The Forge of God

62

During his last hours, Trevor Hicks sat at his computer skimming and organizing genetic records sent from Mormon sources in Salt Lake City. He was staying at the home of an aerospace contractor named Jenkins, working in a broad living room with uncurtained windows overlooking Seattle and the bay. The work was not exciting but it was useful, and he felt at peace, whatever might happen. Despite his reputation for equanimity, Trevor Hicks had never been a particularly peaceful, self-possessed fellow. Bearing and presentation, by English tradition, masked his true self, which he had always visualized as frozen — with extra memory and peripheral accomplishments — somewhere around twenty-two years of age, enthusiastic, impressionable, quick-hearted.

He rolled his chair back from the table and greeted Mrs. Jenkins — Abigail — as she came through the front door, carrying two plastic bags full of groceries. Abigail was not possessed. All she knew was that her husband and Trevor were involved in something important, and secret. They had been working straight through the day and night, with very little sleep, and she brought in supplies to keep them reasonably comfortable and well fed.

She was not a bad cook.

They ate dinner at seven — steaks, salad, and a fine bottle of chianti. At seven-thirty, Jenkins and Hicks were back at work.

Being at peace, Hicks thought, worried him somewhat…He did not trust such flat, smooth emotions. He preferred a little undercurrent of turbulence; it kept him sharp.

The alarm went through Trevor Hicks’s brain like a hot steel lance. He glanced at his watch — the battery had run down without his noticing, but it was late — and dropped the disk he had been examining. He pushed the chair back and stood before the living room window. Behind him, Jenkins looked up from a stack of requisition forms for medical supplies, surprised at Hicks’s behavior. “What’s up?”

“You don’t feel it?” Hicks asked, pulling on a rope to open the curtains.

“Feel what?”

“There’s something wrong. I’m hearing from…”He tried to place the source of the alarm, but it was no longer on the network. “I think it was Shanghai.”

Jenkins stood up from the couch and called for his wife. “Is it starting?” he asked Hicks.

“Oh, Lord, I don’t know,” Hicks shouted, feeling another lance. The network was being damaged, links were being severed — that was all he could tell.

The window afforded a fine nighttime view of the myriad lights of downtown Seattle from Queen Anne Hill. The sky was overcast, but there had been no reports of thunderstorms. Still…The cloud deck was illuminated by brilliant flashes from above. One, two … a long pause, and by the time Mrs. Jenkins was in the living room, a third milky pulse of light.

Mrs. Jenkins looked on Hicks with some alarm. “It’s just lightning, isn’t it, Jenks?” she asked her husband.

“It’s not lightning,” Hicks said. The network was sending contradictory pulses of information. If a Boss was on-line, Hicks could not pick its voice out through the welter.

Then, clear and compelling, the messages came through to Hicks and Jenkins simultaneously.

Your site and the vessel in the sound are under attack.

“Attack?” Jenkins asked out loud. “Are they starting it now?”

“Shanghai Harbor was an ark site,” Hicks said, his voice full of wonder. “It’s been cut from the network. Nobody can reach Shanghai.”

“What…What…” Jenkins was not used to thinking about these things, whatever his value to the network as a local organizer and procurer.

“I believe—”

His own inner thoughts, not the Boss’s, said before the words could come out, They’re defending us but they can’t stop everything from getting through. They’ve never told us this before, but they must have put ships or platforms or something in orbits to watch over the Earth—

“—we’re being bombarded—”

Light fell through the clouds and expanded.

this is a war after all but we haven’t quite thought of it that way didn’t suspect they would do this to us

“Jenks…”

Jenkins hugged his wife. Hicks saw the flash of red and white, the lifting of a wall of water and rock, and the rush of a darkening shock wave across the lights of the city and houses on the hill. The window exploded and he closed his eyes, experienced a brief instant of pain and blindness—

On the last leg of the marathon drive into San Francisco, speeding down an almost-deserted 101 at well over the speed limit, Arthur felt a severe pain in the back of his head. He gripped the wheel tightly and pulled to a halt at the side of the highway, his body rigid.

“What’s wrong?” Francine asked.

He twisted around, threw his arms up on the back of the seat, and looked through the rear window of the station wagon. A hellish blue and purple glow was spreading to the north, above and beyond Santa Rosa and the wine country.

“What’s wrong?” Francine repeated.

He twisted around to face forward again, and leaned over the wheel to peer up at the skies above San Francisco and the Bay Area.

“More asteroids, Dad!” Marty cried out. “More explosions!”

These were a lot closer and a lot brighter, however, as sharp as blowtorches, leaving red spots in his vision. The Bay Area was still over twenty miles away, and these flashes were high in the night sky. Some kind of action, another battle, was taking place perhaps no more than a hundred miles above San Francisco.

Francine started to get out of the car but he stopped her. She stared at him, face twisted with fear and anger, but said nothing.

Four more high flares, and then the night returned.

Arthur was almost surprised to find himself weeping. His anger was a frightening thing. “Those bastards,” he said, pounding the wheel. “Those goddamn bloody fucking bastards.”

“Daddy,” Marty whimpered.

“Shut up, goddammit,” Arthur shrieked, and then he grabbed his wife’s arm with his left hand and reached for Marty in the rear seat with his right. He shook them firmly, repeating over and over again, “Don’t ever forget this. If we survive, don’t you ever, ever forget this.”

“What happened, Art?” Francine asked, trying to keep calm. Marty was screaming now, and Arthur closed his eyes in grief and sorrow, the anger turned inward because he had lost control. He listened to a few of the voices on the network, trying to piece things together.

“Seattle’s gone,” he said. Trevor Hicks, all the others.

“Where’s Gauge, Dad?” Marty asked through his tears. “Is Gauge alive?”

“I think so,” Arthur said, shaking violently. The enormity. “They’re trying to destroy our escape ships, the arks. They want to make sure there are no humans left.”

“What? Why?” Francine asked.

“Remember,” he repeated. “Just remember this, if we make it.”

It took him almost twenty minutes to become calm enough to pull back into the slow lane. San Francisco and the Bay Area had been adequately protected. Suddenly, and without reservation — without any persuasion whatsoever — he loved the Bosses and the network and all the forces arrayed to protect and save them. His love was fierce and primal. This is what a partisan feels like, watching his countryside get pillaged.

“They bombed Seattle?” she asked. “The…aliens, or the Russians?”

“Not the Russians. The planet-eaters. They tried to bomb San Francisco, too.” And Cleveland, which had survived, and Shanghai, which had not, and who knows how many other ark sites? A fresh shiver worked down from his shoulders to his sacrum. “Christ. What will the Russians do? What will we do?”

The car’s steering wheel vibrated. Above the engine noise, they heard and felt a shuddering groan. The rock-borne vibrations of Seattle’s death passed under them.

63

At two in the morning, Washington, D.C., time, Irwin Schwartz reached out for the urgently beeping phone from his office cot and punched the speaker button. “Yes?” Only then did he hear the powerful whuff-whuff of helicopter blades and the screaming roar of jet turbines.

It was the late night White House military staff duty officer. “Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Crockerman is being evacuated. He wishes you to join him on the helicopter.”

Schwartz had duly noted the officer’s reluctance to call Crockerman “President.” He was now strictly “Mr. Crockerman.” If you don’t act the office, you don’t get the title. “What sort of emergency?”

“There have been strikes on Seattle and some kind of action over Cleveland, Charleston, and San Francisco.”

“Jesus. Russian?”

“Don’t know, sir. Sir, you should get out on the lawn as soon as possible.”

“Right.” Schwartz did not even grab his coat.

On the White House lawn, dressed in the undershirt and pants he had worn as he slept, Schwartz ducked instinctively under the high, massive rotor blades and ran up the ladder, his bald head unprotected against the chill downdraft of spring night air. A Secret Service agent stood by until the hatch was closed, and then watched the helicopter lift away to take them all to Grissom Air Force Base in Indiana.

The staff officer and a Marine guard hugged Crocker-man’s sides, the Marine carrying the “football” and the staff officer carrying a mobile data and command center — MODACC for short — hooked up to the helicopter’s communications system.

There were three Secret Service agents aboard the craft, as well as Nancy Congdon, the President’s personal secretary. Had Mrs. Crockerman been in the White House, she would have been evacuated as well.

“Mr. President,” the staff officer began, “the Secretary of Defense is in Colorado. State is in Miami at a governors’ meeting. The Vice President is in Chicago. I believe the Speaker of the House is being airlifted from his home. I have some information regarding what our satellites and other sensors have already told us.” He spoke louder than he needed to over the engine noise; the cabin was well insulated.

The President and all the others aboard listened closely.

“Seattle is gone, and Charleston is a ruin — the strike appeared to be centered at twenty klicks out in the ocean there. But our satellites show no missile launches from the Soviet Union or any fish at sea. No missiles at all were detected coming from the Earth. And apparently some sort of defensive system came into play over San Francisco and Cleveland, perhaps elsewhere as well…”

“We don’t have that kind of defense,” Crockerman said hoarsely, barely audible. He fixed his eyes on Schwartz. Schwartz thought he looked two days dead at least, eyes pale and lifeless. The vote to impeach had taken the last bit of starch from him. Tomorrow would be — would have been — the beginning of the Senate trial on whether he would stay in office or be removed.

“Correct, sir.”

“It’s not the Russians,” observed one of the Secret Service agents, a tall black Kentuckian of middle years.

“Not the Russians,” Crockerman repeated, his face taking on some color now. “Who, then?”

“The planet-eaters,” Schwartz said.

“It’s begun?” the young Marine lieutenant asked, gripping the briefcase as if to keep it from flying away.

“God only knows,” Schwartz said, shaking his head.

The MODACC beeped and the staff officer listened intently over his sound-insulated headphones. “Mr. President, it’s Premier Arbatov in Moscow.”

Crockerman stared once again at Schwartz for a long moment before reaching for the mike and headphones. Schwartz knew what the stare meant. He’s still the Man, damn us all to hell.

64

Arthur drove the car into the driveway of Grant and Danielle’s hillside home in Richmond just before midnight. He was still shaken; the memory of the network’s pain and loss lingered like a bizarre, bitter-sharp taste on the tongue. He sat with hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead at the rough wood garage door, and then turned to Francine.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I think so.” He glanced over the seat at Marty. The boy sprawled on the back seat, eyes closed, his head lolling slightly over the edge, mouth open.

“Thank God he’s asleep,” Francine said. “You gave us both a scare.”

“I gave you a scare?” Arthur asked, his weariness breaking down before a sudden upwelling of anger. “Jesus, if you could have felt what I felt—”

“Please,” Francine said, face deadly grim. “We’re here. There’s Grant now.”

She opened the car door and stepped out. Arthur stayed in the seat, confused, then closed his eyes for a moment, tentatively searching for the network, trying to learn what had happened. There had been little on the radio beyond repeated reports of some unknown disaster in-Seattle; it had been less than an hour.

He half expected the superpowers to stumble into nuclear war; perhaps members of the network were preventing that even now. But he had to go on faith. For the moment, he was cut loose from the circuit of network communications.

Arthur took a murmuring Marty into his arms. Grant showed them to a bedroom with a queen-sized bed and a folding cot. Danielle — now asleep, Grant said — had made up the beds and laid out towels for them, as well as putting a late night snack of fruit and soup on the kitchen counter. Francine tucked Marty into the cot and joined Grant and Arthur in the kitchen.

“Have you heard what happened?” she asked Grant.

“No…” Grant’s shirt and slacks were wrinkled and his silver-gray hair was tousled; he had apparently nodded off on the couch, getting up as he heard their car approach.

“We saw a flash to the north,” Arthur said.

“Arthur thinks it was Seattle,” Francine said. Her look was almost a challenge: Go ahead, tell us you know. Tell us how you know.

Arthur stared at her, dismayed. Then it came to him: she was suddenly amidst family. She did not have to rely completely on him. She could vent a few of her own doubts and tensions; Marty was asleep and wouldn’t hear. He understood this well enough, but it still hurt. On top of the pain he had felt earlier, this small betrayal was almost more than he could stand.

“We heard on the radio,” Arthur said, taking the easy way out. “Something happened in Seattle.”

Francine nodded, her face bloodless, teeth clenched. “’Radio,” she said.

“What, for God’s sake? I have a brother in Seattle,” Grant said.

The airborne sound of Seattle’s death rattled the house windows. Grant glanced warily at the ceiling. Arthur checked his watch and nodded.

“It’s gone,” Arthur told him. “The entire metropolitan area.”

“Jesus Christ!” Grant cried, jumping from his stool. He went to the wall phone at the end of the counter and fumbled at the keypad.

“We didn’t hear that on the radio,” Francine said softly, her shoulders slumping. She stared past her folded hands at the carpet.

“It’s busy. Everything’s tied up,” Grant said. He loped into the den to switch on the television. “When did you hear this?”

“We saw the flash about fifty minutes ago,” Francine said, glancing up guiltily at Arthur. He held out his hand, wriggling his fingers, and she grasped it, covering her face with her other hand. She shuddered, but no tears would come.

The commentator’s voice came to them through Grant’s expensive sound system, resonant and authoritative, but with more than a hint of fear. “ — reports now from Seattle and Charleston, that the two cities have been destroyed by what appear to be nuclear explosions, but there are contradictory reports of no accompanying radiation. We still have no idea what actually happened although it is now clear that at least these two seaboard cities, on the East and West Coasts, have been leveled by unprecedented disaster. The government has issued statements that our nation is not yet in a state of war, which leads some sources to state that the explosions were not caused by nuclear missiles, at least not those of the Soviet Union. Indeed, flashes over the cities of San Francisco and Cleveland have led some to speculate that the destruction of the Earth has begun, and that we are witnessing—”

“Tell him,” Francine said, keeping her voice low. “Tell him. I believe you. Really I do. They need to know.”

Arthur shook his head. She brought her hands over her face again, but her trembling had stopped. “I can’t tell them, and you must not,” Arthur said. “It would only hurt them.”

Danielle appeared in the hallway door, wearing a long silk gown with a chenille robe thrown over it. “What’s happened?” she asked.

Francine embraced her and led her into the den. Arthur regarded the untouched bowls of soup, thinking, Not yet…But it can’t be much longer.

65

A knock on his tent-cabin door awakened Edward at eight o’clock. He glanced at his watch and scrambled into his pants, then opened the door to see Minelli and a plump black-haired woman in black T-shirt and black jeans. Minelli reached out a hand. “Congratulate me,” he said. “I’ve found Inez.”

“Congratulations,” Edward said.

“Inez Espinoza, this is my friend Edward Shaw. He’s into rocks, too. Edward, Inez.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Inez said.

“We met at the dance last night. Pity you weren’t there.”

“I was depressed,” Edward said. “I couldn’t handle company.”

“There’s a story going around about robot insects. Inez says she saw a bunch of them up behind Yosemite Village. What do you think they are?”

“I saw some, too,” Edward said. “Wait a minute. I’ll get dressed and we’ll fix breakfast.”

Over Coleman-stove toast and hard-boiled eggs, Edward told them what he had seen below the Mist Trail. Inez nodded and regarded him with her large brown eyes, obviously content to say little.

“What do you think they are?”

“Hell, if the bastards can make fake aliens, they can turn out robot spiders. They’re surveying the Earth.

Conducting a general assay before they blow it up.”

Inez spontaneously began to weep.

“Hey, let’s not talk about that shit,” Minelli said. “She’s sensitive. Her old man was killed on a Harley on the highway a couple of days ago. She was thrown clear.” Inez sobbed and dabbed at her eyes, revealing a nasty scrape and bruise on her forearm. “She hitched a ride here. She’s a sweetheart.” Minelli hugged her and she hugged him back.

A small, skeletally thin man with a high, square forehead walked past the rock where they breakfasted. He carried a baseball bat almost as big as himself and seemed bemused.

“What’s up, man?” Minelli asked.

“Just heard it on the radio. The aliens nuked Seattle and Charleston and Shanghai last night. I was born in Charleston.” He continued down the path, bat dangling from an unenthused wrist.

Inez hiccuped spasmodically.

“What’re you going to do?” Minelli called after him.

“Going to catch some of those fucking chrome bugs out in the woods and smash them,” the man answered, not stopping. “I want to get my licks in.”

Minelli set down his tin cup of tea and slid down from the rock. Inez took his offered hand and did likewise with surprising grace. “I think it’s time we hiked up to Glacier Point,” Minelli said quietly. “Want to come?”

Edward nodded, then shook his head. “Not yet. I’ll be up there soon.”

“All right. Inez is coming with me. We’ll tent out. Welcome to join us.”

“Thanks.”

The pair walked down the path under the pines to Curry Village.

Edward climbed the stairs into his tent cabin and pulled a topographical map of the valley and regions south from his map folder. Lying on his stomach across the beds, he fingered the Four Mile Trail up to Union Point, and then on to Glacier Point, and compared other vantages.

There were none better and so accessible. Glacier Point offered some facilities. But if things get rocking, won’t it just split off and fall, and take us with it?

Did it matter? What was an hour or so, one way or another?

Edward entered his card number into the pay phone keypad and dialed Stella’s home number in Shoshone. After three rings, Bernice Morgan answered, and told him Stella was at the store, taking inventory. “Life goes on,” she said. “I can transfer you from here.”

After a few clicks and hums, the store phone rang and Stella answered.

“This is Edward,” he said. “I’ve been wondering what you’re up to.”

“The usual,” Stella answered. “Where are you now?”

“Oh, I’m in Yosemite. Settled in. Waiting.”

“Is it what you thought it would be?”

“Better, actually. It’s beautiful. There aren’t very many people.”

“What did I tell you?”

“You’ve heard about Seattle and Charleston?”

“Of course.”

Edward detected a hint of resolve in her voice. “Still planning on staying in Shoshone?”

“I’m a homebody,” Stella said. “We heard from my sister, though. She’s coming home from Zimbabwe. We’re picking her up in Las Vegas the day after tomorrow. You’re welcome to join us…”

He surveyed the riverbanks and trees and meadows beyond the clutch of pay phones. This feels right. This is where I belong. “I was hoping I could convince you to come here. With your mother.”

“I’m glad you asked, but…”

“I know. You’re home. So am I.”

“We’re a stubborn pair, aren’t we?”

“Minelli is here. I don’t know where Reslaw is. Minelli’s found a girlfriend.”

“Good for him. How about you?”

Edward chuckled. “I’m just too damned choosy,” he said.

“Don’t be. You know…” Stella stopped, and there was silence over the line for several seconds. “Well, maybe you know.”

“If we could have more time,” Edward said.

“Is the deal still on?” she asked.

“Deal?”

“If this all turns out to be a false alarm.”

“We still have a deal.”

“I’ll be thinking about you,” Stella said. “Don’t forget.”

What would life with Stella be like? She was tough-minded, intelligent, and more than a touch willful; they might not get along, and then again they might.

Both of them knew they would not have the time to find out. “I won’t forget,” he said.

In the Curry Village general store, he stocked up on dried soups and various pouches of gourmet camp food. The supplies were running out. “Trucks haven’t come in here for two days,” the young woman clerk said. “We keep calling, they keep saying they’re coming. But nobody’s doing much now. Just sitting back and waiting. Damned morbid, if you ask me.”

He added a pair of dark sunglasses and paid for the supplies with the last of his cash. All he had now were credit cards and a few traveler’s checks. No matter.

He had hoisted the plastic bag and was about to leave when he saw the blond woman at the back of the store, picking through a bin of half-rotten apples. Taking a concealed deep breath, Edward replaced his bag on the counter, motioned with his finger to the clerk that he would be back, and walked to the rear.

“Find your husband?” he asked. The woman glanced at him, smiled sadly, and shook her head.

“No such bad luck,” she said. She held up a particularly bruised apple and inspected it ruefully. “I’m a fruito-phile, and look what they offer.”

“I have some pretty good apples in my…Back at the cabin. I’ll be leaving for Glacier Point soon. You’re welcome to them. Too heavy to carry more than one or two on a hike.”

“That’s very kind,” she said. She dropped the apple into the bin and held out her hand. Slender, cool, strong fingers; he shook the hand with moderate firmness. “My name is Betsy,” she said, “and my maiden name is Sothern.”

“I’m Edward Shaw.” He decided to go for broke. “I’m not with anybody.”

“Oh?”

“For the duration,” he said.

“How long is that?” she asked.

“Somebody said less than a week. Nobody knows for sure.”

“Where’s your cabin?”

“Not far from here.”

“If you feed me a nice, crisp, juicy apple,” she said, “I’m liable to follow you anywhere.”

Edward’s smile was spontaneous and broad. “Thank you,” he said. “This way.”

“Thank you,” Betsy said.

In the tent, he found her the best red apple and polished it with a clean dishcloth. She bit into it, wiped away a dribble of juice running down her chin, and watched him arrange the supplies in his backpack.

“I hope you’re not one of those ignorant people,” she said abruptly. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but if you think everything’s rosy, and God’s going to save us, or something like that…”

Edward shook his head.

“Good. I thought you looked smart. Sweet and smart. We don’t have much time left, do we?”

“No.” He flipped the pack over and buckled it, glancing at her.

“You know, if I had it all to do over again,” she said, “I’d choose men like you.”

This pricked Edward a little. “That’s what all the beautiful women say. There aren’t any maidens in foxholes, or something to that effect.”

“Jesus.” She smiled. “I like that. Do you…pardon me for asking…do you have any devastating, immediately fatal communicable diseases?”

“No,” Edward said. “Hardly any.”

“Neither do I. Are you expecting anyone?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She held out her hand, and Edward shook it delicately by the fingertips, then grinned and pulled her toward him.

66

The network came alive in Arthur’s head at eight in the morning. He opened his eyes, wide awake but feeling as if he had been stunned, and rolled over to shake Francine’s shoulder. “We have to be going,” he said. He got out of bed and slipped into his pants. “Get Marty dressed.”

Francine moaned. “Yes, sir,” she said. “What now?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “We’ve been told to be a certain place in an hour. In San Francisco.”

Marty sat up on the cot, rubbing his eyes. “Come on, sport,” Francine said. “Marching orders.”

“I’m sleepy,” Marty said.

Francine grabbed Arthur’s arm and pulled him close to her, staring up into his face with a stern expression. “I’m only going to say this once. If you’re crazy and this is all for nothing, I’ll…” She grabbed his nose, and not in play; the tweak she gave it was exquisitely painful. Eyes watering, Arthur took her hand in both of his and rubbed it. “Do you understand me?”

He nodded. “We have to hurry.” Despite his throbbing nose, he was almost ecstatic. Why hustle all of us somewhere this early in the morning? They have plans…

His ecstasy faded when he met Grant, wrapped in a robe, in the hallway, with his daughter following close behind. “You came in awful late to be getting everybody up so early,” Grant said. “We’ve had quite a night. I don’t think I slept more than an hour…Danielle may not have slept at all.”

Danielle sat at the kitchen counter, drinking a cup of coffee, when they trooped through the swinging door. Her face was pale and she had been smoking; the brimming ashtray told a plain tale of a full night of cigarettes. “Such early birds,” she said unenthusiastically.

“We have to be going,” Arthur said.

Danielle raised an eyebrow. “We thought you’d stay awhile.”

“We thought so, too. But I spent last night thinking, and we should be…out of here as soon as possible. There’s a lot to be done.”

Danielle leaned her head to one side in query as Francine and Marty came into the kitchen. Marty smiled shyly at Becky; Becky ignored him, glancing between her mother and father.

“What in hell is going on with this family?” Danielle asked, her voice sharp. “Goddammit, Francine, where are you going?”

“I don’t know,” Francine answered bluntly. “Arthur’s in charge.”

“Are you all crazy?” Danielle asked.

“Now, Danny,” Grant said.

“I’ve been up all night trying to figure this out. Why are you leaving now? Why?” She was on the edge of hysteria. “Something’s going on. Something with the government. Is that why you’re here? You’re going to leave us all, let us die!”

Arthur’s heart sank. She might be close enough to the truth. All his excitement seemed to drain.

“We’re going into the city today,” he said. “I have business there, and Marty and Francine have to come with me.”

“Can we come along?” Danielle asked. “All of us. We’re family. I would feel a lot better if we all came along.”

Francine looked at him, eyes filled with tears. Marty’s lower lip was quivering, and Becky stood beside her mother, one arm around her, confused into silence.

“No,” Grant said. Danielle jerked her head around.

“What?”

“No. We will not panic. Arthur has work to do. If it’s work for the government, fine. But we will not panic in this house if I have anything to say about it.”

“They’re going someplace,” Danielle said softly.

Grant agreed to that with a brief nod. “Maybe so. But we have no business horning in.”

“That’s goddamned reasonable of you,” Danielle said. “We’re your goddamned family. What are you doing for us?”

Grant searched Arthur’s face, and Arthur sensed his confusion and fear and determination not to let things get out of control. “I’m keeping us in our house,” he said, “and I’m keeping us civil, and dignified.”

“Dignity,” Danielle said. She upended her cup of coffee on the floor and rushed out of the kitchen. Becky stood by the spill and sobbed silently, painfully.

“Daddy,” she said between tight spasms.

“We’re just arguing,” Grant told her. He kneeled beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “We’ll be okay.”

Arthur, feeling like an automaton, gathered their things from the bathroom and spare bedroom. Francine sought her sister in the master bedroom and tried to soothe her.

Grant confronted Arthur in the driveway. Morning fog was thick over the hills, and the sun was a promise of yellow warmth behind the mist. A few mourning doves sang their sweet, nostalgic stupid song behind the hedges.

“Are you still working for the government?” he asked.

“No,” Arthur said.

“They’re not taking you all into Cheyenne Mountain or something like that? Putting you aboard a space shuttle?”

“No,” Arthur said, feeling a twinge. What do you hope is going to happen…? Something not too far from what Grant is hypothesizing?

“Are you coming back here this evening? Just going into town, and then…coming back?”

Arthur shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“You’re going to drive, wander until…it happens?”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said.

Grant grimaced and shook his head. “I’ve wondered how long we could keep it all together. We are all going to die, aren’t we, and we can’t do anything?”

Arthur felt as if he were breathing shards of glass.

“We face these things our own way,” Grant said. “If you’re in a car, driving, maybe everybody can keep together. Keep going on. If we all stay at home, maybe…too. Also.”

Please, you are powerful, you are Godlike, Arthur prayed to the Bosses at the top of the network, take us all, rescue us all. Please.

But the information already passed on to him made that prayer a hollow thing. And he had no assurance his family was going to be saved; no assurance at all, only a strong, living hope. He reached out for Grant’s hand and clasped it between his own.

“I have always admired you,” Arthur said. “You’re not like me. But I want you to know that I’ve always admired you, and Danielle. You are good people. Wherever we are, whatever happens, you are in our thoughts. And I hope we will be in yours.”

“You will be,” Grant said, jaw clenched. Danielle and Francine came through the front door, Marty in tow. Becky did not come out, but watched through the front bay window, a small radiantly blond ghost.

Arthur sat behind the wheel again after making sure Marty was strapped securely into the station wagon’s back seat. Grant held Danielle tightly with one arm and waved with the other.

Nothing so different about this, Arthur thought. Simple family leave-taking. He backed the station wagon out of the driveway and maneuvered on the narrow street, glancing at his watch. One hour to get where they had to be.

Francine’s face was soaked with tears, but she made no sound, staring ahead, her arm hanging limply out the window.

Marty waved, and they drove away.

Winds from the ocean had driven the smoke of eastern fires inland, and once the mist had burned off, the air was fine and blue and clear. Arthur drove them across the heavy, gray-girdered San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, almost empty of traffic, taking the 480 off-ramp to the Embarcadero and turning south for China Basin Street and the Central Basin.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Francine asked.

He nodded; in a way, he did know. He was following directions, but he had a picture of a fifty-foot fishing boat. Twenty passengers sat in the sun on the rear deck, waiting for them.

He parked the car in the lot at Agua Vista Park. “We’re walking from here,” he said. “It isn’t far.”

“What about the luggage?” Francine asked.

“My toys?” Marty chimed in.

“Leave them here,” Arthur said. He opened the tailgate and pulled out the box containing Francine’s disks and papers. That was the only thing he would insist they bring. He let Marty hold it.

The excitement was returning; he could feel sad later about those left behind. Right now, it seemed certain what he had most hoped for was happening. The network was not blocking his way, or telling him to go back; he was being urged on. Only a few minutes remained.

“We’re taking a boat?” Francine asked. He nodded. She lifted her purse, and Arthur shook his head: leave it. She slipped a plastic pack of family photos from her wallet and tossed the rest aside almost angrily, face contorted.

“Aren’t we going to lock the car?” Marty asked. Arthur hurried them away, leaving the tailgate open.

You do not need possessions. Bring nothing but the clothes on your back. Empty your pockets of change, keys, everything. Bring only yourselves.

He tossed his keys and change, wallet and comb, onto the asphalt.

They walked through an open gate in a chain link fence onto a long, broad pier, lined on each side with the gently bobbing masts of fishing boats. “Hurry,” he urged.

Francine pushed Marty ahead of her.

“All this for a boat ride,” she said.

At the end of the pier, the boat he had visualized awaited them. There were indeed about twenty people standing and sitting in the back. A young woman in faded jeans and a windbreaker guided them onto the ramp and they boarded quickly, taking their places in the back. Marty perched on a smelly pile of worn netting. Francine sat on a winch.

“All right,” the young woman shouted. “That’s the last.”

Only now did Arthur dare to let his breath out. He glanced around at the people on the boat. Most were younger than he; four children were in the group besides Marty. There were no passengers past late middle age. As he looked into their faces, he saw that many had been involved in the network, and yet they were not being rewarded for their labors. Others on the network had been left behind; many not on the network, like Marty and Francine, were going along.

Still, nobody seemed to have any idea where they were headed. The boat pulled into the choppy bay waters and headed north. The sun cast welcome warmth, and the winds over the bay took most of it away.

The young woman came around to each of them and held out her hand. “Jewelry, please,” she said. “Rings, watches, necklaces. Everything.” Everybody handed over the valuables without complaint. Arthur removed his wedding band and nodded for Francine to do likewise. Marty surrendered his Raccoon wristwatch without complaining. He was very sober and very quiet.

“Do you know where we’re going?” a young man dressed in a business suit asked the woman as he handed her a gold Rolex.

“Out near Alcatraz,” she said. “That’s what the skipper tells me.”

“I mean, after that?”

She shook her head. “Has everybody turned in everything?”

“Will we get our things back?” a small Asiatic woman asked.

“No,” the young woman in jeans replied. “Sorry.”

“Is Becky and Aunt Danielle and Uncle Grant coming with us?” Marty asked solemnly, watching sea gulls glide over the boat’s wake.

“No,” Francine answered, taking the word from Arthur’s lips. “Nobody else is coming with us.”

“Are we going to leave the Earth?” Marty asked. The adults around him visibly cringed.

“Shhh,” the young woman said, maneuvering her way past him. “Wait and see.”

Arthur reached out and gently pinched Marty’s ear between thumb and forefinger. Smart boy, he thought. He looked out across the water, feeling the bay’s white-caps thump rhythmically against the boat hull. Several people were becoming seasick. A nut-brown, gray-bearded man of about forty came down from the pilot house and passed out plastic bags. “Use them,” he said gruffly. “Everybody. We don’t need anybody sicker than they have to be, and we certainly don’t need chain reactions.”

Arthur surveyed the city’s skyline, blinking at the salt spray. All that work. Around the world. Thousands of years. He could not even begin to encompass the enormity. Francine came to him and wrapped her arms around him tightly. He leaned his cheek against her hair, not daring to feel as optimistic as he wanted to be.

“Can you tell me what’s going on now?” she asked.

Marty snuggled up to them. “We’re going away, Mom,” he said.

“Are we?” she asked Arthur.

He swallowed and barely moved his head, then nodded. “Yes. I think we are.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

They cut through the water under the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, Yerba Buena Island and Treasure Island to their right, tall mounds of dark green and brown on the slate-colored, white-flecked waters.

“See, Marty?” Francine said, pointing up at the bridge’s maze of girders and the huge piers and tower legs. “We drove over that just a while ago.”

Marty gave the wonder cursory attention. The sea was getting rougher. Alcatraz, a desolate rock cluttered with ancient buildings, a water tower prominent, lay dead ahead. The boat slowed, its motors cutting back to a steady chug-chug-chug. The young woman passed among them again, examining everybody closely for unnecessary belongings. Nobody protested; they were either numb with fear, seasick, exhausted, or all three. She smiled at Marty in passing to the rear again.

The boat stopped, drifting in the chop. The passengers began to murmur. Then Arthur saw something square and gray rise beyond the port gunwale. He thought immediately of a submarine sail, but it was much smaller, barely as wide as a double doorway and no more than ten feet out of the water.

“We’ll have to be careful,” the woman told them, standing on a short ladder near the pilot house. “The water’s rough. We’re all going to climb down through this doorway.” An empty black square appeared in the gray block. “There’s a spiral staircase going down into the ship. The ark. If you have a child younger than twelve, please hold its hand and be very careful.”

A burly fisherman in a black turtleneck sweater struggled to extend a short gangplank to the block’s entrance.

“We are leaving,” Francine said, her voice like a girl’s.

One by one, in silence, they crossed the none-too-stable plank, helped by the fisherman and the young woman. Each person vanished into the block. When his family’s turn came, Arthur went first, then helped Francine lift Marty across, and grasped her hand firmly as she lurched over.

“Oh, Lord,” Francine said in a trembling voice as they descended the steep, narrow spiral staircase.

“Be brave, Mom,” Marty encouraged. He smiled at Arthur, walking before him, their heads almost level.

After descending some thirty feet, they stepped through a half-oval entrance into a circular room with three doorways clustered on the opposite side. The walls were peach yellow and the lighting was even and warm, soothing. When all twenty stood in the room, the young woman joined them. The fisherman and other crew members did not. The half-oval hatch slid shut quietly behind her. A low moan rose from several in the room, and one man about ten years younger than Arthur sank to his knees, hands clasped in prayer.

“We’re inside a spaceship,” the young woman said. “We have quarters farther down. In a little while, maybe a couple of hours, we’ll be leaving the Earth. Some of you know this already. The rest of you should be patient, and please don’t be afraid.”

Arthur clasped his wife’s and son’s hands and closed his eyes, not knowing whether he was terrified, or exalted, or already in mourning. If they were aboard a spaceship, and all the work he and the others in the network had done was coming to fruition, then the Earth would soon die.

His family might survive. Yet they would never again breathe the fresh cold sea air or stand in the open beneath the sun. Faces passed before him, behind his eyelids: relatives, friends, colleagues. Harry, when he had been healthy. Arthur thought of Ithaca Feinman and wondered whether she would be aboard an ark. Probably not. There were so few spaces available, fewer still now that the ships in Charleston and Seattle had been destroyed. A breeding population, little more.

And all the rest…

The younger man prayed out loud, fervent, face screwed up in an agony of concentration. Arthur could very easily have joined him.

67

A loose group of ten took to the Four Mile Trail in the early morning, Edward and Betsy among them. They hiked through the shadows of Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine, pine pitch tartly scenting the still morning air. The climb was relatively mild at first, rising gradually to the vigorous Sentinel Creek ford some two hundred feet above the valley floor.

By eleven they were on the steep ascending trail cut into the granite facade to the west of Sentinel Rock.

Edward paused to sit and take a breather, and to admire Betsy in her climbing shorts.

“They used to charge to climb this,”’ Betsy said, propping one well-made leg against a ledge to retie her hiking boot.

He looked over the edge at the distance they had already climbed and shook his head. By noon, they had peeled out of their sweatshirts and tied the sleeves around their hips. They stopped for a water break. The ten, by now, were spread along a half mile of the trail like goats in a terraced-rock zoo exhibit. One young man a few dozen feet above Edward had enough energy to beat his chest and let loose a Tarzan cry of dominance. Then he grinned foolishly and waved.

“Me Jane, him nuts,” Betsy commented.

Their good cheer continued as they stood at Union Point and looked down across the valley, leaning on the iron railings. The sky was only slightly smoky, and the air was warming as they ascended. “We could stop here,” Betsy suggested. “The view’s pretty good.”

“Onward.” Edward put on a valiant face and pointed to the goal. “One more heavy climb.”

By one o’clock they had hiked over a seemingly endless series of switchbacks up the bare granite slope, stopping briefly to examine the manzanita growth. They then followed a much more reasonable, comparatively level trail to Glacier Point.

Minelli and his companion Inez had already pitched tents in the woods behind the asphalt paths leading up to the point’s railed terraces. They waved at Edward and Betsy and motioned for them to come over and share their picnic lunch.

“We’re going to take in the view,” Edward called to them. “We’ll be with you in a little bit.”

Leaning on the rail of the lowest terrace, they surveyed the valley from end to end, and the mountains beyond. Birdsong punctuated the steady whisper of the breezes.

“It is so peaceful,” Betsy said. “You’d think nothing could ever happen here…”

Edward tried to picture his father, standing by the railing more than two decades ago, waving his hands, clowning as his mother snapped his picture with a Polaroid camera. They had driven up to the point that time. An hour later, they had been on their way home, ending the last happy time of his childhood. The last time, as a child, he had felt he could have been happy.

He touched Betsy’s arm and smiled at her. “Best view in the world,” he said.

“Grandstand seat,” Betsy agreed, shading her eyes against the high bright sun. They stood near the edge for several minutes, arms around each other, then turned and walked back to the tents to join Minelli and Inez.

The afternoon progressed slowly, leisurely. Minelli had bought a stick of dry salami in the store, and two loaves of bread; Inez had somehow come up with a large wedge of Cheddar cheese. “We had a whole wheel a few days ago,” she said. “Don’t ask how we got it.” Her smile was tough and childish and sweet all at once.

Minelli passed around cans of beer, warm but still welcome, and they ate slowly, saying little, listening to the birds and the hum of the wind through the trees behind them. When they had finished, Edward spread a sleeping bag on the grass and invited Betsy to lie back and doze with him. The climb had not been exhausting, but the sun was warm and the air was sweet, and large fat bees were buzzing in lazy curves around them. They were well fed, and the beer had made Edward supremely drowsy.

Betsy lay beside him, head resting in the crook of his arm. “Happy?” she asked him.

Edward opened his eyes and stared up at white clouds against a brilliant blue sky. “Yes,” he said. “I really am.”

“So am I.”

A few dozen yards away, other campers were singing folk songs and sixties and seventies tunes. Their voices drifted in the restless, warm air, finally melding with the wind and the hum of the bees.

68

Walter Samshow celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday aboard the Glomar Discoverer, cruising in circles a few kilometers beyond the zone where huge gouts of oxygen had once risen to the ocean surface. The bubbling had stopped three days before.

The ship’s galley prepared a two-meter-long birthday cake in the shape of a sea serpent — or an oarfish, depending on whether you asked the cook or Chao, who had seen several oarfish in his time, but no sea serpents.

At five in the afternoon, the cake was cut with some ceremony under the canvas awning spread on the fantail. Bible-leaf slices of the serpent were served on the ship’s best china, accompanied by champagne or nonalcoholic punch for those ostensibly on duty.

Sand silently toasted his partner with a raised glass of champagne at the stern. Samshow smiled and tasted the cake. He was trying to decide what flavor the peculiar mud-colored icing was — someone had suggested sweetened agar earlier — when the ocean all around suddenly glowed a brilliant blue-green, even beneath the intense sun.

Samshow was reminded of his youth, standing on the beach at Cape Cod on the night of the Fourth of July, waiting for fireworks and tossing his own firecrackers into the surf just as their fuses burned short. The firecrackers had exploded below the surface with a silent puff of electric-green light.

The crew on the rear deck fell silent. Some looked at their shipmates in puzzlement, having missed the phenomenon.

In rapid succession, from the northern horizon to the southern horizon, more flashes illuminated the ocean.

“I think,” Samshow said in his best professorial tone, “we are about to have some mysteries answered.” He knelt to put his plate and glass of champagne down on the deck, and then stood, with Sand’s help, by the railing.

To the west, the entire sea and sky began to roar.

A curtain of cloud and blinding light rose from the western horizon, then slowly curled about like a snake in pain. One end of the curtain slid over the sea with amazing speed in their direction, and Samshow cringed, not wanting it all to end just yet. There was more he wanted to see; more minutes he wanted to live.

The hull shuddered violently and the steel masts and wires sang. The railing vibrated painfully under his hand.

The ocean filled with a continuous light, miles of water no more opaque than a thick green lump of glass held over a bonfire.

“It’s the bombs,” Sand said. “They’re going off. Up and down the fractures—”

The sea to the west blistered in a layer perhaps a hundred meters thick, scoured by the snaking curtain, bursting into ascending and descending ribbons of fluid and foam. Between the fragments of the peeled sea — the skin of an inconceivable bubble — rose a massive, shimmering transparent of superheated steam, perhaps two miles wide. Its revealed surface immediately condensed into a pale opalescent hemisphere. Other such bubbles broke and released and condensed from horizon to horizon, churning the sea into a mint-green froth. The clouds of vapor ascended in twisted pillars to the sky. The hiss and roar and deep churning, gut-shaking booms became unbearable. Samshow clapped his hands to his ears and waited for what he knew must come.

A scatter of calved steam bubbles broke just a few hundred meters to the east, with more on the opposite side. The turbulence spread in a high wall of water that caught the ship lengthwise and broke her spine, twisting her fore half clockwise, aft counterclockwise, metal screaming, rivets failing like cannon shots, plates ripping with a sound curiously b’ke tearing paper, beams snapping. Samshow flew over the side and seemed for a moment suspended in froth and flying debris. He felt all that he was a part of — the sea, the sky, the air and mist around him — abruptly accelerate upward. A much larger steam bubble surfaced directly beneath the ship.

There was of course no time to think, but a thought from the instant before lingered like a strobed image, congealed in his mind before his body was instantly boiled and smashed into something hardly distinguishable from the foam around it: I wish I could hear that sound, of the Earth’s crust being spread wide.

Around the globe, wherever the bomb-laying machines had infested the deep-ocean trenches, long sinuous curtains of hot vapor reached high into the atmosphere and pierced through. As the millions of glassy columns of steam condensed into cloud, and the cloud hit the cold upper masses of air and flashed into rain, the air that had been pushed aside now rushed back with violent thunderclaps. Tsunamis rolled outward beneath corresponding turbulent expanding concentric fronts of high and low pressure.

The end had begun.