. They sat quietly for a few moments, Harry thinking this over. The effort tired him.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve known you long enough. You told me so I could die with some good news, maybe, right?”

Arthur nodded.

“They let you tell me.”

“Yes.”

Harry closed his eyes. “I love you, old buddy,” he said. “You’ve always managed to come up with the craziest things to keep me amused.”

“I love you, too, Harry.” Arthur stepped outside the room to call Ithaca in. She resumed her seat, saying nothing.

“I think you must…have a lot of work to do,” Harry said. “I can’t think straight and…I’m too tired to talk much now.” He waved his finger: time to go.

“Thanks for coming by,” Ithaca said, handing him the tape from the small recorder. Arthur hugged her tightly, then bent over the bed and took Harry’s head gently between his hands.

Thirty years. I can still recognize him behind the mask of sickness. He’s still my beloved Harry.

Arthur squinted, trying to hold back the flooding warmth in his eyes, trying to will another world where his friend would not be dying — ignoring for the moment the Earth’s own illness, ignoring the general for the particular, a more human scale of magic — and knowing he would fail; Also trying to memorize something already passing: the shape of Harry’s face, the set of his eyes, slightly athwart one another, even more elfin in his illness, though glazed; unable to imagine this fevered face with rounded nose and high forehead and strawlike patchy hair, even this ill frame, decaying in a grave.

“I’ll carry you around with me wherever I go,” he said, and kissed Harry on the forehead. Harry reached up slowly and hooked his hand around Arthur’s wrist, touching his heated lips to Arthur’s right palm.

“Same here.”

Arthur left the room quickly, eyes forward. In the parking lot, he sat behind the wheel of the rental car, stunned, his head seeming stuffed with sharp twigs.

“Thank you for letting me do that, I’d like to go back to my family, if there’s time.”

As the sun rose high over Los Angeles, nothing constrained him from returning to the airport and taking the next available flight back to Oregon.

42

Hicks leaned against a massive marble-covered pillar, watching dozens of people enter and leave the hotel lobby. Most were dressed in business suits and overcoats; the weather outside was brisk and there had been cold rain just an hour before. Many others, however, seemed ill equipped for the weather; they were out-of-towners, gawkers.

Much of official Washington had seemed to come to a standstill. With the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the White House in open conflict now, such petty considerations as budgets had to wait. The tourist trade, oddly, had momentarily increased, and hotels through much of the city were jammed. Come see your Capital in an uproar.

After an hour, he still had not spotted Bordes, so he checked for messages at the desk. There were none. Feeling more isolated than ever, his stomach sour and his neck tense, he returned to the pillar.

It was remarkable how life went on without apparent change. By now, most of the people on Earth were aware the planet might be under sentence of death. Many had neither the education nor the mental capacity to understand the details, or judge for themselves; they relied on experts, who knew so very little more than they. Yet even for those with more education and imagination, life went on — conducting business (he imagined the events being discussed over expense-account lunches), politics almost as usual (House investigations notwithstanding), and then back at the end of the day to family and home. Eating. Visits to the bathroom. Sleeping. Lovemaking. Giving birth. The whole cyclic round.

A tall, gangly black youth in a green army overcoat passed through the rotating front door, paused, then walked ahead, looking right and left suspiciously. Hicks clung to the security of not moving, not making himself conspicuous, but the boy’s head turned his way and their eyes met and held. Bordes raised one hand tentatively in greeting and Hicks nodded, pushing away from the pillar with his shoulder.

The youth approached him quickly, coat swishing around his ankles. An embarrassed grin crossed his face. He stopped two yards from Hicks and offered his hand, but Hicks shook his head angrily, refusing to touch him.

“What do you want from me?” he asked the boy.

Reuben tried to ignore Hicks’s discomfiture, “I’m pleased to meet you. You’re an author, and all, and I read…Well, forget that. I have to say some things to you, and then get back to work.” He shook his head ruefully. “They’re going to work all of us pretty hard. There’s not much time.”

“All of who?”

“I’d feel better talking where nobody will pay attention,” Reuben said, staring steadily at Hicks. “Please.”

“The coffee shop?”

“Fine. I’m hungry, too. Can I buy you lunch? I don’t have a lot of money, but I can get something cheap for both of us.”

Hicks shook his head. “If you convince me you’re on to something,” he said, “I’ll spot you lunch.”

Reuben led the way to the hotel cafeteria, emptying now as the lunch hour ended. They were led to a corner booth, and this seemed to satisfy the boy’s need for privacy.

“First,” Hicks said, “I have to ask: Are you armed?”

Reuben smiled and shook his head. “I had to come here as soon as I could, and I’m almost broke now as it is.”

“Have you ever been in a mental institution, or…associated with religious cults, flying-saucer cults?”

Again, no.

“Are you a Forge of Godder?”

“No.”

“Then tell me what you have to say.”

Reuben’s eyes crinkled and he leaned his head to one side, his mouth working, “I’m being given instructions by, I think they’re little machines. They were dropped all over the Earth a month ago. You know, like an invasion, but not to invade.”

Hicks rubbed his temple with a knuckle. “Go on. I’m listening.”

“They’re not the same…whatever you’d call the things that are going to destroy the Earth. It’s hard to put in words all the pictures they show me. They don’t show me everything, anyway. They asked me to just come to you and give you something, but I didn’t think that was fair. The way they came on to me wasn’t fair. I didn’t have any choice. So they say, in my head” — he pointed to his forehead with a long, powerful forefinger — “they say, all right, try it your way.”

“How do they oppose these enemies?”

“They seek them out wherever they go. They spread out between the … stars, I guess. Ships with nothing alive, not like you and me, inside them. Robots. They visit all the planets they can, around stars, and…They learn about these things that eat planets. And whenever they can, they destroy them.” Reuben’s face was dreamy now, his eyes focused on the water glass before him.

“So why haven’t they come forward sooner? It may be too late.”

“Right,” Reuben said, glancing up at Hicks. “That’s what they tell me. It’s too late to save the Earth. Almost everybody and everything is going to die.”

Despite his skepticism, these words hit Hicks hard, slowing his blood, making his shoulders slump.

“It’s awful. They came too late. They had to stop off at this moon, this place with water and ice — Europa. They converted it into hundreds of thousands, millions, of themselves, of ships to spread out. They use hydrogen in the water for energy. Fusion.

“It’s not just the Earth that’s being eaten. The asteroids, too. And really, there was more danger, I guess, of these planet-eaters getting away from the asteroids. Easier to move away from the sun. Something…Damn, I wish I knew more about what they’re showing me. They fought them in the asteroids. Now they can focus on Earth…The trouble is, they can’t explain all of it to me in words I understand! Why they chose me, I don’t know.”

“Go on.”

“They can’t save the Earth, but they can save some of it. Important animals and plants, germs, some people…They tell me maybe one or two thousand. Maybe more, depending on the odds.”

The waitress took their order, and Hicks leaned forward. “How?”

“Ships. Arks, like Noah’s,” Reuben said. “They’re being made right now, I guess.”

“All right. So far, so good,” Hicks said. Damn…he’s actually convincing me! “How do they speak to you?”

“I’m going to put my hand in my pocket and show you something,” Reuben said. “It’s not a gun. Don’t be afraid. Is that okay?”

Hicks hesitated, then nodded.

Reuben drew out the spider and put it on the table. It unfolded its legs and stood with the glowing green line on its “face” pointed at Hicks. “People are meeting up with these things all over, I guess,” Reuben said. “One of them got me. Scared the shit out of me, too. But now I can’t say I’m doing anything against my will. I almost feel like a hero.”

“What is it?” Hicks asked softly.

“No name,” Reuben said. He picked it up and secured it in his pocket again as the waitress approached. She laid their food on the table. Hicks paid no attention to his baked fish. Reuben brought the spider out again and laid it down between them. “Don’t touch it unless you agree, you know, to be part of all this. It sort of stings you, to talk.” The boy bit into his hamburger voraciously.

Stings? Hicks pulled back a scant inch farther from the table. “You’re from Ohio?” he finally managed to ask.

“Mm.” Reuben rocked his head back and forth in satisfaction. “God, it’s good to eat again. I haven’t eaten in two days.”

“They’re in Ohio?”

“They’re all over. Recruiting.”

“And now they want to recruit me. Why? Because…they heard me on the radio?”

“You’d have to talk to it, them,” Reuben said. “Like I said, they don’t tell me everything.”

The spider did not move. Doesn’t look like a toy. It’s so perfect, a jeweler’s fantasy.

“Why are they doing this?”

The boy shook his head, mouth full.

“Let me…well, at the risk of putting words into your mouth, let me see if I understand what you’re saying. There are two different kinds of machines in our solar system. Correct?”

Reuben nodded, mouth full again.

“One type wants to convert planets into more machines. We’ve been told that much. Now there’s an opposing type that is designed to destroy these machines?”

“Exactly,” Reuben said after swallowing. “Boy, they were right to pick you.”

“So we’re dealing with von Neumann probes, and probe killers.” He pointed to the spider. “How can these pretty toys destroy planet-eating machines?”

“They’re just a small part of the action,” Reuben said.

Hicks picked up his fork and flaked away a bite of fish. “Incredible,” he said.

“You got it. At least you’re learning about it the slow and easy way. Me, this thing nearly blew my mind.”

“What else do you know?”

“Well, I see things, pretty clear sometimes, really muddy sometimes. Some things have already happened, like the arrival of the machines that want to save us. They destroyed Jupiter’s moon, to, like, make more of themselves, and for energy. But the cavalry arrived a little late — just after the Indians occupied the fort.” He shrugged his shoulders. “After the bogeys came down on Earth. I suppose it’s stupid to make jokes, but it’s all crazy in my head, and I don’t want it to make me crazy. Some things I see haven’t happened yet, like, I see the Earth being blown into little rocks, more asteroids. And then these spaceships mining the rocks, eating them, making more machines.”

“What do the machines look like?”

“That’s not too clear,” Reuben said.

“How is the Earth going to be destroyed?”

Reuben paused and lifted a finger. “At least two ways. This is pretty clear, actually. I hope I can find the right words. There are things, bombs, whizzing around inside the Earth. I think we know about these, right?”

“Maybe,” Hicks said.

“And there are machines crawling deep in the ocean. Are there ditches in the ocean?”

“Trenches?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Crawling along ocean trenches. They turn water into gases, hydrogen and oxygen, I think…H2O. The oxygen bubbles off. These machines put the hydrogen into more H-bombs. And then they lay these bombs along the trenches, thousands of them. All over the Earth. I think they make the bombs go off all at once.”

Hicks stared at the boy. “I’d like to have you talk to some other people,” Hicks said.

The boy looked uneasy. “All I’m supposed to do is give you this.” He pointed to the spider. “Am I making sense so far?”

Hicks stared at the silvery machine. “You’re scaring the hell out of me.”

“Is that good?”

“You’ve earned your lunch. If I make a phone call, will you be here when I come back?”

“Order me another hamburger, I’ll stay here all day.”

“You’ve got it,” Hicks said. He flagged down the waitress. Again, Reuben pocketed the spider.

Outside the cafeteria, near the entrance to the men’s rest room, Hicks found a phone booth. He had inserted his card into the slot and picked up the mouthpiece when he realized he hadn’t the slightest idea whom to call. He had some vague notion to talk to Harry Feinman or Arthur Gordon, but he didn’t know where they were, and it would probably take hours to track them down. Besides, Feinman was reputed to be very ill, perhaps dying. The task force had been scattered to the four winds after the President’s speech.

Dithering, he replaced the mouthpiece and stared at a potted palm, biting the corner of a fingernail. I am excited, and I am absolutely terrified. He lifted one eyebrow and glanced across the lobby. Hidden dramas.

He could take the boy’s spider and open himself — make himself vulnerable — to whatever the boy was experiencing. But he wasn’t at all clear on what that meant. Would he give up his free will, become an agent of whoever controlled the spiders? Perhaps the spiders controlled themselves — more examples of machine intelligence.

There was no way of knowing whether or not they were controlled by the machines threatening the Earth. Another layer of deception.

Hicks sought the safety of the men’s room and locked himself in a stall. Even after he had urinated, he stood behind the door, trying to control his shivers. Why a spider? Not the most reassuring shape to choose.

A battle in the asteroids. But perhaps it’s not a battle at all; just part of the demolition and making of more planet-killer probes.

He closed his eyes and saw a shower of huge starships radiating outward, leaving behind the rubble of a ruined solar system. Would even the sun become part of this interstellar disease?

He fumbled at the stall latch and stepped out, brushing past a well-dressed, elderly gentleman with a cane. “Windy day out,” the gentleman said, nodding and half turning to track Hicks with his gentle eyes.

“Yes indeed,” Hicks returned, pausing at the door, glancing back.

The gentleman nodded at him again, and their gazes held. God. Is he one? Possessed by a spider?

The old man smiled and proceeded into the stall Hicks had vacated.

Hicks returned to the cafeteria and resumed his seat in the booth. “How many people have been recruited, so far?”

Reuben had eaten nearly all of his second hamburger. “They haven’t told me,” he said.

Hicks clasped his hands in front of him. “Do you feel that you’ve been possessed?”

Reuben squinted. “I honestly don’t know. If they’re not lying to me, they’re helping all of us, and I’d rather be doing this than something else. Wouldn’t you?”

Hicks swallowed hard. “Do you still have free will?”

“Enough to argue. It takes my advice, sometimes. Sometimes, it doesn’t listen, and then it moves me around, so I suppose then I don’t have control. But it seems to know what it’s doing, and as it says, there isn’t time enough to explain to everybody.”

“You are extraordinarily persuasive,” Hicks said.

“Thank you. And thanks again for the food.” Reuben dabbled a french fry through a smear of catsup and lifted it in salute before biting into it.

“Where’s the spider?”

“Back in my pocket.”

“Can I take it with me, make up my mind later, after I’ve talked to people?”

“No, man, you touch that spider, it’s going to…you know. Have you. I’m obliged to tell you that much.”

“I can’t really agree under those circumstances,” Hicks said. Fear and caution win out.

Reuben stared at him, disappointed. “It really needs you.”

Hicks shook his head, adamant. “Tell them, it, that I cannot be coerced.”

“Looks like I made a mistake, then,” Reuben said.

Something brushed Hicks’s hand where it lay on the seat’s vinyl. He had hardly turned his head to glance down when he felt a slight prick. With a scream, he leaped up out of the booth, banging one knee on the underside of the table. He fell over on the carpet and a tumbler of water spilled on his legs and feet. Pain shot up his leg and he held his knee with both hands, grimacing.

Three other patrons and two waitresses gathered around him as his vision cleared. Sharp warmth moved rapidly up his arm, into his neck, his face, his scalp. The pain subsided. He pulled his lips back and shook his head: so stupid.

“Are you all right?” a man asked, bending over him.

“I’m fine,” Hicks said. He searched rapidly for an explanation. “Bit my tongue. Very painful. I’m fine.”

He got up on an elbow and examined his hand. There was a tiny red spot on his thumb. It stung me.

Reuben was not in the booth. The man helped Hicks to his feet and he brushed himself off, thanking the others and apologizing profusely for creating a fuss. His hand touched an egg-sized lump in his coat pocket. “There was a young man with me. Did you see where he went?” He glanced nervously at the floor and the booth seat, looking for the spider. But it’s in my pocket, he reminded himself.

“There’s somebody leaving now,” a waitress said. She pointed.

In the archway to the cafeteria, Reuben glanced over his shoulder at Hicks and smiled.

The boy walked briskly into the lobby, turned, and vanished. There was no need to follow him, so Hicks picked up the check and paid the waitress. He was shaking all over and wanted to cry, but didn’t know whether it was British reserve or the instructions flowing through him that helped him maintain.

Doesn’t feel bad, actually. Of course, I’m not in control…

He returned to his room, lay back in the bed, and closed his eyes. His shaking subsided and his breathing became steady. He rolled over on his side. The spider climbed out of his pocket and attached itself to the base of his neck.

What Reuben had tried to explain, then, unfolded before him in much more detail. An hour later, he wondered why he had even thought of resisting.

Sometime in the evening, the spider released his neck and crawled across the bed, dropping to the floor. He watched with less than half his attention; information was still flowing into him, and while some of it was incomprehensible, within a few minutes the flow would change, and he could understand more.

The spider climbed the television stand and quickly, with surprisingly little noise, drilled into the base. For an hour, sounds of cutting, stray beams of light, and puffs of smoke and dust issued from the television. All was quiet and still for another hour. Then two spiders dropped through the hole. Both crawled into Hicks’s pocket.

“Bloody hell,” Hicks said.

The Andrew Kearney Show (Syndicated Home Info Systems Net), December 19, 1996; guest appearance by science fiction writer Lawrence Van Cott:

Kearney: Mr. Van Cott, you’ve written sixty-one novels and seven works of nonfiction, or rather, it says here, speculative nonfiction. What is that?

Van Cott: Science fiction without characters. Non-fact articles.

Kearney: We’ve been hearing for the last couple of months about the means by which the President’s aliens will destroy the Earth. We’ve heard about things falling from the sky near the Philippines and in the Atlantic, passing into the Earth’s interior. Two such objects have been sighted so far. Last night I interviewed Jeremy Kemp himself. He says that we have evidence the objects are causing a ruckus inside the Earth, below the crust. Van Cott: From what I’ve heard, you should be interviewing Walter Samshow and David Sand. They saw one of the objects first. Kearney: They’re not available, apparently. (Van Cott shrugs)

Kearney (Leaning forward): What could these objects be? You’re a science fiction writer; perhaps you can speculate in ways scientists won’t, or can’t.

Van Cott: It’s a serious subject. I don’t think speculation is what we need right now. I’d prefer to wait and see what the experts think.

Kearney: Yes, but you have degrees in physics, mathematics… (Glances at his notes) I’d say you’re as much an expert as anyone, if we assume you’ve kept up on the reports. Have you?

Van Cott: I’ve read or listened to all that’s been made public.

Kearney: Out of professional interest? Van Cott: I’m always interested when reality catches up with me.

Kearney: Surely you have some theories. Van Cott (Silent for a moment, tamps his pipe with his finger, looks up at the overhead lights): All right. (Leans back, holding out the bowl of his pipe) If these objects are as heavy as we think, they should be very big. But when they hit the ocean, they didn’t make much of a splash. So they can’t be both heavy… (Clasps his hands together around the bowl of the pipe and shakes them, then withdraws them to arm’s length) and big. Heavy and small, that’ s something else. Not much energy transfer to the ocean or the sea bottom. Not much of an impact area. So we can draw some logical deductions. One, each object is very dense. Say they’re made of neutronium. That fits the bill. We may not need black holes. Neutronium is matter squeezed down to push electrons and protons together to make neutrons. Nothing but neutrons. Never mind where the aliens would get this neutronium. Don’t ask me. I don’t know for sure. I also don’t know how they keep a lump of neutronium squeezed together. The second one throws off a lot of sparks and causes radiation poisoning. Some people say the second one is making most of the noise, inside. (Pokes the pipe down at the floor) That speaks to me. That tells me something. Two objects, let’s assume one is neutronium, then the other might be made of antineutrons, antineutronium. Kearney: Neutrons are neutral particles, as I understand it. How can there be antineutrons if they’re neutral? (Music rises)

Van Cott (Sighing): That takes a while to explain. Why not break for a commercial, and then I’ll tell you. (Break)

Van Cott: Neutrons are electrically neutral, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have anti-particles. When two antiparticles meet, they annihilate each other completely. So now we have two objects, falling through the Earth. Neutronium is very dense compared with rock. The objects — let’s call them bullets — would orbit within the Earth, passing through the core as if it were very thin air. They would be very cold — neutronium, being dense, would absorb lots of heat. They would not slow much at all during each orbit.

The antineutronium bullet would interact with the Earth’s matter and create what’s called an ambiplasma, which would prevent the antineutronium from blowing up all at once. This bullet would slow down much more rapidly. So finally it comes to rest at the center of the Earth, spitting and sparking, making lots of noise. When the other bullet slows down enough to also come to rest, the two meet…and I’m not sure what would happen after that.

Kearney: Maybe this anti- or whatever-plasma would keep them separated. Van Cott (Nodding): Smart thinking. Maybe, and then again — maybe not. Maybe the pressure at the Earth’s core would hold them together long enough for them to fuse. Kearney: What would happen then? Van Cott: Complete or almost complete annihilation of a hundred or two hundred million tons of matter. (Holds his hands clenched in a double fist, spreads his fingers, and moves the hands slowly apart) Think of it as a kind of time-delay bomb with a fuse controlled by gravity.

Kearney (Considerably sobered): That…Mr. Van Cott, that is a very disturbing thought. Have you spoken about this to anybody else?

Van Cott: No, and I’ll probably be sorry I mentioned it here. It’s my private speculation. I don’t suppose it’s private anymore.

43

Walt Samshow and David Sand had been aboard the Glomar Discoverer for only an hour when they received an urgent phone call from Jeremy Kemp. Otto Lehrman, the Secretary of Defense, had released pictures from three Navy Kingfisher subtracker satellites just that morning. Why the pictures had been released was not explained; Kemp surmised it was part of a power struggle in Washington between the President and his decimated Cabinet and the military. Sand quickly hooked up a computer slate to the phone and Kemp transmitted the photos from California. There were more than a hundred.

An hour later, Samshow scrolled through the pictures on the slate screen while Sand asked Kemp about the details.

All of the pictures were of deep-ocean regions, taken from low-Earth-orbit submarine-tracking satellites. The satellites were equipped with laser spectrometers to detect oil and other detritus from submarine operations and ocean weapons testing.

The first fifteen pictures tracked the atmosphere and ocean surface above the deep trenches from south of the Philippines to the Kamchatka Peninsula, at approximately five-hundred-kilometer intervals, with little magnification. All were in false color to show concentrations of free oxygen in the near-ocean atmosphere. Within each picture were dozens of red dots against the general blue and green background.

The next group of ten showed waters off the western coast of Central America, with similar dots. In groups of two or three pictures, the ocean surfaces above all the world’s deep trenches were shown to be regions of high free-oxygen concentration. Several unenhanced color photographs of very high magnification focused on an area three hundred kilometers east of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. They showed several square kilometers of ocean turned white with what appeared to be froth or spume. Then Samshow reminded himself of the scale: each tiny bubbling speck would have to be tens of meters across.

Here was the source of the atmosphere’s increase in oxygen. No natural phenomenon could be blamed for such a display.

“So much for that,” Kemp said. “Did you catch the Andrew Kearney Show last night?”

“No,” Sand said. “We’re not watching much TV here.”

“Have you ever met Lawrence Van Cott?”

Sand hadn’t.

“I have. He’s sharp. He said something on the Kearney Show that’s got Jonathan Post very excited. I haven’t heard the tape yet, but Post says Van Cott may be on to something. Not black holes. Neutronium pellets?”

“Still out of my league,” Sand said. He wanted to get back to the satellite data. Kemp passed on a few more items of information and then hung up. Sand reexamined the photographs on the slate as Samshow scrolled through them again.

“Why oxygen?” he asked. “Volcanic activity?”

“I don’t think so,” Samshow said. “Not in my experience. Something is definitely dissociating seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. But only the oxygen is showing up…”

”Something!” Sand asked softly. “What, machines? Where?”

“There don’t appear to be bubbles above the ocean plains. Only in the trenches, and here and here, in known fracture zones.” He scrolled back. “Wherever there are deep cracks in the crust, something is storing up hydrogen and releasing oxygen.”

Sand made a clench-jawed tsk-tsk. “Kemp says oxygen is up by another percentage point in the Pacific region, and half a percent in central Eurasia.”

“Approaching dangerous concentrations,” Samshow said. “We’re going to see conflagrations…forests, cities.”

“I’ve already given up smoking, thank God,” Sand said.

Edward Shaw sat in a comfortable antique chair in the bar of the Stephen Austin Hotel — alone, with a whiskey sour in one hand and a fistful of Smokehouse almonds in the other. He had returned to Austin to straighten out his affairs, as might a man condemned to death by lingering illness. He found himself unable to cope with ordinary life any longer.

Austin and environs had been his final effort to get in touch with the past and attempt at least a symbolic reconciliation. His last girlfriend — almost a fiancée — had married a bank vice-president and wanted nothing to do with him. The university had taken his departure philosophically.

He had even broken free of Reslaw and Minelli in Arizona, though Minelli had promised to meet him in Yosemite in late March, weather allowing. He did not want his malaise to burden them. Reslaw, lightly bearded, hair cut to a thin shag, told them he was going to Maine to live with his half brother.

Edward had come back to his hometown to discover that his two-bedroom apartment had been emptied and rented to another tenant the month before — having been forgotten by the government agents looking after his affairs during his quarantine. That seemed a rather major oversight. At least the landlady had been kind enough to store his belongings in the event of his return. He had sold the furniture, but — to his own amusement — learned he still had a few things he couldn’t bear to part with. These he had stored in a rental shed at the exorbitant rate of one hundred dollars a month, paid in advance for five months.

These things done, Edward became what he wanted to be, footloose and fancy free.

He had few doubts that the Earth would soon come to an end. He had bought a small-caliber pistol in case that end might prove too painful. (Pistols were at a premium now.) He had apportioned his savings and the government money to allow him a full five months of travel.

He had no urge to step outside the boundaries of the United States. Purchasing a small motor home (trading in his Land Cruiser) had depleted his assets by about a third. Now, for his final day in Austin, he was spending the night in the hotel, wrapped in a peculiarly enervated melancholy.

He was anxious to get moving.

He would travel around the country, and in late March or April he would end up in Yosemite, where he would settle in. The first part of his journey would give him a great overview of North America, as much as he could cover — something he had always wanted to do. He would spend a few weeks in the White River Badlands of South Dakota, a few days in Zion National Park, and so on, hitting the geological highlights until by full circle he came back to his childhood and the high rocky walls of Yosemite. Having surveyed some of what he wanted to see of the Earth, he would then begin to catalog his interior country.

Good plans.

Then why did he feel so miserable?

He could not shake free of the notion that one spent one’s life with a treasured friend or loved one. Edward had always been essentially a loner. He felt no need to see his mother; she had kicked him out of the house at sixteen, and he had lost touch with her years ago. But there was still the myth, the image of the dyadic cyclone, as John Lilly had called it…the pair, facing life together.

He finished the whiskey sour and left the bar, brushing salt dust from his hand with the screwing motion of a bunched-up napkin. The doorman nodded cordially at him and he nodded back. Then he went for a two-hour walk around downtown Austin, something he had not done since he had been a student.

It was Sunday and the town was quiet. He wandered past white picket fences and black iron fences surrounding old well-kept historic houses. He studied bronze historical plaques mounted on pillars. Leaving the older neighborhoods, he finally stood in the center of concrete and stone and steel and glass pillars, the balmy midwinter Texas breeze rippling his short-sleeved shirt.

A human city, yet very solid and substantial-looking.

How could it just go away?

Not even geology encompassed the instant demise of worlds.

The next morning, having slept soundly enough and with no memorable dreams, Edward Shaw began his new life.

45

Lieutenant Colonel Rogers sat in his trailer, waiting for word from the civilian liaison, a small, dapper saintly faced NSA man named Tucker. Tucker had but one role in this conspiracy — there was no other word for it — and that was to convey whether or not the weapon had been acquired.

The Sunday New York Times lay spread across a desk below three blank television monitors. On the front page, three headlines of almost equal size vied for attention:

The whole world was going mad, and taking him along. In the past week, he had three times violated his oath as an officer. He was participating in a conspiracy that would ultimately subvert the expressed orders of the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces. Within two weeks, sooner if all went as planned, he would attempt to destroy the very object the cultists surrounding the site wished to protect.

What disturbed him most of all was that he was not more disturbed. He hated to think of himself as a hardened radical, but he had indeed been radicalized, and he was no longer able to see and think of opposite courses of action. All he could see was a threat to his nation and a government in complete disarray. Extraordinary times, extraordinary measures.

The trailer phone rang. He answered and the command center operator told him he had an outside call from CINCPACFLEET — Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet.

Tucker’s voice came on the line. He was, more than likely, calling from the aircraft carrier Saratoga operating a hundred miles due west of San Clemente Island. He had, more than likely, just finished speaking with Admiral Louis Cameron.

“Colonel Rogers, we have an arrow and all the feathers we need.”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Your next contact will be Green.”

“Thank you.”

He hung up the phone. Green was Senator Julio Gilmonn, Democrat, California. Gilmonn was chairman of the Senate Alien Defense Subcommittee. He would ride in a big limousine through the cordon of cultists and onto the site in approximately ten days. He would be heavily guarded.

In the trunk of the limousine would be the “arrow,” a three-kiloton warhead originally designed for an anti-submarine missile aboard the Saratoga.

Carrying this warhead in a custom sling, Rogers would enter the bogey.

He folded the newspaper neatly and stood to make his afternoon rounds.

CBS Daylight News, January 1, 1997, hosts Tricia Revere and Alan Hack: Revere: Were you in Times Square or watching it on TV?

Hack: TV. I value my life. Revere: I’ve never seen anything like it. An absolute frenzy.

Hack: They think it’s our last year on Earth. (Shakes his head at comment off camera) The hell with that. Let’s be real. They do. So they’re going to party.

46

The wonder of it was that Arthur still felt like a private individual. He had driven Marty through drizzling rain to school, in a fit of parental solicitude — the school bus was perfectly adequate and stopped less than fifty yards from the front door. Returning, while parking in the carport, he had heard distant voices, some speaking English, most not. He had sat in the car with eyes closed, listening as if he were on some ham radio or satellite dish connection, but the voices had stopped, replaced only by a humming expectancy.

He had walked into the house, removing his overcoat. Francine had met him with a cup of hot cocoa. His eyes misting, he had sipped the cocoa, put it down on the kitchen counter, and hugged her. She had moved against him with more and more enthusiasm, verging on desperation, and he had led her into the bedroom, where they had made love.

He had not been “watched.”

When not carrying out specific tasks, he was as free — within rational limits — as anybody he knew. He would not even contemplate leaving his zone of activity, the northwestern area of the United States. And if he tried to do so, he would be prevented. But there was plenty of work to do here, and more would be coming later on…

He lay with his head on his wife’s ample tummy, hand around one breast, dozing lightly. She curled a lock of his hair in one finger and watched him with that womanly calmness he had so often marveled at. There had been passion, even obsession, in their bed that morning, yet now she was as placid as a crockery madonna.

He could tell her about the spider. Nothing would prevent him. He lifted his head and was about to speak, but then stopped. So who’s in charge? Is it me, hesitating, or something else? It was him. She had enough to think about without learning her husband was possessed. That word amused and irritated him. It did not describe what was happening…

Why don’t they take her, too? Possess her?

Because they didn’t need her, and their resources were limited. Suddenly his spine tingled and his neck tightened. Only one or two thousand…What if nobody in his family was among that chosen group? None of his friends, colleagues, acquaintances? What if he was not?

“Something wrong, Art?” she asked, stroking his forehead.

He shook his head and caressed her nipple.

“You make me feel like something other than a mother and PTA member,” she said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Oh, I am,” he said. “Thoroughly.”

The rain gusted against the windows and a cold wind howled under the eaves. Ominous, patently ominous, yet it made him feel safe and warm. He could lie nude beside his woman in an enclosed warm bedroom and feel himself a master of infinite space. His body did not yet understand.

A network was being formed. Abruptly, he knew that libraries were being raided in New York, Washington, B.C., and elsewhere. What was their scheme? Would they literally pluck up the Sistine Chapel and disks of Bach and the entirety of the Parthenon or Angkor Wat and lift them into space, along with the geniuses of Earth? Somehow, that seemed obvious and very naive.

He had listened many times to Harry’s “essay” on the tape. Ever since, he had been mulling it over, comparing Harry’s ideas with what the nascent network was relaying to him.

In his head, a concept more than a word: grammars.

Hooked to that concept was a maze of connotations: grammar of a planet’s ecosystem, from genetic material on up, how the species fit together as “words” in a “book,” the structure of evolving plots and the implications for a denouement…

Grammar of society, how human groups interact as part of the overall ecosystem…

Fruit, gonads, a planet’s reproductive system, a fertile pseudopod reaching up into space away from the surface and having to learn Jesus Jesus.

To learn about deep vacuum and gravitation and the wind between worlds, the ecosystem of Earth must evolve an “organ” or arm equipped with perception and logic, just as life had once adapted to the land by developing certain kinds of eyes and limbs and neurological structures. Sentences in Earth’s book using the syntax of land-walking, space-walking, all implied by the original ecosystem grammar, all inherent. As on a thousand other worlds with similar living grammars. Humans were the Earth’s organ for crossing between worlds and stars.

They speak Life. They know what to take to keep the essence, the basic meaning, of the planet intact.

That was what he was being told. Harry had said, on the tape,

”I’ve spent twenty years of my life as a biologist. You, Arthur, kept me up to date in other disciplines; you got my mind working fifteen years ago when you gave me Lovelock’s book on ‘Gaia.’ Recent events have made me dig out some of my own old theories and speculations, made after reading Lovelock and Margulis. We’ve talked about them, off and on, but I was never so sure of myself that I put them down on paper. Now I’m pretty sure, but I’m too weak to put them on paper, so…this.

”Gaia is the entire Earth, and she’s come alive, she’s been an organic whole, a single creature, for over two billion years now. We can’t make complete analogies between Gaia and human beings, or dogs or cats or birds, because until recently we’ve never studied actual independent organisms. Dogs and cats and birds — and humans-are not independent. We are bits and pieces of Gaia. So is every other living thing on the Earth. Imagine a single cell trying to make analogies between its cytoplasm and organelles, and the role it plays in a human body; it’s going to be misled if it compares too rigidly.

”So Gaia, the Earth, is the first independent organism we’ve studied. I’ll call her a ‘planetism.’ A planetism is made up of plants and animals and microorganisms, and these are made up of cells, or are themselves cells. Cells are made up of cytoplasm and organelles and so on. An organism regulates itself with hormones, neurotransmitters, and it does its work and gets its nutrition with enzymes and other substances…all organized, on schedule, synergistic. Self-controlled.

”Gaia does her work with ecosystems. Like any organism, a planetism has a schedule and certain goals to meet. She grows and develops and goes through different stages in her life. Sometimes she undergoes radical shifts, destroying whole ecosystems. Maybe she’s experimenting in ways that smaller organisms cannot; she reaches a dead end, clears some of the slate, and starts over. I don’t know. But ultimately she has to do what all living things do — mature and reproduce.

”How can a planetism make others like herself? She came into being — probably — without outside interference, though maybe she’s the offspring of another planetism. Maybe life was seeded here a long, long time ago. I don’t think so, frankly. I think most planetisms have no parents, at least not right now, and so they’re free to develop on their own schedule. This takes a long, long time, but eventually she finds a way to reproduce. She develops a reproductive strategy.

”The planetism has found ways to use more and more of her raw materials and surface area. She dominated the oceans, then spread plants and animals out to conquer the barren continents. These plants and animals had somehow become specially suited to life on land. I suspect more than random chance was at work, but I’m too weak to argue about that now. It’s irrelevant to my scheme.

”Now, after ages, humans are here, and we’re not doing too badly. We’ve got an organ as important as the legs on an amphibian — a highly developed brain. Suddenly, Gaia is becoming self-aware, and looking outward. She’s developing eyes that can look far into space and begin to understand the environment she has to conquer. She’s reaching puberty. Soon she’s going to reproduce.

”I know you’re way ahead of me now. You’re saying, ‘That means human beings are the Earth’s gonads.’ And I am saying that, but the analogy is weak at best. In time, Gaia would probably have sacrificed everything on Earth — all her ecosystems — to promote human beings. Because we’re more than gonads. We are the makers of spores and seeds, we are the ones who understand what Gaia is, and we will soon know how to make other worlds come alive. We will carry Gala’s biological information out into space, on spaceships.

”You know, this idea puts a lot of problems in perspective. Gaia has nurtured us, but she has also goaded us, and sometimes tormented us. She’s used all of her resources to make sure we don’t feel too comfortable. Diseases that used to help regulate ecosystems have suddenly become stimulants. We’re working hard to control all the diseases that harm us, and in doing so, we’re understanding life itself, and coming to understand Gaia. So Gaia uses diseases to stimulate and instruct. Is it any real coincidence, you think, that in the twentieth century, we’ve been hit by so many retrovirus and immune system epidemics? We can’t solve these epidemics without understanding life to the nth degree. Gaia is regulating us, regulating herself, making herself ready for puberty.

”Because that’s what would have happened. Gaia would have sent us out, and we would have carried her within our spaceships. Maybe we would have made Earth unlivable, and that would be one more reason to leave the seed pod, because it’s all dead and shriveled. But that would only be natural. Maybe we would have preserved Earth and gone outward. It’s like the dilemma for parents who either make life a hell for their kids to get them out, or the kids have enough gumption to get out on their own, to break loose. Not that I know these problems firsthand, as a parent…but I remember being a kid.

”Of course, Gaia isn’t the only planetism. There are probably billions of others, some of them part of seeding networks — planetisms with parents. Some are independent. And when they get out into the galaxy, they find they are in competition. Suddenly they’re part of an even larger, much more complex system — a galactic ecology. Planetisms and their extensions — intelligences, technological civilizations-then develop strategies to compete, and to eliminate competition.

”Some planetisms take the obvious route. They exploit and try to spread rapidly. They’re like parasites, or young diseases that haven’t learned how to live harmlessly within a host. Other planetisms react by seeking and destroying the extensions of these parasites. Eventually, I suppose, if the galaxy itself is to come alive — become a ‘galactism’ — it’s going to have to knit together the extensions of all its planetisms, put them in order. So the parasites either fit in and contribute or they are eliminated. But in the meantime, it’s a jungle out there.

”You talked to me a long while back about Frank Drinkwater. Drinkwater, and others like him, have maintained for years that there is no other intelligent life in our galaxy. He claims that the lack of radio signals from distant stars provides the proof. He also thought the lack of von Neumann machines confirmed that we are alone. He was too impatient. Now, obviously, he’s wrong.

”We’ve been sitting in our tree chirping like foolish birds for over a century now, wondering why no other birds answered. The galactic skies are full of hawks, that’s why. Planetisms that don’t know enough to keep quiet, get eaten.

”I’m just about done now. Too tired to elaborate. Maybe you’ve already thought this through. Maybe you can find it useful, anyway.

”You’ve been my own goad and barb sometimes, Art. Thank you for that. You are my very dear friend, and I love you.

”Take care of Ithaca, as much as she needs it.

”My love to Francine and Marty, too.

”I hope and pray you all make it, though for the life of me, I can’t figure out how.”

Harry had known, almost by instinct. He was still alive, hanging on in Los Angeles, too weak to do much besides sleep. Arthur suddenly felt a panic at the thought of a world without him. What would he do? Now, more than ever, Harry was necessary…

“Art,” Francine said. He tried to relax and brought his gaze down from the ceiling, to her face. “Are you thinking about Harry?”

He nodded. “But that’s not all.” Without considering the consequences, moving ahead on an instinct he hoped was as good as Harry’s, he had made up his mind. “There’s something big going on,” he said. “I’ve been afraid to tell you.”

“Can you tell me?” she asked, squinting as if reluctant to hear. Enough change, enough shock in the news without it coming into her house any more than it already had.

“It’s not a government secret,” he said, smiling. He told her about the encounter in the airport, the information in his head, the formation of the network. It spilled from him in a confessional torrent, and he interrupted only to let Gauge in when the pup howled miserably in the garage.

Francine watched her husband’s shining eyes and his beatific face and bit her lip.

When he was finished, he shivered and shrugged all at once. “I sound completely nuts, don’t I?”

She nodded, a tear falling down her cheek.

“All right. I’ll show you something very strange.”

He went to the locked upper-hall cupboard and drew down a cardboard box. In the bedroom, he drew off the lid. Within the box, to his surprise, lay not one but two identical spiders, motionless, their green linear eyes glowing. Francine backed away from the open box.

“I didn’t know there was another,” he said.

“What are they?”

“Our saviors, I think,” Arthur answered.

Will she be saved? he asked the humming expectancy in his head. She reached out to touch the spiders, and he was about to stop her, warn her, when he realized it didn’t matter. If they had wanted her to be “possessed,” the new spider — wherever it came from — would have already taken her. Hesitantly, she reached out to touch one. It did not react. She stroked the chromium body thoughtfully. The spiders moved their legs in unison, and she withdrew her hand hastily. The motion stopped.

“It’s like they’re alive,” she said.

“I think they’re just very complicated machines.”

“They take samples, store information…and they…” She swallowed hard and wrapped her arms around herself. She began to shiver, her teeth clacking. “Ooo-o-h, Arrthur …”

He reached out to hug her tightly, laying his cheek on the top of her head, nuzzling her.

“I’m still here,” he said.

“Everything is so unreal.”

“I know.”

“What…what do we do now?”

“We wait,” he said. “I do what I must do.”

Her expression as she craned her head back to face him was a mix of fascination and repulsion. “I don’t even know that you are who you say you are.”

He nodded. “I can’t prove that.”

“Yes, you can,” she said. “Please, maybe you can. Maybe I know already.” She folded herself more compactly into his arms and hid her face against his chest. “I don’t want to think…I’ve lost you already. Oh, God.” She pulled away again, mouth open. “Don’t tell Marty. You haven’t told Marty?”

“No.”

“He couldn’t take it. He has nightmares already about fire and earthquakes.”

“I won’t tell him.”

“Not until later,” she said firmly. “When we know for sure. What’s going to happen, I mean.”

“All right.”

Then it was time to dress and pick up Marty from the school. They drove together through the drizzle.

That evening, after Marty had gone to bed and while they sat together on the couch in the living room reading, legs entangled, the phone rang. Arthur answered.

“I have a call for Arthur Gordon from President Crockerman.”

Arthur recognized the voice. It was Nancy Congdon, the White House secretary.

“Speaking.”

“Hold on, please.”

A few seconds later, Crockerman came on the line.

“Arthur, I need to speak with you or Feinman, or with Senator Gilmonn…I assume you’re in touch with him, or with the Puzzle Palace?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President…I haven’t spoken with the senator or the NSA. Harry Feinman is very ill now. He’s dying.”

“That’s what I was told.” The President said nothing for a long moment. “I’m under siege here, Arthur. They still can’t get a vote through in the House, but they’re maybe two votes down…I’m not sure I know everybody who’s laying siege, but I thought you might be able to speak to them. You don’t need to admit complicity…or whatever you would call it.”

“I may not be the right man, Mr. President,” Arthur said.

“In the past few hours, I have been denied access to the war room. I’ve fired Otto Lehrman but that hasn’t stopped a thing. Jesus, they’ve actually threatened to withdraw the troops around the White House! All they’ve done is clearly illegal, but these people…They can afford to wait me out. Something’s going on. And I need to know what it is, for Christ’s sake. I’m the President of the United States, Arthur!”

“I don’t know anything about this, Mr. President.”

“Right. Hold to the party line. For whatever it’s worth, I’m not a stubborn idiot. I’ve spent the last few weeks agonizing over this. I’ve spoken with Party Secretary Nalivkin. Do you know what they’re doing? They’re negotiating with the bogey in Mongolia. He says the world is on the brink of a socialist millennium. That’s what the spacecraft in Mongolia is telling him! Arthur, give it to me straight…Is there anybody I can talk to who can put me back in the chain of command? I am not an unreasonable man. I can be reasoned with. God knows I’ve been thinking this all over. I’m willing to rethink my position. Have you heard about Reverend Ormandy?”

“No, sir.”

“He’s dead, for Christ’s sake! They shot him. Somebody shot him.”

Arthur, face pale, said nothing.

“If they aren’t talking to you, then who would they be talking to?”

“Have you called McClennan, or Rotterjack?” Arthur asked. Both of them had sworn allegiance to Crockerman even after their resignations.

“Yes. I can’t get through to them. I think they’ve been arrested or kidnapped. Is this a revolution, a mutiny, Arthur?”

“I don’t know, sir. I honestly don’t know.”

Crockerman muttered something Arthur didn’t hear clearly and hung up.

47

Reuben Bordes met the Money Man near the Greyhound bus terminal on Twelfth Street. The white-haired, paunchy stranger wore a dark blue wool suit, pin-striped golden silk shirt, and alligator-skin shoes. He seemed perfectly happy to pass Reuben a plump gray vinyl zippered bag filled with hundred- and thousand-dollar bills. Reuben shook his hand firmly, smiled, and they parted without a word said between them. Reuben stuck the envelope into the pocket of his olive-green army coat and hailed a cab.

Instructions given, he sat back in the seat, happier than he had ever been in his life. With this money, he could be traveling in style now: taxicabs, airplanes, fine hotels wherever he went. But more than likely the money would be spent on other things. Still, the thought…

There was an extensive shopping list in his head. His first stop would be the Government Printing Office Data Center. There he would purchase four sets of data disks containing the entire public-domain nonfiction records of the Library of Congress. Each set, on five hundred disks, occupied the space of a good-sized filing cabinet, and he did not know why four copies were necessary, but he would pay for them all in cash with about half of the money in the envelope.

He stood in line at the service counter of the Data Center for ten minutes, and then stepped up to the clerk, a young, balding man with a full red beard and a sharply appraising stare.

“Can I help you?” the clerk asked.

“I’d like four sets of number 15-692-421-3-A-G.”

The clerk wrote the number down and consulted a terminal. “That’s nonfiction, complete, L.C.,” he said. “Including all reference guides and indices?”

Reuben nodded.

The clerk’s stare became more intense. “That’s fifteen thousand dollars a set,” he said.

Reuben calmly unfolded a roll of money and counted out sixty thousand-dollar bills.

The clerk examined the bills carefully, rubbing them, holding them up close. “I’ll have to call my supervisor,” he said.

“Fine,” Reuben said.

A half hour later, all the formalities cleared away, Reuben wrote down where he wanted the sets sent — a mailing address in West Virginia.

“What will you do with them all?” the clerk asked as he handed Reuben the receipt.

“Read them,” Reuben said. “Four times.” He regretted that flippancy as he walked south on Seventh Street toward the National Archives, but only for a moment. Instructions were pouring in rapidly, and he had little time to think for himself.

January 5

Lieutenant Colonel Rogers came out of a sound sleep at four a.m., just minutes before his wristwatch alarm was set to go off. He deactivated the alarm and switched on the small lamp at the head of his narrow bunk. For a luxurious minute, he lay still in the bunk, listening. All was quiet. All calm. It was Sunday; most of the Forge of Godders had moved to Furnace Creek the night before for a huge rally planned this morning by the Reverend Edwina Ashberry.

He dressed quickly, putting on climbing boots and pulling two hundred-foot lengths of nylon rope from a knapsack in the trailer’s corner. Rope in hand, he looked down, brows knitted, at the small desk and telephone. Then he dropped the ropes on the bunk and sat in the chair to write a letter to his wife and son, in case he did not make it back. That took five minutes. He was still ahead of schedule, so he spent five more minutes carefully shaving, making sure every long bristle on his neck was scraped off: military clean. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair meticulously, glancing at the letter. Unhappy with the wording, he quickly recopied the message onto a fresh piece of paper, signed it, folded it into an envelope, and posted the envelope on his message board with address and instructions.

At four-thirty he descended the trailer steps and stood in the bitterly cold desert darkness, a steady wind dragging at his coat and pants legs. At the east end of the camp was Senator Julio Gilmonn’s car, in a fenced-off square reserved for the munitions locker. Gilmonn himself stood with two aides, a handsome, stern-looking middle-aged black woman and a young white male, bulky and clean-cut, near the inner gate leading to the rock.

“Good morning,” Rogers said as he approached. Gilmonn extinguished a cigarette after taking one last frowning, concentrated drag and shook Rogers’s hand.

“There are still a few Forgers out there,” the senator said, pointing to the outer-perimeter fence. “Have you made any plans for clearing them?”

Rogers nodded. “In fifteen minutes we’ll set off a siren and announce an emergency situation. Nothing specific. Then we’ll evacuate the camp through the corridor. If the Forgers haven’t cleared out by then…” He shrugged. “The hell with them.”

“That could alert the…bogey,” the young aide said.

Rogers acknowledged that possibility. “It hasn’t done anything for months that we know of,” he said. “We’ll just take the risk. There are about a thousand people out there now.”

The woman regarded Rogers with an expression between severe doubt and motherly concern, but said nothing.

“Who else is involved?” Gilmonn asked.

“I’m having two of my staff officers help me carry the weapon to the entry. They’ll evacuate at that point. And there’s your expert, of course. Where is he?”

Gilmonn pointed to a figure walking through a spotlighted area a few dozen yards away. “He’s coming now.”

The “expert” was a young naval lieutenant, lean and of middle height, with thin, precise eyebrows and short-cut tight brown hair, dressed in civvies and carrying a large bag and a briefcase. He greeted the others quietly and asked to be taken to the weapon. Gilmonn opened the gate with the key Rogers had entrusted to him, and then lifted the trunk lid. Within was an orange-striped silver cylinder about a foot and a half wide and two feet long, lying in an aluminum cradle. The radiation-warning trefoil was prominently featured at three points on the cylinder.

“We don’t have a presidential authorization code,” the lieutenant explained matter-of-factly. “So I’ve had to take an unarmed, stockpiled missile warhead and remove the PAL — the permissive action link, the code box. This causes a fatal mechanical failure in the detonator and proximity fuse — fatal to the mechanism, not to me. So I’ve had to engineer my own time fuse and detonator and match them with the warhead. With higher authorization, I’ve taken a Navy plane wave generator and klystron and the necessary black boxes and cobbled them together. I can guarantee that it will work.” He smiled almost apologetically and turned to Rogers. “Sir, you will be able to deactivate this weapon, should you encounter something unexpected, right up to the last second before it goes off. So pay close attention.”

Rogers listened carefully as the lieutenant removed a cover plate from one end of the cylinder and explained the procedure. He then explained it all over again, cheeking Rogers’s face at each crucial point to make sure he understood. “Got that, sir?” the lieutenant asked.

“Yes,” Rogers said.

“I apologize we couldn’t find a backpack nuke — a SADM — for you, sir,” the lieutenant said. “But they’ve been out of stock for about twenty years. They’ve all been scrapped or dumped. This only weighs about a third again as much as a SADM — special atomics demolition munition,” he explained for the benefit of the senator’s aides. “But you should be able to haul it up with no difficulty if the shaft is as smooth as you’ve said. Then push and pull it for the next leg, and when you can stand, haul it into position using your backpack. You seem to be in good shape, sir, and you should be able to complete the mission…” The lieutenant shook his head. “Sorry. I don’t mean to tell you your business, sir.”

“No problem,” Rogers said.

“Just one question. Nobody back home was able to answer something for me. How strong is this bogey, internally?”

“We don’t know,” Rogers said.

“Strong enough, possibly, to have survived a descent from orbit,” Gilmonn said.

“If it offers even token resistance to the weapon, then I can’t estimate the effect on the surrounding countryside,” the lieutenant said. “Unless it stays integral, which I really doubt, there’s going to be hot rock and shrapnel all over this valley. I don’t know how far away you’ll have to be, sir.”

“I’ll have a Jeep,” Rogers said.

“Drive like hell,” the lieutenant recommended. “And another thing. What sort of drive mechanism might it have?”

Rogers shook his head. “There’s no outlets, no nozzles or…Nothing we’ve seen.”

“If there is a drive mechanism — which seems logical, if we think of it as a spaceship — then the explosion could set it off.”

Rogers took a deep breath. “I’ve thought about that,” he said.

“We’ve detected no radiation in or around the bogey,” Gilmonn said. “If there’s any drive mechanism, I doubt very much they use rocket fuel.”

“Yeah, but what do they use?” the lieutenant asked.

“Everything we do here involves some risk,” Gilmonn said. “And if they think we can be bamboozled by our own imaginations…How much stronger does that make them? What has that kind of thinking done to us already?”

The sirens began to wail, echoing back from the mountains, painful and terrifying. Loudspeakers around the perimeter announced:

”This is an emergency. This is an emergency. Evacuate all personnel immediately.” The message repeated, louder than the sirens, until Rogers felt he might jump out of his skin. Around the site, car horns began to honk. Headlights flashed like the eyes of wary animals. Gilmonn held his hands to his ears. “Are we going ahead, or are we going to stand here and waffle?”

Rogers nodded. “We’re on.”

The lieutenant reached into the bag and pulled out a white jacket with a crotch strap. “Residual radiation protection, sir. Put this on now,” he shouted over the din. He pulled out another and donned it himself, connecting the crotch flap to a loop on the back.

The jacket weighed perhaps twenty pounds and seemed reasonably flexible, with overlapping sheets of leaded plastic sewn into its fabric.

“You do me, and I’ll do you.” Rogers helped secure the straps and the lieutenant reciprocated.

“Let’s go, sir,” the lieutenant said. Together, they lifted the weapon from its cradle in the car’s trunk onto a hand truck. It weighed at least sixty-five pounds, perhaps seventy. “No need to be delicate, sir. It’s made to withstand missile launch and ocean impact. We’d have to take a sledgehammer to it to do any damage.”

Rogers opened the inner perimeter gate and they pulled the hand truck a hundred yards across the pounded sand and gravel trail to the entry hole.

The lieutenant lifted the cylinder from its cradle by himself and lowered it on one end into the sand. The sirens continued to scream and the loudspeakers repeated the evacuation order, over and over, painfully monotonous.

The first suffusion of dawn outlined the Greenwater Range in ghostly purple. Bouncing headlight beams still cut through the air around the site, but fewer in number now.

“Looks like they’re moving out,” Gilmonn said.

“Time for the camp to evacuate,” Rogers said. “I’ll need the lieutenant and one other, that’s it.”

“I’m staying until you’re in the tunnel and the arrow’s up there with you,” Gilmonn said.

“We call it a ‘monkey’ now, sir, not an arrow,” the lieutenant corrected him.

“Whatever the hell,” Gilmonn said.

“Monkey on my back,” Rogers said.

The lieutenant pulled an inch-thick Teflon sheet from the weapon’s accessory kit and wrapped it tightly around the cylinder, belting it with three straps and a clasp. The top and bottom of the sheet projected over the ends of the cylinder, blunting any sharp edges that might hang up inside the tunnel. He then attached two ropes to sunken eyebolts in the upper end, on each side of the cover plate. “All set, sir?”

Rogers nodded. “Let’s go.”

The lieutenant removed the cover plate and set the timer. “You have forty minutes, sir, from the time I flip this switch. We’ll stay down here for fifteen minutes. You’ll have your Jeep to drive clear after we leave.”

“Understood,” Rogers said.

He climbed into the hole, paying out the ropes from loops in his belt, and scrambled to the first bend, then braced himself there. “Bring it up,” he said. The lieutenant flipped the switch, closed the plate, and hefted the weapon up into the hole. Rogers pulled it up the length of the first segment of the tube, hand over hand on the rope.

He then called down to the lieutenant and Gilmonn. “Around the first bend,” he said. “I’m climbing the vertical shaft.”

“Thirty-five minutes, Colonel,” the lieutenant replied.

Rogers glanced up the shaft and held his rasping breath momentarily, trying to hear something. Surely the bogey wouldn’t just let him haul the weapon in, without some resistance?

He coiled the ropes and secured them to his belt, then suspended the monkey on a rope secured to a stake he hammered into the lava. He climbed the chimney as he had before, bracing back against one side and feet against the other, inching his way. That took an additional five minutes. Twelve minutes had passed and he was tiring, but not yet winded.

Crouching in the low, almost horizontal tunnel, he jerked free the slipknot attaching the monkey to the stake, and began to haul it up the chimney as fast as he could. The cylinder weighed at least seventy pounds and the effort made his arm muscles knot.

With the cylinder almost over the edge, he heard Gilmonn’s voice echoing from below.

“How are you doing, Colonel?”

“Almost there,” he answered. His arms were twin agonies. The radiation jacket chafed and was becoming a major irritation.

“We’re going now.”

“You have twenty-five minutes,” the lieutenant added.

“Gotcha.”

He switched on the electric torch, placed the warhead perpendicular to the tunnel, and rolled it ninety feet to the lip of the antechamber. Resting his arms for only a moment, he scrambled over the weapon, detached the ropes, then lifted it and waddled ducklike to deposit it in the center of the cylindrical space. He placed it on its end and opened the cover plate to see that the timer was still working. It was. He closed the cover plate.

As he shined the torch at the larger chamber beyond, a grin flickered on his rips. The impassive gray faceting reflected the beam back in a myriad of dull gleams. “Here’s thanks for you,” he murmured.

Twenty minutes. He could be down the tunnel and two miles away. He pulled a knife from his trouser pocket and sliced away the crotch strap on the jacket, then shrugged it off and flung it aside. He slid along the horizontal tunnel, ignoring the heat of the friction on his elbows and butt, and stopped long enough to take a deep breath and prepare to shinny down the chimney. Instinctively wary of heading into even the most familiar darkness, he played his torch beam down.

Three yards below, the beam met a dead end.

Rogers stared at the blockage in disbelief.

It might have been there through all eternity, a flat plug as dark and featureless as the walls of the chimney itself.

“Holy Christ,” he said.

Eighteen minutes.

He was out of the horizontal tunnel and beside the bomb before he could even think. With amazing dexterity, he had the cover plate open and his finger on the cutoff switch. And then he froze, his face wet with sweat, salty drops stinging his eyes.

No way out. Even if he stopped the timer on the monkey, he could not think of any way he could escape. A dozen unlikely possibilities lined themselves up in panicky parade. Perhaps another opening had been made elsewhere. Perhaps the bogey was coming alive, finally, even preparing to lift off.

Perhaps a bargain was being struck.

Deactivate the bomb, and we’ll let you go.

He backed away from the cylinder, his torch swinging back and forth on the floor nearby. Why did it close up? Has it been active all along, watching us, guessing everything we’d do?

He propped himself against the curve of the antechamber near the horizontal tunnel. Sixteen minutes.

In five or six minutes, it probably wouldn’t matter whether he got out or not. He wouldn’t be far enough away from the bogey to survive the hail of shrapnel. He could not conceive of any vessel, even the size of a small mountain, withstanding an internal blast of three kilotons.

Rogers shook his head slowly, trying to concentrate, keep his mind from wandering. He could turn off the weapon and see if the way was opened again. Tit for tat. Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Sorry, it was all a big misunderstanding.

Kneeling beside the monkey, he again reached out for the switch.

You know, this is the first time we’ve actually gotten a reaction.

He thought that over, biting his lower lip, fingers tensing and relaxing over the switch.

“Maybe you feel threatened,” he said aloud. “Maybe for the first time we’re getting through to you.”

Somehow, that wasn’t convincing.

He could not bring himself to flip the switch. He would not be able to reset the timer if he shut the weapon off; the lieutenant had not shown him how to do that.

Fourteen minutes.

The first blow for our side. I’m in charge.

He sat down beside the monkey, reaching out to bring up the radiation jacket and drape it over his knees. Quandary.

The silence within the chamber was absolute.

“If you’re listening, damn you, then talk to me,” he said. “Tell me about yourself.” He chuckled and that sound scared him worst of all, for it told him how close he really was to flipping the switch. He might see his wife and kid again if he flipped the switch; they might not have to receive and read the letter he had posted on his bulletin board. He could see Clare’s face, mourning, and his chest hurt.

William’s face, sweet five-year-old deviltry pure.

What would he think of himself if he deactivated?

His career might as well be over. He would have fallen back in the face of enemy action and jeopardized their entire defense effort. Others had risked their careers, perhaps even their lives. Rogers did not, right now, want to contemplate how many people up the line had helped to procure this weapon, and how they felt at this moment: possible traitors, lawbreakers, risk-takers. Acting in defiance of the President. Mutineers, rebels,

“God damn, you know us so well,” he said to the darkness. “You’ve twisted us every which way, so casual, and now you think you’ve got us again.” No reply.

The silence of deep space. Eternities.

Twelve minutes.

How many times would his hand reach out, the body pleading, and how many times would something undefined pull it back?

“I won’t touch it. Come on out and deactivate it yourself. Maybe I won’t put up a fight. Maybe we have something in common now!”

He was hyperventilating. Clasping his hands before his mouth, he tried to rebreathe each gulp of air and slow his frantic lungs. Did judgment of one’s courage, valor, require the appearance of nobility, or was an act alone sufficient? If by the end of the — he checked — eleven minutes, he was on the floor, a screaming, weeping madman capable only of keeping his finger away from the switch, would he still get to the Army Valhalla and toss off a few with all the dead heroes? Or would he be turned away, sent to the showers? Wash off that stink of fear, soldier.

He didn’t want Valhalla. He wanted Clare and William. He wanted to say good-bye in more words than he had put in the letter. In person.

“Please God, let me be calm,” he said hoarsely. He flattened his cupped hands into a gesture of prayer, pinching the tip of his nose between his index fingers, closing his eyes. It might have been easier if he had brought a pistol along. “Jesus Jesus Jesus Christ.”

Don’t let me fuck this one up. Dear God keep my hand from that switch. Hit them back hit them back in the face. God I know you don’t take sides but I’m a soldier God and this is what I have to do. Take care of them please Lord of all of us and help us save our home our world. Let this mean something please God.

Nine minutes. He crawled down the horizontal tunnel again and saw the plug was still in place. To make sure it was solid, and not just an illusion, he jumped the three yards and landed his feet squarely on the flat grayness, flexing his knees to break the shock, slamming his elbows and lower arms against the chimney wall. Solid. He stomped on it several times. Nothing. Grimacing from his bruised heels, he braced himself and climbed out of the well, returning to the antechamber.

He refused to allow himself to get closer than six feet from the monkey.

Another way out.

Not likely.

Tit for tat.

“What are you doing, learning more about us, setting up another experiment? Will I or won’t I?” He stood on the edge of the antechamber, waving his torch beam across the semiglossy cathedral facets. “I can’t make sense out of any of this. Why did you come here? Why can’t you just go away, leave me with my wife and family?”

That was enough talking, and a fine sentiment to end all the words he had ever spoken. No more words, he vowed. He broke the vow immediately. Breaking small vows helped him keep to the big one.

“So why don’t we talk? I’m not going to push that switch. I won’t be around to tell anybody. Talk to me, show me what you’re all about.”

Five minutes.

“I hear you might have gone clear across this galaxy, gone from star to star. You’re part of a planet-eating machine. That’s what the newspapers are saying. Lots of people speculating. Aren’t you curious what we’d think, what I’d think if I knew the truth? So talk to me.” Give me something to hang on to. Some reason. “I’m not touching that switch! That bomb is going to go off.”

What if it didn’t?

What if he had to spend the next few weeks in here, dying of thirst, all for nothing, because the aliens had found some way to deactivate the weapon? What if they kept him there to starve just as punishment for trying?

Three minutes.

“I’m a dead man,” he said, and realized the truth of that. He was a dead soldier already. There was no escape, no way out between his convictions and his duty. That thought calmed him considerably, and he sat on the lip of the antechamber, as he had sat once before, legs dangling out over the darkness. “So where’s your light?” he asked. “Show me your little red light.”

He wouldn’t even know when it had happened. He wouldn’t hear anything, see anything.

One minute.

Frozen men become warm again

And rabbits drug themselves in the wolfs jaws

God gives us ways out

I’m still thinking

But it doesn’t hurt now.

I know how very small and inconsequential

I

From six miles away, Senator Gilmonn put on the smoky gray glasses the lieutenant gave to him and looked across the desert at the distant black hump that was the bogey. The cultists had scattered all across the desert floor, most out of the area, farther away than his small group, but some hiding behind piles of rock and other cinder cones. He had no idea how many of the diehards would survive.

“He’s not out of there,” the lieutenant said, removing a pair of radio headphones. Observers in the mountains had not seen Rogers leave the bogey.

“I wonder what happened?” Gilmonn asked. “Did he plant the…it?”

Beams of brilliant red light shot up from the false cinder cone, and the desert floor was illuminated by a small sun. Huge black fragments twisted upward in silhouette against the fireball, disintegrating, the smaller fragments falling back in smoking arcs. The sound was a palpable wall, more solid and painful than loud, and a violent blast of dusty wind progressed visibly over the scrub and sand and rock. When it hit, they had a hard time staying on their feet.

The dust cleared momentarily and they saw a tall, lean pillar of cloud rising, a fascinating ugly yellow-green, shot through with pastel pinks and purples and reds.

The lieutenant was weeping. “My god, he didn’t get out. Dear Jesus. What a blast! Like a goddamned pipe bomb.”

Senator Gilmonn, too stunned to react, decided he simply did not understand. The lieutenant understood, and his face was shiny with tears.

Fragments of rock and glass and metal fell for ten miles around for the next ten minutes. At six miles, none of the fragments exceeded half an inch in diameter.

They took refuge in the trucks and waited out the shower, and then drove away from the site to the decontamination center in Shoshone.

49

The network between the Possessed was beginning to knit and connect. Arthur could feel its progress. This both excited and saddened him; the time he was spending with Francine and Marty might be coming to a close.

If she could not accept what had happened, he would have to continue without them.

Arthur did not know quite how she was taking his revelation, until, in the morning, he overheard her talking to Marty in the kitchen. He had just finished a thorough check of the family station wagon and was wiping his hands on a paper towel before passing through the swinging door.

“Dad’s going to have a lot of work to do soon,” Francine said. Arthur paused behind the door, crumpled towel in one hand, his jaw working.

“Can he stay with us?” Marty asked.

He could not see them, but he could tell that Francine was by the sink, facing the center of the kitchen, where the boy stood. “What he’s doing is important,” she said, not answering Marty’s question. She didn’t know the answer.

“He’s not working for the President now. He told me.”

“Right,” Francine said.

“I wish he could stay home.”

“So do I.”

“Is he going someplace without us?”

“I don’t understand what you’re asking, Marty.”

“Is he going to leave us here when the Earth blows up?”

Arthur closed his eyes. The towel was a tight ball in his fist.

“He’s not leaving us anywhere. He’s just…working.”

“Why work when everything’s going to stop?”

“Everybody has to work. We don’t know everything’s going to stop. Besides, he’s working so that maybe it won’t…stop.” The catch in her voice made him raise his head to keep the tears from dropping down his cheek.

“Mr. Perkins says there isn’t much we can do.”

“Mr. Perkins should stick to arithmetic,” Francine said sharply.

“Is Dad ascared?”

“Afraid.”

“Yeah, but is he?”

“No more than I am,” she said.

“What can he do to stop things?”

“Time for us to take you to school now. Where’s your father?”

”Mo-ommm! Can he?”

“He’s working with…some people. They think maybe they can do something.”

“I’ll tell Mr. Perkins.”

“Don’t tell Mr. Perkins anything, Marty. Please.”

Arthur stepped back a few feet to make a noise, came through the door, and dropped the thoroughly wadded towel into the trash bag under the sink. Marty stared at him with wide eyes, lips pressed together and sucked inward.

“Everybody ready?”

They nodded.

“Have you been crying, Daddy?” Marty asked.

Arthur said nothing, simply staring between them.

“We’re a team, aren’t we, honey?” Francine said, hugging him and gesturing for Marty to come. The boy was not of an age to be enthusiastic about physical affection, but he came and Arthur knelt, one arm around Francine’s waist, one arm wrapped around his son.

“We sure are,” he said.

What he received, in the way of messages, was a peculiar shorthand unlike anything he had ever experienced before. The flow of information came as truncated visuals, bits of spoken conversations (sometimes delivered by separate and identifiable voices, sometimes monotoned or not auditory at all), and as often as not, simply as memories. He could not remember receiving the memories, but they were there, and they informed his planning and action.

By that evening, as he lay in bed again beside his wife, as yet more rain pattered gently on the roof and windows, he knew that;

Lehrman, McClennan, and Rotterjack had formed a delegation to inform the President of the destruction of the Furnace bogey. (Lehrman was one of the Possessed.)

The President had listened to the information, delivered largely by Rotterjack, and had said nothing, simply shaking his head and gesturing for them to leave.

He saw:

A Soviet vacationer from Samarkand (Arthur did not know whether male or female) watching a conifer forest burn in the Zerafshan Mountains, sending thick white walls of smoke over the craggy alpine ridges.

Large sections of New York (Queens and the Bronx), Chicago, and New Orleans on fire, with no sign of the blazes being brought under control. Much of Tokyo had been leveled by four major fires in the past week. Half of Beijing had been consumed by fire following an apparently natural earthquake.

Lying awake, not knowing whether Francine was asleep or simply lying still, Arthur received these memories that were not his, and made decisions about his family’s immediate future.

Wherever he went, they would go with him; their unity was far more important than any home or security. In approximately a month, they would remove Marty from school and travel together.

He would soon be called to Seattle. From there, he would work his way down the Pacific coast to San Francisco, performing his duties along the way. Apparently, most of his work would consist of gathering records of culture — documents, music, films, whatever was on a list that would be fed to him a section at a time. The decisions as to what should go on this list were being made by others on the network. And who does the choosing?

He had again the nightmare thought:

The Possessed are simply being used. There are no saviors. There are only plunderers, and they use us as slaves to loot the Earth of all they can carry away.

How many were Possessed now?

Ten thousand.

A round number, growing larger each day.

And room on the arks for as few as two thousand.

If he was chosen, he decided, and Marty and Francine were not, he would stay. He would refuse. Won’t I? And that was the worst nightmare thought of all. Arthur could not be sure that when the time came, given the opportunity denied to his wife and son, he would not leave them.

I can stay. I will stay.

“Are they talking to you?” Francine rolled over in the dark and faced him. He smiled at her and pulled her close.

“No,” he said. “Not right now.”

“Where are the spiders?”

“In their box.” He had taken a wooden box and given the spiders a home on the upper shelf of the office closet. Neither of the spiders had moved for days.

“What kind of people do they need?”

“I have no idea,” Arthur answered.

“Do you remember that night, when Grant and Danielle and Becky were visiting, and Chris Riley called…To tell you about Europa?”

He nodded.

“I was really afraid then. I don’t know why. I knew it was far away.”

Arthur saw Europa boiling, great chunks of ice flashing into linear rays of steam, other chunks lifting away, and beneath it all, a spreading, perfectly smooth sphere of light, as white and pearly as parachute silk and bright as the sun, pushing the ice and steam out into space…

“What really happened to Europa?” she asked.

“I think our friends…our…friends, ate it,” he said. “Turned it into more of their own spacecraft.” And the huge chunks of ice, sent inward to Mars and Venus? No images or memories explained them.

“Then I shouldn’t have been afraid.”

“Oh, yes,” Arthur said. “You were right to be afraid. You knew before I did.”

She nodded in agreement, “I did, didn’t I? What does that make me? Psychic?”

She was talking just to be talking. He knew that, and he didn’t mind; her words soothed him.

“A woman,” he said.

“How quaint.”

He grinned against her hair and kissed her.

“It’s funny, but in all of this, I’ve been thinking of you and Marty, and…my book. The Huns and Mongols and Scythians and Indo-Europeans…All those people and my book. I’ll never get it finished.”

“Don’t be so sure,” he said, but it hurt him to say it.

“Do you think these probes are like the hordes? Migrating, ravaging, pushed on by famine or overpopulation?”

“No,” he said. “It’s a big galaxy. We’ve seen nothing like that.” But would we know where and how to look?

“Why are they doing it, then?” she asked.

“You listened to Harry’s tape.”

“I’m not sure I understood it.”

“You understand it as well as I do,” Arthur said, squeezing her shoulders.

Long dark shape, a single needle, pointing at Europa’s heart, the rocky core, wrapping long collecting fields around the ice and steam, gathering it in, paring away the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen, fusing them. Piercing the core…

And again, no more.

“Have you decided yet?” Francine asked softly.

“Decided what?”

“Marty asked this morning…”

“I thought I’d made that clear.”

“I just need to be told again.”

“Yes. We’re staying together. I’m taking you both with me, wherever I go.”

“Good,” she said.

Francine finally slept, but Arthur did not. He was haunted by his “memory” — Lehrman’s, actually — of the expression on the President’s face.

Do you believe in God?

I believe in punishment.

The Los Angeles Electronic Times, unsigned editorial in the Opinion Track, January 10, 1997:

The news of the Death Valley anomaly’s destruction has spread around the world like a shock wave. At first, we have exulted — a blow struck against the enemy. But the bullets still rumble through the Earth’s interior. The anomaly in Australia is still intact. Rumors of a Russian anomaly are rampant. The Earth is still besieged. The opinion of a well-known science fiction writer, expressed on a late night talk show, has rapidly become public dogma; that these “bullets” are superdense capsules of neutron matter and antimatter, destined to meet at the Earth’s center and destroy us all .We have no way of knowing the truth of this. It seems clear, however, that there is little we can do, and however irrationally, our hope fades fast.

50

Walt Samshow took his sandwich out on the starboard wing of the bridge of the Glomar Discoverer and stared down at the bow wave and the sullen blue-black ocean as he ate. They had left Pearl Harbor the morning of the day before, zigzagging across the ocean in search of atmospheric oxygen concentrations above the Molokai Fracture.

Occasionally an insignificant crumb of white bread would drift down from his meal into wet oblivion. He imagined some wandering zooplankton would soon know where it was, and partake of it. Nothing was ever truly lost, if you only had access to all the eyes and senses in the universe, as he sometimes imagined God did. God himself had no eyes; He made eyes and put living things in charge of them, that He might witness the majesty of creation from an objective viewpoint.

David Sand came up the stairs and leaned on the railing beside Samshow, eyes red from lack of sleep. “We’re twelve hours from the fracture,” he said. “Captain’s turned in and Chao’s going to stand deck watch from here on.”

Samshow nodded and chewed.

“Not much enthusiasm, is there?” Sand asked.

“We’re working, at least,” Samshow said after swallowing.

“Fanning in the radio room says the Navy has three ships out here, just cruising back and forth…” He made two doubled-back sweeps with his hand. “Back and forth. Looking.”

“Has the House voted for impeachment yet?” Sam-show asked, straightening, legs expertly compensating for the gentle sway. He crumpled his sandwich wrapper and stuffed it into his shirt pocket, behind pens and pencils.

“Not that I know of,” Sand said.

“I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid.” Samshow’s tone was unperturbed, mild. He might have been making an observation about a seabird.

Sand smiled uncomfortably and shook his head. “Voice of experience,” was all he managed to say.

“Yeah. I’ve kept up with the news and I’ve read books and I’ve worked with all sorts of people for sixty-odd years, and I’ve seen one kind of stupid, and another. We all bump into each other every day of our lives, by guess and by golly, and we render our opinions whether we know anything or not, and if anybody catches us out we lie…Ah, shit on it.” He shook his head. “I’m just feeling uncommonly sour today.”

“Right.” Sand brushed his sun-dried hair from his eyes.

“They’ve got us, you know that? We’re down and we’re weak and there’s not a goddamn thing we can do now except go out and look…” — he raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips — “and say, ‘yep, by golly, there it is. We’re bleeding to death.’ They knew exactly what to do. They used their decoys, and we fell for them. It’s like they know stupidity from generations back, thousands of years back. Maybe they’ve found stupid hayseed worlds all across the galaxy. So now they have us confused and on our backs kicking and they’ve got the knife at our throats, like slaughtering a goddamned pig.” He gripped the railing and rocked on his heels gently. “I have never in my life felt so useless.”

Sand cocked his head to one side. “It still seems theoretical to me,” he said. “I can’t believe anything’s really happening.”

“It’s been raining for two days in Montana, and they still can’t put out the fires,” Samshow said. “Now there’s a grass fire in central Asia that’s burned half a million acres. They can’t control it, needless to say. And the fire in Tokyo. We’re not only stupid, all our crazy folks are going to burn us out before the world goes kablooey. All our sins hang around our necks.”

Fanning, barely twenty, a graduate student from the University of California at Berkeley, came onto the bridge and stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunching his shoulders in excitement. “I’ve just figured it out. Some of the Navy’s coded messages,” he said. “They’re not working real hard to hide anything. They have a deep submersible somewhere out there.” He removed a hand from one pocket and swept the horizon. “I think it’s one of their biggies, a nuclear. With treads. They say it’s crawling along the bottom.”

“Anything else?” Sand asked facetiously. “Or is it a secret?”

Fanning shrugged. “Maybe we’re going to do something,” he said. “Maybe we’re going to try again. Knock out something important, not just a rock. Up the President, man,” he said, and lifted an expressive finger.

January 30

Edward stood in the parking lot of the Little America Restaurant and Motel, motor home idling nearby, and scanned the smoky northern horizon. The fire had been burning for five days now and was completely out of control. The orange and brown cloud stretched to the limits of east and west, turning the sun an apocalyptic flame red. Tendrils of gray smoke had passed over the highway and motel, dropping ghostly flakes of fine white ash. From what he had heard on the radio, there was no way he could go any farther north; two hundred thousand acres of Montana were ablaze, and yesterday the flames had stretched hungrily into Canada.

Seated at the RV’s dining table, he charted a southwesterly route on an auto club map with a yellow marker, then climbed into the driver’s seat and strapped himself in.

The cold northern air was delicious, even thickened by the smell of burning timber. He had never known air so invigorating.

Edward pulled out of the parking lot and headed west.

He hoped Yosemite would still be there when he arrived.

Sky and Telescope On-line, February 4, 1997: Today, Venus is at superior conjunction, behind the sun and out of sight. Today is also the projected date of the impact of a huge chunk of ice, allegedly from Europa. What this will do to Venus is a fascinating question. The impact will cause enormous seismic disruption, perhaps even deep-mantle cracking and a rearrangement of the planet’s internal structure. Venus has virtually no water; with the trillions of tons of water provided by the ice ball, and the renewed geologic activity, the planet could, in a few tens of thousands of years, become a garden of Eden…

51

“About a third of the kids have been taken out of school,” Francine said, putting the phone down. She had just phoned to tell the attendance office that Marty would be vacationing with them. Arthur carried a box of camping gear and — for no particular reason — the Astroscan through the living room to the station wagon in the garage.

“Not surprising,” he said.

“Jim and Hilary called to say Gauge is doing fine.”

“Why can’t we take Gauge with us?” Marty called from the garage.

“We talked about that last night,” Arthur said.

“He could sit on my lap,” Marty offered, squatting beside the station wagon and sorting toys.

“Not for long,” Arthur predicted. “He’s got kids to play with, good people to look after him.”

“Yeah. But I don’t have him.”

There was nothing Arthur could say to that.

“I called the auto club,” Francine said, “and asked what traffic was like between here and Seattle, and down the coast. They say it’s really light. That’s surprising. You’d think everybody would be off playing hooky, off to Disneyland or the parks.”

“Lucky for us,” Arthur said from the garage. He rearranged the crammed boxes in the back of the wagon. Marty sat on the concrete, continuing to pick halfheartedly through his toys.

“This is hard,” he said.

“You think you have problems, fellah,” Arthur said. “What about my books?”

“Are we just going to lock up?” Francine asked, standing in the door from the garage to the house. She carried a box filled with disks and papers- — the notes she had made for her book.

“Just like we’re going on vacation,” Arthur said. “So we’re atypical.”

“It is strange, isn’t it, that everybody’s staying home, now of all times?” She crammed the box into a spare corner of the station wagon.

“How many people really understand what’s happening?” he asked.

“That’s a point.”

“The kids at school understand,” Marty said. “They know the world’s going to end.”

“Maybe,” Arthur said. Again, trying to reassure them hurt him. The world is going to end. You know it, and they know it.

“Maybe everybody wants to be together,” Francine said, returning to the kitchen. She brought out a box of canned and dried food. “They want to be someplace familiar.”

“We don’t need that, do we?” Marty asked, shoving aside a pile of unwanted metal and plastic robots and spacecraft.

“All we need is each other,” Arthur agreed.

In the office, he reached into the back of the closet’s upper shelf and took out the wooden box containing the spiders. It felt peculiarly light. He opened the box. It was empty. For a moment, he stood with the box in his hand, and for some reason he could not understand he smiled. They had more work to do. He glanced at his watch. Wednesday. Ten a.m.

Time to be on the road.

“All packed?” he asked.

Marty surveyed the pile of rejected toys and clutched a single White Owl cigar box filled with the chosen. The cigar box had come down from Arthur’s father, who had had it from his father. It was tattered and reinforced with tape and represented continuity. Marty treasured the box in and of itself.

“Ready,” the boy said, climbing into the back seat. “Are we going to sleep in a lot of motels?”

“You got it,” Arthur said.

“Can I buy some toys where we go?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“And some pretty rocks? If I find them, I mean.”

“Nothing over a ton,” Francine said.

“The boulder that broke the Buick’s back,” Arthur said, going into the house for a final check.

Good-bye, bedroom, good-bye, office, good-bye, kitchen. Refrigerator still full of food. Good-bye, knotty-pine paneling, elevated porch, backyard, and wild plum tree. Good-bye, smooth and singing river. He passed Gauge’s wicker bed in the service porch and felt a lump in his throat.

“Good-bye, books,” he whispered, looking at the shelves in the living room. He locked the front door, but did not turn the dead bolt.

52

Trevor Hicks, his work finished in Washington, D.C., had taken a train to Boston, single suitcase and computer in hand. At the station, he had been met by a middle-aged, brown-haired scattered-looking woman dressed in a black wool skirt and old flower-print blouse. She had taken him to her home in Quincy in a battered Toyota sedan.

There he had rested for two days, watched owlishly by the woman’s five-year-old son and seven-year-old daughter. The woman had been husbandless for three years, and the old wood-frame house was in severe disrepair — leaky pipes, decrepit wallboard, broken stairs. The children seemed surprised that he did not share her bedroom, which led him to believe she had not lacked for male company. None of this mattered much to Hicks, who had never been judgmental even before his possession. He spent much of his time sitting on the broken-down living room couch, thinking or interacting with the network, helping a dozen other people in the Northeast compile lists of people to be contacted, and/or prepared for removal from the Earth.

All of his life, Hicks had worked with high-powered personalities — bright, knowledgeable, contentious, and often cantankerous men and women. Most of the people he now communicated with in the network fit this description. To his surprise, whatever maintained and governed the network did not discourage high-powered behavior among the network’s members. There was considerable debate, even acrimony, as first the categories of contactees and “saved” were decided, then specific communities, and finally specific individuals.

The Bosses (or Overlords or Secret Masters, all titles applied at one time or another to the anonymous organizers) had apparently decided that humans, with broad supervision, knew best how to choose and plan for their own rescue. Hicks sometimes had Ms doubts.

Over a dinner of macaroni and cheese served on a bare oak table, as the children listened, Hicks asked his hostess about her role in the rescue.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “They got to me about six weeks ago. I took in three people about a week after that, and they stayed here for a few days and then left. Some more people after that, and now you. Maybe I’m a den mother.”

The daughter giggled.

They could have chosen more hospitable lodgings. But he kept that thought to himself.

“What about you?” she asked. “What are you doing?”

“Making up a list,” he said.

“Who’s going, who’s not?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “Actually, we’re concentrating more on a list of others to recruit. There’s a lot of work left to be done, and not nearly enough people to do it.”

“I don’t think my kids and I are going,” the woman said. She stared at the table, her face slack, then slowly lifted her eyebrows and stood. “Jenny,” she said, “let’s clear the table.”

“Where ain’t we going, Mama?” the boy asked.

“Hush up, Jason,” the daughter ordered.

“Mama?” Jason persisted.

“Nowhere, and you pay attention to your sister, what she says.”

They had to start somewhere, Hicks thought. She was one of the first. They didn’t know where to begin. The suspicion of her inadequacy — if that was the right word — of her inability to qualify for the migration, did not prevent her from seeing the good they were doing, or the necessity of their work.

If we have any free will at all now.

That question was still unanswerable. Hicks preferred to think they did have free will, which implied that this woman demonstrated a truly admirable human quality: selfless courage.

Two days later, she drove him to the airport, and he boarded an airliner for San Francisco. Only on board the aircraft did he realize that he had heard the names of the woman’s children, but not her own.

High above the Earth, over the deck of obscuring clouds, Hicks napped and typed notes into his computer and realized he was not, for the moment, on call. The network had released him for these few hours and he was not privy to the ordered flow of voices and information. He had time to think, and to ask questions. How did the spiders get through airport security? That seemed easy enough. They had departed his luggage in the scanners, crawled through the mechanisms, and reentered the luggage beyond the sensors’ range. Or they had means of altering their X-ray shadows. Human sensory apparatus had failed completely from the beginning; if the bogeys could land on Earth without being detected, what was so amazing about a spider passing through airport security?

He mused about these things behind his closed eyes, relishing the temporary privacy. Then, on impulse, he inserted a CD carrying the texts of his complete works into the computer and called up Starhome. Scrolling through page after page, he skimmed the long sections of characterization (reasonably adept and no more) and intrigue and politics and read in more detail the passages of speculations and extrapolations. It’s not a bad book, he thought. Even now, two years after I finished it, it engages my interest, at least.

But the pride was largely masked by a sadness. The book dealt with a future. What future was there? Certainly not the one he had envisaged — a future of humans and extraterrestrials interacting on a vast mission of adventure and discovery. In some respects, that now seemed pitifully naive.

Life on Earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization…

And yet…

Somebody out there was thinking altruistically.

Or perhaps not.

Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction.

He had written that once in an unpublished article on third-world development. The developed nations could serve their interests best by fostering the growth and development of less privileged, weaker nations…

And perhaps that was what was happening here.

But many experts on strategy had read his article and criticized it severely, citing many historical examples to prove him wrong. “Whose interests does the Soviet Union serve?” one reader had asked him. The Soviet Union, he had acknowledged, was stronger than ever — apparently — but faced enormous problems coordinating the nations and peoples it had absorbed, problems that others thought might prove fatal in the long run. “But not yet — and how many nations last for more than centuries?” the critic had responded.

Now apply the theory of necessary altruism to groups of intelligent beings that have survived tens of thousands of years. If only one of them launches planet-eating, civilization-destroying probes, and none of them respond by launching probe-killers—

Who wins?

Probe-killers, then, were definitely launched in self-interest. But why attempt to preserve possibly competing civilizations? Why not just destroy the planet-eaters and be done with it?

The network was not available to him; all he had were implanted memories, information he was not always able to access without the help of the network.

He often spurred thought by letting his fingers speak. Now he opened a file and began to type. The first few sentences came out as gibberish and he erased them. There is an answer here, inside me. I know it.

But try as he would, he could not bring it all together.

I don’t know why they’re trying to preserve us.

When he was outside of the soothing and persuasive direction of the network, that lack of an answer worried him.

Harry Feinman could not make a connection with his past. That time, when he had been mobile and free of pain, was fiction, something concocted by his imagination. He could not conceive of ever having made love or of having eaten a full meal. In the few moments of lucidity left to him each day, he searched his body for any sign of that past and found nothing. All was failing. He was a different person; Harry Feinman had already died.

Most of the time he spent sleeping or nearly asleep, heavily doped. He thought or dreamed vaguely of life after death and decided the question didn’t really matter; anything, even complete oblivion, was better than this half-and-half existence.

Ithaca drifted in and out of the room like a cloud. When he was in pain, between medications, she sat by him sharp as a razor, saying nothing as he lay rigid, teeth clamped.

You pays your money coming in, going out. Ticket price for this ride: pain.

The difference between day and night was not clear to him anymore. Sometimes the lights were down when he was awake, sometimes not.

There was a miraculous hour when somehow his medication was perfectly balanced, and he felt almost normal, and in this time he cherished Ithaca’s presence. He told her he wanted her to marry again and she accepted this unintentional but necessary torture with the calmness he had come to expect and rely on; then he remembered having told her several times before.

“Why worry about it?” she asked quietly. “We’ll probably all be gone soon anyway.”

Harry shook his head as if disagreeing, but she looked at him with her “Oh, come on” look, one eyebrow arched, and he said, “I’d like to see that. What a show that’ll be, if it comes.”

“If?” Ithaca smiled ironically. “You’re my favorite pessimist. Now you sound hopeful.”

“Just barely hopeful,” Harry said.

“What did Arthur tell you?”

“Never try to hide anything from my woman.” Harry took a moment to remember. “He said the planet is covered by little spiders now.”

Ithaca leaned forward. “What?”

“The cavalry is here, but it’s probably come too late.”

She shook her head, not understanding.

“He showed one to me. A little robot. They’re harvesting the Earth before it goes. Trying to save a little breeding population, I’d guess. Like a zoo expedition. And they’re destroying the machines that are doing this to us.”

“Arthur told you all this?”

He nodded. “I thought he was nuts, then he showed me one of the spiders. He seemed…not happy, but he seemed to know he was doing something useful. He thought maybe they were controlling his thoughts, but he said he didn’t mind, and he couldn’t be…” Harry’s weakness came on him and he closed his eyes for several minutes. “He said they knew what was best, probably.”

Ithaca studied his face closely, leaning forward. “I saw one,” she said softly. “I think I did. In the garden.”

“One what? Spider?”

“Silver.” She held up her open hand. “Big as this. It ran away before I could see it clearly, but when I looked — it had been on the trunk of the old live oak-there were cuts through the bark, knife cuts. I thought I was seeing things, or just mistaken. Harry, should we tell people?”

“What good?” he asked. His thoughts were blurring again, so he said no more and only held her hand lightly in his.

Ithaca called the Gordon house the next evening and received no answer. The last part of Harry had died, finally, at eleven in the morning.

53

The Glomar Discoverer, its engines in reverse against a steady surface current and a constant twelve-knot southwesterly wind, drifted at the edge of a vast sea of lime-green and gray and white foam. The air was filled with a constant churning roar. High overhead, peculiar clouds were forming — swirling bands, curving upward as if along the inside of a funnel.

Walt Samshow scanned the foaming sea to the distant horizon and could see no end to it. He hardly needed to breathe at all now. Most of the men held wet rags over their noses and mouths. Nosebleeds were common; the delicate nasal tissues were deteriorating under the drying, burning effect of too much of a good thing: oxygen.

“We can’t stay here long,” Sand said, standing beside him on the bridge.

“Do we have our samples and readings?” Samshow asked. Sand nodded.

“Any word from the Navy ships?”

“They’ve left the area already. We’ve been listening for the deep submersible, but all we hear is the roar of bubbles.”

“Tell the captain we should pull back ourselves,” Samshow said. “Can anybody fight this?” He had directed his question out over the bridge railing, but Sand shook his head.

“I doubt it.”

“It’s like watching the whole ocean being dismantled,” Samshow said. He pulled a bottle of eyedrops from his peacoat pocket and leaned his head back to administer them.

Sand refused the bottle when Samshow offered it. “It’s scary.”

Samshow grimaced. “It’s goddamned exhilarating, and I don’t mean the oxygen. You can see the end of things, you can see a plan — or at least some outline of a plan — and it’s horrifying, it’s grand.”

Sand stared at him, not comprehending.

“Forget it,” Samshow said, waving the almost empty bottle of eyedrops. “Tell the captain to get us the hell away from here.”

Sand bumped into Chao, the first mate, in the bridge hatchway. Apologizing, he stood back and Chao held out a scribbled note.

“From Pearl Harbor, and from San Francisco!” he said.

“What?” Sand asked.

“Report of a seismic disturbance in Mongolia. Not an earthquake, a bomb. Perhaps ten megatons. Not an air burst, an underground or something like it.”

Samshow looked at the figures on the scrap of paper. “They’re no fools,” he said.

“You think they blew up the Russian bogey?” Sand asked.

“What else?” Chao grinned broadly. “Maybe we can get them all! Maybe the Australians, too, eh?”

“Where will they get a bomb?” Sand asked.

“If they even want to,” Samshow said.

“Only a fool would hesitate now,” Chao said. “Put the bastards out of action, cut their lines of communication!”

“Hear that freight train down there?” Samshow pointed figuratively and emphatically down through the deck and the ocean, and jabbed his finger to deepen the thrust to the mantle and core below. “As long as that’s running, we’ve accomplished nothing.”

“If the theories are correct,” Sand said.

“Still, we got them!” Chao refused to have a wet blanket thrown over his enthusiasm. He stared defiantly at Samshow then dipped his head and raised one leg over the bottom of the hatchway to return to the bridge.

54

Edward Shaw drove the Itasca into Fresno and stopped for gas. The sky to the north was free of smoke but deeper blue than he had ever seen it at this latitude. There was a lot of fine ash in the air from the fires in the Soviet Union and China.

Winter was coming to an end prematurely; across the Sierras, snow was receding rapidly.

California — with the exception of San Diego, where fires had spread north from Tijuana — seemed to have escaped the worst of the conflagrations. Yosemite was intact. That might be explained by the lack of tourists; the roads were unnaturally empty. A few radio stations had gone off the air, abandoned by their personnel. The news broadcasts he had heard driving into Fresno were far from encouraging.

The Kemp-Van Cott objects within the Earth were slowing more rapidly than before. It seemed both scientific and public perception that the harmonic swings of these two (or more, some said) “bullets” were ticking away the Earth’s final days. The current estimate was thirty days before they met at the Earth’s core. Sentence of death.

He bought basic groceries and several six-packs of beer in the convenience store, then drove through the city, stopping on impulse at a sprawling three-level shopping mall just off the highway in Pinedale.

“What in hell am I doing?” he asked himself after he had parked the RV. He sat in the driver’s seat, looking across the half-filled parking lot. “I hate shopping centers.” He got out and carefully locked up. In faded blue jeans, Pendleton jacket, and running shoes, he could have passed for any of the locals who wandered on the lowest level of the mall, going from window to window, alone or with girlfriends or family. Still unsure why he was where he was, Edward sat on a bench near a flower-shop kiosk and watched the people passing, concentrating on the men.

Life as usual? Not quite.

The expressions on the men’s faces, young or old, seemed fixed, dazed. There was no joy in their shopping. The children still showed enthusiasm, and the women for the most part appeared either calm or blank. Why? Women are supposed to feel things more than the men. Why the difference?

After an hour of watching and puzzling, he stood and approached a bookstore, the only conceivable place in the mall he might find something of interest. Looking through the travel section and picking out books about Yosemite, he heard a commotion near the front counter. A florid, stocky man in white shirt and gray slacks came in shouting, “Hey, hey! Hear this? Hear about this yet?”

He flashed a newspaper around, his face wreathed with a smile. “The Russians blew up theirs, too. That’s two down! Just the Aussies now, and we’ll have them!”

No one showed much enthusiasm.

We’re down and nearly out, Edward thought. The whole planet feels like the four of us did at Vandenberg. What does it matter if we take a small chunk out of them?

He bought the books and quickly left the mall.

On California state highway 41, driving north, passing a car perhaps every five minutes, he nodded his head and clenched his jaw, suddenly realizing why he had made the Pinedale stop. The books were of course superfluous; he had gone there to say good-bye to part of his culture.

If this is going to be an extended wake, he thought, might as well say my farewells to everybody.

Edward followed 41 into the park and took the long, winding drive along a nearly empty Wawona Road, the shadow of Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines crossing his windshield. It was four o’clock and the cool, sweet, green-scented air came through his half-opened side window with strobing warm bursts of sun between stands of trees. Large patches of snow dripped by the roadside, edges round and glittering.

The Wawona tunnel opened onto Inspiration Point and a view of the length of the valley. He parked the RV in the small paved lot, three spaces over from a lone unoccupied car. Climbing down, savoring the moment, he walked to the edge and stood by the railing, hands in pockets, a silly grin on his face.

I’m a kid again.

This is what he remembered most clearly — the valley floor, green with thick pine growth, and in western shadow, the Merced River reflecting snake curves of clear blue sky. Bridal Veil Falls cut its famous brilliant white arc and died in foggy spray against the rocks below. Above the falls, the Cathedral Rocks framed granite monstrosities beyond. On the left, the face of El Capitan glowered gray and pure, dominating the valley from this perspective.

Over twenty years ago, I wondered what it would be like to wander through a mass made of that much granite. There are places inside no one has seen ever, a vast space of solid rock, silent and still, frozen.

Beyond and behind El Capitan rose the Three Brothers and North Dome, from this angle a simple superfluity of rock capped with snow, sure to assume their proper characters when seen from below. Almost on a par with the white peak of Clouds Rest, and above the lower of the Cathedral Rocks, was the calm, bright-faced assertion of Half Dome.

The cold wind drove up the valley and whipped Edward’s hair. I’m not dreaming. By God, I’m finally here, and this isn’t a dream. He felt compelled to make sure and kicked his boot lightly against a post rail.

For more than twenty years, in his dreams, this had been the place of his greatest happiness, his peace. Nowhere else had he ever felt quite so much at ease, he thought; and his almost monthly returns in sleep to this valley, these monoliths, kept reminding him of what he had lost.

His father, whom he had lost — who had lost him, as well — and his mother, who ignored him. The peace and self-assurance of childish ignorance, or perhaps it was enlightenment; he didn’t care.

By five-thirty, Edward had carried the last of his equipment from the Curry Village parking lot to the tent cabin he had reserved (needlessly) three weeks before. He checked out the cabin, a raised wooden platform covered with oft-patched white canvas, placed in isolation in the middle of trees close to the talus slope of Glacier Point. The cabin’s single light bulb gave sufficient if not bright light, and the two army-blanketed metal-frame beds were in good repair and comfortable.

He followed the road past the Curry Village shops and over a stone bridge and then crossed the meadow. A red-winged blackbird in a nearby bush took exception to his presence. He grinned and tried to chirp back in a friendly manner, but the bird would have none of his overtures. That didn’t matter; he knew he belonged there as much as the bird.

From the middle of a meadow, surrounded by tussocks of grass, he rotated to survey his new world. The valley was dark and quiet; the rich, deep blue evening sky hovered on motionless air. He heard the distant echoes of people laughing and talking, their voices bouncing from the granite walls of Glacier Point, Sentinel Rock, and the Royal Arches across the valley. At the base of the Royal Arches he could make out the lights of the Ahwanee resort hotel. To the west a few hundred yards, a few campfires and electric lights revealed the extent of Yosemite Village.

He and his parents had lodged the last night of their journey in the Ahwanee, after spending a week in the tent cabins. He was still debating whether he would do that when the end approached.

Sublime peace.

How would the people of the world fare if all could spend their lives in this kind of beauty? If humans were rare enough that almost any meeting was precious?

He turned on his flashlight and shone it ahead as he returned to the tent cabins. On a flat-topped granite boulder just down the slope from his cabin, he laid out the Coleman stove and a pot of water and fixed a quick supper of ramen soup, throwing an onion and a hot dog in with the noodles.

He walked in darkness to the showers, wearing only an off-white knee-length terry-cloth robe, shaving kit in hand. A Steller’s jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. “It’s dark,” he told the bird. “Go to sleep. I’ve eaten already. Where were you? No food now. “The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars.

The communal showers — a large wood-paneled building, women to the left, men to the right — were practically empty. An attendant at the towel and soap station lounged back on his stool and only leaned forward when Edward approached. “Step right up,” the young man said, flourishing a small bar of soap and a towel. “No waiting.”

Edward smiled. “Must be dull.”

“It’s wonderful,” the attendant said.

“How many people here?”

“In the entire valley? Maybe two, three hundred. At Camp Curry, no more than thirty. Perfectly peaceful.”

Edward showered in a clean, virtually unused stall, then shaved himself with a disposable razor in a mirror long enough to accommodate fifteen or twenty men. One other came in to shower, smiling cheerfully. Edward nodded cordially, feeling like privileged nobility, packed up his kit, and returned to the tent cabin.

By eight, he had had enough of reading the books he had bought in the shopping mall bookstore. He turned out the overhead light and plumped up the pillows, and then lay sleepless for an hour, thinking, listening.

Somewhere in the valley, a group of kids sang folk songs, their young voices rising high in the starry darkness. They sounded like cheerful ghosts.

I’m home.

55

Reuben turned nineteen on March 15, in Alexandria, Virginia. He celebrated by buying himself a doughnut and a carton of milk in a small bakery, and then stood on the street, drawing suspicious glances. He had bought a new overcoat and a fedora, but tall, muscular young blacks, standing idle, dressed even in inconspicuous nonconformity, were not a favored attraction in the tourist district. He did not care. He knew what he was doing.

With a flourish, he tossed the carton and the waxed-paper doughnut wrapper into a public trash can, wiped his lips delicately with the knuckle of his index finger, and unlocked the door of a faded silver 1985 Chrysler LeBaron. He had purchased the car with cash in Richmond and had already, in just three days, put four hundred miles on it. It was the first car he had ever bought, and he didn’t care whether he owned it or not. He had sole use of it, and that was what counted.

The remainder of the bag full of cash — about ten thousand dollars — he had stashed in the trunk under the spare tire.

“Okay,” he said, listening to the engine smoothly idling. “Where to?”

He squinted a moment. Now, the orders usually came from people, and not from the indefinite nonvoice of what those on the network called the Boss. Reuben had even come to recognize the “signatures” of certain human personalities he communicated with, but this time, they were not familiar to him.

“Cleveland it is,” he said. He pulled several maps from the glove compartment and used a yellow marker to draw his course along the highways. He had spent the last few days stealing hundreds of books and optical disks from libraries in Washington and Richmond, and buying hundreds of others from bookstores. He had passed all of these on to three middle-aged men in Richmond, and he had no clear idea what they were going to do with them; he hadn’t asked. Clearly, the Boss was interested in literature.

With some relief — he did not enjoy thievery, even in a good cause — he took to the open road.

Spring was coming fast. The hills surrounding the Pennsylvania Turnpike were already rich green, and trees were bringing forth leaves that they would not have time to shed. There would be no summer or autumn.

Reuben shook his head, thinking about that, hands on the wheel. When he was on the road, the network rarely spoke to him, and that gave him plenty of time — perhaps too much time — to wonder about things.

He refilled the LeBaron’s tank in New Stanton and parked in front of a diner. After a quick meal of a hamburger and a small green salad, he paid his tab and looked over a rack of postcards, choosing one showing a big white barn covered with Pennsylvania Dutch hex symbols. Purchasing a few stamps from a machine, he scribbled on the back of the card,

and dropped it into the box outside the diner.

He made it to Cleveland by eight. A quiet rain fell as he checked into an old hotel near the bus depot. He parked the LeBaron in a public parking garage, uncomfortably aware that he would not be driving it to the final destination. Somebody would pick him up and take him there.

He was no more than a couple of miles from Lake Erie, and that — so the network had told him — was where he would have to be in the early morning.

Reuben regarded himself in the bathroom’s spotty mirror. He saw a big kid with a patchy beard and strong, regular features. He saluted the big kid — and the network — and went to bed, but didn’t sleep much.

He was scared. Tomorrow, he would meet other people in the network — some of the people behind the voices. That didn’t frighten him. But…

Something in the lake waited for them.

How much did he trust the Secret Masters?

What did it matter?

He’d be on the lake shore, at the Toland Brothers Excursion Terminal, at six a.m. , clean-shaven and freshly showered and dressed in the new suit he had purchased in Richmond for just such an occasion.

56

Trevor Hicks stepped out of the rental car under a big iron trestle and screened his eyes against the sun. He saw Arthur Gordon crossing the street. Gordon waved. Hicks, exhausted from the drive and still nervous, made a feeble gesture of acknowledgment. He had never become used to driving in the United States. Unable to find a quick route by surface streets, he had taken the freeway to get to the Seattle waterfront, then had driven in circles beneath the bridge for ten minutes, twice barely missing other cars in the narrow aisles. Finally he had managed to park just down the long concrete steps from the Pike Place Market. Across the street, warehouses converted into restaurants and shops vied with new buildings for views of the bay. Sea gulls wheeled and squeaked over a half-eaten hamburger in the street, lifting on spread wings to dodge passing cars.

Gordon approached and they shook hands awkwardly.

Despite having communicated recently on the network, they hadn’t seen each other since their first meeting in the Furnace Creek Inn. “My wife and son are in the aquarium,” Gordon said, pointing down the street. “That’ll keep them busy for a couple of hours.”

“Do they know?” Hicks asked.

“I told them,” Arthur said, “We’re staying together, wherever I go. We’re driving to San Francisco next week.”

Hicks nodded. “I’m staying here. I hear there’s going to be activity in the sound soon.” He made a face. “If you can call it ‘hearing.’”

“Any idea what sort of activity?” Arthur asked.

Hicks shook his head. “Something important. In San Francisco, too.”

“I’ve had that impression.”

“I’m sorry about your friend,” Hicks said.

Arthur stared at him, puzzled. “Sorry?”

“Mr. Feinman. It was in the papers yesterday morning.”

Arthur hadn’t thought of Harry much since leaving Oregon. “I haven’t been reading the papers. He…”

“Monday,” Hicks said.

“Christ. I…Ithaca probably called, and we were gone.” He lifted his head. “I told him about the network, too.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I think he probably did.”

“Then maybe it helped…No, I suppose that’s silly.”

Arthur stood with hands in pockets, shaken despite the months of preparation. He felt vaguely guilty for not thinking of Harry; he had called several times before leaving Oregon, and had been unable to speak to his friend. He took a deep breath and indicated they should climb the stairs to the market. “I wanted him to know that not everything was lost. I hope it helped. It’s so difficult sorting everything out.”

They passed in silence through the mostly empty aisles, stopping at a bakery to buy coffee and sitting at a white wrought-iron table placed between shops.

“How have they kept you busy?” Arthur asked.

“I’ve been visiting libraries, universities. Locating people…That’s how I’m most useful, apparently. I help find people the network is looking for, scientists, candidates.”

“I haven’t been doing much of anything yet,” Hicks said. “Do you know…who the candidates are?”

“Not really. There are so many more names than places. I don’t think any of us are making the final choices.”

“Terrifying, isn’t it?” Arthur said.

“In a way.”

“Have you heard anything about the bogeys? On the network, I mean.”

“Nothing,” Hicks said.

“Do you think we’ve slowed them down, done any good by blowing them up?”

Hicks smiled grimly. “No. Just about as effective as Crockerman.”

“But he didn’t…at least, I presume he had nothing to do with the action in Death Valley.”

“That’s right,” Hicks said. “He’s done nothing. So have the hotheads. Certainly, they’ve boosted our morale a little…but nobody believes they’ve fixed anything. The bullets still spin.”

“Then what purpose did the bogeys serve?” Arthur asked.

“You stated it once. They were a distraction, a misdirection. We’ve concentrated almost all our attention on them.”

Arthur blinked. “I didn’t think they were just decoys.”

Hicks shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Arthur pushed aside his sweet roll, all appetite gone. “They dropped them here, to deceive us, test us, as if we were laboratory mice?”

“I would say so, now, wouldn’t you?”

Arthur shook his head. “That burns.”

“Insult before injury,” Hicks said.

“Have you discussed this with others on the network?”

“No. We’ve been far too busy with other things. But the network has been given no instructions whatsoever by the Boss regarding the bogeys. We have not been instructed to recruit the President. You know that Lehrman is Possessed?”

Arthur nodded.

“The Boss has written off our entire military and government effort. Obviously.” Hicks held out his hands and stood, gathering his foam-plastic cup and waxed-paper wrapper. “So I stay here, help with whatever effort is made in Seattle. And you move south.”

Arthur remained seated, stunned. He should have assembled all the facts. He was disappointed in himself to find he had still harbored some illusions.

“Sorry to be the one to tell you about Mr. Feinman,” Hicks said.

Arthur nodded.

“Tonight I’m joining a group staying on Queen Anne Hill,” Hicks said. “We’ll reconnoiter from there.” He held out his hand. “Best of luck to you and your family.”

Arthur stood and shook it firmly. “Good-bye,” he said.

They looked at each other, not voicing the single question too obvious to ask. Is he chosen? Am I?

Hicks returned to his car. A few moments later, after surveying the fresh fish stalls and vegetable markets and purchasing a pound of smoked salmon and several bags of fruit, Arthur descended the stairs and crossed the parking lot and street to join Francine and Marty at the aquarium.

57

An ancient Chevy Vega with Texas license plates crossed the stone bridge in the opposite direction and honked at Edward. Edward turned and saw a collage of bumper stickers covering the back of the car, including the trunk and lower corners of the rear window. One glaring Day-Glo pink sticker immediately caught his eye: REGISTER PUSSY NOT FIREARMS. A faded yellow plastic square hung in the window’s upper corner: CAUTION! CHILD DRIVING.

“Hey, Edward!”

“Minelli!” He walked to the window and leaned down to wrap his hand around the back of Minelli’s neck. “You madman. You own this?” He spread his palm at the Vega.

“Bought it three weeks ago, complete with decoration. A beauty, isn’t it?”

“I am genuinely glad to see you.”

“I am glad to be seen. It was rough for a while after we parted. You went back to Texas?”

“That’s right,” Edward said. “How about you?”

“I made a scene in the institute office. They pulled my papers and kicked me out and said go ahead, sue us. I was going nuts. I bought this and I’ve been driving around ever since. I went to Shoshone again and dropped by the grocery store. Said hi to everybody. Stella wasn’t there. She was off in Las Vegas talking to lawyers about mineral deals. Bernice was there. She asked about you. I said you were fine. Are you?”

“I’m great,” Edward said. “Park and take a walk with me.”

“Where to?”

“I hear there are rock climbers on El Capitan.”

“Hot damn. Just like Disneyland.”

Minelli parked the car under a cloud of blue exhaust. He patted the trunk before opening it. “Why spend lots of money on something that doesn’t have to last more than a month or two?”

“Looks like it could break down in the middle of nowhere,” Edward commented.

“Hey, I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers.”

“With your sense of humor, that could be dangerous.”

Minelli shrugged and spread his arms out to the sun. “Ultraviolet rays, do your worst. I don’t give a fuck anymore.”

They followed the asphalt road for two miles, past the Three Brothers, then took a trail for another mile and stood in the El Capitan meadow, looking up at the massive ancient wall of gray granite. A pale streak showed where a sheet of rock had broken off in 1990, revealing unweathered surface.

“It is magnificent. I haven’t been here in ten, twelve years,” Minelli said. “Why’d you come?”

“Childhood memories. Best place on Earth.”

Minelli nodded emphatically. “Wherever I am right now is the best place on Earth, but this is better than most. I don’t see anybody up there. Where are they?”

Edward held up a small pair of field binoculars. “Look for ants trailing ropes and bags,” he said. “There’s five or six up there today, I hear.”

“Christ,” Minelli said, shading his eyes. “I see a black spot. No. It’s a blue spot. Color of my sleeping bag. Is that one?”

Edward drew a line with his finger from the tiny speck of blue. “Look above that a couple of degrees. Here.” He handed Minelli the binoculars. Minelli swept them back and forth in decreasing arcs and stopped, brows rising above the eyepieces. “Got him. Or her. Just hanging there.”

“There’s another above that one,” Edward said. “They must be a team. You can barely see the ropes between them.”

“How long does it take to get to the top?”

“A day, someone told me. Maybe longer. Sometimes they overnight up there, hanging in a bag, or on a ledge if they’re lucky.”

Minelli returned the binoculars. “Makes me queasy just thinking about it.”

Edward shook his head. “I don’t know. I could get into it. Think of the accomplishment. Standing up on top, looking out over everything. Be like building a skyscraper and knowing it was yours.”

Minelli made a dubious face. “What else is happening here? The place is deserted.”

“Practically. There’s a group meeting in the amphitheater at Curry Village this evening. A band is holding a concert tomorrow evening. The rangers are really loose. Some of them are giving tours on the weekend.”

“Everybody’s staying home. Mr. and Mrs. Mom-and-dad huddling next to their TVs, huh?”

Edward nodded, then raised the binoculars, spotting another climber. “Do you blame them?”

“No,” Minelli said quietly. “If I had a home or anybody I cared about — a woman, I mean — that’s where I’d be. I said good-bye to my sister and mom. They don’t know what the hell’s happening. They’re too ignorant to be scared. Mom says, ‘God will take care of us. We’re his children.’ Maybe He will. But if He doesn’t, I’m with you.

I don’t hold grudges. I can still admire the Old Dude’s masterworks.”

“It might be nice to be ignorant,” Edward said, lowering the binoculars.

Minelli shook his head adamantly. “At the end, I want to know what’s happening. I don’t want that…panic, when it comes. I want to know and sit and watch as much of it as I can. Maybe that’s the best seat in the house.” He pointed to the mottled rock face. “Up on top somewhere.”

Since Edward’s tent cabin had two bunks, he offered one to Minelli, but he turned it down. “Look,” he said, “they’re not even charging for them now. I asked down at the village and the fellows there say go ahead, sleep in one, just keep it clean yourself. Me, I’m going to want someone of the opposite sex with me when it happens. How about you?”

“That would be nice,” Edward agreed.

“All right, then. We party together, find women — some smart women, I mean, who know what’s going on as much as we do — and we party some more. I brought some food in with me, and the village store is stocked to the rafters with beer and wine and frozen food. We’re going to have a good time.”

At dusk, they showered and put on clean clothes and walked to the amphitheater, passing the wood-frame cabins. A middle-aged couple sat in folding chairs before the open door of a cabin, listening to a portable radio turned down low. They nodded greetings to each other.

“Going to the meeting?” Edward asked.

The man shook his head. “Not tonight,” he said. “It’s too peaceful tonight.”

“You’ll hear it from here, anyway,” Minelli warned.

The man and woman smiled and shooed them away.

“Tell us if there’s anything interesting.”

“Casual,” Minelli commented to Edward as they passed the Curry Village administration building and general store.

The valley was wrapped in cool shadow. Straying clouds obscured the tops of Half Dome and the Royal Arches. Edward zipped up his suede jacket. The amphitheater — benches arranged in curves before an elevated log and wood-beam stage — was full, people of all ages milling while engineers worked on the sound system. The loudspeakers popped and hummed; echoes of the crowd and the electronic noises bounced back at varying intervals from several directions. They found a bench halfway out from the stage and sat, watching the others, being watched in turn. A scruffy gray-bearded man of about sixty-five in a khaki bush jacket offered them unopened cans from a half-empty case of Coors and they accepted, popping and sipping as the gathering came to order.

A tall middle-aged park ranger climbed onto the stage and stood before the microphone, raising the stand to her level. “Hello,” she said, smiling.

The audience replied in kind, a low, warm murmur.

“My name — some of you know me already — is Elizabeth Rowell. There are about three hundred and fifty of us in the Yosemite now, and a few more coming in each day. I think we all know why we’re here. We’re all kind of surprised there aren’t more here, but some of us understand that, too. This is my home, and I plan on staying home.” She thrust out her jaw and looked around the audience. “So do others, and not many people live here year-around, as I do. Those of you who have left your homes to come here, you’re welcome to stay.

“We’re awfully lucky. Looks like the weather is going to be warm. It may drizzle off and on, but there’s not going to be much rain and no snow at all for a week or so, and all the passes are open. I just wanted to say that the park rules still apply, and we’re all behaving as if things are normal. If you need help, we’re fully staffed with rangers. Park police are on duty. We haven’t had any trouble, and we don’t expect any. You’re good folks.”

The man with the Coors box smiled and raised his can to that.

“Now, I am here basically to introduce folks. First, there’s Jackie Sandoval. Some of you know her already. She’s volunteered to be our spokesperson, sort of, tonight and for the rest of our stay. Jackie?”

A small, slender woman with long black hair and doll-like features came on stage. Rowell lowered the microphone for her.

“Hello,” she said, and again the warm sound emanated from the crowd in the amphitheater. “We’re here to celebrate, aren’t we?” Silence. “I think we are. We’re here to celebrate how far we’ve come, and to count our blessings. If what the experts tell us is true, we have three to four weeks to live in this wilderness, to appreciate the beauty and to think back on our lives. How many have had a chance for that kind of retrospective?

“We are a community — not just all of us here, but people everywhere. Some of us have stayed at home, and others have come here, perhaps because we recognize that all of Earth is our home. Each night, if we wish, if we all agree, we’ll gather in the amphitheater and share our dinner, perhaps have people sing for us; we’ll be a family. As Elizabeth said, all are welcome. I noticed some bikers camped at Sunnyside. They haven’t caused any trouble, I’ve been told, and they are welcome. Maybe for once in our history we can all be together, and appreciate what we can share. Tonight, I’ve asked Mary and Tony Lampedusa to sing for us, and then there’s going to be a dance at the Yosemite Village visitor center. I hope you’ll come.

“First, there’s a couple of announcements. We’re pooling our books and videotapes and such at the Ahwanee to make a kind of library. Anybody who wants to contribute is welcome. The park service has chipped in a lot of books about Yosemite and the Sierras. I’m the librarian, so to speak, so talk to me if you want to read anything, or donate anything.

“Oh. We’re also arranging for a music library. We have fifty portable optical disk players used for recorded park tours and about three hundred music disks. If you want to donate more, anything is appreciated. Now, here’s Tony and Mary Lampedusa.”

Edward sat with the half-full beer can between his knees and listened to the high, sweet folksinging. Minelli shook his head and wandered off before they were done. “See you at the dance,” he whispered to Edward in passing.

The dance began slowly on the open-air wooden deck of the visitors’ center. A ranger’s powerful stereo system provided the music, mostly rock tunes from the eighties.

About half the people in the park were single. Some who weren’t single acted as if they were, and a few arguments broke out among couples. Edward heard one man telling his wife, “Christ, you know I love you, but doesn’t this make anything different? Aren’t we all supposed to be together here?” The woman, shaking her head tearfully, was having none of that.

Minelli had no luck finding a partner. His appearance — short, on the edge of unkempt, his grin a little too manic — did not attract the fit, well-groomed single females. He glanced at Edward across the open-air pavilion and shrugged expressively, then pointed at him and held a hand out, thumbs up. Edward shook his head.

Everybody was on edge that night, which was only to be expected. Edward stood to one side, unwilling to approach a woman just yet, willing only to watch and evaluate.

The dance ended early. “Not a great dance,” Minelli commented as they walked in the dark back to Camp Curry. They separated near the public showers to go to their separate tent cabins.

Edward was not ready for sleep, however. Flashlight in hand, he walked west along a trail and came to the Happy Isles, where he stood on a wood bridge and listened to the Merced. In the distance, he could hear Vernal and Nevada falls roaring with snowmelt. The river ran high on the bridge pilings, black as pitch in the deeps, dark blue-gray in turbulence.

He glanced up at the stars. Through the trees, just above Half Dome, the sky was twinkling again, tiny intense flashes of blue-green and red. Fascinated, he watched for several minutes, thinking, “It’s not over out there. Looks like somebody’s fighting.” He tried to imagine the kind of war that might be fought in space, through the asteroids, but he couldn’t. “I wish I could understand,” he said. “I wish somebody would tell me what this is all about.”

Suddenly, his whole body ached. He clenched his jaw and slammed his fist on the wooden railing, screaming wordlessly, kicking at a post until he collapsed on the wooden deck and clutched his throbbing foot. For a quarter of an hour, back against the rail, legs spread limp, he cried like a child, opening and closing his fists.

A half hour later, walking slowly back to the camp, flashlight beam showing the way, he realized what he had to lose.

He climbed the steps to his tent cabin and collapsed on the bed without undressing. Tomorrow night, he would not hesitate to ask a woman to dance, or to return with him and stay with him. He would not be shy or principled or stand on his dignity.

There was simply no time for such scruples. He did not understand what was happening, but he could feel the end coming. Like everybody else, he knew it in his bones.

58

Reuben came awake at five o’clock. Eyes wide, he oriented himself: spread-eagled on a short single bed in a small, shabby hotel room. His nighttime thrashings had pulled the upper sheet and blankets loose and he was only half covered.

Sitting on the side of the bed, he put on his ballpackers (that’s what his father always called jockey briefs) and a T-shirt and his pants. Then he pulled the curtains on the narrow window and stood in front of it, looking out at the predawn light coming up over the city. Gray buildings, old brick and stone darkened by last night’s sleet and snow; orange streetlights casting lonely spots on wet pavement; a single ancient Toyota truck driving through slush below the window and slowly cornering past an abandoned and boarded-up storefront.

Reuben showered, put on his new suit, and was out of the hotel by five-thirty. He had paid his room tab the night before. He stood shivering for a moment by the abandoned storefront, listening to the network, getting his final directions. The old Toyota came down the street again and pulled to the curb in front of him. A man just a few years older than Reuben, dressed in overalls and a baseball cap, sat behind the wheel. “Need a lift?” he asked, reaching over to open the opposite door. Heat poured from the cab. “You’re heading down to the Toland Brothers Excursion Terminal. You’re the second I’ve picked up this morning.”

Reuben slid into the passenger side and smiled at the driver. “Awful early to be out driving,” he said. “I appreciate this.”

“Hey, it’s in a good cause,” the man said. His gaze lingered on Reuben’s face. He did not appear happy that his passenger was black. “That’s what I’m being told, anyway.”

They took East Ninth Street to the Municipal Pier. The driver let Reuben out and drove away without saying another word.

Dawn was something more than a promise as he walked along the pier and approached the heavy iron bars and gate beneath the giant painted TOLAND BROS. sign. A plump, grizzled man of something less than seventy years and more than sixty stood behind the gate with a flashlight in hand, waggling a cigar between his teeth. He saw Reuben but did not move until the young man was less than two yards away. Then he pushed off from the bars next to the closed gate and shined his flashlight on Reuben’s face.

“What can I do for you?” he asked sharply. The cigar was soggy and unlighted.

“I’m here for the morning excursion,” Reuben said.

“Excursion? To where?”

Reuben stretched out an arm and pointed vaguely at Lake Erie. The man scrutinized him for several long moments in the flashlight beam, then lowered the lens and called out, “Donovan!”

Donovan, a short, clean-cut fellow in a cream-colored suit, about as old as the plump man but far better preserved, came out of a shed near the office.

Donovan glanced quickly at Reuben. “Network?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Let him in, Mickey.”

“Goddamn fools,” Mickey muttered. “There’s still ice on the lake. Making us go out before the season.” He leaned his head to one side and concentrated on keying the padlock and releasing a chain from the gate latch. He tugged the chain out of the eye with a conspicuous machine-gun snick-tink, pulled the gate inward, and bade Reuben enter by swinging a large, callused red hand.

Halfway down the pier, past an old, boarded-up seafood restaurant, a two-decked excursion boat named the Gerald FitzEdmund belched diesel from twin motors through stern pipes just above the waterline. The boat was easily capable of carrying two or three hundred passengers, but at this hour it was practically deserted. Donovan walked ahead of Reuben and gestured for him to cross the roped boarding ramp.

“We’ll cruise the lake for an hour or two,” Donovan said. “We’ve been told to leave the three of you out there. Wherever ‘there’ is. It’s mighty damned cold to be sailing today, let me tell you.”

“What are we going to do out there?” Reuben asked.

Donovan stared at him. “You don’t know?” he said.

“No.”

“Christ. I presume” — he used the word as if it had an official flavor, yet was not at all familiar to his lips — “I presume that you’ll find something out there before we drop you off. Or maybe you’ll just freeze to death.”

“I hope to God we do,” Reuben said, shaking his head dubiously. “Find something out there, I mean.” They haven’t done me wrong yet.

He walked toward the bow and joined a white boy some four or five years younger than he, and a well-dressed black woman about thirty. A stiff, icy breeze cut across the deck, blowing the woman’s hair past her face. She glanced at him, then faced forward, but said nothing. The boy held out his hand and they shook firmly.

“My name’s Ian,” the boy said, teeth chattering.

“Reuben Bordes. Are both of you network?”

The boy nodded. The woman gave the ghost of a grin but did not turn away from her view of the lake.

“I’m possessed,” Ian said. “You must be, too.”

“Sure am,” Reuben said.

“They make you do things?” Ian asked.

“They’re making me do this.”

“Me, too. I’m a little afraid. Nobody knows what we’re doing.”

“They’ll take care of us,” the woman said.

“What’s your name, ma’am?” Reuben asked.

“None of your damned business. I don’t have to like any of this; I just have to do it.”

Ian gave Reuben a screw-faced glance and cocked an eyebrow at her. Reuben nodded.

Donovan and Mickey were climbing to the pilot house on the upper deck. A man in a dark blue uniform was already at the wheel. With only the six of them aboard, the excursion boat pulled away from the dock and headed out onto the smooth, lazy morning waters of the lake. Chunks of ice slid spinning past the bow. “We’d better go inside or we’ll freeze, ma’am,” Reuben suggested. The woman nodded and followed him into the enclosed passenger area.

Fifteen minutes into the cruise, Mickey descended to the lower deck with a cardboard box and a Thermos. “The galley ain’t open,” he said, “but we brought these things aboard with us.” He peeled the top of the carton back to reveal doughnuts and three foam cups.

“Bless you,” the woman said, sitting on a fiberglass bench. Ian picked two doughnuts and Reuben followed his example. Mickey poured steaming coffee as each held a cup. “Donovan tells me nobody knows what’s out there,” he said, capping the Thermos.

Reuben shook his head and dropped sprinkles of powdered sugar from his doughnut into the coffee.

“So what do we do if there’s just water? Let you drown?”

“Something’s out there,” the woman said.

“I’m not doubting it. I just wish I didn’t feel so damned creepy. Everything’s gone to hell the last few months. Thank God it’s not the season. No tourists. The President’s going nuts. Whole world.”

“Are you part of the network?” Ian asked.

Mickey shook his head. “Not me, thank God. Donovan is. He’s told me about it, and he showed me the spider. Damned thing wouldn’t bite me. Shows you what the hell I’m worth. I’ve thought about calling up the newspapers, but who would believe me? Who would care? Me and Donovan, we’ve worked the lakes for thirty years, first fishing smelt, then running geehawks — that’s tourists — all around. I named this boat. It’s a joke.”

Nobody understood, so he cleared his throat. “I tell people, ‘Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.’ Remember that song? Ore tanker went down. Big wave or something broke its keel and it sank without a trace. But what the hell — geehawks don’t know nothing about the lakes. They think lakes are puddles. These lakes are goddamned oceans, landlocked oceans. You could hide anything at the bottom, whole cities…” He glared at them for emphasis, one pencil-thin eyebrow raised. “So I’ve been thinking. No need to talk about what I’ve been thinking. I’ll just let that sit with you, and with Donovan. If the goddamned spider doesn’t bite me, sure I’ll cooperate — he’s my partner — but I say the hell with it, and with everything else.”

He walked aft with the box and Thermos, shoulders twitching. The woman ate her single doughnut delicately, leaning her elbow against the back of the bench, watching him leave. “So what have you two been doing?” she asked, suddenly familiar and friendly.

Ian sat beside her, holding his coffee cup against the boat’s gentle sway in the crook of one folded leg. “I’ve been looting the libraries at Cleveland State,” he said. “And you?”

“Case Western,” she said. “I and about six others. Two of them are hackers, They brought a truck into the data storage center at the main library and ran cables into the building and took everything they could get their hands on.”

“I sent records from the Library of Congress to this fellow in Virginia,” Reuben said. “And other stuff. I recruited Trevor Hicks.” Neither Ian nor the woman knew who Hicks was. “Have you met any of the ones below the bosses — the humans I’ve heard on the network, giving orders?”

“I have,” the woman said. “One of them’s my husband. We were separated, filing for divorce, when we were both possessed. I’ve had to work with him, and take orders from him, the last two months. He works for the State Department.”

Cleveland was no longer visible to the south. There was nothing but blue ice-dotted lake and a fast-disappearing mist from horizon to horizon. They had been on the water for over an hour.

“Do you think there’s anybody who’s got the whole picture?” Ian asked. “Any human, I mean.”

“I haven’t met one if there is,” Reuben said.

“My husband gives orders, but he doesn’t know everything.”

Ian licked crumbs and sugar from his fingers. “I hope they have a bathroom on this tub,” he said, walking aft.

The boat’s motors cut back to a throaty gurgling rumble. The water had taken on a slight chop and as they circled, Reuben felt queasy. I’m going to regret that doughnut.

“All right,” Donovan called on the loudspeaker from the pilot house, “this is where we’re supposed to be. Anybody getting messages?”

“Not me,” the woman said, standing and brushing doughnut crumbs from her coat.

“Christ,” Donovan commented dryly.

They had circled for ten minutes when Ian sang out, “Thar she blows!” He had ascended to the upper deck and now leaned over the railing beside the pilot house, pointing east. Reuben and the woman returned to the bow and followed his point and saw a dead gray block rising from the water, about the size and shape of a moving van’s trailer. The pilot gunned the motors and moved them closer to the protuberance.

“What is it?” Ian shouted. “A submarine?”

“I don’t know,” Reuben said, half laughing. He was excited and more frightened than ever. The woman’s face was a stiff mask, but her wide-eyed, glassy stare gave her away.

The boat came to within a few yards of the gray block. The bow wash slapped against it.

A square hatch about as tall as Reuben opened in the smooth dull surface at the level of the boat’s bulwarks.

“It’s an elevator,” the woman said. “No, it’s a stairway. We’re supposed to go inside. You, me, and him.” She pointed at herself, Reuben, and Ian on the upper deck. “Nobody else.”

“I know,” Reuben said. At least it’s not rocking.

Donovan stood by the port gangway and pulled it aside as the pilot brought the boat as close to the block as he dared. Mickey wheeled a shorter gangplank to the gangway and pushed it out to the block’s entrance. It was safe enough and no more. The woman crossed first, impatient, buffeted by the wind, gripping the single raised handrail tightly; then Reuben, and finally Ian.

She was already descending a spiral staircase within the block when Reuben stopped at the rear of the alcove. He peered down after her. Ian came up behind him.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Reuben affirmed.

“Better go, then.”

They descended. Above them, the hatch shut with a gentle hum.

59

There was a wildly canted floor, smoke coming up through the boards and tile, a gout of steam and rock, and the walls falling away. He felt himself lifted and screamed.

Sitting upright in the bed, Arthur blinked at the unfamiliar room. Marty was on his hands and knees crying hysterically in the next bed.

Francine put her arms around Arthur.

“There’s nothing,” she said. “There’s nothing.” She let him go and crawled out from under the covers to embrace Marty. “Dad was having a nightmare,” she said. “He’s all right.”

“It was here,” Arthur said. “I felt it. Ahh, God.”

Marty was quiet now. Francine came back to their bed and lay next to him. “You’d think they’d help you with your dreams or something,” she said, somewhat bitterly.

“I wish they’d blocked that one,” he said. “I could—”

“Shhh,” Francine said, wrapping her arms around him now. She was shivering. “Bad enough if we have to live through it. Why do we have to dream about it, too?”

“Have you dreamed about it?”

She shook her head. “I will, though. I know I will. Everybody will, the closer it gets.” Her shivers turned into something more. Her teeth clicked together as she held him. Arthur stroked her face with his fingers and tightened his grip on her, but she was not to be consoled. Without tears, she shook violently, silently, her neck muscles locked with the effort of not making a sound, not scaring Marty.

“We-we-we wou-would die,” she whispered harshly.

“Shh,” he said. “Shh. I’m the one who had the nightmare.”

“We would d-die,” she repeated. “I w-want to scream. I n-n-need to scream, Art.” She glanced at Marty, still awake, listening, watching from where he lay.

“Is Mommy all right?” Marty asked.

Arthur didn’t answer.

“Mommy!” Marty barked.

“I-I’m fine, honey.” Her shaking hadn’t diminished.

“Your mother’s scared,” Arthur said.

“Stop it,” Francine demanded, glaring at him.

“We’re all very scared,” Arthur said.

“Is it happening now?” Marty asked.

“No, but we’re worried about it, and that gives me nightmares, and makes your mommy shiver.”

Francine closed her eyes in an agony of maternal empathy.

“Everybody’s ascared,” Marty declared. “Not just me. Everybody.”

“That’s right,” Arthur said. He rocked Francine gently. She relaxed her wrinkled brows but kept her eyes closed. Her shaking had slowed to an occasional shudder. Marty came from his bed to theirs and wrapped his arms around Francine, placing his cheek against her shoulder.

“It’s all right, Mom,” he said.

“It’s all right to be afraid,” Arthur said to nobody in particular, staring at the flowered wallpaper illuminated by a small night-light pointing the way to the bathroom.

They were in a bed-and-breakfast inn a few miles south of Portland.

The network was not active.

He had been set on his course, given his instructions.

I could use a little sympathy, too.

But none was offered.

Excerpt from New Scientist, March 25, 1997: The emergence of a new and radically altered Venus from behind the sun has given planetary geologists many things to ponder. It was supposed that the impact of a block of ice two hundred kilometers in diameter would cause enormous seismic disruption, but there is no sign of that. Some, in fact — connecting the impact with events on Earth — have theorized that the block was artificially “calved” into many smaller chunks, distributing the impact more evenly around the solar system’ s second planet.

What we now see is a naked Venus, her atmosphere transformed into a cloak of transparent, superheated steam. Surface features thus revealed are little different from what we had expected from the evidence of past planetary probe radar scans.

Planetologist Ure Heisinck of Gottingen University believes that the atmosphere may now have a built-in heat-transfer mechanism that will allow it to cool; that eventually the steam will condense and the resulting opaque white clouds will reflect more of the sun’s heat into space than they will absorb. More cooling will occur, and eventually rain will fall, which will turn again into steam on the planet’s surface. The steam will condense in the upper atmosphere, conveying heat back into space. In a few centuries, Earthlike conditions may prevail…